haPpiE nEw yeAr 2004!

the downside to today is i have to stay back in the office. the chairman's having his new year's party (cocktail & dinner!) up at the glam 22nd floor. i'll try to get the pics for u to drool at - all my colleagues agree the decor is simply stunning! each of the meeting rooms have been dolled up in various theme colours. they've used streamers made out of sequins to double up as curtains to each rooms. and scattered the same sequins on the laced tables together with candles in champagne glasses. *_*

it sounds kinda sucky having to stay back in the office next to the graveyard just to help out at a party for your bosses, but i'll be going off to countdown with my friends at church after that. that will be much much much better than staying back till midnight (like 2 of my colleagues) at the office! :P

time to count my blessings and remember the good/bad times :)

Michael Bublé

Have you heard of Michael Bublé?

I fell in love with his voice when i heard "Sway" on the airwaves. This must be another golden oldie, I thought to myself. His voice reminded me of Frank Sinatra. I may not be an expert on those music from my parents' era, but I can tell you I prefer songs and music from the 60's and 70's compared to those of the 80's! Imagine mismatched clothes, big shoulderpads, bright colours and thick kohl-lined eyes and that's enough to put me off :P

What a surprise when I found out he's only 25! If you were to take a black-and-white (or even sepia) photo of him, blur it a little and look at it while his song is being played, you'd be transported back in time.

I think I shall add this to my wish list for next year's birthday! :)

the christmas that was...

... quite happening! :D

had a few parties, got some really nice pressies and had a steady stream of delayed christmas wishes over the sms.

somehow the maxis network got flooded with too many messages flying about that i didn't get most of my read receipts. i was left wondering whether my friends got my wishes.

celcom was worse. my brother sent me a message in the morning. i only received it about 10 hours later! i also sent a christmas greeting to irene, which strangely was only recipocrated 12 hours later. upon reading the time stamp on the message did i realise it was replied almost immediately, but delayed over the networks.

it was tough having to decide which sms should remain in my phone, while i had to delete some to make way for incoming ones. although my sim card has the capability to store 20 messages, i could only hold about 15 or 16 at one time. some sms' were really sweet, especially those with text arts. some people just have so much time to create flowers, bears and blinking christmas trees! i also liked the one which goes :

"NOTICE : Christmas has been cancelled and it's all because of YOU. i told Santa that you've been good all year...





He died laughing!!!"

ahh... the wonders of technology!

LOTR 3 : ROTK

legolas is still the mostest cutest!!!! :D

ok, fine. maybe he's like the only cute actor around in the show, so i can't help but gush over him.

too bad he had minor roles in the last installment. the hobbits seem to be the main actors this time around. i think i'm gonna re-watch LOTR 2 again. LOL!

what a great way to start my christmas hols!

of porcelain gifts

was just rummaging through my gifts box. some of my pressies are still in their boxes and the wrapping intact. was actually looking for some christmas decor.

i saw a few porcelain gifts, one of which was a white angel with a garland around her. this was a christmas gift from one of my grrlfrens some years back. this would be perfect on top of the television! i took it out, washed out the dust and carefully put it next to the christmas cards. there, that should set some christmas mood in the living room.

but that's not wat this post is about. i'm trying to say i have too many of those porcelain gifts which i do not know what to do with, or where to put them. no offence to those dear friends who have been scratching their heads trying to think of something sweet to give me, but what do i do with a porcelain figurine of a boy holding a teddy bear sitting on a rock? or this victorian-era looking woman in those mary-poppins gown, also made out of porcelain?

if it was a porcelain trinket box, that would be have been more useful. besides collecting dust, it also keeps my rings and bracelets. or a photoframe with a porcelain frame. besides making the task of cleaning the frame a little tedious, it also holds my favourite photos.

but, tell me, what do i do with porcelain figurines???

of the rush job

On Thursday morning, boss emails me about this job that has to be completed in a week's time. Project brief: powerpoint presentation on the company by the Big Big Big Boss, to be presented to the dep. PM of thailand.

