A few mornings ago, I skipped out of the office for a while to buy some breakfast from a nearby coffee shop. Right after I walked out of the coffee shop I heard an old lady call me

I don’t know what it is but it works. When somebody calls me “Leng Chai”, I just turn around and look to see who! Even if it’s a guy! 

When I turned around I saw an old lady on a wheelchair sitting right outside the coffee shop asking me if I would like to buy some lottery tickets she was selling. 

The immediate impulse reaction when somebody tries to sell you something is you just say no thanks and walk away.

As I was walking back to the office though my mind starting thinking about that old lady. She was of old age and on a wheel chair yet she had the courage (whether by choice or not) to come out and sell lottery tickets to make some living. I thought about where her children were (if she had any) and then I thought about how would I feel if my parents had to live that kind of life in their old age. My heart sank for I have always promised that I will never allow my parents to live a lesser quality of life than they have given me while I was growing up.

Then I realized that one lottery ticket is probably only going to cost me a few bucks but would give her so much more not just in the small money she makes but in the confidence she might get.

So I turned around and walked all the way back to the coffee shop and bought a ticket from her. I just simply picked the ticket on top. Her bored discouraged frown had turned to a very big smile on her face the minute I expressed interest in buying a ticket from her. I wish I could’ve caught it on camera to show you guys but I didn’t have my camera with me at the time.

I headed back to the office and started thinking that maybe it was a sign. Maybe I’m supposed to buy this ticket to help her and also maybe to give it to someone else to win something. Then I remembered that today is Robb’s birthday so I went back to the office and gave it to Robb.

I said 

Robb started scratching the ticket straight away.

Unfortunately that ticket didn’t win Robb anything (at least so far till we wait for another draw results to come out at the end of the month).

But it felt great anyway because it reminded me how sometimes with one small gesture and with a small amount of money, we can put a smile on someone’s face.  

Yesterday I decided to bring my camera out with me everywhere I went that day to document my day.

Here’s what I did.

1) Went to the office but hopped out for a while to have a quick breakfast with Cheng Leong who is this famous anonymous blogger out there.

During the night he blogs but during the day… he’s a high flying lawyer!

Very busy lawyer. Always on his Blackberry. 

The funny thing though is that while you might think he’s always checking e-mails and doing work stuff, the truth is most of the time he’s just on his Blackberry chatting with someone else on MSN or Gtalk. Right dude?

2) After breakfast I headed back to the office to start my work day. 

This is the view from where I’m sitting.

That’s Carol, sitting right in front of me. She was working in the office till 1.30AM the previous night and was back again in the office by 9AM that morning.

I worry for her.

I bet she goes home and her mum complains to her 

I met her mum that night though at a Nuffnang Screening. She introduced me to her mum and I greeted her with a

And she was nice about it. She said “It’s okay… when young must work more to learn more”.

3) Soon it was lunch time. Seriously trying to decide where to go for lunch with the Nuffies is just so difficult!

We normally just bicker about a place to go until someone in the Nuffie team says

Then we all rush out of the office

That day we had lunch at this restaurant near our office.

I was trying to take a random picture of Vernice. Some people look good and some people look bad in candid pictures but somehow Vernice looked damn lansi in this picture don’t you think?

With her chin up and all. She defended herself saying that she was looking at something on the ceiling.

Sure Vernice… sure…

I got Vernice to take a better picture with Jestina and Carol.

And I got Penton then to take a picture of all of us at the lunch.

4) After work that day, I went for this thing called Web Wednesday at Souled Out, organized by the Malaysian Digital Association. It’s this after-work gathering with all sorts of people from the online media industry in Malaysia gathering around to have some beers.

You know whenever you see any ads online, whether it’s on Facebook or the news portals or even blogs, chances are it would have passed through the hands of some of the people in that event.

To name a few people there.

Had an embarrassing moment with the guy in the pic whose name I don’t remember. I had met him some time back and I recalled that he was from some agency. Couldn’t remember which agency though.

So when he greeted me I said 

He said “No… I’m from Arc” (a completely different agency).

Everyone around the table laughed. Desmondkiu and Ham poked fun.

5) I left Web Wednesday early to rush to KLCC for our Nuffnang Monsters Vs Aliens screening. 

Picked Princess up on the way too to have dinner at the food court in KLCC.

