Had an early dinner as I wanted to be prepared for Earth Hour. Started preparing for my dinner at 4:00pm — partly because I was getting hungry as well.
What did I prepare for dinner? Can you guess from these (partial) ingredients?
*sigh*
My garden is being invaded… By creepers from my neighbour’s garden.
I don’t think my neighbours actually bother about the garden. There was only once when Mrs Tai saw them cutting the grass. Even then, it was just a bit, and using scissors.
And while their grass and creepers are growing so fast, mine doesn’t look like they are growing. And I suspect they won’t actually grow and cover up the garden. Pearl grass is supposed to be a low maintenance grass. You don’t need to cut them. They don’t really grow. If that is the case, I think I made a BIG mistake by spot planting them…
*sigh*
A neighbour with green fingers seems to agree that they’re not likely to grow and cover up the garden… Grrrr….
I am grateful for having so many wonderful and caring family members and friends. I’m grateful for a roof above my head. I’m grateful for having a wonderful wife. I’m grateful for the food on the table. I’m grateful for being having my own car. I’m grateful for having a wonderful place to live in.
I’m grateful for everything… 
Earth Hour is an event organised by WWF (World Wildlife Fund, not World Wrestling Federation) and is held on the last Saturday of March. It started in 2007 and at the time, it was only in Australia. In 2008, a few other countries took part in this event. For 2009, Malaysia is taking part in Earth Hour. I will be doing my bit as well for Earth Hour 2009.
What do you need to do? Simple. Just turn of your lights for one hour from 2030hrs (830pm) till 2130hrs (930pm) local time.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Hour:
The event was interpreted as tokenism, and some focused on the reduction of carbon emissions, whether the significant reduction in electricity consumption reported occurred at all, and questionable coverage of the event by the media conglomerate that sponsored it. It should be noted that the Earth Hour is very similar to the grassroots Earth Day Energy Fast, which from 1991 to 2007 proposed going completely without man-made energy each Earth Day. Earth Day Energy Fast was folded in 2007 since the campaign’s founder claimed it was “too late” for such a campaign to have meaningful impact.
Turn OFF your lights if you vote for Earth. Leaving your lights ON means you vote for global warming.
I’m a bit lazy… Just wanna relax and do nothing…
A few ex-colleagues from Sanofi-Aventis dropped by my place at Setia Alam in the evening just to check out my new place. They said its been a while since we met up… I’m so touched.
To me, being a friends means being there for someone when they need it… Sometimes being there even when they say they don’t need it — but in this case, it requires some skills to make yourself ‘invisible’.
Being a friend to someone does not mean trying to change their way of thinking. Being a friend is not about telling your friend what is wrong. It is about giving advice (your opinion) and then providing support to them, regardless of whether they take your advice or not.
I guess many fail at this — sometimes I do too. As a ‘friend’, we think that our opinion is correct and that if our ‘friend’ does not follow, this means they are ‘wrong’. We end up nagging them and trying to change their thinking. By doing this, we ultimately push our friend away.
I have seen a few cases where a friend gets into a relationship with someone that the rest of the friends (myself included) thinks its the wrong choice. As ‘friends’, we then tell that friend of ours that its wrong, it will be painful and that things will not work out. We nag, we scold, we preach…
But who are we to say what is right or not? If a friend decides that is what he or she wants, at most we can do is share our concerns. But if our friend wants to proceed, we should then support the friend and provide all the help and guidance. Instead of saying the relationship will not work out, we should try to share how to make a relationship work and last!
Correct?
Even before we moved to Setia Alam, I’ve told Mrs Tai many times that it would be fun to walk around at the Central Park every morning. I told her that once we moved to Setia Alam, I’ll start to be more health conscious. After all, back in my parent’s place, there were hardly any trees and jogging paths.
We finally moved to Setia Alam and early mornings were spent… Either getting to work (on weekdays) and waking up late (I need my beauty sleep). So every other week, Mrs Tai would remind me of what I used to say. It didn’t help that Derrell and Su Fei from Aman Perdana now jogs regularly at the Central Park. They have on several occasions invited us to join, but I was still too lazy… 
This morning, I decided to finally start my brisk walking and jogging. The weather seems to be quite good — cloudy. After a quick and light breakfast, we came back and changed into our jogging shoes and off we went… After about 5 minutes walk and just 50 metres from Central Park, it started to rain…
Well, I tried…
I like love to cook. I really do enjoy cooking. Not just preparing something to fill the stomach, but something that also arouses (wow, using such artistic words) other senses. I like to prepare dishes that is colourful, tasty and yet healthy (ok, healthy to a certain extend).
So, about a week ago, I invited Derrell and Su Fei over for dinner. Sometimes its more fun when you have a few more people over for a meal. And they would be good ‘test’ subjects for a new soup I’m preparing… Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you… A dinner for four…
Being a vegetarian, I sometimes miss having shark’s fin soup… Not that I enjoy the shark’s fin, rather, I enjoy the rich thick soup. Most vegetarian restaurant that sells the fake shark’s fin soup is usually just thick starch. So I decided to experiment and make my own version called superior soup (or maybe just souperior — ya, i know… lame joke).
This time around, the preparation wasn’t as extensive as I planned. I didn’t use the slow cooker to boil the stock overnight. Also, I didn’t use any herbs. The next time I try this, it will include dong quai. Anyway, I personally find the soup to be good…
I also prepared a simple rice vermicelli dish with garlic oil and some vegetables. I could not get the purple cabbage otherwise, it would have looked really nice. Next time I should also consider stuff like alfalfa sprouts, etc…
Didn’t really focus much on the deep-fried mushroom not because it was lousy but because there wasn’t really a lot of effort placed to prepare it — mushroom + Kentucky powder + Baba’s curry powder. Anyone can do it.
So, wanna come to Restaurant Atai in Setia Alam and try out the mouth-watering dishes?
It was raining quite heavily yesterday evening and night…
I went to check on the garden after I got back from work today and saw…
The rain washed away the sand and soil… Aarrrgggghhh!!! The grass was supposed to be at the same level as the cemented area… Only yesterday it was looking like this:
