Team building day at Holiday Inn Resort, at Batu Ferringhi, Penang

Lunch with my team building gang surrounded by this good view

I remember two years ago, when i was a newbie in my dept, i joined the team building. And that was my first time attending a team building. My boss assigned a task to me, which is to lead a mini ice breaking activity on the bus during our journey to Batu Ferringhi. Ice breaker prior to the ice breaker session which we will have later in the team building! Dont ask me why is that needed.. I had to bring along a guitar to entertain the gang in the bus.. Well, of course it went well and the whole gang enjoyed the session. I need to apologize to those who planned to get a quick nap of 45 min.

This time, I attended another team building session, without my boss! and without any ice breaking session in the bus. So i get to sleep, and the bus was quiet (perhaps my boss did have a good intention to cheer up the atmosphere in the bus in the morning :P)

Thank God for a good weather

I enjoyed the sessions too. One of the activities rather interesting is we did is knowing different type of leaders by building traditional malay house.

We were being separated into 3 teams. Tools and stationary given are two flip chart paper, scissor, straws, markers, masking tape
The 3 leaders are being instructed to behave according to the type of leaders as explained: Laissez-Faire, Autocratic and Democratic during the process of building the house, and of course, without telling anyone in the team of our pre-assigned behavior. The 3 leaders were asked to come forward to present their product at the end of the session and name a price for each of them.

Well, I was one of the leaders and guess which type of leader i need to act as? (hint: the one with the ugliest less attractive house). Yah.. LAISSEZ-FAIRE
It is not easy to pretend to be a care-free boss indeed. During the process, I was asked to lepak around the hotel and just return to check on the status from time to time, without giving any ideas to my team, everything is "as you like / up to you" when my team brought up ideas.

Outcome: (see pics below)

Conclusion: A good leader must be a situational behavior person to be successful, means all these behaviors must be used in different types of situation. All these behaviors are equally important and should be used according to the working environment / situation that one is in.

Of course there were other fun activities for indoor and outdoor. We all enjoyed laughing and cheering together.

It was a good Monday afterall :)

Foodies I tried in Ipoh

Recently i made a trip down to Ipoh to visit his parents. It has been quite a while since i pay them a visit, due to it is hard to arrange for replacement for the duties i have in church on saturday and sunday.

It is always nice to be there, we will go for food hunting and sadly after the trip, I will see the significant increase in the number appeared on the electronic weighing scale. But who cares, eat more so that I can lose more weight.

So here are some food we tried out this round.

Pasir Pinji Chee Cheong Fun -
waited for about half an hour before the food can be served. But it tasted good! This stall operates at the compound of an old house, and it only opens during weekday

Rojak -
Unlike Penang rojak, this rojak comes with a small bowl of paste for you to dip the cut fruits before you put it into your mouth. I havent found any rojak stall in Penang that comes with ambarella a.k.a 'umbra'.

Pasir Pinji Chee Cheong Fun

The CCF stall is set up at the compound of the owner's house

Rojak at Jelapang

Ice Kacang at Jelapang

Change is a constant

Hello my dear readers (if there are still anyone left),

Here is an attempt to revive my blog which has been inactive for the about 3 yrs already.

As I scroll through my previous posts, i found that so many things have changed in my life.
My career, my relationship, my lifestyle..

I am glad to have this posted today..

I hope i shall have discipline to post up some writings from time to time from this day onwards =)

Cheers to a good restart, and I will end with a photo which taken during my BKK trip with my girl friends (testing out the posting image feature and seems successful :P)

Chocolate Ville, Bangkok

First half and second half

6 months since my last post, 6 months?! Ying Ying Dai Tao Har, this shows how lazy you are being a blogger. *fail* Here is my first post after 6 months. and I decided to blog about this past week that was unforgettable for me in my 4 yrs + working life in my current company.

Well it started off with a nice Monday as 1st half of the day was nice and easy. No Monday blue :) My dear friend invited me to join her for a lunch at town as she wanted to show me a nice cafe around town. We left office slightly earlier than usual lunch time to town. Here are some nice photos taken in this cafe called "La Vanille"

La Vanille

La Vanille

A rack with so many cute miniatures on the wall

Rabbit on the board

3 cupcakes for RM10

Noms noms noms

Santa on cupcakes :)

That's me in December 2012

Super like this wall deco

Though it was a quick lunch, i enjoyed eating in that place. Moreover, price of the food is not too expensive.

