Letters Home Part 7 January 31, 2010

I had a quite shitty day, I’ll blog about my weekend later. It’s like, the one thing that I was looking forward to all MONTH, just blew off in the wind. I feel soooooooo terrible. I actually cried wtf. Anyway, you can’t cry over things in the past, so I just hope that I can get more done tomorrow. I actually got quite a fair bit done today, it wasn’t a day totally wasted. :\ Gotta look on the bright side of things. :\

How are your Chinese New Year plans coming along? It’s just two weeks away! This year is actually gonna be a rather quiet year for us because our paternal grandmother is not well. The reunion dinner will be held at my auntie’s house, and the 1st day of CNY will be in a vegetarian restaurant. Somehow, that already sounds quite subdued to me. At night, my grandmother will follow us back to our house, so now we have to prepare dinner properly. I say that because usually we eat fast food for dinner on the 1st day of CNY and then spend the night playing mahjong. I offered my mom to make some “wan tan” cos I found a really nice recipe that I’m really enthu-ed about trying out and she sounded a bit disbelieving and saying that I’ll turn her kitchen upside down. Hmph, wait til she tries it. Last time, she was quite impressed by my marmite chicken. *hmph*

Will blog about weekend (like a weekend report, haha) later. Right now want to post finish my Laotian “Letters Home” series.

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Entry #20
I tried to write this in a way that would let you know how much anguish I was in, but I’m just not good enough a writer, I suppose. I left my camera in this restaurant where I had lunch today. -___- I know, pretty doofus thing to do right? And I didn’t even realise til I got home from work, and was packing a smaller bag of mine to go out for dinner. Then I shook out my laptop bag and all and had NOTHING. Called AhSiang (who didn’t go back with us because there was a very slight drizzle) and asked him to check the office. Nothing. Called Mr Lim and asked him if I left it in his car when coming back from lunch. NOTHING. Wong and Sia suggested going back to the place to ask if we left it behind there.

The restaurant we had lunch at… it’s more like a bakery, and Mr Lim bought us some delicious cakes and pastries from there before. It’s VERY sweet and it’s located near the “touristy” area of Laos. However, it looks very classy (read : expensive, which is why we only went there when Mr Lim was paying, HAHA!) and the gwailohs we saw dining there were all the rich looking old ones who didn’t carry backpacks with them and the women with them wore gorgeous little summer dresses. We had this sumptuous yet light lunch…

Sample of delicious cakes that can be found at the cafe / bakery place. Bought for us by MrLim.

More baked goods.

Sweet treats. Wish I could try EVERYTHING.

AhSiang and Sifoo Wong waiting for food to arrive.

Banana cake.

Our healthy lunch spread. Soup, bread, fruit salad, coffee with fresh milk.

Anyway… as we walked to the restaurant (thank God it’s a walkable distance) kept feeling like crying and talking like, “It’s not the camera.. it’s the pictures inside” and “It’s definitely in Mr Lim’s car.. I remember browsing the pictures on my way home from lunch.”
Wong : “Lim just called… he said it’s not there.”
Sia : “what were you saying about remembering seeing pics in Lim’s car?!!”
Me : “OBVIOUSLY A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION!!! I DON’T FANCY THE OTHER ALTERNATIVE!!! IT’S SURELY GONE!!!!”

And then I felt like kicking myself cos I so wanted to upload the photos onto my external harddisk yesterday and then I was too lazy to do so. :~( When we reached the cafe, my heart was thumping and I purposely let Sia and Wong go ahead so that they could ask for me and then be my buffer against bad news. When Sia asked the girl, she said, “Camera? NOooo.” And my heart just stopped. I wanted to say, “Are you sure??” but before I could say that, she fished a camera from behind the counter and said, “This?” ZOMG!!! Tears of joy sprang to my eyes. So alls well that ends well, except that I said I wanted to belanja the two guys for encouraging me to come and look for the camera at the restaurant. I swear, if I was with negative people like… well, I don’t want to bitch about anyone.. anyway if I was with negative people I would just give up as well. Anyway, we had pizza at this place called “Swedish Pizza and Bakery”. Cost me 130,000 kip. O_____O” (That’s RM52)

Swedish Pizza

Drinks… the erm.. container? It’s made from really good quality plastic. I think Sifoo Wong took it home to store his stationery… lol.

One pizza coming right up!

And a calzone… yummy!

