Letters Home Part 6 January 22, 2010

I’m really angry, thanks to Aeroline… #1 time-wasters. Giving them benefit of the doubt before I rant. Work week has been so-so. I actually keep a list in Notepad about what work I do everyday, so should someone ask me what I’m busy doing, then I’ll just send them the file, lol. Aside from that, today I did something really cool that I’ve always wanted to do, but never got around to doing! I feel sooooooooooooo good and warm and happy now.

This weekend is a busy one — team teaching again, and going for Mandy & LeeLong’s wedding. I need a break, man! Holiday holiday holiday!!!! T_____T

Cut & paste old, pre-written entry. Hope I can blog during the weekend. Have a good one!

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Entry #17
Been put on a wild goose chase the whole day. Fcuk… almost been here for 3 weeks and it feels so at home here. Nyeeeehhh I want to work here instead of Cambodia now.

We ate at the Mekong Hotel tonight in honor and celebration of Nguyen’s last night here in Cambodia. Actually, when I went to the market, I was thinking about buying a gift for her but in the end I totally forgot about it. Heh. :3

The restaurant.

All the food… lazy to write out all…

Weird pink watermelon… tasteless.

Okay la, don’t want to talk anymore. Had high intentions of solving something for my colleague but fcuk him la. Those who need help, open their mouths and ask for it. I don’t have intentions to help those who keep quiet, lol.

Entry #18
Another day, another eSMR (in case you forgot, it stands for System Modification Request) raised by a user that I have dropped. Feel quite proud of myself. Been churning out reports like a Crystal Report expert, never mind the fact that I have only picked it up like a week and a half ago. :3

Today was the last day for the Vietnamese girl.. she was most worried that she couldn’t run her loan schedule patching script in time as the user couldn’t confirm the figures (user = so-called most handsome man in the bank) and so she hurriedly taught us how to run her patching script and what to change if we couldn’t patch by today. In the end we practically held a gun to the user’s head to get him to confirm the figures and alls well that ends well.

[Cut out long rant against someone who I feel bad for ranting against now because he's just a helpless creature, haha.]

For dinner, the country head took us to eat steamboat. It costs like 35,000 kip per person, and it’s all-you-can-eat. Too bad they started to hide the food by 9pm. Still, we had good enough barbeque and steamboat. I’m okay with steamboat… I think the most important part in steamboating is just to go with the flow and not bitch too much about other people’s idiosynchracies. I’m very selamba over food, so I’m good at steamboat-ing with pple.

The restaurant.

Tall MrSia leading the way, across some huge lake!

Dude setting up the cooking implements…

Buffet style!

Girls always go for the mushrooms and veg… correct?

Nooooooootttt….!! You think I’m a rabbit ah! Meat meat meat!! I love meat!! CarnivoreeeeEeeee RoaaarRRR!!

There were some already-cooked food as well, but I don’t think it tasted so good.

Starting small.

More meat. Give us the meatsssss!

More cooked food…. I think AhSiang took most of the cooked food… lazy bugger!

Cooked already…

Local herbal jellies for dessert. I really like the green herbal jelly! Very cooling and refreshing.

All filled up.

Fried stuff. How not to gain weight while working there laaaaa…

Aftermath!

Happy steamboat-ers – AhSiang, Sifoo Wong, MrSia (looks like a beggar here… lol) and Mr Lim.

The guys were all randomly talking about beautiful girls in Laos… and for some reason ended up talking about “wonderland” which is a term that they use to refer to the prostitute den. The country head said that a lot of his clients bring him there, and he says that they bring the women in a line to the front of the men and ask the men to pick. If you don’t like any, a second line comes in. It’s very “meat market” and he said sometimes he just feel bad for the women so he just pick whoever is in the first selection instead of being a bitch. However, this guy is married, so he will plan with his friends first for a “rescue call” after about two drinks so that he can excuse himself from the clients (and the pawing women). He say the ladies are all so subservient and beautiful that if you stay too long and get touched by them sure cannot resist already wtf. Mental note to self : never date a banker.

