Final Farewell July 12, 2011

Picture heavy post… my very very very last day in XYZ Bank… (not like you can’t tell what bank it is from the pictures).

One of my favorite-st users everrrrrr… none other than Mr Soo from Treasury Control Processing. Any project done with him will be a joy because he knows what he wants and he can even give suggestions how to do it! Also, he’s very funny and nice and understanding user. The best. I was lucky that he came over to Bangi the day before I left, so I could get a picture with him. And remind him how many meals he owes me already by now. Never claimed once also. Fun fact : his brother was our national badminton player once upon a time. He played doubles. Should be easy for you to guess… 

Mangosteens on my desk in the morning. How often does your boss put fresh fruits on YOUR table. Sigh…

Raymond said that my new make-up so glamourous. Well… I knew I would be taking lots of photos for the day mar… 

I blogged about my make-up FOTD at my beauty blog.

Breakfast in the morning… this is kinda the cleanest my desk has ever been… but it’s gonna get even more sparse…

Last time imma work in these cubes…

Last time Imma work with these two… the last seven years were a blast, right? We’ve been through so much together. AS400 Cobol, Java, JSP, Visual Basic…

One last box to cart home. And that strange thing at the bottom is actually an ant trap that I generously donated to my office. The pest control really sucks!

First person I took photo with was Lim because he was working half day that day… 

Photo with the calendar from year 2004… the first calendar I ever got from XYZ Bank! This is like, ancient history for me.

Last time Imma look at this monitor with all the funky stickers. Not like I can personalise my current laptop in the same manner. 

My pedestal has never been cleaner… 

Mr Ho.. who likes to tell Raymond that he’s very lucky that he (Raymond) gets to go out for lunch with a “leng lui” everyday (ah-hem, that’s me…)

Me with Barbara and R, two UAT testers who we frequently worked with. They came over to pass me a farewell present. 

This whole team came downstairs to have a “tea date” with me… so touched. It’s Jonathan, Mandy, AiChee, Daniel & Sunny. So sad… where to get colleagues like this…

This was what they bought for the “tea date” — two boxes of J Co Donuts!

Pauline and I. Am so happy for her that she is now a manager… Where’s my lunch treat?

Hema and myself… once upon a time she sat next to me…

Justin and I… dunno why he is so nice to me.. I only helped him out occasionally in JSP and Java stuff… and usually only cos Sifoo Wong asked me to cos I think Justin scared to ask me. Hahaha! Anyway, a really smart guy… and I’m glad that our offshore project is safe in his hands..

MY boss and I. I won’t lie… I teared up when I saw this picture… because all the memories came flooding back. All I can say is… I wish I was a better employee at times.

Me and the young men of the team (minus Lim who is married, therefore an old man) – William, NSL And Putera.

Me and Mr NXY… the AS400 expert..

Me and Umma…didn’t get to work with her much … no opportunity as she came in after Hema (when I was still doing AS400 Cobol occasionally).. and she wasn’t on the offshore project, so I didn’t need to teach her like Justin.

Wong and I… this coffee maker is a bane in Wong’s existence… cos I took it to work and left it there… for 3 years!! Hahahahha!!

Me and Raymond…. best work buddy…

CJ and myself… CJ is in charge of the server side stuff.. so I frequently have to torture him… but he likes it… hahahha.

I’ll miss the “Who’s on leave?” board…

I’ll miss my tag…

Crying while eating the carrot cake that Barbara and R bought for me… overwhelmed.

Farewell to Leech Pt 2 (Old Man Restaurant) July 1, 2011

The following farewells were all organised by the “dai lou pan” (Big Bosses) of the company, and for some reason, they really love this restaurant : Old Man Restaurant. The place is one of the more upscale Chinese restaurants around the area, and most prominently — featured on Ho Chak! I am so blessed to be able to be treated to lunch here TWICE. I took the menu back home to show my parents, and suddenly they are so eager to try this place out too. If you are interested, it’s located at :

No 5 & 7, Jalan Kajang Impian 1/11
Taman Kajang Impian
Bandar Baru Bangi
43650 Kajang
Selangor Darul Ehsan
MALAYSIA

Sadly, they don’t seem to have any branches elsewhere!

(1) Ms Boo + Julia + Raymond + me
Ms Boo is the director of the IT division, and I’m so honored that she would want to throw a farewell for me. According to her, the GM of the IT division was supposed to join us as well, but he had a meeting that day. I don’t mind, as if I want to see the GM, I can see him at gym any time. Heh heh! ;P Julia is the most polite & charming & funny friend of mine who used to play squash for Selangor. Now she is in her 50s and we became close thank to our own “book exchange program”. I will miss her dearly. She is always classy, graceful and courteous and I aspire to be more like her (though I must admit my blood tends to boil very quickly…).

Raymond was invited to tag along because Julia was afraid that I would be lonely just chatting with the two of them. For nothing Raymond benefitted a good meal also! See Raymond, you should thank your lucky stars that you are my friend. HAHAHA!

The ginseng chicken soup. They only have 2 soups available each day, and if you want to order something else from their menu, you will have to pre-order it.

The star dish – superior fried rice with tobikko. It’s flavorful, chock-full of seafood, the RICE even tastes different from normal fried rice… and topped with LOTS and LOTS of tobikko. They do NOT stinge with this dish!

The “Fa Diu Kai”… you can really taste the alcohol!

Claypot fried kangkung STEMS. It’s such a weird dish, but it tastes SO yummy. Julia says it’s because they fried it with some salted fish and fermented beancurd.

Simple “cheung cheng” fish, but it was very fresh…

The restaurant recommended this fried noodle which was quite nice, but we were too full at this point to fully appreciate it.

(2) Ms Fam + friends farewell!
Ms Fam is another bigwig at our company, and again, I’m very honored that she would treat me to a farewell lunch as well. When I first joined the bank, I was loaned to her for an auditing project — auditing all IT systems in the bank! I worked with Ravi & Geok on this project, this was how I became close to them. You know how they decided on having 3 of us in that group? Because of our written english! Hahahaha! Sigh, if they only knew that I myself don’t know how I got A1 in my 1119 papers… Oh, and I was also once-upon-a-time roomies with her when we were in Cambodia for a project!

I was supposed to have a farewell lunch with Justin & Raymond on Friday… in fact, I don’t know why Justin invited me out as I only worked with him on the offshore subsidiary project. Occasionally he will ask me for pointers & debugging… so was surprised when he asked me for a farewell. He said Raymond should join so it won’t be too awkward for me. Mr Ho also wanted to join in on the farewell, cos he & I worked together on a project in Cambodia last time. In fact, when the company first sent out notification of my resignation, he called up Raymond right away to taunt him with a, “So… you cannot eat lunch with your leng lui lunch buddy anymore, huh!” Hahaha! He had kept asking me for a farewell lunch outing, but wound up had to delay til my very last day. When Ms Fam called, she asked if I already had farewell plans with anyone else. I said with Mr Ho, Justin & Raymond, so Ms Fam said, call them come along (in the end she paid). For nothing Raymond benefitted again! And Justin & Mr Ho benefitted… I don’t mind la, since they were nice enough to want to treat me in the first place. Hahahaha!

Then Ms Fam said, “Can I bring along some other friends?” And those other friends turned out to be Em (my boss) and Sifoo Wong. -___- Two other guys from Windows team asked Ms Fam if they can join in cos they wanted to give me a farewell, so they also got nice treat… what the heck. You wanna belanja me, pls take out your own money. *evil* Wow, I sound so bad… it’s the thought that counts right? Ok ok, next time get me a farewell gift! XD

Justin, Sifoo Wong and my boss Em.

CJ, Mr Ho and Ms Fam.

We ordered chicken & sharkbone soup. Weird combination huh?

The soup is flavorful, but I still prefer the ginseng one. As Joe says, we are no environmentalists, but I really don’t see the point of crunching on shark bone… nothing special or nutritious about it at all!

This was the only dish that Ms Fam pre-ordered. It’s called “Golden Seafood with Salted Egg Ball”. Honestly, it taste NORMAL only, and don’t think it’s worthy of being a pre-order dish. In fact, it is quite hard in the middle, and I cannot taste the seafood. Most people also thought it’s normal only.

Fried brinjal & long beans… quite a standard veggie dish.

The must have that we had it twice! When I bring my parents here I will order it AGAIN.

This is also a must have – fried prawns with lime, chilli and peanut. The best dish, hands down.

Mongolian Meat Chop… it tastes quite yummy, well marinated and well cooked. Only problem is that the cuts of meat were TOO big, so we had trouble eating it. Hahaha. We are lazy people who want everything well-cut for us beforehand.

Honey chicken — also quite scrumptious. But not spectacular like the prawns.

Simple steamed fish… not really memorable in my books.

If I go there again, would recommend to my parents : superior fried rice with tobikko, the lime,chilli and peanut prawns, and maybe the claypot fried kangkung stems. Other than that, there’s nothing else I would re-order, tried once is enough. And seeing as they have so many things on the menu, it would be good to try the other stuff there as well.

Next entry will feature more humans, and after that — the cleaning out of my cubicle. Hahahha!

Farewell to Leech June 30, 2011

Will be schedulling a lot of blog posts because I don’t foresee myself blogging a lot in the next few days. These are some long-ago pictures from various farewells that my colleagues had thrown for me when I was leaving XYZ Bank. I will definitely miss all of them… but I have to look forward in my new job as well. Praying for favor, wisdom and protection. Not only to be blessed by the new workplace, but to be a blessing to the new workplace as well!

LaVista, Hotel Equatorial Bangi

Sponsored by my boss Em… the whole team + Mr Lee was supposed to come for this farewell, but Raymond had Emergency Leave that day, so he was excused. Which was good news for a new guy who showed up at work the same day of my farewell party, hahaha. On his first day of work already got buffet to eat, what a nice introduction to the company… =)

Mr Lee was this manager who I had to work under for computerisation of two of our subsidiaries, the trustees and the factoring side. As for why the teams are so big, it’s because over the years we had split from doing wholesale treasury and offshore subsidiaries and the overseas subsidiary support (retail banking). For myself, am blessed that I got to “play” with every single system since I started off in wholesale treasury, was loaned over to do computerisation for trustess & factoring, did telebanking also… then did a treasury & accounting system for offshore subsidiary (also involved in them starting e-banking) before finally ended up in retail banking for overseas subsidiaries (specialising in loans, but kinda have to know the whole system from GL to CA/SA, FD, etc).

/>Actually, for group outings, my boss really likes Cafe Lavista, though I think it’s quite pricey. Well, they like it cos it’s halal and there’s a lot of variety. Whether you like western or asian food, you will be able to find something here…

All my plates of food… *grin* Some of them went 6 rounds ok, I think I’m not too bad.

Mr Lee & William

Umma & the new guy (Soo)

Justin, Mr NXY and Putera

Ng & Kelly.

Group photo! Soo, Mr Lee, William, Justin, Mr NXY, Putera, Sifoo Wong, Lim, Ng, Kelly, myself, Em, Hema & Umma.

Belanja Makan by Other Colleagues @ Serdang

Actually a joint-farewell for me and Francis, who everyone joked that we are going to end up in the same company. I don’t think so because he said that he will be more on business / management side while I’m staying on the technical end. I think most of the peeps are joining for farewell to Francis, hehehe. Thanks for belanja-ing me too!

Jessie, Andric and Helen.

See (organiser), Chu and JLS.

Helen, SF and Francis.

Mr G, Tun & LiTeng.

This is “zhu pak chou”.

The star dish in this restaurant is the ginger fish. We had two giant plates of this = 4 fish!

Some normal veggies… ehhee.

Another star dish – the deep fried seafood tofu.

Sauce-covered fried chicken wings.

Egg foo yong.

A medley of long beans, brinjal, four angled beans.

The Old Gang

Call them the “old” gang not because  of their age, but because these are the ones who I’m closest to and who I’ve known the longest. Pauline, Raymond and Justin treated me to a nice Japanese meal at Miyagi in Bangi. To be honest, during the times that I was going for all this farewell, I was having havoc at work, so I was not really able to enjoy myself peacefully. Ya, I know, even when I’m leaving the workload is a lot… =p

I forgot to bring my camera (!! must be the work !!), so I had to use my handphone camera, as which you can see, is definitely not as high quality…

Justin and Raymond — didn’t get to take a photo with Pauline and myself.

