i wonder how long this post is going to be?

haha I just realized that I was supposed to list three things that I love and nominate other bloggers I deemed worthy of the Kreativ Blogger award. My bad!

My list is as below:

a) I love the people I have around me; my great family, my best girls, my good friends, and my Baby Boo, definitely :)
b) I love cats (our Zoey Schmoey especially!)! I adore anything cat-related! Except for cat poo.
c) I love good food. Sometimes too much. heh :D

And for the award, I shall nominate:

a) Azzura - http://wickedrossored.blogspot.com/
b) Moqh - http://blog.mukhrizlatif.com/
c) Ili fm - uhh, what's your blog address?
d) Suffianr - And what's yours?

I'd name Najeeb, Kusa, Ikin and Saddiq as well, but they have all already been nominated at some point for the same award, so I don't want to be redundant.

Okay so let's move on.

You may realize from the date of my blog and the time, that I am blogging from the office right now, which is somewhat of a rarity. If you didn't, then you should already know since I just typed it out haha. The reason for this such rare, privileged occasion is...

THERE IS NO IFN NEWSLETTER FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS! woohoo~

There's no real reason to celebrate here, coz it's not like I won't have anything to do until January comes. But hell, I won't have to go back home late for the next two weeks, so I'm psyched about that. There's still reports to be written, and possibly people to interview, but I'd like to know how it feels to have a lil bit of a work-less Friday.

I hope my bosses won't kill me, if ever they found out :D

Especially since I'm kinda promoted, effective from January onwards :)

haha yup. No more Editorial Executive, hello Senior Writer! It's not really a promotion, coz we didn't have that position in IFN before (although there is a Senior Writer in IFA, another one of REDmoney's publication). Its more like a new position for me, with more work. And a bit more money.

Uhh. I think I just described a promotion. But anyways.

Azzura and I decided to meet up today for lunch to kind of celebrate my new appointment. And in a way to make it up to her for not being able to join the gurls yesterday, when they went shopping for bridesmaids' material for Noran's wedding. Azzura asked Noran, Animz and Along to come as well, but they're busy so nevermind. We'll have fun anyways.

Had a somewhat good lunch at Chakri Palace in KLCC; I say somewhat coz I had better Phad Thai in The Gardens. Bitched for a bit, walked and oogle over shoes and handbags and makeups for a while (while bitching duh), then settled at Starbucks for a bit for coffee (juice for Zura; no coffee! gila unlikely for her ok?!) and cake. And yes more bitching.

Of course, its great to hang out and just lepak with her, even for a couple of hours. Would love to lepak with her longer, but I still needed to drag my lazy bum to the office.

And oh, my office had the Xmas dinner on Tuesday, and my secret santa (Shashi, my copy editor. Gila terer hide it from me!) gave me A Thousand Splendid Suns! yeaayyyy~! I was the santa for Raphael, my editor, and I got him Philips' earphones. He told me he love them. Hopefully he told me the truth :P

And the dinner was great. It was held at The C Club in Pavilion, a jewelry boutique -cum-fine dining restaurant, owned by The Carat Club. The ambience was nice... We had the terrace all to ourselves! The food... well, it depends. Personally I find that there's nothing special about the mushroom soup, but the fish for main course was amazing. Took only a bite of the brownie ala mode, coz by then I was already too full.

And some of you may know how much I like watching people act silly... And I had a ball of a time that night! haha I dunno why, watching drunk people making little sense amuses me.

Okay I'm done. Only 45 minutes to go before I head to Kelana Jaya. Will be going out for a date with my Sayang later... We're having Bubba Gumps. :)

no, i didn't lose any weight this Ramadhan.

For as much as I love the idea, albeit a false one, of losing weight during Ramadhan, and having berbuka with my in-laws, my family, my friends and my Sayang, I honestly can't wait for the month to be over with. I don't mean it in a disrespectful way; I am simply glad that I will be able to get my normal sleeping hours back in three days' time. And I am looking forward to not being sleepy at 12 noon. Oh, especially that.

