Being Thankful: Day 7

I'm not supposed to be superstitious and I'm not... but I'm thankful it's Day 7 and also my birthday! I'm thankful for:

1. Family whom I can count on through thick and thin, better or worse.
2. Friends I've made throughout the different stages in my life, where each phase I've had a few who've stuck around. And the future whom I've yet to meet!
3. Bargain hunting - bought 3 shorts and a skirt for RM5 each! Any my beach wear is complete! Now I just need to get a backpack.

Being Thankful: Day 6

I am thankful for:

1. Waking up early today (not because forced to)
2. Having a good laugh from the stories shared by a friend
3. Receiving a birthday message from my ex-boss :)

Horsey year, yeeha!

Just for laughs - I saw this white horse in the middle of a garden-like display selling hyacinths and tulips in MALAYSIAN weather!!! (Ok, these couple of weeks have been exceptionally colder but not to the level of 16-18 degree Celsius, as stated on the plant info card)

Chinese New Year Horse in Sunway Pyramid - whatcha lookin at?

Being Thankful: Day 5

There's nothing like the little pleasures in life. Today's thankful list:

1. Found my old Case Logic laptop sleeve and my current new notebook fits it to a tee! I know, stupid happiness... but AWESOME!
2. Finished my meeting minutes with a minimal disturbance day! One cloud gone over my head.
3. Received a phone call on my direct line and the lady was asking me whether there are elephants in the Ipoh theme park as her friend from Japan is very interested in visiting!?! Although I'm totally the wrong person to be asking these questions, I was laughing in my head while trying to remember what I saw in the theme park last year during team building! hahaha I have no idea how she got my number! But funnily, after putting down the phone, it made me think of how we project the image of the company through our responses to external stakeholders, although my job function largely revolves around internal stakeholders.

Being Thankful: Day 4

I am thankful for:

1. Capturing the sunfairy and winning a RM20 shopping voucher and 6 festive ang pau packets (although I started catching at lunchtime (it is said that the sunfairies are 'released' at 10am).
2. Discovering that our local Sephora carries the Boscia detoxifying black cleanser, which I had read many good reviews online. However, the price was a little steep at RM92! I'll need to rethink and summon all my impulse buying strength to make the purchase (if any). Oh, and while there I just discovered so many interesting products! Weeeee!

Blogger.com, why you reset my profile?

No idea how long the changes had been effected, I just found out that Blogger.com has reverted my display name to the old "violet_periwinkle" and deleted my profile photo and random question! Bah!

Being Thankful: Day 3

Today I'm thankful for:-

1. Esperanza Spalding, whose music saved me from the Land of Nod while drafting my meeting minutes. Once I'm able to beat the sleepy spell then I'm ok to continue working at optimal alertness again!
2. The short queue at the Malay food stall in our canteen (usually it snakes its way obstructing the canteen entrance doors) and thus I managed to get my "ikan longkang" for lunch!
3. Having the opportunity to play another round of cash flow board game at cell meeting... and I won! Yes, take more risks!
   

Being Thankful: Day 2

I'm thankful for the laughs I get at work. My colleague accidentally called me "Rose" today and it was loud enough for everyone to overhear! And by reflex another colleague retorted, "Where's Jack?" Lol.

We'd just received a confrontational email (for some reason randomly addressed to me) demanding who I can refer her (Rose XYZ) to as she "wanted to make sure [a particular] bank account was closed". And this executive had to Cc the email to the big bosses! Only now have I learned to appreciate the importance of English for business communication. Every employee should undergo a course on email etiquette!

The long short was that we'd only received the request less than 24 hours ago and the company was not in my portfolio. But the little slip of the tongue incident really lightened the climate of that moment. From feelings of harassment to joking and teasing!

Being Thankful: Day 1

As a normal human being, it is not peculiar to feel a little (or a lot) down every once in a while. Been having such feelings quite often lately after the occurrence of a couple of events. Hence, the lack of motivation to complete a blog post, let alone publish it (currently 2 in draft mode for months)!

Some weird idea popped into my mind today while doing the dishes. I've always heard that being intentionally positive on a daily basis is therapeutic. So I'll be trying a new experiment (since it's still the beginning of the year) and hopefully I will stick to the routine - listing down what I'm thankful for on this blog daily!

So here goes!

I am thankful for:

1. The memory of overhearing a banter between colleagues where one was commenting that he would do such and such work before sending the documents for a particular difficult deputy CFO to sign... and he referred to her as "Ah-(deputy CFO's name)-jie" in the most singsong Chinese slang ever! Like she was his buddy or big sister! Words just can't do justice to how it sounded at that moment in time! Lol
2. A kind kind soul on the Scratch forum who responded to my plea for help, looked into my Scratch project scripts and helped point out the problem, explained and suggested alternatives to optimise my Scratch project! I'd almost lost hope on perfecting it since almost 3 weeks ago.

I feel a smile coming on already.

Umami, the 5th Taste!

In school, I can't recall ever learning about a 5th basic taste called umami, besides the sweet, sour, salty and bitter tastes. Given that 'umami' was only formally recognised as the 5th basic taste in 1985, I guess our text books would have to take a few more decades to record the updated information (I have yet to peruse the current text books to spot the updates).

It is interesting that from a very young age, most of us who've been little kitchen helpers of our moms would have heard her say that we need to add in enough meat to a soup or a stew in order for the dish to have a meaty sweetness or roundness taste to it. And all this while I never knew that that taste was the umami taste - difficult to put into words but all of us know what it is.