Revolving Christmas

Christmas is always a sentimental and romantic celebration. Last minute gift-shopping for loved ones. Christmas songs being played over the air. Decorations and bright lights hanging everywhere. Family dinners to make the picture perfect.

We had that. Sis' bf, Vainpot came down from Hong Kong yesterday for the weekend. We took that opportunity to go for the Christmas buffet dinner over at the Seri Angkasa Revolving Restaurant in KL Tower. It was a lovely restaurant. There were tables for two by the window glasses, overseeing the whole city as the tower revolves. Definitely the most romantic place in Malaysia. Hint for guyz who want to propose to their gfs, or at least, to make an impression to their ladies on their first dates. *wink* Although, it can be a rather expensive one.. It costs at least 90 bux per person on Christmas!

Bird's eye view of KL

Don't worry about the $$, the setting was lovely (Christmas trees and decorations everywhere), the buffet was marvellously yummy, especially the desserts.. Creme brulee.. Caramel pudding.. Hehe.. I'm a bigger fan of the desserts rather than the food. ;) After a round of Christmas songs, there was a live solo, singing lovey-dovey songs (like "Wonderful Tonight" and "Forever Love") as he plays the piano. How romantic can this NOT be?

Fluffy Santa Claus

Lovely.. Absolutely lovely.. Merry Christmas. ;)

Opening The Wine Bottle

A pre-Christmas "humour" (if not, a lame one)..

What happens if the R&D dept receives a hamper and there were no bosses around?
Answer: Open it la.

What happens if the hamper contains a bottle of wine and there's 2 and 1/2 more hours to go till the Christmas weekend?
Answer: Drink it la.

What happens if there is no bloody corkscrew around, not within the dept room, the pantry, not any other depts in other buildings?
Answer: Unscrew it the typical engineer way la.

How?
Answer: Get 2 long screws, 1 screwdriver (or testpen), 1 pair of pliers, 2-3 pairs of hands, and the rest as cheerleaders. Drill the screws deep into the cork. 1 pair of hands to use the pliers to pull the screws out (hence, pulling the cork out). The other 1-2 pairs of hands to hold the bottle. Pull as hard as you can get, and *wah lah*, the cork is out.

The screwed cork

Like I said, typical R&D engineers' way to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew. Hehe..

Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas Eve and despite being in a Christian company, they're not letting us off early today. :( Oh well.. Am blasting Billy Gilman's "Jingle Bells Rock" now. I don't care if anyone's gonna be mad about it! It's Christmas Eve!!

I've always loved Christmas rather than CNY. CNYs are mainly "dong dong chang" and there's always the expectations of giving angpaus, exchanging oranges and all. No doubt, I'm not exactly a Christian. But somehow there's something melancholy about Christmas - the Christmas tree, carols, bright lights and cottony snow. Even the songs are sentimental. No expectations whatsoever, but merely the companionship of family and friends. I miss the days when I used to attend Sunday School, and we would go around the nearby housing area singing carols while holding lit candles.. That was, what, almost 15 years ago.

My family is definitely not Christians, but we do put up Christmas trees every year and decorate it with colourful ornaments, bells and candy sticks. Plus, our tree is the fibre optic one which looks like this, well, not exactly la, something like that. I would try to buy them Christmas gifts and we would go for Christmas dinners, just the 4 of us.

This year's Christmas, I got to dress up as Santa Rina for my company's Annual cum Christmas Dinner. It was fun "Ho ho ho"-ing at my colleagues and distributing gifts with another colleague, Santa Hippo. Although we were all required to bring a gift worth at least 10 bux, it was nice to see their excited eyes as they select their gifts. Yeah, I let them choose their own gifts (they suka big one, then take the big one lor). We played games, sang carols, performed a comedy skit and had lucky draw. I hope everyone had fun there.

