Screen shot of Go Where Eat

This is what I've been busy doing, with czeeyong at the helm, for the past few months. In my opinion, it's an awesome website that he created, called Go Where Eat and I'm just filling it up along with my stomach every weekend

I'm not a food blogger, nor a food photographer. But over time, I've learnt to enjoy the processes of documenting the food I eat and taking photos of them (more him than me) and putting it up on the website in the hopes of creating a food directory in our region, and elsewhere.

Recently, we have redoubled our efforts, with the help of an extra camera purchased by czeeyong, the Olympus PEN. Since I go out sometimes during the week, it would help us document more food instead of just relying on czeeyong's camera on the weekends. Plus, I've always wanted a PEN XD So even though it's not mine, I've been made a guardian of it and I get free reign to use it. Sort of like a leasehold. Plus, I don't need to pay for it HOHOHO.

screenshot of the go where eat page

This is what it looks like! And the best part of it is that if you could help me

Just sign up with Go Where Eat (the easiest way to sign up to them would be to register through facebook) and as soon as you do that you can start submitting food entries XD We already have a few dedicated users who are helping us build a food directory in other countries, such as Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia.

Or you could just be a user, wanting to eat somewhere, but really tired of your regular eating out places, you could go to Go Where Eat for new restaurant suggestions. The search function is really easy to use, and in no time, you can easily find a few choice places to eat based on your preferences, such as location, type of cuisine, price range, type of ambience, etc.

Come on over Go Where Eat

i do think that i am a very lucky person, so far. and a big part of this can be attributed to that one person in my life. even though we have our ups and downs, i still hope that a big part of our relationship will always be on the upside. i am grateful for all this "interview grooming" because i have managed to be in a place where i have the liberty of choosing where i want to work.

after all this while i do believe that things happen for a reason. if i'd accepted a job at synovate 4 weeks ago, i would not have had the opportunity to work for MGRC, which at the time, was what I thought I had always wanted.  And if they had not taken so long to get back to me with the offer letter, or even offer such a long start date, I would not have bothered applying for the market research job or go for the interview.And now, I got a better offer than the other two. It makes me wonder whether other forces are at play here.

Yesterday was the longest interview of my life- almost 5 hours.

First up was an interview with the male director of the company- he chatted about the job description and described a little bit more about the technology that they used in the company- which was really really interesting to me. I think he thought that I was a good fit, and reccomended me to take the assessment test. They probably assumed that I would do well, because of my English results in JobStreet and how I spoke in general. AND I FREAKING NEARLY FAILED. so embarassing.

It was a GMAT test, where they used American standards, and it was horribly difficult. The kicker is that I aced my Additional Mathematics but only got a 4/7 for Math. How? Wha... I don't know. And for English, I scored an awesome 1/5. Damn. So brutal. I just covered my assessment paper sheepishly during my second interview with the lady director and told her, "I'll work on it" and flash her a grin.

After that, it was a short lunch break, and then back to the office for another test.

This time I had to do some excel tests, and use their statistical software. I had zero experience with their software, and she said that she understood if I was unable to do it, I just had to concentrate on the last part which was the research proposal. But I thank every single deity out there for taking Research Methods in Biology last semester, because I could use the software since it was fairly similiar to RCommander. She was pretty happy with that. The second part was an excel test where I needed to do a pivot table. I was like.... Dammmmmn. I have two friends working in IBM who always talk about pivot tables and I have never asked them to teach me how to create one! So I skipped that bit and went straight for the next part. And as for my research proposal, it was something which I was super nervous at, but I managed to present and explain fairly well, even though I knew that I probably had some errors here and there due to my inexperience. In the end, she offered me a job on the spot

i'm excited about friday!

i'll be working at a small company, 10 people tops, but everyone seems to be a tight-knit bunch, which is what I'm looking forward to.

Today was dyeing my hair day! i totally got sucked into the marketing campaign for Liese hair products and decided to try out their foam dye for myself.

It's been a long time since i dyed my hair. The last time i did it was a disaster, i just could not admit it to myself. My hair was a disgusting orangey brown, and I looked horrible.

This time I chose something closer to my black hair, chestnut brown.

And.... it turned out... okay.

Don't get me wrong. My hair felt great! And healthy. It just wasn't very clear. Only a shade lighter than black. I think I should have gotten a lighter hair dye. But I do like it very much

I told czeeyong, as usual, he's my confidante. And the man said two words. Actually, not really two words. More like a smiley followed by a syllable of three words. Or more specifically, "D:, wth".

And that was the end of it. He talked about something else entirely.

I have since devised a number of ways to get him to give me the attention that I deserve but do not get sometimes.

1. Change the subject every single time he tells me a story.

I figure this would be the most passive aggressive way of getting my point across but you know. Blame my parents.

2. Make a beer game out of it.

Every single time he switches the subject or ignores what I say, down a shot of beer/whisky/alcoholic beverage of your choice. That way, you'd be drunk before you even know it! Win-win.