I swear, that when I thought my camera was gone, I suddenly hated this country a lot and told myself that if I ever had to come back here, I won’t!! Like wtf, in Cambodia, cracked my camera, in Laos, lose it entirely??? But now I feel like this is the best country on earth!! Of course, if I lost the camera, it would be totally my fault, just like the Cambodia camera-cracking case, but still, it’s quite a matter of luck. :3 Wong said that if I left my camera behind in any other restaurant, he wouldn’t walk back with me because it’s sure gone. -___-

I’m watching this corny Chinese show now… semi drama and semi comedy. It’s so full of shit la.. hahaha, but it’s funny in a bullshit kinda way. WTF. It’s soooo stupid. It’s an old film of Kim Cattrall’s … if you don’t know who she is, it’s one of the Sex & The City girls la… the so called sexiest maneater one. Anyway, damn stupid la. The hero will randomly try to shoot people with his machine gun and when nothing comes out, the sidekick says, “Safety!” and he will go, “Oh… yeah!” And then when the heroine is missing, this other lady hammers him with a, “Yeah, like YOU’RE not interested in her!” and he says, “No! I’m only on this mission to get my truck back!” and she replies, “She’s not your type anyway… all brains!” When a fight started between the good guys and bad guys, the dude shoots his machine gun to the sky as a part of his battle cry. The ceiling fell down on him and he gets knocked out. LOL. Damn fucking stupid. Hero had makeout session with Kim Cattrall then went into fight with lipstick all over him. STUPID SHOW YOU MUST WATCH LA!!!

Don’t pity me for working on a Sunday. There was the trip to Thailand, besides, I spent about 2hrs walking by myself in the morning. I walked to the Riverside to this store called “Walkman Village” as recommended by my sister’s friend. It turned out to be the more expensive but better quality extension of “Home Ideal” the “made in China” store. Incidentally, when we were in Thailand, they stocked some of the stuff in Home Ideal as well, but cheaper! When my sister’s friend said I must buy bags in “walkman Village”, I thought it was those traditional cloth bags or something. I am using an oddly shaped bag that I bought in Cambodia here to carry my handphone, money, etc. Mana tahu all the bags in Home Ideal is FAKE bags! And quite expensive la, between RM150 – RM200. I’m not good at identifying whether it’s a good fake or not either, so I don’t want to try and buy la. I searched desperately for something to buy and in the end found this funny thing…. it’s called “The Original Multifunctional Seamless Wear” wtf. Apparently it can be: a neckerchief, headband, blind chicken (WTF.. blindfold la), wristband, foulard (??), alice band, balaclava (LMAO), scarf, hairband, saharian, pirate hat, mask and cap. It’s so cute that I’m planning to write an entire blog entry about it, so look out for it! :3

In the end, I went to this store right next to my hotel to get my “traditional” bag. It’s made out of red silk and it’s smaller than the current Cambodian bag I have. More expensive though because it’s owned by a gwai poh, who has this cute Laotian lady to sew the bags! I also went to this expensive looking store that had gorgeous little dresses. Called “Sutri Lao”. I saw the bangle that I wanted in Thailand there, but pimped up a bit. It was selling for about RM80 lor!! Crazy bitch! It’s also owned by a gwai por. I decided to give it a benefit of a doubt and walked around a bit to see if got anything that I can afford, but a table runner was already 265000 kip, I cannot imagine how much those gorgeous little dresses cost. In order to avoid temptation, decided not to go to the higher floors to check the price out.

Went back to Home Ideal to see if there’s any nice clothes I can suss out. Indeed had the same stuff in Walkman Village, but worse quality, and slightly cheaper. Sigh… was tempted to buy this shirt that had a giant “YOU” word in front. It was going to be my “Soulja Boy” tee. In the end not going to buy it cos I think I can get it much cheaper in Thailand. I so can’t wait for my trip to Bangkok with Pauline in May next year. Chatuchak!! Especially after reading my “Cheeze” magazine and seeing what funky fashion the Thais can come up with. :3 :3 :3

P.s: the credits rolled and I just found out that the movie is called “Big Trouble in Little China” and stars Kurt Russell. :3 Go check it out.

Entry #21
I really have nothing much left to do here. The only reason why I’m not on a plane back to Malaysia is because it’s almost the month end and people always say, “might as well stay a few more days to make sure that nothing goes wrong during month end”. Well, I don’t mind… I’m just afraid that they might ask us to stay like, another month. Then I’ll cry cos I’ll have to spend my birthday in Laos. Which is different and unique, but it’ll probably be boring as hell.

Our relaxing day was just spent checking up some stuff here, uploading reports to production there…

I’m going to watch Bleach! Just watched til episode 154 only… I stopped downloading for the longest time ever. Now going to go back to Bleach-ing intensely.

Bonus Entry
Things I’ve learned about packing to work overseas:
a. eat the local food – it’s easier to pack medication for diarrhea than to pack a month’s supply of dry biscuits;
b. if your boss tells you to pack for a 2-week trip, pack for a 3-week trip. (even then, it still might not be enough);
c. don’t EVER try to find out what channel StarTV / HBO is on. Productivity decreases exponentially once you find it;

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Actually, this is not the end of my working overseas posts. There are a lot of other random pictures on my harddisk that I want to share out, hahaha.

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.