Reading Daphne’s blog (yes, that Daphne of The Star) reminded me that I have yet to post up any entry about books in a long while.
And the irony is, I’ve been munching and guzzling books – academic and non-academic – in tonnes this year.
Year: 2005
Feasting on the Eve
Each year, we have a feast at my Grandma’s place. For Xmas? Well, everyone loves eating so we’ll take any festivity as a reason to come together and showcase our cooking talents.
Ya, did I say talents? Yep, we’re a highly kiasu cooking family. We love to cook up a storm and then sit down for a great big feasting.
We try to outdo each other each year…. but Christmas isn’t the only time we do this cooking do. We do it about 3 or 4 times a year, depending on our moods. Usually it’s because there are folks converging in my Grandma’s place – either someone far away comes home, or just the KL-based relatives coming back.
Anyhow, it’s very Malaysian to bond at the makan table. It’s almost unthinkable to have a party without good old Malaysian food.
God and the Art of Making Money
This is a real story about necessity, monks, and how black dust prompted one innovative monk to go into business.
I loved this story.
Simple, honest and very, very clever.
Read this first…. and then read this.
Merry Christmas to all!
How Do I Close the Year?
This year has been a year of ups and downs, happy and melancholy, fun and not-so-fun moments. I get pensive when I reflect on the things I’ve done, the people I’ve met. But being the Piscean that I am, I often am attracted to people, feelings, emotions. Never been very rationale. I always thought it was a weakness until I realised recently that it is a blessing.
Fanatically Yours…
I don’t usually brandish my religious inclinations for a number of reasons. One of them is that people tend to bracket me into categories based on what religion I profess to. In another word, they stereotype me. And that’s possibly not the last of it. They’ll next try to play the “Whose Religion is More Superior Game” and I, for one, do not intend to start world wars. Not even if the second coming of Christ is around the corner.
Moments in Life
He loved books. In fact, I was truly glad to have found a bookworm in him.
Oddly, the way we met were not so strange, given the nature of the ‘Net. After all, people meet people all the time online. Friendships start in forums.
Social relationships don”t work sometimes. Well, it’s easy to forget to reply an email. It’s easier to forget because you haven’t met your online friend. And there’s less guilt when that happens. Unless you sent each other photos.
Our friendship took off from a business standpoint. He was a client. Back in 2003.
Visiting Uncle Lim
Yeah I know. I’ve been missing for a while now. Not on purpose but work, business and social life – let’s just say the past 3 weeks have been both relaxing and yet, frenetic. And sometimes I just need a break from blogosphere. Bloggers do need a life beyond the PC and the ‘Net.
I took off to visit Uncle Lim.
Saving Daylight
The call with a friend/project collaborator was scheduled for 10pm (Malaysian time). It’s not my style to schedule calls that late into the night as I think I should stop work when it is past dinner time. But the problem was, we were 12 hours apart.
Going Au Naturel
This problem with getting older is that white hair starts to show. And white hair is unsightly.
The way I tackle it is with tweezers. Pull white hair out by the roots. My aunts make a good game of this when I was younger. On a lazy weekend, they’d pay us kids to pull their white hair out. Each one was worth 10 sen. Gave us lots of impetus to start finding the tiny white hair on their head. This practice, no matter how profitable it was for us, has stopped because my aunts find that dyeing their hair gets the job done faster! (I also think they don’t want us to get rich on their unwanted follicles!)
Dyeing my hair did cross my mind but the last 2-3 times I did that were quite futile. For one, the hairdresser said I had virgin hair. Commercial dye does not “stick” well on virgin hair. And two, my hair is (OK, was) jet black. Need lots of dye and lots of time sitting around with smelly hair dye before any effect could be seen.