3. Add an educational fact into the conversation each time a subject is changed

Did you know that polar bears are left handed? Did you know that a whale can grow to be the size of a football field? Did you know that dogs only see in black and white? Did you know that leeches hunt you down through thermal sensor? Did you? Bet you didn't know that.

Dang. Men.

today i was caught in the middle of a freak lightning storm in my neighbourhood while praying for the mooncake festival =.= i swear it was a harrowing experience, almost as if i was challenging the gods to strike me while i prayed frantically for the burning prayer paper not to fly into the air and smack straight into my face.

at one point when the wind was so wild, a few stray paper flew out of the urn and i ran behind the car and shielded myself with the urn steel cover. then i wondered whether my mother would kill me if she found out that i halted the burning process and took cover in the house and waited for the rain to stop before continuing an hour later.

i thought it was a good decision because in less than ten minutes after i took cover, it was as if zeus decided to make taman bukit maluri his playground. every lightning bolt was an eerie experience, because i could hear with each bolt, a video-game-like phhhhssssssssssssssssssssstt sound, almost like a movie. and a loud crack of sound a second later following that jolt of lightning on the telephone poles.

my 300 pound dog ran in the house from his usual spot outside, and took cover in the dark corner of the spare room toilet. and my tiny dog pooped in fright =.=

me, i was just staring in distress at the stack of unburned paper in my hand, wondering if i should risk it because i think the protocol is that you should not stop the burning process until it's over, according to traditional chinese people T.T

so 2 hours later, i lit another pair of joss sticks, muttered sorrrryy and started burning the prayer paper again.

next time i'll look at the sky before i start praying T.T

I've been keeping up with the latest spectacle lately, and all that drama which is currently unfolding amidst the start of the new hunting season of dolphins in Taiji, Japan.

I knew The Cove won an Oscar earlier this year, I just have not had the chance to watch it yet. I also was not familiar with their organization, and their affiliates until much later this year, around July.

Reading much about their cause in Taiji, and trying to save some of the thousands of dolphins that get slaughtered is pretty heartbreaking.

I decided to watch The Cove, after having my interest peaked when reading up articles about what was really going on in Taiji and why the fishermen would want to kill these animals.

The movie... is something any human should watch, really. The last bit of the movie was extremely gory, and irony of ironies, it wasn't a horror movie, nor was it special effects. It was reality. The water of the ocean at the cove where the slaughter was going on turned a bloody red because of the massacre. You could hear the cries of the dolphins which were almost deafening because they were afraid, much like how humans would be too if they were the ones being killed instead.

I had a friend, a Japanese friend commented on the links that I posted up saying that these poor fishermen should be left alone and later on mentioning that I have been blinded by these films as well.

He left me an email which I requested from him, detailing why the movie was fraud.

His argument was baseless, in my opinion, and pretty much so far from the point that any person who loves animals is trying to prove and make you understand.

He said that there were a couple of scenes in the movie which were made up, such as the scene where the couple was sobbing after witnessing a baby dolphin struggling from the slit in her throat and swimming up for air, and eventually drowning. The part where the couple was sobbing did not happen in reality, he said. They filmed that part seperately, where the couple was just standing at the beach, crying at nothing.

There were other bits which he said were untrue. The director of the museum did not get fired, as stated in the movie. Private Space, a weird Japanese guy against these activists who kept hanging around and filming them was not removed from his position as the movie mentioned at the end.

My question is... isn't my friend arguing semantics? Isn't the point of the movie to highlight the act os mass senseless slaughter of the dolphins which are cruel, rather than the other points of the movie which may or may not have been true? The bit where the baby dolphin was swimming in futile towards shore with blood spilling out of his neck was undeniably true. The bit where they speared hundreds of dolphins within a couple of minutes were undeniably true.

So how is the movie false and spreading lies if the main part of it cannot be denied or made up anymore than him trying to defend his countrymen for the sake of them just being Japanese?

If there are Malaysian farmers being cruel to cows, and mass killing them senselessly, then it's just that. That is all there is to it. They are doing a cruel act, and they should be stopped. Perhaps a movie was made about these people and in it, there were some deliberate takes or scenes filmed, to be addedinto the movie. But the act of senselessly killing the cows themselves cannot be denied.

This is what I was trying to emphasize. And this was what was deliberately ignored by my friend.

How can you justify such a barbaric act?

That it's culture? Tradition? How can it be culture or tradition if it involves only 26 of you? and not the other millions that constitute your country?

Please help sign the petition. They had already presented 1.4million signatures much earlier to the US embassy in Tokyo earlier, and now aiming for a much higher number. Every single one counts as a voice to contribute to the stop of these killings. I have already signed. So have a number of my friends. It takes less than 1 minute, so please help out if you do come across this tiny little website.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/724/210/624/

watch?v=k62kc07m1Dc&feature=player_embedded