"Kiasu"-ism & me at Ikea

It was a beautiful Saturday, and like any kiasu people out there, I wanted to be the first 100 early birds to register for a free gift at Ikea, and oh my, I got it. Yeah sweet! A limited edition yellow-colour book ends (those that you "kepit" at the end of your books to prevent it from tilting forward). And the day was also the 5th anniversary of N & I being together as a couple (not as married couple, mind you…). So you see, it never occurred to me that I would see my ex on this fine day.

The limited edition book ends

N & I were busy looking around the marketplace hall in Ikea, at the fabrics section. I wanted to skip the section, but N was still lingering around looking for some panel curtains. It was then I looked up to my left while trying to search for N and instead, horror of all horrors, I was looking straight at my ex! Not that I had anything to hide, but I wanted to avoid having to make any casual small talk with him (imagine how fake it would be!) It was lucky that he wasn’t looking at me at the moment.

Somehow, we miraculously avoided each other paths. Perhaps he already spotted me (since I was wearing bright red!) and made a conscious effort to avoid me at all costs. Whatever he was thinking, I was glad we did not bump into each other. I quickly called out to N to hurry off to the next section. And I told him in hush tones what I saw. Trust me, it is an awkward feeling when you see your ex appearing near you when you least expected it.

But I quickly forgot the whole episode, as N & I were busy picking up more furniture for the house and spent our last weekend putting up the new cabinets and installing the shelves, attended two Hari Raya open-house invitations and ended the Sunday night watching the movie “Orphan”.

Chihuahua spotted at the morning market

A colleague told me about some stalls in the local morning market in my neighbourhood, so I decided to check it out two weekends ago. I told N that we shall wake up earlier on that fine Saturday, have dim sum for breakfast then head to the morning market. And we decided to bring Kiko along. We were sure the dim sum place would allow us to sit outdoor with our pet.

Hah! How wrong were we. We told them we were ok to sit outdoors, but nope, the dim sum restaurant’s staff still said no. I mean how troublemaker can Kiko gets? He’s such a small cutie! Anyway, we decided not to let the misfortune ruins our weekend and head straight to the food court at the morning market.

I thought morning market are supposed to be the busiest in the early morning. We reached there around 9am, but the place was not as crowded as I expected. We found a good spot away from the main crowd to have our breakfast. Hey, there was a dim sum stall at the food court! Not bad. And no one was there to say no to Kiko. We even saw another couple bringing their furry dog too. A little boy from the next table was saying to his parents “ee..look mom, there’s a little puppy there!”. That little boy was fascinated with Kiko’s small size.

After enjoying our dim sum breakfast, we walked round the market, towing Kiko along. If you are curious to know how a little puppy like him gets around in the market area, teng deng deng… Yup, in his very own "LD" puppy bag (looks like the LV logo right?) :P

Weather talk of Arizona

Apart from the Grand Canyon, I do not have much knowledge about Arizona. So I looked up abit on the Internet on Arizona.

Arizona is actually located in the western United States, and best known for its desert landscape, also has primarily very hot summers and mild winters.

Since I have not stepped foot in any dessert location, I have always thought dessert landscape primarily has only scorching days and cold nights. How wrong of me! Arizona has winters and summers in:
Nov to Feb : winter (4–24 °C)
June to Sept : dry summer (32–49 °C)

Just by comparing Arizona's temperature variances with Malaysia (23-34 °C), I think Malaysia's all year round "summer" is much "cooler" than the dry summer in Arizona! And being a tropical country, Malaysia does not experience winters. But the raining season could bring the temperatures down to 22-25 °C at night, which you may say is comparable to the mildest winter of Arizona.

Arizona's weather may not appeal to much to me, but the real estate (e.g. Scottsdale Arizona realtors) there are definitely interesting and captivating. If it interest you so much that you wish to relocate, there is always the relocation specialist to assist you step-by-step.


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The RM50 winning photo that I took

I took this candid photo of dad feeding the monkeys at Bukit Malawati at Kuala Selangor, but the monkey got the better of him, clutching him from the back trying to get the whole pack of food for himself.

And this candid photo won me RM50! yeah..you read it right. I submitted the photo to The Star daily thumbnails with a funny title and caption: Piggyback monkey - Hey mister, I actually prefer a piggyback ride than bananas!

I thought I had a pretty good chance at the RM50 prize. And I was right ;-) Check it out at The Star's website. However, the editor had changed my photo's title and caption.

Crunchy Sesame Chicken

I wanted to cook chicken today, however I'm running out of ideas for chicken dishes.

I guess God heard me, so when my MSN homepage came out on my IE browser, this caught my eye "Simple chicken dishes". Immediately I clicked on the link and a whole long list of chicken dishes were displayed for my choosing. I thought this Crunchy Sesame Chicken sounded like a simple dish to prepare.

I printed out the recipe from the website and it didn't take long for me to prepare and serve this dish for dinner. I served them with Thai sweet & sour chilli dip.

One tip - the recipe didn't ask for marinating the chicken. However, the chicken could taste better if you marinade them for at least an hour. You could also add more salt to the recipe.