As for my family, Sis' bf, Vainpot is down from Hong Kong for a short visit. This year, it's gonna be the 6 of us having our Christmad dinner in KL Tower. Hopefully the sky is clear tomorrow night and we'll get to see some fireworks. :)

"And so I'm offering this simple phrase
For kids from one to ninety-two
Although it's been said, many times, many ways
Merry Christmas to you".

Here's wishing you a marvellicious Christmas and may you have a much blessed one, surrounded with loads of love, joy and don't forget this, as I quote Sir Cliff Richard, that Christmas is "a time for giving, a time for getting, a time for forgiving, and for forgetting".

Merry Christmas. *Hugz*

Anyone Feeling Like This?

Got this through my colleague..

"I WANNA GO ON HOLIDAY NOW!!!"



Hehe.. I'm already on the holiday mood.. Are you?

Shaolin Kung Fu Masters Return

I went for this last night! Inspector got the 70 bux tickets from his colleague. It started at 8pm, we were late and I guess we'd pretty much missed the lion dance. His colleague managed to get us seats near theirs. The stadium was awfully packed, probably coz they only perform for these 2 nights?

The exponents were really superb! They had group demonstrations for animal styles and drunken fist, spears on the throat, knives on the abdomen, etc. I particularly was looking forward to the needle piercing through the glass pane act. The practitioner was supposed to use Qi Gong to pierce the glass pane with a needle and burst the balloon at the other side of the pane. He took a few tries and in the end, managed to pierce the pane, but he did not burst the balloon. Still.. It was a superb try. Another practitioner managed to push a van by using a spear against the throat. It looked sooooooooooo painful to me. Imaging having the pointy tip over at your throat, the van in front of you, you pushing the van backwards and therefore, pushing the spear deeper onto the throat. But he made it feel like nothing only! *Gasp*

Oh, there was this other fascinating act - Log ramming against the abdomen. They asked the audience to go onto the stage and hit the practitioner's abdomen. Most of the people that went up were kids. Hehe.. One kid kept wanting to hit, most of them left with the look on the face, telling us that their fists hurt, and there were some adults showing off kung fu style lar, taekwando style lar, and whatever style.. Just to hit on the abdomen! Hilarious!

Managed to buy a copy of the Shaolin CD from one of the exponents. 40 bux for a 2-hour disc! Seems expensive, but then again, nevermind lar.. Consider it as a donation to the Tung Shin Hospital lor.. We had to leave early though coz Inspector was really exhausted, so we missed the closing ceremony.

Nevertheless, I had a great time there. Truly wonderful experience. I don't mind going back to watch it the next time they come down. ;)

My Christmas Song Listing

Since Christmas is just around the corner, thought of sharing my Christmas song listing.. Contemporary ones though. Am gonna play these songs for my company's Christmas dinner on Friday. It's a short list for now, will add more to it later. Feel free to use the list. ;)

Billy Gilman - Warm And Fuzzy
*NSync - Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire
Backstreet Boys - Christmas Time
Olivia Olson - All I Want For Christmas Is You
Brenda Lee - Rocking Around The Christmas Tree
*NSync - The First Noel
Jewel - Winter Wonderland
Clay Aiken - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
Billy Gilman - Jingle Bell Rock
Jackson 5 - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
Cliff Richard - Mistletoe And Wine
Debbie Gibson - Sleigh Ride
Britney Spears - My Only Wish (This Year)

I'm gonna be playing Christmas songs the whole week long over the speakers. My colleagues will all be sick of them by Friday. Muahaha..

Bumblebee's Arrival

A huge shoutout of CONGRATULATIONS to Inspector's family on the arrival of Princess & Eskimo's firstbon, Bumblebee. What an "ong" date to be born on.. 12th of December on a lovely Sunday afternoon!!