She had her favourite Yoshinoya.

6) I had Fish & Chips 

but right after that I felt like having a McDs Apple Pie so I went over to queue up for one. The girl at the counter told me that I had to wait 3 minutes so I said okay and both Princess and I just stood aside to wait.

To our very big surprise, they poured us both a cup of Coke each just to give us a drink while waiting.

I was SO pleasantly surprised. I mean it wasn’t the drink. I wasn’t feeling thirsty or anything but it was the very nice gesture that made my day. 

And all I was buying was an Apple Pie! Kudos to the people at McDs for that!

7) Then we went for our movie.

This is us posing as the little cartoon characters in Monsters Vs Aliens.

Princess and I were fighting to do the pose of Bob the blob. 

And nobody wanted to pose as Dr Cockroach.

So in the end we decided to take turns.

This is me posing as Bob the blob and Princess posing as Dr Cockroach.

And this is Princess posing as Bob the blob and me as Dr Cockroach.

Everybody was looking on wondering why the two of us were fighting just to pose.

After the movie we went home and headed straight to bed.

Such a tiring day.

Nuffnang is having another big party coming up on the 6th of June: Standout with Tiger and Nuffnang. Just like all our other parties, we all need to write entries on our blogs to gain an entry (you know so the Nuffies can help narrow down who to pass the invites to if there aren’t enough tickets to give away).

So that means even I have to write an entry in order to go for a Nuffnang party. This time though I thought the entry was a little more fun because all we’re supposed to write is how “I’m a Standout in Life“. At first I thought it would be easy, then after pondering over it for a while I began to realize that hey, it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be to try figure out why you’re a standout in life.

I even tried asking my friends on Facebook and these were a few of the responses I got.

I particularly thought the one from Vanda was interesting. Something I never knew myself.

Anyway here are a few things that I think make me a little different.

1) I have an abnormal craze for Fu Chuk. Like INSANE.

I LOVE FU CHUK… whether it’s in steamboat or Bak Kut Teh… it is just… THE BOMB.

2) I buy ice-cream not by the scoop but by the bucket…. especially when I’m stressed.

I have though successfully managed to cut down this really fattening habit. I’m going to try to resist. End of the month on the 30th I’m going to buy some New Zealand Natural ice-cream and I am going to try to buy “reasonable quantities” instead. 🙂

3) Unlike a lot of other people, I wear a Man Utd jersey sometimes not because I’m a fan or anything but because Ming bought me one all the way from Old Trafford customized with “Boss Stewie” at the back of it.

He’s been trying to convert me to a Man Utd fan. When I walk around with the Man Utd jersey a lot of other people I see with their own Man Utd jerseys turn to look at me… you know thinking I’m one of their kind when I’m not really.

Not yet at least… Ming’s constant campaign to turn me to a fan is slowly working though. 3 months ago I would never wear a Man Utd jersey out.

4) When Princess posted pictures of herself growing up from what she thought was an ‘ugly duckling’ to the beautiful swan that she has become today, I said that my favourite picture was this one.

Instead of say… this one.

I don’t know what it was about that old picture but it just had that very cheeky grin of hers.

At dinner one day I made Princess do that same smile she did in that picture and she came up with this.

Then I tried to follow it but I failed.

It’s a lot harder to do than it looks. Try it… bet you’ll need a few tries before you can pull it off.

5) And finally… I love beer but I have the uncanny ability to get very red when I drink. I don’t mean just … red or a little red… I mean… freaking red.

Far more red than my Man Utd jersey or red like Sebastian from The Little Mermaid.

I unfortunately don’t have that many pics of myself being that red but I guess you’ll see me in that colour at the Nuffnang-Tiger party.

If you guys are going… see you then ok?

I went for a hair cut on Saturday. I used to figure that it was time to go for a hair cut when my hair started covering my ears. Now though I go for a hair cut when I feel like it’s getting too long to style.

I went to my usual place to get my hair cut in Sunway Pyramid and Princess insisted she tag along. 

She was supposed to have lunch with her parents first and then come find me after lunch when I would’ve almost been done by then. But being Princess, she woke up so late her parents decided to go for lunch without her.

So Princess decided to come with me while I got my hair cut and tarpau’ed sushi for herself.