Pauline’s Sushi Set.

Justin’s Unagi teppanyaki set…

My seafood teppanyaki set, which is what I always order when I come here. Their garlic fried rice is darn nice, but somehow not as nice as I remember it to be last time. Maybe food didn’t taste as appetising because of all my work problems, lol. Anyway, Raymond also had a beef teppanyaki set, so lazy to resize and upload his food pic as well.

This is not really related to “farewells”, but I was working late (at one point it was the norm for me to leave at 12am, 1am, etc. Sifoo Wong saw me working late so he bought this for me… Arabian food. I didn’t really have mood to eat, but it was a touching gesture. He went out to eat and by me food, then came back to office just to pass me food before he ciao. As he left, he said, “You don’t need me here right?” Hahaha. Actually, I wanted to say “Please stay!” but I don’t want to burden others.

When I left the office at 1am, the guards had locked the gate and my car was parked outside. I distinctly saw a guard saw me standing outside, so I waited patiently for him to open the gate (it is autogate, cannot manually open, unless I become superman). After a while, he still didn’t open, so I went to the security guard window and waved at them. There were 4-5 guards inside the room and they PERSISTENTLY avoided looking at me until I shouted. I think they thought I was a ghost or a figment of their imagination, so they purposely dowan to acknowledge me! Hahahhaa! When I told this story to my friends, they laughed their ass off. And probably vowed not to work late.

I will continue the farewell posts in another post that I will schedule to update tomorrow.

Cheering Me Up June 9, 2011

My boyfriend knew that I had a pretty rough first week to the month (don’t have to remind me that it’s only 3 days for the first week of June, it is horrific ok? Trust me on this), so come the first weekend, he said he would pamper me to the max. After taking me to Old Town Signature (-___-), he said that that was enough. Hahahaha! Ok, but I just have to say here that OTK Signature is completely the same as OTK, except that they have ONE additional page of “signature” food that you can’t get in the normal branches. *sigh* I had the OTK Signature Claypot Lo Shi Fun, and it was pretty darn good! I really wish that they sold this in normal branches too because I’m getting sick of ordering the same thing in OTK whenever Raymond and I are on staggered lunch hours.

(Off topic, but Raymond – my lunch buddy – and I *always* go to the same chap fan store whenever we are on the 12pm lunch break shift. We go there so often that the chap fan lady knows us, the owner of the kopitiam knows us, the drinks seller knows us, I have a stalker construction worker who always ogles me, the guy who sells fruits there knows what fruits I’m gonna buy and always puts aside those fruits for me… etc etc. We call this kopitiam “Default” but actually it’s “Sun Fei Loong” in Serdang Perdana. If you ever work in Bangi, you should come here! Cheapest chap fan around, I tell you.

Anyway, when we are on the 1pm lunch break shift, things are a bit harder. We can’t go to “Default” anymore because the place would have run out of food. If we don’t go to “Default” to eat chap fan, really no point to go there because we LOVE the chap fan there the most. So when we are on the later lunch shift, we go to Mines Wonderland or South City Plaza instead. And when we’re in Mines, the only thing we eat is either at the food court there (rarely) or Old Town Kopitiam. Someone wrote in a forum that “People who eat at OTK don’t know the value of money!” and Raymond and I felt so ashamed of ourselves. And then we ate there again that afternoon.)

I thought the OTK Signature Claypot Lo Shi Fun was all the loving that I was getting that weekend, but then Tron bought us Gold Class tickets to watch X-Men : First Class! I was soooo cheered up after hearing that! Okie, I wouldn’t have mind it NOT being Gold Class, as I just wanted to catch this summer blockbuster, but I did feel very pampered. Hehehe! The movie? I liked it! It was interesting to see the “history” of all the X-Men characters. I had no idea that Mystique and Professor Xavier were the same age (maybe she’s even older), and how she used to be “one of the good guys”. (Spoiler-ish stuff up ahead, proceed with caution.)