He was born 18 days earlier and until today, the gynae still could not scan for the baby's gender. So you can imagine the whole 9 months of "boy or girl ah?", "I think girl la", and all the midwives' stories of telling whether it's a boy or a girl. To me, I knew it would be a boy, coz I did the pendulum divination thing and it told me "boy". That said, Inspector is now officially a "dai kao fu" (Big Uncle). Hehe.. I may have been an Auntie years ago - from my many cousins' children. Err.. Roughly 20 of them now, I think! But then again, they're not directly related to me. So it's different. And I still make all my nieces and nephews call me "Jie Jie". *lol*

Went to Assunta Hospital as soon as we came back from Sepang Circuit to visit them. Gosh.. Bumblebee is sooooo cute and he smelled soooooo nice.. And very active! He had been awfully active since his "womb days". I have a great feeling that he's gonna be spoiled to bits by everyone - the great grandma, the grandparents and both the uncles. Hehe..

A quick snapshot of Bumblebee. Inspector & I chipped in to buy the pram for him. Oooh.. I can't wait to see him again!!

Bumblebee on the first day of his arrival

AMF Final Day

It was a lovely weather at Sepang today. Bright and sunny. That my whole face, neck and hands were flushed red and itchy. But on a happier note, I brought my camera! Yippieeeeeeeee!!

Player & Freckles joined us today. We got a much wider range of cars to look at for the Metal Modders ShowOff. I particularly like this BMW. Apparently the owner is one of Aneh's friend's bf. According to Aneh, on top of the full specs of the BMW, the owner spent an additional RM 70k just on the modifications. I don't know what did he do (did I mention I'm lousy at cars?), but it's simple and nice and still as classy.

BMW

We saw the 1/10th Radio Control Car Championship as well for both the electric and the gas categories. My goodness.. I was quite fascinated with it. I couldn't even properly control my Audly Mini Cooper RC that goes like, 10 miles/hour, and the RC cars I saw there were speeding like a jet! No photos were taken for this though..

Next up was the SuperCar Display at the Pit Area. Oh wow.. Damn a lot of 'cun' cars. And since I'm very illiterate on cars, someone kindly please tell me the full model name of the ones below? Anyway, here were some of the nice cars we took..

Ferrari

Lamborghini Murcielago

Zonda, that was used to drive audience with special passes to get a feel of it

There were many more like Lotus, Bentley, Maserati, Porsche, etc. There were other car booth exhibitions like Hyundai, BMW, Nissan, Mazda, etc. I think this one below is a Satria?

I like the dragon look

Managed to watch the SuperCar Sunday Time Trials at the circuit.. Just a glimpse (from where I sat) of the cars that were lining up for the Time Trials..

A couple of Ferraris?

And of course, how could I ever miss taking at least a photo of the "power bomb" models?? Here's one of it. Sorry lar, I sat at the opposite side of the pitlane, so the pic's a bit small to see..

Guyz drooling over them. Hehe..

Before we left, we stayed for the Babe of the Hour Search. That particular hour, there were about 5 girls from the audience. I figured that the crowd would have voted for the absolutely well-endowed girl (suprise, suprise, she is only 16!), but they gave the loudest cheer to another girl who was just clueless and was doing the "Sunday morning walk" (or that's what I thought the emcees described). Justice was done! *smile*

And then we left. 32 bux well worth spent (despite the sunburn!), considering that there's no way I can ever have the $ to get such cars, so being able to see them right in front of my face is my best alternative. ;) In the meantime, I've got to go nurse my aching legs and toes..

Asian Motorsports Festival Weekend

Went to the BF Goodrich AMF at the Sepang F1 Circuit with Inspector & Aneh. I'm not very good at cars, but what the heck, I wanted to see the circuit! *grin* The entrance fee was RM 32 per person for 3 days (Fri - Sun). Went to check out the modified cars, the in-car entertainment sets, and oooh.. The 'leng luis'. ;)

Managed to watch the Ultimate 1/4 Mile Clash II Finals at the Circuit. Saw a BMW skidded towards the corner and hit the wall. Everyone just cheered when the fire engine, ambulance and the tow truck sped across the circuit. *lol* Good thing the driver wasn't badly injured, but the car had to be towed back to the pitlane.

Too bad I didn't bring a camera along. I must remember to bring it tomorrow!