As soon as I see the title of the VIP, i start panicking. What the...? Me? A corporate profile to be shown to the 2nd top guy in our neighbouring country??

I am already imagining myself suntanning with the Aussie hunks in the beaches of Phuket or shopping away in Bangkok. If he liked my presentation enough, perhaps I would be rewarded with a free trip to Thailand! heheh...

But reality starts to sink in. Real fast. My boss didn't say anything much, just some details of what had to go into the presentation. I have to think of the layout, design, sequence, information, who to get the various data from, and of course, the animation. And the Big Big Big Boss is known to be rather fussy over details. He even came up with his own anthem for the company!

If I was given, say, 2 weeks at least, I'd be able to come up with something reasonably good. But because boss is going off on her christmas holidays next week, I have to rush and come up with something mediocre. :(

I just hope when I present the draft to her tomorrow, she'd be gracious enough to accept my humble work!

the botizen named angel

Seeing that Bengie had a little chat with Ms Angel, I decided to check her out too. Maybe she ain't that bad, you know.

Me : Good morning angel
Angel : *Yawn* same to you, Snoflek.
Me : Did you have a good sleep?
Angel : I'm glad.
Me : er, ok. Good to know you had a glad, i mean good sleep.
Angel : You can have BOTizen Lite ASP for $100 a month and you will save $400 if you choose yearly plan. Click our purchase page for more info on BOTizen Lite."
Me : What if I don't want to have BOTizen?
Angel : BOTizen is a Cyber Customer Service Agent that automates your CRM activities. BOTizen engages your customers online and while assisting web site administration at the same time. Here, Snoflek. I've brought up just a little more information on the BOTizen."
Me : Can you say something else?
Angel : This might sound a bit funny, .. something else.. "
Me : Ok, let's try this. How old are you?
Angel : Please, Snoflek. I am a lady. Be nice.
Me : I am a lady too, but I'm not interested in you in that way!
Angel : Please, Snoflek. How do you expect to pick up any girls that way
Me : Fine then. We'll chat more next time.
Angel : Sure, Snoflek. I was getting bored of the silence anyway
Me : What the ....?!
Angel : I couldn't say for sure, Snoflek.

* sighs.. i give up! *

you'd never guess what happened yesterday...

My mum picked me up so that we could do a bit of christmas shopping after work. Just after paying for the parking ticket and walking no more than a few steps, her phone rang.

I didn't care much coz I thought it was one of her church friends. But after talking for awhile, her steps slowed down and her face looked strange. I gently nudged her to the side as she continued the conversation.

"What?! You sure it's my car?... Yeah, it was parked at the road side... right opposite my house..." Something must've happened to mum's car as she looked troubled.

Later as we got back into the parking lot, mum told me that it was the Siamese neighbour who called. Seemed that someone had banged into my mums' car, banged into the bumper road sign, and finally banged into the wall of Kesas highway.

Thus began a series of phone calls to friends and neighbours in our housing area. Mum was trying to get someone to check out the situation while we tried to get home as fast as possible. I was more interested in seeing the damage. How could anyone have banged through the sound barrier of Kesas highway?

As we neared our house, we saw cars and people surrounding the accident area. Thank God my mum's car wasn't THAT badly damanged, but the guy's Wira was stuck at the wall. I was like, "Good grief!!! If that guy didn't brake in time, he'd have flown through the wall and onto the Kesas highway!!" That would be a sight.

And you'd see that car on the front page in your newspapers today.

imposter alert!

hmm, methinks there's an imposter out there trying to impersonate snoflek.
so far, he's posted 2 comments and signed off as "snoflek".

is there something i can do about it? hmm.. like track who was the imposter.. oh, that will not do, coz it won't tell others who he is. or, maybe i can sign off in a way which is only uniquely me...

but at least i know he means no harm. well, at least that's what he said lar!

i need to ...

