good lazy sunday

Last Sunday, I had a really good relaxed and chilled-out time with good food and good friends =).  I met up with the boys (Alvin & Jet) after their Standard Chartered KL Marathon -- which, by the way, they turned up very late for their 10km run and had to do the 5km run instead because they had the wrong starting time in mind *SWEAT DROP* --  and we went on a breakfast hunt.  We ended up at Taste of Foochow.  Although my mom is Foochow and I grew up eating Foochow food, apparently the Foochow food in Sarawak is different from the ones in West Malaysia because I did not recognize any of them haha...

Different types of fishball -- the special one being the Foochow fishball, which has meat stuffing.  Not such a huge fan as I still prefer fishballs to remain as fishballs =p.

Deep-fried fishball.  Very good and springy in texture but according to my mom, springy fishball has added bicarbonate or something to produce the texture =(.  And very little fish.  But it's so fun to eat!  Here's the funny part -- the owners spoke to us in Cantonese so it was a little bit disorienting and we just kept nodding and said "yiu" to everything.  So we ended up with a lot of food =D.

Very yummy Foochow pancake.  According to Alvin, the story behind this dish is that the owner was making this for his own family but the customers saw it and wanted to try them.  Even now, you can see the owner sitting in the corner on a stool making these pancakes.  Once, the son jokingly teased his dad (the owner) for not manning his pancake station and something about that scene that is just so heart-tugging and cute =).

Handmade egg noodle fishball soup.  The soup was delicious and the noodle...well, as the boys put it, I don't particularly enjoy food which are tasteless in the centre.  And this includes big fat noodles and taufu fa.  Yes, even taufu fa =S.

Red wine mee sua with chicken.  This is the most interesting one of all because red wine mee sua in Sarawak is very different! In Sarawak, the dish is basically mee sua in chicken soup + clearer red wine.  In West Malaysia, the mee sua is cooked in ang zao (红槽) and I've only had chicken cooked in ang zao.  So this was very very interesting =D.

After that, we chilled by the pool.  Given that I'm moving out soon and that I've never used the pool at my condo, it seemed like the most appropriate time to do that.  The sun was in hiding and the water was freezing cold but it was really fun to hang out with the boys.  I'm still learning how to swim breaststroke and Alvin's still learning how to swim freestyle.  And the state swimmer just watches us and laughs.

I cannot think of anything better than a good cup of cappuccino after the cold swim =D.  There's something about a cuppa that warms you up slowly inside, followed by feelings of fuzziness and happiness.  And at Palate Palette, we played board games as we savored our cuppa and food...snake & ladders, aeroplane chess, scrabble...obviously I wished the happy day did not need to end.

Definitely looking forward to a good break from everything!

what a week =)

it's been a whirlwind of emotions this week.  what with me leaving the firm soon, having to pack my worldly possessions yet again and move out, dreaming a vivid scenario of getting back together with him, doing a studio photoshoot with Kumitaa & Aliaa for the fun of it, catching up on lost time with Kumitaa, being frustrated at work over numbers, being told by the radiologist that I cannot get my MRI scan because I have braces on when the doctor should have told me that instead and after I had rushed to the hospital for my MRI appointment, getting shit treatment from his nurse when we would expect to be treated better because it's a private hospital, forgetting my IC at a service counter, having Mabel over to make sure packing gets done, meeting up with high school friends over roti seafood, roti Beckham, roti Hawaii and lo shu fan, eating at Prime Steakhouse for the first time, having to schedule to get my braces removed for the MRI scan and get my braces back on after that.

it's really a bit too much drama for one week. 
 

to auto-pilot or to re-boot?

I'll admit it.  I'll totally admit that throughout my entire existence, I have someone managed to shuffle along the paths and bobbed together with the waves.  Not that it was particularly easy, but things did just kinda fall into place one by one for me.  Just when no one believed that I'd get the scholarship to study in Singapore, I was suddenly on my way there.  Just when I think I had failed my public exam, I actually got straight As.  Just when I thought SAT was really impossible, I did much better than I had expected.  Just when I was doomed to fail Honors Calc because I was bottom of the class during the midterms, I bounced back with a B+.  Just when I lost my first elections, I won the next. Just when plans for summer internship were going downhill, I got an internship with Abbott.  Just when all job interviews had not worked out, I got into McKinsey.

And frankly, as I reflect back on my life while writing this, I'm terribly conflicted on what I'm feeling right now.  Have I really achieved all these, or have I really been handed all these things and have just been moving along conveniently?  What is the one extraordinarily cool thing that I've done?  None?

Yes, I'm leaving McKinsey in a few weeks.  Yes, I'm moving onto the next phase in life, whatever that means.  And in one night, over a dinner, I had gone from being pretty damn sure what I wanted to do for the next year because the opportunities were sitting there ripe and ready to be picked to being completely lost and miserable because what if I was just shuffling along yet again?  What if I'm just on auto-pilot?  What if I always end up taking the traveled path?  But why not?  I don't even know why my face is wet right now.

Here's when a dash of good 'ole American ego-boosting confidence would really come in handy =(

it's the end of a road for me...