Okay, tomorrow I’m going to some part of Thailand.. not Udon already. Udon apparently too far. We’re just going there to stamp our passports and then come back home. Oh, and to shop at Tesco and to eat KFC. :O~

And then I went to Thailand…. 60+ pictures after the cut. Don’t stop — story time!

Letters Home Part 4 January 9, 2010

Entry #13
I just finished watching “Maid in Manhattan” (seriously no chemistry between Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes — I’m also distracted by his strangely creepy smile which shows off his weird pebble teeth), and am distracted by a live performance of Take That singing “It Only Takes A Minute” in concert. Gosh! Take That!! That was sooooooo Standard 6 ok. I still remember how happy I was when my sis and I were saving up for the cassette tape and then strangely my dad suddenly bought it for us. I still have that cassette. It was so strange… how did he know that we liked Take That? We rarely share such information with our parents. Maybe my dad likes their songs too, hehehe. Anyway, that live performance was so provocative ok… one of the members suddenly started pole dancing (yes, a GUY pole dancing) and then I felt like, wtf, I want to learn pole dancing too.

Today was a milestone in our work here, we patched a great freaking lot of errors in the system to production, I pushed in my new reporting program, etc. Tomorrow, Mr Tuan will be leaving to go back to Vietnam, I’ll be left with my new roomie who I am suddenly fond of. Tell you something weird she told me today. She said that last time she worked for a software house that didn’t have enough laptops for all the staff. When not enough laptop and another staff have to go overseas for work, they packed their PC to go wtf. HAHAHAHA. And yes, they were always over the weight limit. WTF. HAHAHAHA. And that time the monitors (which they also packed) was not flat screen but the old school CRT type. You know last time I bought my new flat screen monitor, I traded in my old school CRT one? When I told that to my colleagues, they said 50 sen also the computer shop don’t want. I said I got RM10 for it, and the computer shop owner said, “Why are you treating my shop like a rubbish dump.” And then he said he will turn the CRT monitor into an aquarium.

I am dying to buy more souvenirs to bring back home, but no time and no money. The crazy staff here (Mr Sia and AhSiang) really go and calculate the exchange rates like madfcuks. They will even exchange very exact USD in order to make sure when they round up / down the Lao kip, they suffer the lowest of lows of losses or no losses at all. Anyway, we get slightly better staff rates when exchanging USD for kip. I hope US market doesn’t fall any lower… wtf… at least while I’m here. If it falls lower, at least do it when I’m back in Malaysia. If it reaches 3.0, I will open a foreign currency account. Cos I’m sure as hell it will climb back up again. I’m that sure. Hahaha.

After work, I managed to convince them to go to the Joma Bakery which my sister’s friend’s Laotian gf recommended. Said the coffee is good, but I think the pizza even better. This freaking huge slice for about RM8… it was soft and so filling. And then washed it down with a cappucino freeze that was quite bad, but not as bad as the coffee I had in Cambodia. It’s about RM6, so definitely cannot compare with Starbucks lar. We had our usual soyabean with cincau after that. Crap… I’m turning quite cina hanging out with these 3 old people… they are like talking cantonese all the time, so I will follow as well. That’s a good thing though… I don’t really mind. But the better my chinese, the worse my english. A good telling point is when those people say that my english is good. Don’t laugh your arse off, I got an A1 in my triple-one-nine after all. Hahaha.

Store from the outside

Interior inside… quite a comfy little coffee house. Very popular with all the gwai loh backpackers!

You can get yourself a souvenir if you love the bakery / cafe THAT much.

AhSiang placing his order…

Some yummy looking sandwich..

Meat pizza! Really really good. The coffee is meh, but the pizzas are yummmmmm!

