Chinese new year in Malaysia

I bought my flight ticket 6days ago, everything was happened out of sudden,
the infection/allergy thingy plus the tedious work I have in the past few weeks,
lurched my stomach and force myself to give myself a break.

Maybe I've had terrible homesick that I can't tell.

Anyway, those factors lead to a good ending, that I'm flying back to Malaysia.
Though I might lose my job, the most scarry consequances of losing  my job is
waving away my LV, GUCCI, BURBERRY and Egypt trip. At this stage,
I've overcome the money problem, mean I've accepted the fact of
being able to travel to 9 countries without buying any branded bag,
still it would be a marvallous trip whenever I have my beloved one
going with me.

Since the day I bought my ticket, I've been hallucinating all the events I would
participate, food I would eat and song I would listen in my mom's car.
I am over the moon with all the forthcoming events in Malaysia,
and the most exciting thing is my dearest one is going with me, HURRAY!!

I'd brought my D60 with me so I could capture something or food while
having holidays at home, I reaaly can't stop myself from wailing and laughing!

stop here, cause I really can't put my feeling into word anymore,
and I have to watch movie and wait for my flight.. heheheh!!

Snippest of life

Working in a restaurant mean you don't have day off on most of the BIG day.

I was working on both Christmas and new year eve. But I managed to
have an early celebration, travel down to London to catch a snapshot
of Christmas lighting in London city center and funfair in Leicester Square.
We spent half day sitting in a Chinese restaurant to read some gossip magazine
and savour the authentic chinese food, it was so relaxing and the life
that I used to have in Malaysia come into my mind.



I played tantrum whenever I was being aside when he having fun with his camera,
so making me obsess in photographing is brilliant. I did some shooting at that night,
cause he festooned photographing in such a charming way.


At that night my hand was being hold in his, we walked into the crowd,
we're promised to make our way back to London again for theatre.


The day after new year eve, we again stepped into London city,
we're expecting a great theatre and lunch. We move from booth to booth,
to check for the lowest price for Sister's act's ticket, and finally get it at
39.5pound, we weren't sure if it is the cheapest but anticipate that it couldn't be
any cheaper. We paid the tickets and we get into a cozy dinky japanese restaurant,
we had a great eel's rice, assorted of sushi and tempura ika.

Our tiny table was joined with another table, resulting a small movement room,
though the food was divine, I couldn't help myself to feel I was dining in a busy canteen.
After filled ourself with all those delicious meal, we bought some sushi from
Japan center then plonked ourself in the next door "IT'SU" restaurant,
again, it's a japanese light food restaurant, we found it warm, comfort
and suitable for a pre-pre-tea for Theatre. We had some tea and
special made juices there to go with our sushi and gossip magazine.
(I've never found that HK gossip magazine is such a mind-relaxing magazine)

You'd gasp in horror that our next activity after pre-theatre tea was dinner,
but indeed, we had our dinner after tea and before heading to theatre.

It was drizzling, when we stepped out of the restaurant. We strode toward
the theatre with a map on hand. After settled down on our seat, we started shooting
some picture in memory of our very first theatre experience in UK.
It was so amazing, we realised we'd far under-estimated their performances,
background and every single detail of them.

You can't imagine if you'd never been here. The automation of the backgrounds,
the specifically made backround for every scence and shopisticated prop that
utilised, they all amazed me. We're glad that we had the chance to experience
all this in our lifetime, and we're happy that we're together at every special moment.

We took a train home with smile hanging on face, the happiness deep inside us,
couldn't fade over in days.

Massive passion on working

Based on the title, I might have confused people that I've gotten
a great job in my own field, but it is a waitressing job in one of the
buffet restaurant own by BBI (British bornt Indian) brothers.

My mom was always hoping her daugther to study hard and more,
so they would be able to live independently in the future. "You have
to study hard to get a high pay yet flexible job office job otherwise,
you'll end up standing in the shopping mall for whole day long
resulting a bad looking calf (as a sale/promoter) and marry a bad
 husband." she advised me. I knew she tried to exagerate it to
aware me from being laziness, but it is just a way irony that
I'm now working as a waitress.

