Total blurness

A.M. Sat : *gurgleeee……..* Aik… sore throat!
P.M. Sat : *shiver shiver…* Fever…
P.M. Sun : *sniff sniff……..* Huh? Cold has started?!?
A.M. Mon : *ZZZzzzz…………* I’m SOOOO not going to go office today. Ahhh… MC!
P.M. Tue : *Cough cough…* Sigh… just when I thought it cannot get worse…

Took M.C. again on Friday and a colleague called my mobile whilst I was fast asleep in the afternoon…
Eugene: Juan… we’re in so much trouble. Client copy bombed… bla… bla…
Me: *groggy* Is it? Call Chen… he might be able to help.
Eugene: Who’s Chen? How about Po Li? What’s her number?
Me: Wait… it’s on my phone… *search for number on mobile for ‘Po Li’*
Eugene: {after long pause} Err…. Hello?
Me: Err… I cannot find wor… why huh?
Eugene: Err… arr… I… err… dunno…???
After I woke up from my slumber, it suddenly dawned on me how blur I was. ‘Chen’ was supposed to be ‘Chin’. Of course Eugene had no idea who I was talking about. AND I saved Po Li’s name in my Phonebook as ‘Cheang’… of course I couldn’t find her name on my mobile. And then… after whatever that was written above, I had absolutely no idea what else was in the conversation. Think I could have been telling him about all the Magnums I was dreaming about… or about sheep *shrug*.

Went out for dinner with parents and another couple, friends of my parents. During the car ride, was already in a SLEEP MODE whilst overhearing one of the weirdest parent conversations I’ve had.
Auntie: You know, we women must go for mammograms.
Mum: Aih, I don't have to go for one. Hubby, I OK or not?
Dad: OKAYYYY!!!!
Uncle: Juan, sorry to say this… but I think my wife is OK too!!!
Me: Huh? Mum… what are you all talking about? Zzzzz…
After I woke up, THEN I realized what they were implying *Duh-hhhh* For those who doesn’t know what mammograms are, please GOOGLE :P

What’s the saddest thing when one is sick?
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The headache?
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The coughing?
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The continuous interrupted sleep?
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No…
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It’s the lack of taste in all foods :( I want a MAGNUMMMMMM!!!!! Two minutes of happiness while savoring the luxurious Magnum chocolate, with delicious milky, creamy, vanilla ice-cream. Two minutes of Heaven... probably followed by another 2 weeks of Hell... *sob sob… cough cough… ueeeekkkk…*

To be a kid again...

It’s time for missions again *smiles*. The building of the community hall for Ongkil is progressing well. It looks like it would be ready anytime now. Pretty soon, we will have a place to worship for about 30 to 40 people. We can have the space to minister to the adults separate from the children *grin*.

It was pretty amazing when we get to see children praying with all their might. Blew me away when I saw it the first time. Am still in awe. Children of faith reminds me how I should be; have child-like faith that everything is possible through Him *Amen*.

Our first communion together. Twas interesting to be with a roomful of people who had their first communion. I guess after being a Christian for so long, I kind of forgot how the first time felt…heheh.

We had a short discussion about their spiritual growth after accepting Christ over the past 2 years. Although they still lacked much understanding about the Word of God cause they were illiterate, it was wonderful hearing the Orang Asli’s testimonies about their dreams and visitations from the Lord. Look… look… that’s me posing with some of the children during their makan session.

Thought we were done for the day and headed back towards the van when we saw the children playing with their own make-shift ‘slides’ *giggle*. With just some basic card board-like wooden boards, they were sliding up and down so very happily. Ahhh… the simple pleasures of life!

One last pose with the infamous ‘slide’ before we left ….hahahahahahahah. Later, they were just running round and round the boards as Benjy and Darren held them up. Sigh… I wish I could show the impromptu video I shot. They were so so so cute just circling the two-grown men.