This week has been somewhat eventful. Had berbuka with the rest of the REDmoney people on Tuesday at Traders Hotel [which was really good], met up with Zara, Kak Dalin and her boyfriend on Wednesday, baked honey cornflakes cookies on Friday night [my first attempt, and a successful one at that!], and today at noon, I made some chocolate chip cookies [another successful first time!]. Okay, so it wasn't all that, but all these little things made me happy, so its something :P

Next week, I expect more happy happenings. It's Eid on Wednesday, whee~! It'll probably feel a little weird not waking up to my sister's screams and nags to get up early on the first day of raya, and then the little 'arguments' we have about who gets to use the bathroom first. We usually go to arwah Mama's kubur by noon, and that's something I'm going to have to do in the evening next Wednesday, with my Sayang instead of one big family in three separate cars. Before going to the kubur is the ritualistic salam session, but I'll get to do that with a different - and new - set of family this year.

Insya Allah, everything will turn out well.

Other things happening next week will be the return of Ikin and Bad from Japan for Raya, as well as the double-honeymoon we're having on this coming weekend. Will elaborate on that after Eid.

Uhhhh I have more things to say, but dang I need to sleep.

not-so-instant dinner

Alhamdullilah.

I was supposed to have dinner with Noran and Azzura (and Animz too, I guess) to have a belated 'welcome to the age of 27' get-together for Zura, but I cancelled in the 11th hour as I thought I had to stay back at the office. But that didn't work out, and to sms them and say "eh let's have that dinner anyways" would be beyond rude on my part. Left with a few extra hours on my hand, and what did I do?

I made dinner for my Sayang.

Refering to the title of my post, I made him instant dinner that didn't exactly turn out to be so quick after all. The Betty Crocker tuna fettuccine alfredo I made him did save me time; and it didn't really taste that bad, considering that cream-sauced pasta is not on my favorite food list. But I wanted to give him a bit more than just out-of-the-box dinner, so I tried my hands on mug cake - basically moist chocolate cake in a mug.

It took a while longer than I expected to prepare it, probably because I was too worried about messing it up. Or maybe I was just slow. haha. The baking part was really easy and fast; only 3 minutes for each mug [I made two]. But it didn't turn out to be moist [so in the end I did sort of messed up], but it was really fluffy, and filling. And YUM! It wasn't too sweet, but 11.30pm is not really the best time to be eating cake, no?

My Babe and I ended up sharing 1 mug of cake. The other one is left alone in the kitchen, waiting to be eaten. Kesian.

It's a quarter after midnight. I should sleep.

big old baby

My Baby is 28! yeay! Happy happy belated birthday wahai si Bengot!

He wasn't in an especially celebratory mood yesterday. The year so far, agreeably, has not been especially good to him and to us [no, we as a couple are not having any problems]. It was understandable that he did not want to celebrate, but it was his birthday and I really wanted to do something for him.

So I made him meat pie. Made possible, of course, with his help and Alia. It came out a lot better than I expected as there were a little bit of a mishap with the dough. But all went well. Ikin even came with a surprise birthday cake for my Sayang. We were full to the very limit, but hey, there is always room for dessert! Najeeb came all the way from Shah Alam too, and I guess that definitely brightened up my Bengot's spirit for the night.

And yet again, I only remembered to take pictures of my pie only after everyone was done eating. Oh well. It's really yummy, that's all that matter :P

Last night, me and my Sayang agree, was fun. Good food, good company, great time. What more could anyone want?

lips on fire

ooooo~ 2 weeks without any updates. Anyone miss me yet? Okay don't answer that.

... Well it's not like anyone was going to anyways kan?

So what is going on in my world? Class has started since 3 weeks ago, but I've only been to every single one of my classes only this week. I'm taking 3 subjects, and God willing I'll do fine. They seem to be interesting in their own way, either by the nature of the subject itself, or the nature of the lecturer teaching the subject. But seriously, going to college from Monday to Friday, 5 days a week... it drains me mentally most of the time.