Working in an environment filled with world cuisine is much better
than in a old folk boutique (my ex-job), although it is tiring and busy,
still I enjoy more than in the boutique (which allow me to access to
facebook most of the time). I can slot into the time gap and make
a little conversation with people from different world, regarding
the life event (food, movie, living); where the conversation in a boutique
could only link to cloth, accesories, shoes..which was boring for me,
as I have a low vacabulary pool in my mind that can apply in my sentence.

Another thing that make myself passion in my work, is the tips given
after they finished, plus a soft goodbye kiss from some big eyes baby.
The remaining part of the life in restaurant coudn't be described
in much nicer way than terrible.

I've 2 main bosses and 2 minor boss and another manager,
I've to get myself prepared for the command given by any of them,
it would be lovely if they had discussed how should everything work
before gave command in unison, so I always do another duty
in the midst of serving customer/polish cutlery/handling food from kitchen.
Some time change the position of cutlery for more than 3 times a day
to fulfilled all my bosses. I'm working for 5 of them but receiving a pay.
It is fair enough as they're sharing one restaurant, though they
tripled or sometimes quadrupled my workload.
 
I believe in KARMA, all of the goodness that I get at the end will
enable me to travel around europe, getting a branded bag and
a new laptop (maybe?). I was getting so excited everytime listening
to the foreign folk song in the restaurant, which remind me the divine
time I had in Greece then realise I'm working for my dream,
again I melt into a big sweet smile to all the "God" in the restaurant,
who partially contritbute to my future trip.

Make my own thick western broccoli soup

(I forgot t clean the soup edge, but I love the rustic of it.)

I've recently added a gadget to my kitchen's appliances collection.
It is a hand blender + chopper that I longing for more than half year,
ignore all my considerations to click one on internet in the past 6 months,
mate finally relented to make my dream come true.
(We have no reason to say no to a gift.)

I didn't dupe him to buy it. Bactrack to the incidence of chunky vegetable soup
that I made on the other day, which was a WESTERN soup, he gave
quite a recoil expression, as in his opinion, western soup should be
thick, creamy and without a speck of visible chewable chunk, also
at least translucent (it was transparent soup like chinese soup).
I argued I can't make any thick-creamy-chunkiless soup unless
I have a hand blender/blender/chopper. So I acquired a blender
mentally on that day and materilised it 2 days ago.

He provides the tools and i roll up my sleeves to make soup.
There was so many variety of soup that you can easily grab from
internet, the first in my list was tomato soup, but it end up
involves too much of herb that I have none of them on hand.
So I retreat to the simple start--Broccoli soup.



Ingredients:
1. 1 medium Shallot (red onion) chopped
2. 1 medium yellow onion chopped
3. 2 cloves garlic chopped
4. 2 Tbs butter/olive oil
5. 1 1/2 cups of broccoli head and cut into florets
6. 1 large potato cut into tiny dices
7. 3-4 cups of vegetable/chicken broth
8. Parmesan/Cheddar cheese

Steps:
1. Melt the butter in a medium heat pot.
2. Saute red and yellow onion until soft and add in a big pinch of salt
3. Add in garlic and potato dices, slightly stir fried for minutes.
4. Pour in broth and boil it until potato become tender.
5. Add in broccoli florets and cook for 2-4 minutes.
6. Remove from heat and blend it to puree form.
7. Sprinkle some freshly grated parmesan cheese to taste.




We were both happy with the result. Consider the amount of vegetable used,
and omitted cream, this soup can be considered as a healthy soup,
where the ratio of vegetable, starch to fat is 4:1.5:0.5,
you could reduce the amount of oil and potato but as well as the thickness,
if you're a huge fans of health concerned society.

Breakfast treat for a serene day

I wonder if patient wasn't embbeded into me while I was budding inside my mom.
I always forget my boiling pot on the stove, high temp oven baking bread,
burning smell roaming in the house, charcoal formed in my pot,on and on.
Sometimes, this wasn't because of my early senile but impatient to wait infront of stove
or oven, I love multi-tasking, waiting is kind of wasting time (though I wasn't away
for some important thing).

So I came out with a better solution, where I put a pot on stove to allow
the water to boil, cut and chop the ingredient, start saute and boil noodle,
when everything was in the grip, I could start bakingbread or cake/cookies.
Combined pot to pan, check the oven, served pasta on plate,
garnish and withdraw bread from oven. I was busy with knife, pan, pot, laddle,
oven,bread... I smirked with risible acheivement.



