Flavours of the night

I love love love night markets, or more affectionately known as pasar malam. My favourite is at Seri Petaling on Tuesday nights for two reasons. Firstly, adorable animal paos. Lastly, the world's best salted chicken. I just found out that the one here at Serdang has both the same stalls, which means I no longer have to drive all the way to Seri Petaling, nor having to endure the horrible smell of stinky fermented tofu there. Now I don't even have to choose between Seri Petaling and Section 17 on Tuesdays anymore (world's best asam laksa at Section 17!!!!)















Meet Bunny, Hello Kitty, Piggy, Hedgehog and Pumpkin in their assorted glory!
















Don't be fooled by its simple looks. It is the most delicious, juicy and flavourful salted chicken that you can ever find. Other stalls may sell salted chicken that looks just like this, but they can only try and fail to achieve the same level of tastiness. Excuse me while I go ahead and feast on my piece of chicken. I can't type with greasy hands. omnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnom

Counting my blessings

Human beings are one big bunch of spoiled brats in the mammal kingdom. That stands as a fact no matter how hard we try to redeem ourselves or sink further in denial. In case if you're wondering if I'm going to launch into a tirade against global warming and such, the answer is simply a "no".

Today could've been just another Monday where I join the rest of my Facebooking friends and update my status as "Ashley Liew is having Monday blues". But I am choosing not to. Before you judge me, I am not declaring myself as being more intellectually advanced than the rest of you folks. I just feel like I should be counting my blessings instead of bitching and moaning about being stuck in the office. 

I had visited a friend yesterday and came home happy. She is fighting an ailment but I am happy for her because I can see that she is doing so with much love and support. I am glad that she is not feeling lost and alone. Somewhere tucked within a corner of my cold black heart, lies a tiny spark of fear that I can never see her again nor have the chance to share my nonsensical warblings to one of the few people who actually gets me. This is starting to sound selfish because once again I managed to make it all about me. But I sincerely hope that she gets through these trying times. 

A colleague had been away from work for more than a month now. Her father is diagnosed with cancer and she immediately flew home to Philippines to care for him and be with her family. One can only admire such love and dedication from a caring daughter. I tried to contact her earlier but I guess her priorities were at the right place in the beginning. I just heard from her this morning, and I am touched by the fact that that she still manages to tell me to take care and say that she misses KL. I wonder where she got this super human strength to stay positive. 

My thoughts and prayers are with these two beautiful women and the people who love them. I wouldn't be of any help at this moment but that's the least I can do. I think I'm gonna press the pause button on procrastination today and finish my workload. I shouldn't be wasting away by moping around when there are people who are so kind and trusting to give me chances in life.

tmi

In this universe, there is always two sides to everything; black & white, left & right, up & down, Friendster & Fiendster... You get the idea. What I'm trying to say is, what is really huge and popular right now also has haters who dedicate their time and energy to mock its popularity. I'm sure there are also tons of websites out there dedicated to mocking the current "it" social networking site, Facebook. I've read through one once, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember the webpage. This particular one that I read has posts on the silliest and most entertaining Facebook statuses. I'm sure you can easily go on Google, find another one of these sites and have a good chuckle.

By the way, I just saw a status update from one of the peeps on my Facebook friends list and may I warn you that the level of emotional damage inflicted can be as bad as watching your parents have sex. I bet it also makes a brilliant submission to the aforementioned websites. Personally, I felt embarrased after seeing it because the same thing happens to me every month. However unlike her, I (and the rest of the female population) do not go proclaiming on Facebook that it is the time of the month. This person, obviously a chick, posted this:














Anyone can recommend me her a good psychologist gynaecologist?

p/s: Wtf is that dude, Nicholas doing leaving a comment??!

BeGaga




two fierce ladies join forces
made sweet music and a badass video
will Lady Gaga adopt me?

Walk, walk fashion baby


I love love love my new leather PVC jacket that I bought from CHIC POP yesterday. CHIC POP is an event by Tongue in Chic, where a number of online and offline vendors gathered at Zouk yesterday to showcase their stuff (They have it at other times too but I only went yesterday). In fact, I got a few pieces which I have been lusting over, thanks to the fashion blogs that I read almost everyday. They never fail to put my wardrobe on a walk of shame. That, or my fashion sense isn't all that chic after all. So I'm trying my level best to put myself on a more fierce level.