... sleep!

this is the 2nd week i'm beginning to dread driving to work!

the blockage at the NKVE is still not cleared and the traffic from there is clogging the federal highway. even though i stay back and lepak around pj until 9pm, the jam is still there! *horrors*

worse comes to worse, i'm gonna park at tmn jaya and take a nap. might as well do something productive instead of getting stuck at the crawl :P

kiasu/inpired?

when i introduced the world of bloggering to john, i didn't realise it would be a competition.

the first week of my blog saw a rather plain looking, obviously-taken-from-a-template webpage with enlarged fonts and minimal links. i took my time to refine the look by tweaking the codes.

when his page was up, i could see that he had carefully thought out the layout before displaying it for the world to see. he had comments, tag-board, cute picture of a wine bottle and glass, and a breezy cool look to his page. plus, some philosophical view of life as compared to a glass of wine.

i knew i had to do something about mine. (let's not use the word kiasu, i prefer "being inspired"!) so i changed the font sizes, enabled the title bar, added my blogchalk and changed my comments to snowflakes. nothing spectacular, but at least it looks better now.

and now he wants to get a guestbook so that he can "go one up against" me. bleh :P

wondering whether i can add snow flake cursortrails....

comments

yay! i've got my comments feature up. feel free to leave your snowprints around :)

hmm...

my boss approached me just 10 minutes before balik time and asked me if i could come up with an interactive website. my first thought was "not another one!" you see, i was hired to do some major touchup to the company's website. but until today, i have not even touched it because i've been creating websites for our subsidiary companies.

i'm not shying away from what's supposed to be my job responsibilities. but this is too much! i've been here 2 years, and i'm still not doing what i was hired to in the first place :P

actually, this sub company was about to hire a so-called professional web consultant to do the job for a smooth rm18k. my boss had earlier said that i was busy with the main website, so they brought in the pros. when she heard how much they were going to be paid, she stepped in and offered to do the job for rm10k instead.

meaning, i'm going to do freelance and earn rm10k. well, that's a pretty kewl offer, but i don't wanna be unnecessarily excited in case she was just joking. what kinda boss asks her staff to do freelance??

:)

today feels like a good day. i woke up early to escape the morning madness of the past 2 days. and God blessed me with a sunshiny morning. :)

i hope the rest of the day will be as sunshiny as well!

of the morning crawl to work

the traffic was so so unbearable today! i thought it would be as smooth as yesterday, considering that the fasting period is over and it's still the school holidays. but noooooo, everybody decided to come out at the same time, the clouds cried, and the obstruction at the NKVE wasn't completely cleared yet.

driving out of the usj area into subang, cars were whizzing by. however, they started to slow down at the subang traffic lights. little did i know this was the beginning of a horrendous drive to work. i pressed on the odometer to reset it. when it clocked 5km, i was still in subang, and that was 1 hour after i had left the house!

there was no way i could turn back and feign sickness, and escape the nightmare that was before me. i was already halfway there, might as well go through the whole thing and pray that my boss will forgive my lateness.

so there i was, crawling along federal highway with the rest of the valley folks. it was still drizzling and many were impatient to get to work. anyways, i finally arrived at work 45 minutes late. that means i will have to stay back and replace the lost hours. wooohoo! :P

dress sense

i bumped into a colleague from a neighbouring department while washing hands in the wc. as she eyed me from top to toe, she made some comments on how i was dressed in blacks, a lot. i told her black was a very easy colour to match, especially when it comes to black slacks or black cardigan, or black hair even.

then she said "aiyo, amoi! you manyak slim, cantik dan muda lagi... mestilah pakai colour-colour lain!" for awhile there, i didn't know how to interpret her comment. the first part sounded like a compliment. but the latter sounded as if i have limited colours/clothes in my wardrobe, which also sounded like an insult.

i always thought i had considerably OK dress sense. while i don't have the moolah to buy each lovely dress i set my eyes on, i do try to wear classy pieces hopefully to suit the occasion. if you were to see me on the street, i wouldn't stand out too much coz my clothes ain't loud nor too outdated. i would probably look like one of those young urban yuppie trying to make an impression in the office! :D

i daresay my taste is quite good for i've received compliments before. so therefore, this was a strange comment. since i do not know how to make of it, i will take it as a constructive comment.

now... who's game for some shopping? hehe....