The other morning I was cooking linguini, meanwhile bread was slathered with butter,
sprinkled with parsely and black pepper, covered with layer of thinly sliced tomato,
pickle, red chili and goat cheese. Before linguini proceed to studio, the first batch was
pushed into oven.



When the first batch had done, second batch of baked freach bread topped with soft cheese
and garnished with yellow pepper.



Each of them was lovely for breakfast, though it look like starter of a meal,
but I prefer starter to be a main course, cause it was too wasteful to switch them
to a subordinate role.

X'mas Scene lunch box - Sun dried tomato Tuna Linguini

I have a bottle of sun dried tomato in oil, it was placed in my shopping basket
due to a recipe of 10 minutes vegetable soup, it was an optional flavour,
but I took it as a MUST, with a speck of hesitation (I wasn't sure I would use it
anymore after the soup) I brought it home.

The soup thing is a nother story, so back to business, I was searching linguini recipe
in a rush, I'd bought a pack of fresh spinach linguini without a though on how to use it,
(the buy first think later bahaviour made my drawer, shelves and cupboard full of
 food ingredients) but I do want to slurp it tonight. Read through pages and pages
of pasta recipe, I found the simple but rapturous one.



I love colorless sauce either for pasta or salad, manifesting garlic pasta
perfect for me, and the original recipe involved only 4 ingredients,
garlic, red chili, sea salt and tuna (in oil). The rebellinous deep inside me
wasn't allowed me to follow the recipe exactly, so I quadrupled the garlic and doubled
the amount of red chili. I always enjoy saute garlic (or onion) then red chili..

I believe food is a medley of your favour ingredients to create a very you like
piece of production, so I added in a tiny bit of sugar, sun dried tomato (in oil)
and some pickle.They were truly fascinating!!

When I suggested him to bring a lunch box, he requested to reproduce
last night meal. I have to emphasize he seldom (almost never) repeat the same dishes
for consecutive days, this can be explained by tedious-hatred manner of him,
or I never made divine dishes or this is really a perfect one!



Such a easy peasy linguini is worth to stay in my cookbook.

Off to Malaysia Embassy in London

I had spent a minute on deciding the title, where it should be
day in Malaysia embassy or day in London. In fact I spent a day in
London nor Malaysia embassy, but I spent my big fat half day on foot.

In the context of losing my wallet, together with my IC and driving license,
I was advised to report to Malaysia embassy, I was planned to do so weeks ago,
but the forever procastinating police report hold my plan until today.
(Yes, I don't see any difference between police in Malaysia or UK,
in term of their effectiveness, so I guess I wont be so tempted to complaint
Malaysia police anymore.)

Anyway, I made my way to Malaysia embassy with a scibble map,
which later I find it quite useless then as it was too rough to get the way.
However, I took less than 20minutes to find out the right way
(in such a drizzly freezing weather 20minutes was not quick enough),
Having the Malaysia flat spotted is such delighting thing in this depressing morning.

In the Malaysia embassy, I smell, see and sense Malaysia,
the ambiance, the decoration, the language and the people
were all pieced up the picture of my home country.
One of the most significant thing is the small canteen
at the corner selling nasi lemak by "tudung" ladies,
and malay speaking person was crowded with cup of tea tarik each.
That's it the smell, picture and sound of Malaysia.

The thing I can't ignore was the time consuming process of any document
handled by them, which is persist perpetually no matter in Malaysia or UK,
maintaining their own personality is good huh?!

So, I was told to come back 3 hours later, its seem to be a long time to go,
but it was actually too long for me to stay in a coffee shop,
and too short to deal with my phone in China town. I was then decided
to have my phone unlock by today, hence mentally plus physically consesus
to pay a walk.

Instead of swaggering around I was striding the whole afternoon,
as my thrifty mind not allowed me to spend a sum of bus fare for just
reporting IC lost, which was so so so wasteful, I got to make it worth for
each pence I paid..

At the end of the day, I sat shiveringly on coach and waited for the
forever belated bus. The weather was getting atrocious, I was hoping
for a cup of hot pure dark chocolate (with hazelnut syrup without cream and milk)
to help me fight with the coldness and. Somehow I miss the humane sunlight in Malaysia.