Oh yeah, this Tuan and Wong rented bicycles for the past two days. The people here are soooooo weird. They rented the bikes for 10,000 kip a day. NO NEED PAY IN ADVANCE. And then NO COLLATEROL. And then.. they told the lady, it was for one day, but ended up due to working late and karaoke sessions, they kept the bike for 2 days. Today they returned it and the lady didn’t scold or complain or anything. GOSH. These people are soooooooo trusting la. If they joined the bank as loan officers, sure we end up with lots of bad debt. KAKAKA. Anyway, since Tuan and Nguyen left earlier to go with their friends to … I donno what… Tuan asked me to cycle his bike back. This AhSiang smartly said he would ride pillion on Wong’s bike, which left Mr Sia to either be pillion on my bike, or I be pillion. I wanted to cycle, so I said I would ride. But once I got on that stupid bike, it was soooo wobbly. Plus I had to sling the laptop around my bike. I remember being a pretty good cyclist when I was younger, but the stupid thing kept swaying towards the right, and the seat was high so I frequently had to use my legs as brakes (tip toe). THen I also felt bad that if I was to ride properly, Mr Sia had to walk and carry my laptop bag for me. WTF. OF course he didn’t dare to ride pillion while I cycled because I was sooooooo unstable. So then I let him cycle and I walk, cos I didn’t trust HIM cycling either. He wasn’t having such a good time of it, and most of the time he used his legs as brakes as well, besides, he is damn tall, so him using his legs as brakes is much easier than me.

Conclusion : I ran home and Mr Sia cycled. Of course, when we got back, Wong and AhSiang who had no problems laughed like hell at me. Donno what la.. they said Mr Sia looked like the boss cycling to work and I look like the maid running after him saying “Sir, sir.. you forgot your laptop”. WTF… hahaha.

Anyway, it was another fun day here… and since there was a lot of work completed, it was also satisfying in a way. Very rewarding. :3

More stories after the cut:

Letters Home Part 3 December 30, 2009

So how did you spend the Christmas holidays in the end? Despite my initial plans of decadent shopping and indulging in good food, I wound up having a very quiet Xmas indeed. It started with catching up on sleep debt and reading. Dinner with the family. Quiet indeed. The next day, my dad  gave me a bill for a little over RM500 for two new tires for my car. T___T So I suppose, that was the Christmas present to myself. T____T When you get a bill like that, you generally do not feel like racking up more bills.

Changed money for my upcoming Singapore trip, bought myself some workout gloves for training (so that’s one item off my wishlist — not that I got Harbinger. I got Kettler!) and then gym gym gym all the way. I think that going to the gym is one way to stave off the need to go shopping, haha. And besides, the gym fees have been paid up in full already, so in a way it is fun that costs nothing. Met up with Dull and we watched Avatar which was really a visual orgasm. Kinda regret not being patient and waiting til we could *actually* get tickets for the 3D version, cos I don’t think I could sit through the whole show again despite how nice it is the first time around. It  is just too slowly paced… and I found Jake Sully a bit too annoying at the start of the show. So I don’t want to start feeling annoyed all over again, but this time over a three dimensional Jake Sully.

On Sunday, I decided to treat myself to my belated Xmas meal, so I wanted to go for a nice Japanese meal in Sugimoto, and as luck would have it, the place was closed. And so were most of the Japanese restaurants in Hartamas. Grrr! It’s so not convenient for me to go there, and this was totally just my luck. Dreaming of nice sashimi sets. T_T In the end, had very below par Taiwanese bento around the area, but it was really crap. Xi Men Ting has  much nicer “lion head” and the honeydew sago dessert tasted like medicine! Blehk.

Ok, enough with the tedious everyday-life update… I’m feeling very tired now because I was up last night doing something annoying that I oughta have done earlier. Like 3 years earlier!!

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Continuing with the third part of my letters home from Laos mini-series… hehehe.

Entry #9
At first, I thought I was being silly by bringing my hand cream to Laos. It’s my Eucalyptus Spearmint one. :3 I imagined that I would have a luxurious little cubicle here where I could put some of my personal belongings, every now and then when I wanted to “refresh” myself, I can put on some hand cream… like when I’m back in Bangi. :3 Of course, that was not meant to be since AhSiang put me in a tiny little craphole and the idea of my own cubicle is a laugh and a half. -___- However, it’s realllllyyyy useful when I use my 3000 kip detergent. I imagine that the hand cream counterattacks any acidic thingies that is in the detergent. Poor me, doing washing by hand again. T___T