The second half of the day after i returned to office was totally opposite from the 1st half. It was terrible. It was the beginning of my tragical week when I realized that I did a silly mistake on my work. It was too late for us to correct the mistake as the parts had already been loaded in the production line.

For the next few days, I was busy with explaining, apologizing, and clearing up the mess that I myself created. Well, my program counterpart which I work closely with had a harder time actually, for he has to explain to our US counterpart on the error and provide a proper package to explain the scenario.

The error that I did was actually using a new setting that was not intended, when I was supposed to change back to the old setting after the decision was made last minute by US counterpart.

To cut the story short, I thank God as by the end of Friday, the tension was able to be reduced and finally most of the crucial things were fixed. People began to understand the whole incident as they realized that communication was also a cause to this error. It was not over yet of course, but I know that things are in better control :)

These few days I kept praying that God will help me to stay strong and not to break down emotionally. True enough God was in control. I thank God for my program counterpart is understanding and helpful to me in times like this. He didn't just leave me to settle the problem by myself. I learned my lesson, in a hard way definitely. I also thank my dear and I know that he was trying to cheer me up when he saw a less cheerful me during the week. He kept saying that "no biggie, it's just work"  My bff was also showing her concern and care too. She boiled tongshui for me and encourage me to ganbate in clearing up the mess.

This was my week, when Christmas is just around the corner. :S
i hope that i will have a good and peaceful Christmas by then.

Macchiato night = mai chia to (Hokkien translation)

It was a relaxing sunday evening because Monday is a replacement holiday for me!!! Whee!!! I brought my parents for a nice dinner at James Foo. Again it was just the three of us as my sista was away in KL attending her job interviews and bro was attending a wedding dinner. Haha. I need to explain to my siblings that I did not do this deliberately but so happen that they both were not around most of the time I bring my parents out for dinner :P

"It was a satisfying dinner", "The deep fried fish is better than the fish & chips in Manhattan Fish Market lo", "Luckily we didn't go to Straits Quay, the food is so much cheaper here", these were some of the good remarks given by both of my parents.

As usual, my parents don't like us to spend too much on dinner, and they prefer cheap and good food. James Foo is the right choice we made as you can find varieties of western food at a reasonable price here.

Crispy Spring Roll with nice dip sauce

Deep Fried Fish

Oxtail Soup

extra tartar sauce

After filling their stomach with yummy western food, I brought them to a nice place for some desserts and coffee. This place is recommended by my bff and she brought me there a few weeks ago.

Along the way we passed by this famous Nasi Beratur shop and people were really queuing up (see the long queue in the photo below) to buy the rice =.= One day I must try it

Long Queue at Nasi Beratur

CHINA HOUSE
You may refer to the website for more info on this interesting heritage building cafe - CHINAHOUSE

Mom and Dad

Brown Sugar Caramel Pear Cake - RM15

Roast Plum & Blackberry Cake - RM12

Here comes the interesting part of the evening as I suggested to dad this Macchiato drink listed in the menu.
When the drink came, here is how it looks like in a small glass - not even half filled. Dad was kinda surprised by the size of the drink and he thought of this hokkien name for it - Mai Chia To (it means do not spill the drink) since it costs RM9 for such a small glass of coffee. LOL

Macchiato - Mai Chia To?? - RM9

Affogato - RM14

We were half way through the desserts

CHINAHOUSE - a long narrow building made of three heritage buildings linked by an open courtyard

Decos

Food is not cheap here as you can see from the price i put in the captions above. But I think once a while it is good to bring your loved ones here to enjoy the 'mai chia to' coffee and the cakes which are richly filled with ingredients. :)

Shanghai, nice meeting you for the first time :D

Still remember the Shanghai trip I got from a magazine subscription last year? reading, travelling, here i come!

Last March, we went for the trip :) I am now posting up some pics for the wonderful trip.

Luggages ready for check-in

 We arrived at around 4.30am at LCCT after departing from Ipoh when our flight to the land of our forefathers was at 8am. =.= So we had plenty of time to kill.

A cup of coffee to freshen up

Now everyone can fly, includes me :)

happy faces and couldn't wait to on board

FIRST DAY~

Just arrived at Hangzhou airport

It was really cold outside. I preferred to be wrapped in the shawl even after got into our bus

Thanks to my dear friend who actually lend me her winter outfits from top to bottom.  Do you like this?  I like it so much. Esp the beanie winter hat, totally in luv with it!