The Malaysian market catches up very slowly with the latest trends and I was pleasantly surprised to find decent stuff there. I was kinda expecting to find boring ahlian stuff we normally see while walking around Bangsar or any of the bigger malls in Klang Valley. Most of the vendors had pretty impressive pieces and I ended up buying a strong-shouldered dress (which I have no idea where to wear it to), a big and colourful link chain (it's nothing compared to the Yokoo one that I want, but it does somehow bear a resemblance to it), a cute metal bow ring in gold and a rad square stud ring in silver. It's bling-ing as I type this out now :) :) :) Sophia said it looks like something Lady Gaga would wear. I'm flattered *flaps wings* I had wanted to get another bracelet but it's too late now to regret my non-purchase (It was a one-day event). The bright side is I walked out of Zouk still with money in my wallet. Haha!

p/s: Anyone who wants to see my in my tightass black dress can call me for a night out and I'll have a reason to whip out my square shoulders.

OMFGaga

Here is another reason why I am so in love with Lady Gaga. Her latest music video for Bad Romance absolutely rocks my socks. You have to just SHUT UP and WATCH to witness the awesomeness that is Gaga.




Apparently the single premiered at the McQueen fashion show that I blogged about earlier.




You'll never miss the fierce McQueen fashion that Lady Gaga paraded in her music video. It seems like the shoes and clothes were made just for her, or at least strongly inspired by her eccentric style. You'll have to check with McQueen to confirm that.

I know her videos are weird but aren't they just sexy as hell? She even went nekkid for it!! My two favourite scenes are when she freezes with all those diamonds in the air and the part when she shows off McQueen's glittery alien getup. You know what, I love the video so much I couldn't stop watching it and nobody can get between Gaga and me!!!!

p/s: Methinks Lady Gaga is trying to prove she doesn't have a dick when she donned that red suit at the end bit of the video. You can almost catch a glimpse of her vajayjay here.

Kiss my meaty ass

I read a feature in today's edition of The Star, and it talked about how we can help save the planet by skipping meat for just one day on this coming 25 November. The writer went to great lengths to try and brainwash regular meat-eating folks by describing how farm animals pollute the environment with their excessive gas emissions. Right yeah Mr. or Ms. Vegetarianism-is-holier-than-thou, I do have one question though:

If every single person on earth switched to become a vegetarian and ate leaves for the rest of our lives, where in the world are we supposed to get oxygen from then?

These vegetarian theories are pretty damn dumb, if you asked me. Before you judge me, I don't condemn vegetarianism at all. I just get peeved when these holier-than-thou peeps try to shove their beliefs down other people's throats. I don't care why you prefer to have a salad when you could be chowing down on a juicy chicken drumstick. Just don't tell me that piece of chicken is going to kill me when the earth that grows your plants is not less polluted than chicken feed. You can stick to your tofu burger as long as you want, just leave me alone with my meat-eating ways. Stop pretending as if skipping meat is a magical cure. It might be for some who have bad digestion, but leave us the freedom to judge and decide, will ya?

I get even more annoyed at some so-called Buddhists who go around preaching about vegetarianism. They say meat-eaters are cruel and kill other beings just to satisfy hunger. So harvesting a living plant does not kill it? Just because you can't hear the plant scream, doesn't mean that it isn't in pain. The most annoying part is the wide selection of "vegetarian meat" you find in almost every Chinese-run vegetarian shop. I think some other establishments have them too, but never as commercial as the Chinese ones. I thought being holy and vegetarian came with excluding the desire of wanting to eat meat, no? So why are these vegetarians being fed with mock meat and not being truly holy in the end? They aren't putting their healthy ways to practice by eating all these fried flour after all. 

I've been to a wedding lunch which served an entire banquet of vegetarian dishes. The groom's family were in some sort of a weird religion and they were staunch vegetarians. No need for me to get to the details, but the food sucked. We almost made a stop at the KFC right outside from the wedding venue right after the lunch. I was certain I could have at least a few pieces of chicken. That was the first time I never got stuffed silly from a wedding lunch/dinner. I couldn't believe that there wasn't an inch of respect for the guests from these people. You may swear off meat but if you were to ignore what everyone else preferred, then why bother inviting them? My point is simple, if you believe something is good for you, then great. Just don't go walking around trying to tell people they aren't good enough just because they don't buy into the same bullshit as you do. It's like me inviting Muslim guests for dinner and having a whole roasted pig as main course. 

Methinks I'll get quite chummy with Anthony Bourdain.

A foxy tale

Yesterday we had quite a scare at home. The security alarm went off in the afternoon and it freaked us out a little bit. Hold on, make that completely panicked. My brother got our cousin who lived opposite to come over to check out the house and he said the door was open and shoes were strewn messily at the front porch. I also got a friend living nearby to wait in front of the house. But she told me everything was normal. No doors were open. But it's not like we had any room to take chances. So naturally I had to tell my boss that I had to leave the office to check on things at home and I took 10 minutes to speed home from Putrajaya. Normally I take a 20-minute leisure drive home after work everyday.