Today the Vietnamese girl gave me the patching script. It took me almost 2 hours to patch the database, and even so, she did inform me she cannot rectify 100% of the things. There’s still another 8 GL accounts that cannot be fixed because the problem is just too severe. Hahaha. Haih. I cannot imagine how LONG patching is going to take. This is just for current accounts. Another 1.5 hours for savings accounts? Another 1.5 for OD? *dies*

[Excluded some P&C stuff]

One funny part about this Loans officer (Sengphet… almost pronounced like ‘Sinbad’) is after Wong and I had keyed in quite a few stuff into our report, we came across one loan ledger (this is the manual book keeping) that was confusing. Couldn’t figure it out so we called Sengphet over. Wong asked him, “Phet! How did you key this into the system?” And then Sengphet was like, “Oh, how to key in ah?” Then he pressed “Enter” into one cell in the spreadsheet and then keyed in some nonsense… “sdfsdfswerw”… something like that. Then he stood back and said, “Like that.” WTF. AHAHAHAHAHA Thinking back about it makes me laugh like crazy, especially when I saw Wong’s face.. it looks something like this : |-o HAHAHAHA. The mouth is totally gaping open. AHAHA. Then he smacked Sengphet on the shoulder and said, “What is that?!” AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA. Laughing like a sorpor here… HAHAHaAA…. after Sengphet did that I kept turning my head away to laugh because it’s just sooooooo stupid. Ok, the way Wong asked is damn dumb and Sengphet took his question totally at face value. But takkan we donno how to use spreadsheet and we were sitting at that terminal for quite some time keying in other stuff… Hahahhaa… it’s just hilarious. :3

Again, the country head took us out to eat dinner today. I had deep fried crickets, the freshest Mekong river tilapia ever (they salt the fish and then fry it, so the meat is actually lightly salted only. I drank 2 cups of Lao beer with absolutely no effect. It’s like chinese tea la, seriously. Anyway, after 1.5 weeks here, I can feel myself gaining weight. Sigh…

Country head, Sifoo and Tuan. Tuan is always camera-ready. Hahaha.

Fried crickets. Raymond told me that I am “unforgettable” in Laos for this one incident where I ate one fat cricket and made a horrid face. Well, it was too “juicy” if you get what I mean.

Other food : raw veggies for starters, fried rice, tom yum soup and lightly salted fried Mekong fish.

Country head enjoying cricket, Wong tucking in to the tilapia. All round, alcohol.

Pure whiskey… scary. Don’t even know how I managed to finish the glass…

Teach you a Lao word — PIBA. This means “CRAZY”. Hahaha. This Wong learned the word the last round he came here and kept calling me that. I actually went to the staff and ask them what it means. HAhahaa.

My sister wrote to me … as usual my parents expect email updates. Funny la, I update them more on my life when I’m overseas than when I’m back home. Anyways… she also asked her friend’s gf (who is Laotian) on what is good to buy here. I got some random tips, like going to the Morning Market (it’s a misleading name because the morning market is now an “afternoon market”, like the Central Market that I went to in Cambodia. It sells everything now, mostly souvenir-y touristy stuff. I went there once, for quick look around, not very long. I memang plan to get a bulk of my souvenirs here. Next to it is this mall called Talat Sau that we go to for lunch. There’s souvenirs there too, but I think cheaper in the morning market area. Why it’s called morning market is because “a long time ago”, this place was only to sell fresh vegetables, fruits, etc. Like a wet market. Over the years, the purpose of the market also changed…

My sister also said her friend recommend to buy a bag from “walkman village”. I passed by the store alone and once again with my colleagues. They told me that it’s quite pricey… so should I ? Hahaha… its recommended by local Laotian wor. Then there was like.. recommendations on European food and er… Joma Bakery for coffee and baked goods. The last one I also heard from the country head. When I showed the list to AhSiang he was like “WAh! Europe food! Wah.. French food? Of coz is nice la…”. She also asked me to go to the Riverside… as I wrote in the last letter, I already ate there. I did feel guilty about it though because AhSiang said he’s been there almost 2 months and never ate there (following some kinda strict self-imposed budget). For me, my meal that day was about 18,000kip. Not too bad, that’s about RM7.20. I left 2000 kip tip then I felt like a shit because that’s like… 80sen tip wtf.

