today was a good date with czeeyong. he took me to the most awesome bakery in the world, after a reccomendation by my colleague - it's called Levain Boulangerie Patisserie (look at all the nice pictures and review at GoWhereEat), and then to the city center for some (window hahahaha) shopping! i can't wait till my payday to go again XP Oh yeah, I shouldn't start planning how to SPEND my future money but I cannot help it. I saw so many nice things I would like to have today!

After that, later on at night, we went to this food court underneath Lot 10- not underneath per se, I meant the basement. Except that this was not a normal food court. It was a GATHERING of Malaysia's or Klang Valley's most famous restaurants in one place. There was the beef noodle kiosk (original branch opened since 1935 or some other ancient time), the dozens of super awesome old school ancient wantan mee stalls, Kissaten, Le Porc Dor, Duck King, even kayu nasi kandar, you name it you got it. As long as you're famous, you get to have a kiosk. It's sort of Malaysia's best eats under one roof.

SUPER DUPER AWESOME.

And then, super sweet czeeyong bought me another bouquet of flowers Totally unexpected, no occasion, randomly. He He He.

It was a funny thing. He made an observation about how girls like  ME will always say NO when asked whether I want flowers, but we just want them to buy it from the heart and give it to us, and not buy it because we want them to.

Ha Ha!

Yeah, I do admit, reason for doing things is extremely important for me. I am annoyingly one of those 'I want you to want it' girls.

XP

2nd day of work and I already feel the pressure. It's all positive pressure so far, one that is challenging and interesting at the same time. I hope that I will be able to balance everything without sinking in despair. I still have not grasped a hold of everything and I had a crash course on SPSS on my first day. I thank every single deity in the world for taking Dr. Chua's Research Method in Biology last semester where I had to learn how to use RCommander which I loathed with every fiber of my being then. It helped me so much in getting this job. Oh, thank you for also having a programmer for a boyfriend. All very useful tools

My colleagues and employers are all really nice people, and so far, I really enjoy working with them.

Now I just brace for the day which I long for more sleep, and a life....

What I want in life, is not simple. I do not want the house, nor the car, nor the lifestyle. I just want to travel, and be a happy tourist for a long time. And for me to do the things which I believe in. And to support my family, especially my dad. For all that he has done for me, I really want to do the same for him. On my first day of work, I heard a jingling of coins from the kitchen, and found out that he had loaded the side of my car (where you stuff things like used tissue and touch and go cards, and loose change) with a lot of spare change so that I would have enough money to feed the meter. He does things like that a lot without asking or telling me.

I luff my daddy

(2 days ago)

It's now my fourth day at work and I am fairly comfortable already. I know I have a ton of projects coming my way, and during the company meeting today, the directors asked me how my training was going, I said... It's been abandoned on the 2nd day itself.I'm a bit concerned about my work pace, and I hope to pick it up soon because I am pretty slow.

My boss was really nice as they know that I manage GoWhereEat, so she gave me a Spanish food and wine magazine today as a present, because it had really nice photographs

Overall, I'm very very pleased with my work environment, and the nature of my job, just concerned about meeting deadlines, and stressful juggling of many many many projects at once.

Maybe three months from now there will be a post entitled. I HATE MY JOB.

After my last job at Kepong(which sucked horribly), I really do not have high expectations anymore.

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 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 absolutely spoilt rotten since i (followed) was shipped by czeeyong down to his hometown. since i've been here, it's been a never-ending journey of food, and more food. i think my waistline has expanded by several inches. even though i hate to admit it, i think czeeyong has won the challenge of proving to me that JB indeed has great food. everything is different here, from their deliciously saltier wantan mee, to their herby bak kut teh. it's not that KL does not have good food, both do, just different.

we made a day trip to singapore by car on sunday, and made the effort to go on a food trail, in a bid to hunt down nice hawker food in the red dot. it was not impossible, and contrary to assumptions that they have bland, tasteless hawker food, some of it indeed taste pretty good. i had my yummy max brenner chocolate again after two years of not tasting their waffles. czeeyong mentioned that it was the only waffles he thought was delicious. OM OM OM.

pictures to come after i have edited them. it takes a little bit of an effort now that i don't have a mouse with me.