I went in the house with my friend after I arrived. I got so annoyed by my cousin when I saw that things were exactly like what my friend had told me. We hesitated at first to enter but did it anyway. There was no break-in so we concluded that the bugger must've attempted to but ran away after the alarm went off. My neighbours had their houses broken into within these past few weeks, and most of them through the back door or roof.

The police came more than an hour and a half after my mom called. She called immediately after she got the alarm response. They had balls like the size of dried raisins that I pour out of the cereal box that I have for breakfast every morning. We told them there wasn't any break-in but we suspect someone must've tried getting in through the roof. It was obvious neither my mom or myself could get up to the roof and my mom asked them to check. Ten points for those who guessed they never climbed up to the attic. For those who still have blind faith in the justice system in this country, you might as well go drink straight from the gutter right behind your house. If you're lucky, you might just die from E.Coli or something like that. Fyi, they just kept smoking in front of my house and talked about us as if we were crazy and wasted their time coming over. Their ciggie butts are still right outside the gate. One joker even tried to comment that we had a fox up on the attic and the animal probably set off the alarm. Finally one of them just merely stuck his head up to the ceiling opening and concluded that there was no break-in attempts. This stunt, I already pulled off an hour before they reached. Another guy tried to protect their whole police integrity by threatening that they had already checked and we shouldn't spread lies by saying that they didn't check. That seriously left me wondering if they were professional jesters in police uniform. I live in a fucking joke of a country and I'm not doing anything about it!!! This feels even worse than being screwed over by a so-called friend. Somebody tell me why shouldn't we all just emigrate?

Quote of the day

A friendship founded on business is a good deal better than a business founded on friendship.
-John D. Rockefeller-

_________________________________________________________________________________


There could never be more truth to Mr. Rockefeller's words of wisdom. I had the opportunity to experience the harsh reality of his words today.

Just a few months back, a friend who worked in the events industry got my help to write and design an entire magazine which they specifically wanted to produce for a business awards event. Only a handful of complete materials were passed on to myself and my designer friend (muffin), even after they had postponed the event from the initial date. The event is scheduled to be on next week, but they are still taking their own sweet time to gather and compile submissions from clients till this week. They had wanted me to submit the final pagination and output files by yesterday. So that got to me. I snapped. I had a face off with her bosses (well, through phone calls, emails and text messages anyway) and in the end, the job got canned.

You see, the real problem didn't end there. I got a cheque for the cancellation fee but they pulled off some majorly fucked up shit behind my back. If you hadn't already guessed, my cheque got bounced. I already predicted this even before receiving the cheque. These particular business folks didn't fail to live up to my expectations. They failed to plan a proper working timeline and are now sprinting their way to meet an impossible deadline, but in the end I am the victim.

I bet they must be damn pissed because I initially refused to pass them the unfinished winner profiles. I clearly told them I am only passing them the approved files. But of course they had their own impressions of what I was going to submit. Finally I did send over the files, but this shit is still happening. Methinks their receiving antennas need some major fine tuning. Someone please scoop up their brains and soak 'em in acid before shoving 'em all back into their cracked skeletons?!! A 5-year-old know would know the payment is just for reimbursement of the work that we have already started. These brainless assholes are thinking that the money coming out of their pockets can buy whatever they think they can.

My friend is caught in the middle but I totally believe my anger is justified. I find myself yelling at her for several occasions but I really needed her to listen. They didn't get my point from the beginning, when I tried to manage their expectations of how deadlines for a publication work. It's just plain obvious that they never cared about how things work except for the way they want it to be, which is typically last-minute and without high quality. Although she might be dead trapped between her donkeyballs management and me at most times, there were tons of ways to work in a more organised manner. Clients who are difficult to manage still needs to be managed cleverly. They just allowed everyone to move in a typical Bolehland working pace. It's too late now to say that this day could've been avoided because it already happened. I really need to buy muffin a very nice dinner. Make that dinners. I'm sorry to drag a good friend into this mess. He is such a talented designer but I wasted his time, energy and effort. Thank goodness he has such an open heart. I could never be more thankful. I am blessed too because Bun has so much patience to listen to me curse up a storm about these fucktards.

I so trust that Karma's going to show them what a bitch she is. Holla at me, Karma! *high five*

p/s: Awards are so full of bullshit because honestly devils businessmen just buy them to showcase in a cabinet. What else is new in Bolehland?