Ben said that it sucks because got no girl power in this film, and the Diamond Lady (dunno the real name, lazy to find out) was so useless (“only good for cutting ice” lmao). To be honest, I don’t go into the cinema seeing if the women are going to be well represented or not. Is that very un-feminist of me? On hindsight, I do agree that the girls didn’t seem as powerful as Shaw, Magneto or Azazel (sp?). But still January Jones’s character *was* supposed to be powerful, no? She has the same powers as Prof. X! And on top of that, can transform herself into ultimate defense mode, while Charles has to depend on others to protect him.

Ok, I don’t want to wax lyrical about this movie because already argued with Ben over it about morality + who is Charles to tell Magneto to get over his crap childhood + be the better person and make life easier in the future for others, etc etc. I thought it was a good film, really watchable. I like the way Kevin Bacon, James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult and Michael Fassbender fleshed out their roles…

But what was lol-tastic was that I had no idea that the German doctor who killed Magneto’s parents = Shaw til towards the end of the movie. I was as clueless as Charles Xavier. Reason? I don’t think the German doc looks like Shaw also!! And I really don’t get why Magneto didn’t just kill the German doctor there and then. He easily killed the two soldiers there. Maybe if he had tried to kill Shaw then, he wouldn’t have been able to (since he had mutant powers of his own), but he didn’t even try!

In return for the movie tickets, I treated Tron to TGIF with this RM50 voucher that HSBC gave me. Hahaha! In fact, RM50 is definitely not enough for 2 people. Had to pay about RM30 extra some more. Not worth it la. *grumpy* Food is yummy, but everything is so overpriced, especially the drinks! And why can’t they have free flow fruit juice like Chillis… I don’t want to drink so much Pepsi / Ice Lemon Tea. However, the service in TGIF is always awesome, and had fun camwhoring around the booth since we were early and no one else was around.

Good morning Tron!

Me & myself.

Tron asked me to take a picture of this, perhaps he wants to improve his game.

Tron’s Ultimate Beef Tacos or something like that. I kept stealing his fries!

My South Western Mac & Cheese… good, and the cheese is not too overwhelming like in D’Italianne Kitchen. The chicken was pretty tasteless though…

On Saturday (I’m actually doing my weekend update backwards), we didn’t really do much as we both had to catch up on sleep debt. Met up pretty late to go for lunch together at Sakae Sushi. I quite like Sakae Sushi’s salmon promotion — thicker cuts of salmon for the sushi, for RM3.99 for 2. Anyway, we had RM15 worth of coupons to redeem from Sakae, so it was really affordable eating that day!

At night, we both had family functions to attend – he celebrated an early Father’s Day, while I celebrated my paternal grandmother’s birthday. I thought it was going to be a simple dinner at New Paris Restaurant again, but at the last minute (I think…), my uncle who is back from Australia suggested a change of venue, to Imperial Restaurant in PJ. He also wound up footing the RM1k bill.. O_O Thank you Uncle KC!!

The Food

Two different types of stir-fried vegetables.

Mushrooms, fishballs, ‘tau kan’ & broccoli

Some kinda soup.. not sure what it is, but good to clear the palate.

Cheese prawns… my fave!

Steam fish.. not very good as it wasn’t so fresh.

Steam chicken… had a nice garlic compote to go with it.

Pancake dessert. I love the crispy pastry and the yummy lotus paste filling… <3

Super sweet & spicy ginger syrup with a “tang yuen” filled with black sesame. My mom & brother couldn’t stand the “spiciness” of the ginger syrup, so I ended up having 3 bowls of this! *greedy*

Uncle KC, my dad (brothers dress alike), and my brother Andrew.

My “Ah koo” and my “amah”.

Birthday cake baked by my sister – her classic carrot cake & cream cheese! It’s very good! If she loves you, she’ll make this cake for your birthday.

My sister and my brother-in-law

Aunty Anita, amah and Aunty SY.

My cousin Aron is belting out the birthday songs…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMAH!!

Praying for brighter future ahead of me… favor, protection & wisdom!