Below is a snapshot of the residential house which look old but are still occupied by residents. We were taking a trip down the canals on a boat. Along the way, we passed through ancient bridges and the whole experience was really serene and enjoyable. :)

Our first destination - Wuzhen, it's a very beautiful village on a river. Too bad it was drizzling when we were there and no many photos taken there.

Not easy to get a snapshot because the boat was swaying left right when we trying to position ourselves in the boat. 

苏州文化艺术中心

Me and aunty uncle - still feeling cold in the building

enjoying 苏Show

enjoying 苏Show - 西施与范蠡

Talented young performers

Chinese Opera

Chair Stacking

Great show =)

Taking a photo with aunty :)

2ND DAY~

my first morning on the street of Suzhou :)

Brrrr... cold.. the cardigan i was wearing is not thick enough to keep me warm @@

耦园 Ou Yuan, establised in the Qing Dinasty

hello, Miss Chloe here ^^

Ou Yuan is a very beautiful mansion of an official during Qing Dynasty

It was still early spring as most of the flowers were not blooming yet

五代同堂 - this was a living hall and five generations of the family would be seated accordingly

Over here, I've found some flowers here!

The beautiful garden in the mansion

A beautiful pavilion overlooks the man made pond

In those days, i think the only entertainment for the daughters / ladies in the household was to spend time in the garden, admiring the beauty of the trees, rocks and flowers LOL

Me wrapped in layers of clothing :D

:D

handsome pair of carved chinese wood door panels

POSER! lol 

Min Fei's daddy and mummy

Us

Father and Son

boatman singing a boatsong for us. (this is my most favourite photo of all)

Min Fei with his big looking tummy :P

parking for motorcyclist along the street

nice road name - daichengqiao lu

pedestrians crossing the road - y did they put a "No Honk" sign up there?

man made landscape with waterfall at 灵山大佛

it's really a nice waterfall :)

Group photo

The spectacular view of the shrine at 灵山大佛, Wuxi

you need to put on a shoe protector to enter the shrine

that's a huge door behind us!

灵山梵宫

This Buddhist Sacred Place is really beautiful

Min Fei said that's Nobita walking by :P

Me and my best buddy - I'm born in the year of Pig! are you? 

An enormous bronze palm

aunty and I fell in luv with the lovely vege flowers behind us

closer shot of the 'vege flowers'

Thank God for beautiful weather, still super cold though

View from the top

The Famous Lingshan Grand Buddha - an 88m high bronze buddha statue, weighing over 700 tons

Lost in translation =.=

Felt great to sip on a cup of hot bubble milk tea in a weather like this :)

People put down their wishes here

Handwritten wishes on the little wooden plaques

出入平安 - peace be with you in your coming in and going out

全家健康 - good health for the whole family

grumpy old man

red flowers spotted!

posing with the mini bus

closer shot

老妈米线 at the shopping mall in Wuxi

3rd DAY~

ahhhh.. cold.. can die @@

freaking cold but yet still have to pretend to be bold cuz WE ARE ON A BATTLESHIP! fuhhhh...

it was drizzling, brrrrrrrr...... *cold*

hiding behind

watching a show, and it's part of the famous story of The Three Kingdom

group photo with all Hwa Jing tour members

Shanghai - 上海城隍庙

I love the lighted buildings in this famous street

Snacks selling on the street

The streets are filled with people at night

Starbucks!

Xiao Long Pao! Awesome!

Yummy but tasted rather salty compared to Malaysian food

Night View of Shanghai

Shanghai's beautiful night view with the Oriental Pearl Tower

Shanghai's beautiful night view across Huangpu River

another good view captured!

Nanjing Road

one for him, and one for me LOL

see, it's 5 deg in Shanghai city... i'm freeeeeezed

4TH DAY~

everything is lovely as long as it's hot / warm, even when it's just a glass of plain water

Taro Pie in Mc D, super yummy i tell you

trying to keep my hands warm with this papercup of hot choc

yummeh max!

reflection :)

Mr Frog

5TH DAY~

i look just like a Bak Chang / Chinese Dumpling =.=

this snack bought in the supermarket is kinda yummy. it's a sausage btw

lastly, if you dun wish to end up like this, remember to prebook your Air Asia meal online before you go on-board >____<