Just thought I'd share with you:
Last Monday was an extremely good day for me. Nothing super happened... it was just a good day. At every time I took the public transport, whether the bus or the train from home to college or vice versa, it did not take me more than 2 minutes to wait for my ride. And everything else that happened during the day seemed to be very... pleasant. I know that I will probably forget about Monday, June 11th within a few weeks; maybe within the next few days... but I thought, with every sucky things that could happen everyday in our life, it's good to remember a good day we have had, and look forward to the next time it comes, rather than dwell and get too upset about the sister who took our new favorite pair of shoes without asking for permission, or that ticketing counter guy who refused to take RM1 worth of coins in exchange for a ringgit note for the silliest of reason, and that new lady in your department at college who doesn't seem to know nuts about how things work around the place and how to keep the students happy.

It's human nature I believe, that people tend to remember the bad things more than the good ones; but I also believe that being positive keeps you grounded. Although admittedly, it's hard to keep your head up and smile with the kind of things life throws in front of you nowadays.

Moving on...

I've successfully made my first lasagna ever! There's a few things to improve on, of course, but it was still quite yummy. My Sayang and his bro Fen took second helpings, so yeay me! There were also praises from Auntie Rosnah, so double yeay! haha.

oooo Azzura is done with her exam. Yeay Zura! Anim has an assignment due this week... are you done with it babe? I've been bumping into Noran twice this week at the train station... I think I'm gonna ask her about keeping to bump into each other on those two days every week, as long as my Summer semester lasts. Chatted with Along and she's as bubbly as ever. There's a glitch in the preparation of Ikin's wedding, but replacement is found. It's not perfect I know babe, but I'm so glad that you pulled through! Lyana is done with the 4th stage of her management training interview with a certain corporation, I REALLY REALLY hope the 5th one will go smoothly as well!

haih. Friends. I know that I don't have that much of them, but the ones I have, I'd like to keep for life.

oooo by the way. Arnie Ruxana has stopped blogging. There goes one source of my entertainment. My days will be hollow and bleak.

haha.

ooo. Chik is back from Australia. Here goes one month of constant teasing. Ooh fun. :P

And haha. I just found out yesterday that Mr. Vijay's parents are my neighbor. I mean, I've always known that his parents are in Serdang, but I never knew that the man who usually walks his BIG AS HECK German Shepherd around my house is his dad! haha. dang it. Just shows how much of an anti-social person I can be sometimes :P

The bed beckons. And so I shall succumb to its call. nyeheheh. Ciao~

nothing happens by coincidence

just got back from a really filling dinner at Pizza Uno. gotta love their home-made ravioli... and don't get me started on the bread pudding! a definite YUM!

still no news on Disco Boogie... but fret not, there's a birthday present backup :) i'm equally excited about that one... will update soonest as i get news.

i'm banned from posting any comments on my own blog. i have no idea why. quite funny la actually... i'm banned from something that is my own. and i'm supposed to call the owner if there's an error. okay. no problem. contact owner. i'll get on it. all i gotta do is... contact myself.

... right.

my philosophy paper was bad. but it was better than i expected. coz i honestly thought it would be extra super duper hard. alas, i was wrong. it was only plain hard. no problem there. :P

if you're thinking of watching a movie this weekend, go for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Seriously layan! It might not be your cup of tea [for the fact that it's quite sad and unfair, those who read the books should know!], but it was brilliant. Jim Carrey was superb. and the kids... i adore them all! sunny was just too cute!

sorry for the messy post. i don't quite feel like myself tonight. but it hasn't been a bad day. as a matter of fact, it's quite lovely. hmm :)

later world... ciao~

oh, crab!

here's something for you guys to ponder on...

what makes a person 'mulia'? does praying 5 times a day without fail and read the Quran every night makes a person noble? what if the same person lies, and bitch about other people? is she/he still mulia? in my opinion, that's being religious. but even religions - not just Islam - state that it's sinful to lie and talk behind people's back.

share your thoughts.

on a happier note, kusa and i came back from asia cafe in subang an hour ago. i FINALLY got my crabs! asia cafe is subang's equivalent to hartamas square... but to find a parking spot is like looking for a 5 sen coin in a big bag full of nuts and bolts! murder! but kusa and i both enjoyed our meal, and are planning to go back... but not in the near future. we, especially kusa, need to find our will and patience again. haha.

i need to get some shut-eye... so freaking sleepy! but first i need to wake kusa up... Man U is playing tonight. but he's sleeping like a baby, i hate to interrupt! ~sigh~

later, world~