In between

Many times I seem to be an outlier, not by choice but by circumstances. Slightly off centre, never entirely with the flow of the majority. But not too far off to be considered eccentric.

Season of Change

On 10th May 2018, a historical moment in Malaysian history was created. Pakatan Harapan, the opposition coalition, won the 14th General Elections.

To sum up 2017

It's the penultimate day of the year and a lot has happened in 2017, especially in the past two months. I'm not sure if this is a characteristic of aging, but time has been flying past really really fast lately. And every day in my last working week felt like a week in itself with insufficient time to complete what I had planned for the day.

Solo Trip

Last week I took my first solo trip to Singapore for a series of exams. On one hand I was weary to try something new during a stressful situation. However on the other hand, I was excited to test myself and it was a good opportunity to do so.

Organisational Culture

Like a typical Gen-Y, I have had my fair share of job hopping (not as many as some I know though). And what I've noticed is that although organisations are made up of individuals working together, there was an unmistakable difference in corporate culture in each organisation. It isn't just working style, but age spread, dressing and even physical attractiveness.

Linking risk management with news

I must say that the syllabus and reading materials I've been exposed to has helped me to gradually see how risk management comes into play in many situations. For example, the United Airlines incident a couple of days back where a passenger was dragged out screaming and injured, forced to leave on an overbooked flight - the first thing I thought of was that there was a lapse of controls.

Priceless 10: Facebook after death

Priceless is...

...the moment I discovered that we can actually appoint a friend to be like an "executor" of our fb profile in case of death.

Taskmaster

This weekend has been a "should not be doing this" time in repeat mode. Like how I should be studying now but I'm checking out my agreements (4 years after they were signed!) and discovering new music. My present ear tick at the end of this post.

Priceless 1: Warm bath

In light of some recent social media diarrhoea and hypocrisy, I shall neutralise the experience, forgive and forget, rise above the lowness and create positive vibes. So here's starting another slew of thematic posts to be thankful for the little things in life, that anyone can enjoy.

It is priceless...

The week that was

Today this blog is 12. And it's just another 5 days till the Lunar New Year. And another 3 days for my annual obligatory post. Time really is chasing me. The weekend is gone and I still feel like I haven't had my weekend!

But first, to recap the week that was.

Work in progress: Lunar New Year 2017 card

My timing is worse every year. It doesn't help that the lunar new year is getting earlier as well. This year, I won't have enough time to produce hardcopy cards as I've done in previous years. So it'll have to be e-cards this year!

Inspiration seeking started on Sunday mid-afternoon, and it's quite obvious that the chicken year is much easier than last year's monkey! I'd planned to make a hardcopy chicken and scan it, like last year, but I got lazy and only made part of the design in hardcopy.

A little peek at what it's going to be like. Quite bad quality camera phone photo, but this is the exact shot that I'll be using in the final copy.

HP Envy Touchscreen TrueVision HD webcam undetected [Solved]

I realised that my laptop's webcam (HP Envy Touchscreen TrueVision HD webcam) wasn't working after I had fixed my BSD issue last year. Whether or not it was working fine before that, I am not sure as I rarely use my webcam. The only annoying thing was when I wanted to join a video conference call and everyone else was on video except me, although I had a webcam - a non-working one.

Desert Rose - Dead and Alive

Every year we have charity sales in the office around September. I got a little desert rose plantling, which I was supposed to love and nurture as advised by my colleague. But by October, my poor desert rose plant lost all its leaves. I didn't dare tell my colleague this, because it was "hard work growing them from the seeds!". I was worried that I was indeed a plant killer!

Desert Rose plant - alive (left); seemingly dead (right)

Baking Experiments: Baked Cheese Tarts

When we were in Japan (a few years back), I remember buying this Pablo 'rare cheese tart' because (1) there was a long queue (kiasu lah) and (2) I was curious why they called it "rare" since I've only seen the term used in steak. It turned out to be a light cheese cake with a wobbly centre - we took the medium rare. At that time, we were greenhorns and put up all our mental barriers that it was too oozy for our schmoozy time.

Recently there's been a craze for Hokkaido baked cheese tarts. A slew of stores have been popping up in all the malls and there are a few brands which are all yellow with black text - I haven't been paying attention, I thought they were all the same. The tarts would sell for around RM5 each (but I've not bought any in Malaysia so far). The only time I had it was in Bangkok earlier this year - and it was gooood!

Bake Cheese Tarts we had while waiting for a seat in After You Cafe in Central World, Bangkok

Cooking Experiments: Creamy Curry Pasta

Over the weekend I bought some cooking cream in the hopes of trying my hand at carbonara (my fav which causes fatty ass but I probably need some adipose there!). When I got home and started googling for a recipe, to my surprise most of the recipes only used eggs and no cooking cream! A moment of enlightenment for me.

So over to today's lunch. The lunch gang decided that Friday is a splurge day after the crazy week we've had. And so we drove out to the nearby New Chapter by The Owls Cafe. Going into CCC reminded me of the Sponsor a Brick from many many years ago and now I was a stranger entering.

Creamy curry pasta - New Chapter (left) & homemade (right)

Reading and Reflecting

Recently I've somewhat got back into reading - perhaps with the realisation that pretty soon I may not have the luxury of reading for pleasure anymore. Although what I read are from the fiction genre, with every book there is a certain realness when I'm immersed in it and it is inevitable that the mind starts drawing parallels with real life.

Health & Wellness week

I knew it was not a good idea to have a toffee nut latte after dinner and this is the consequence - a wee hour post.

The good thing about smaller organisations is that corporate initiatives can be done in a more intimate setting. We had our Health & Wellness week a couple of weeks back. I for one, was quite excited to see how the plans would pan out after hearing the first mention of this in management meetings and then seeing the proposal papers come through. The objective was for us as an organisation to walk the talk as well as to reduce our medical claims.

Weekend Jog and Reading

After working a full week, the weekends tend to be a time to sleep in and do nothing; or to carry out the non-work routines. Life (or at least mine) tend to revolve around routines and little blips of irregularities from time to time.

Baking Experiments: Blackout Brownies, Roasted Vegetables, Baked Eggs, Berries with Yoghurt, Pizza & Salted Caramel Chocolate Tarts

For the past few months I have been experimenting whenever time permitted. The success rate was somewhat mixed but I am just happy that I completed them and eventually someone ate them up.

Computer Problems Round 2 (Error Code 0xc0000001)

Not long after I had restored my laptop to working condition, probably about a month or so, I had a promo email from Microsoft reminding that the free upgrade to Windows 10 was still being offered. Thinking that my laptop was touchscreen-enabled and not too old, I reckoned that my laptop could handle the upgrade. Unfortunately, halfway through the upgrading, I got the BCD again!