If Raymond was here, I know I’ll be hella lots more spendtrift because that guy likes to go for overseas assignment because it’s a “free trip” and not to earn money. For me, I want to do both… I want to see the sights, but I’m not willing to pay much more to fly to say, Luong Prabang over the weekend, especially not when there’s work to be done. Raymond is willing to go and eat in all kinds of expensive restaurants and order wine. I don’t even like wine, and lucky for me so far I’ve been shamelessly LEECHing off others. Hehehe. Basically, trying to strike a balance between enjoying myself here and also really doing a lot for the bank here. The past few days I’ve been slacking because it was WONG’S idea to say, “LeeCheng, you take Current/Savings/OD accounts and I will do Loans!” Now I have completed my stuff and hand over to the Viet girl for the patching scripts, while taking on adhoc tasks, and now also helping Wong in getting the “True” figure for loans… so I think I deserve to slack? Yet sometimes I feel like I should be thinking harder… I miss the days of finding the outages for the accounts… it was like.. really fun. Imagine doing some brain/ IQ puzzles.. that’s how I felt it was like. Hahaha… maybe my true calling in life is to help banks in 3rd World countries to membangunkan diri. Hahahaha…

Click the cut for more letters home.

Letters Home Part Two December 25, 2009

Note : this was written last year. I spent Xmas in Laos!! I’m back in Malaysia since. Didn’t travel to that country in 2009 at all…