Hey, remember the time when we were kids and we could just create games out of everyday items and still have loads and loads of fun? Do you remember playing with:

• Getah – A two-team game. String together rubber bands made into a rope with two people holding the ends up whilst the others try to jump over them. Apart from trying to jump over different heights, we had the ropes move in horizontal, vertical and circling motion. What fun! Was playing with them throughout my primary school days :)
• Ice cream sticks – A two-person game with each person trying to get their stick to fall right on top of the other so that the other stick can be ‘won’.
• Coloured Sticks – Made out of lidi, the thin sticks are painted to different colors for different marks. After the sticks are released, we’d try to retrieve as many sticks as possible one at a time without causing another to move. The competitor with the most marks will win. I think red colour sticks are worth 20 points whilst yellow ones are worth only 1 point; amidst other colours ;)
• Five-stones – Uncooked rice stuffed and sewn into little packets of five. Can have as many players as possible with a series of stuff to be done. Start by throwing a single stone up and picking another up whilst it’s still in the air, so on, so forth.
• Catching – Who could ever forget this simple yet fun game? Hahahhahahah… Basically, to just run wild whilst trying to get away from the ‘catcher’.

Sigh… think I’ll stop with 5… can probably come up with more than another 10 off the top of my head. Trip down memory lane whilst being a kid sure is fun.

I wish I were a kid again…

So carefree…

So easily fulfilled…

Ahhhhhhh…

Happy Deepa Raya!

Last week, work was crazy. A certain factory decided to pay their staff earlier because of the Deepavali come Hari Raya holidays and hit some payroll problems. Apparently, their Unionized staff were given a pay-rise in April based on their work performances. The new Contractual Agreement (CA) was signed in September resulting in an adjusted-pay backdated to April for all affected employees. Normally if the staff is underpaid, the CA would take effect cause the main purpose of a CA is to actually protect the benefits of a so-called ‘under-privileged’ worker. So, I’m really dumb-founded as to why there were people who received a pay-cut because their performance-based increment were MORE than the minimal CA amount. This is soooo NOT right *shakes head... but what can I do?*.

Somehow, the system’s Overtime calculation was not configured to cater for back-payment resulting the payroll calculations to be totally off. Some of the employees were actually getting negative overtime *gasp!* causing major cuts to their pay *sigh!*. It was a tough week with just minimal hours of sleep daily, to adjust the figures to how it should be. Thanks for the prayers to those who were praying *hugz*. The thing bugging my mind throughout the entire time wasn’t about covering my own butt, but about those workers not getting their pay for the festivals. I cannot imagine how their holidays would be if they couldn’t get their money on-time, especially for those who already hardly have enough with their couple of hundreds of ringgits.

Luckily we managed to come up with a temporary solution that would buy us some time till the next payroll run to really fix everything up properly. Was supposed to go to Cameron Highlands with my ex-LF from Saturday till Monday but cancelled that just in case my payroll thingy was going to spill-over to the weekends. However, my week-long holiday did gun-off to a pretty good start *grin*.

On Saturday, went to this tattooing parlor at Desa Sri Hartamas. A gym buddy was gonna add another tattoo to his ‘already-filled-with tattoo’ arm *giggle*. Here’s a snapshot of the pin-up of the address just in case you’d want to get one as well *wink*.

There’s Eddie doing his thing. Fui-yoh… his handi-work was really steady. Warren got the designs off the Net; it was some tribal designs that looked really cool. He passed the designs to Eddie, and the result of the re-designing was completely different; just kind of maintained the basic shape and size of the original design. ‘Tis an artiste’s responsibility that no TWO designs of tattoos can be similar. Anyway, I guess tattoos are very personal, and somehow the design Warren chose suited his personality :) Eddie’s a real pro, I saw some snap-shots of him doing tattoos for the band BLUE.

Here’s a close-up picture of the tattooing done. The design was drawn onto a sheet and printed onto the arm before the outline was done. I could see the liquid bubbling out from where the ink was injected and thought it was the ink, but it was BLOOD!!! *shiver…brrrr*

The parlor does body piercing as well. Warren kept coaxing me to get some tattoo done, “Go get youself a sexy butterfly… or would you like to pierce ahem… wherever also can la”. Or like what another friend suggested, “You should get some Naruto design…” RIGHT. Very funny. I’m supposed to get a tattoo so that one-day when I’m 70 and wrinkled, my Naruto will look like a pack of sand? :P

Thanks for the suggestions… but no thanks *LOL*.