Entry 5 It’s Saturday here in Laos and I’m working in the office again. I just met one of the branch managers for one of the branches here. He’s working til the end of the month and then leaving to join a rival bank. There are a lot of new banks opening up and down the street here. There’s already 2-3, and another 2 are opening up. These two new banks are pinching staff like mad from us. Had lunch with the country head (yay! he’ll pay! Hahaha)… and he said that he knows a place which sells good wine that goes down ‘damn smooth’ and that he’ll call us out later that night to drink. We just took him as just talking and didn’t really expect any drinking excursions la. Besides, we were too busy eating the Japanese food (it was decent, and considering the price — a little over RM15), it was way worth it. Also had this pregnant fish dish which was VERY salty cos the fish really is stuffed to the max with eggs, but all the while felt a bit icky over it. Hahaha. The country head loves it though. Hahaha. Entrance… must specify where I was when I took the photo too. ;P Mr Lim, Sifoo Wong and TayTay Kee and MrLim aka the country head. Cheap leh… affordable leh…?? 10,000 kip = RM4 btw. The pregnant fish thing which made me feel a bit grossed out. I mean, do you think cannibals would treat pregnant women as delicacies? My set meal… looks nice eh? Tasted good too! This is TayTay’s one… lol Engrish. Sifoo Wong is happy to be stuffing his face… Okay, anyway after leaving work on Saturday (we walked back the long way as AhSiang wanted us to “enjoy the sights”), we had dinner at this local fried rice place as recommended by MrSia. This MrSia is a strange guy in the sense that he is always worrying about nonsensical things and saying things like how he is the unluckiest guy on earth. Ok, this is one weird story he told us… he said that 25 July (or somewhere thereabouts, don’t remember the exact date) is the unluckiest day of his life. One year.. got accident. Another year… the branch he was relieving got robbed on the first day he was there. Another year.. branch robbery AGAIN at the branch he was relieving. The next year, car got STOLEN. This year, he was to travel to Vientiane with Wong and another lady (Ms Woo) for this project on 25 July. He was actually so worried about it that he actually bought extra travel insurance and then he warned Wong and Ms Woo about his bad luck some more… hahaha. He made Ms Woo scared, but Wong said, “Who knows, maybe if got anything also, only you will fly out of the airplane window. You’re the unlucky one what, not us.” WTf…. hahahaha. Anyway, Mr Sia.. I think he’s like my dad lar! Seriously he’s so like my dad. The talking crap, the worrying over nonsense but things he ought to worry about, he doesn’t. AhSiang and Sifoo Wong says that we are alike because : a. we both like the same music (we don’t discriminate to listen to only one language songs like Wong and Siang) b. we both eat too many eggs a day (cannot help it when KP Hotel serves 2 eggs for breakfast each day) c. we both had the same reaction when Wong shouted, “TAY IS WATCHING PORN ON HIS LAPTOP”, that is, we both whipped around to see. Then Wong said we are HAM SAP but it’s natural reaction to go and see if your colleague is watching porn or not right!! There were some more, but I forgot! It’s just funny la! The strangest thing about Mr Sia is that he takes ages to bathe. According to Wong — 1.5 hours. So when Wong had to go take a dump, he had to go to the toilet at the lobby. HAHAAHA! And last of all, Mr Sia cannot sleep at all if the person next to him snores. So Wong has been giving him many sleepless nights. At the fried rice shop, Mr Sia said for some reason the Laotian waitress kept looking at me and smiling. Then they all very layan and said “oh… cos LeeCheng is a leng lui mah…” But I think the real reason is because I was the one who was looking at her and smiling. She’s really pretty!! And then she smiled back at me, so I kept smiling at her and vice versa la! Haih, she’s so pretty I wish I took a picture with her la! Actually, Laos got a lot of pretty girls! :3 Sifoo Wong waiting in the fried rice store. The stuff that you can eat there… the pineapple fried rice is really good! That’s why we always refer to it as the “pineapple fried rice store” even though they serve other stuff. Had soyabean to “kap” the soyabean girl again. AhSiang bought us some snacks from nearby vendors. There were these mini little paus which was stuffed with boiled egg and meat and some fried mystery meat with yam that was also damn good. Wong spilled his soyabean… must’ve been too distracted and sad that the soyabean girl wasn’t there, but her brother was (he is not as hot as his sisters). Went to the “Made in China” grocery store to buy detergent, and I got some for 3000 kip!! CHEAP CHEAP! Sia said I might burn my hands washing with it, but I tried it and it’s ok! :3 Once I finished my laundry that night and about to start my work, the country head did call Wong to go out for some wine! We were all so excited, and then dressed damn nicely. I put makeup, perfume, etc. When AhSiang came to “fetch” us from the hotel room, he said that we were drinking downstairs. When Wong and I heard that, we went back into our rooms to change into more casual attire. HAahahah! And then we thought it was downstairs in the hotel restaurant, but our country head actually wanted us to sit on these wooden benches outside the hotel and have a drink in the cool night air. It was actually very fun and comfortable! We had 3 bottles of wine and 2 bottles of Lao beer. To be honest, I’m no wine connoiseur, but just drink only la…. Think I had 4-5 glasses. They invited the hotel owner to drink with us, and the guy fished out some bordeaux from dunno where and that’s how we ended up with 3 bottles instead of 2. The country head also brought along Lays and Ruffles… and then the hotel owner brandished more Lays. Zomg.. so good. View of the hotel at night… Kee trying to open the bottle of wine, while MrSia and TayTay are playing with their China-made iPhones. Hahaha. MrLim looks on approvingly @ Kee’s efforts. Sifoo Wong is egging TayTay to drink some more. Group pic! Kee, MrLim, myself and that old guy is the owner of the hotel! Sober MrSia and sober TayTay Kee is getting pinker. He has a HTC phone! How come so rich! :O *jealous* Cheers to you! Slowly getting inebriated… Look at Sifoo Wong’s sneaky expression! No wonder TayTay has to cover his wine glass! MrLim continues to egg the rest of us on. Tay can’t resist Wong’s charms any longer… Oooh… white wine. Tay is officially drunk. It is quite deserted at night… Sifoo Wong is still egging Tay on! As you can see, Tay managed to finish his glass of wine. Kudos.. great effort for a teetertoller. Kee and the empty bottles. We were all laughing and joking and talking crap and trying to make AhSiang drunk. I think he drank two glasses and then pretended to be drunk but actually isn’t! Anyway, I managed to “maintain” myself, but just thank God they only had 3 bottles of wine and not more, because I really don’t think I could stand anymore.

Click here for entry #6, #7 and #8!