I’m pretty anti-social when my hair gets cut. I mean the hair stylists are often really nice and they try to strike up conversations with me but I’m always very distracted with my book. I mean if there’s one thing I like about getting my hair cut (apart from the head massage when I get my hair washed), it’s just having some private time to read my book.

Princess took this picture of me reading while I was getting my hair dyed. By the seriousness of my face, I guess it’s obvious I wasn’t reading “P.S. I love you” or “Over the rainbow”.

I looked as if I was about to pick a fight with the book, throw it to the ground and pounce on it.

Anyway here’s the funny thing. In the midst of my haircut I saw a whole family crowd around a seat behind me. On the seat getting his hair cut was a boy probably aged around 13-15. There was a little bit of arguing. The parents of the kid were upset and I overheard the father saying

pointing towards the boy’s hair cut.

Being a little busy body I tried to eavesdrop but my Spidey-senses failed me. I couldn’t tell what the whole fight was about. I turned to ask Princess but she was too distracted camwhoring.

Fortunately for me, I wasn’t the only one interested to know what the fuss was all about, my hair stylist wanted to know too. So I overheard her talking to another staff. Apparently what happened was the boy asked the stylist to give him an “undercut“ and when the parents saw it they got really angry.

It wasn’t the stylist’ fault but heck you can kinda understand why the parents would be angry anyway. It brought back memories for me. I remember back in high school all my friends were going for the “undercut”. Something I never caught on but all my friends were crazy about. I didn’t know that was still the trend in schools these days.

After a while the dad cooled down a little but the mum was still furious. Here’s what the mum decided to do: The mum ordered that the boy’s head be shaved.

So the boy went home botak. 

I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again: Hell hath no fury like a woman’s wrath (scorn).

I think I’ve kinda given up on my Project 365. I was trying to trace back any pictures I had taken in the past week but the truth is that I didn’t have many. 

When you’re stricken with Dengue the last thing that actually crosses your mind is

So I missed out so many photos in the past week that I’ve decided to just abandon the project, at least just for namesake. One thing I liked about Project 365 is that it gave me a reason to take any random picture and just write about that picture rather than sometimes having to do a whole full length blog post. I’m going to keep doing that.

Anyway, speaking of photos… today against Doctor’s orders, I went back to work for a while. Was just feeling bored staying at home for so long. Then for lunch, I celebrated my recovery with the rest of the Nuffies by going to Klang for BAK KUT TEH!

Ohh it was just so worth the long drive there! Look at my excitement upon eye contact with the pot of yummy Bak Kut Teh!

——————-

My mum came down to KL today and she’s staying for the weekend. She basically wanted to come down to take care of me for a while because she says I’ve been eating out so much lately that I should have some home cooked food. So she came down from Penang just to cook for me.

She went through all my kitchen supplies while I was at work and she was appalled!

I guess when you live alone at your place as a bachelor and the most cooking you do is some pasta here and there, you never feel how ill-equipped your kitchen is. Hey when I need to cook rice I use a pot. I kinda like manually cooked rice too because at the bottom of the rice you get these bits of rice that stick together and are a little chewy.

Those are just the best if you ask me. Princess doesn’t agree though, she says I’m weird for liking something like that. So my mum decided to drag me out this afternoon to go shopping… for kitchen supplies.

You name it, everything from rice cookers, to knives to stainless steel bowls to wash things in or something, we bought. 

Way to stimulate the Malaysian economy.

Then my mum came back and she cooked some nice old home cooked dinner for us.

Throughout the whole dinner she was telling Princess how to cook this and that this herb is good for this and that. Princess was just listening on without realizing what my mum was probably trying to impart on to her. Mum was teaching Princess how to COOK for me and take care of me! Haha!

Don’t laugh at Princess though. I see it in her… I see a very domesticated girl somewhere deep inside of that career woman. One day she’ll grow into it. She’ll hang up her mini-skirts and put on a bright yellow apron.

Right Princess? 🙂

Hello everyone!

Thanks so much for all your caring comments in the previous post. It meant more to me than you guys think… the fact that you guys actually care and how some of you even went as far as to suggest remedies and things to do. Thank you so much. You guys made me feel better about eating porridge and macaroni soup for days… or for like missing a party that had these angels in them.

I’ve been feeling better today. My fever has stopped and my rashes have begun to subside. It doesn’t itch anymore but it still feels damn bloody good when I scratch so once in a while I let loose and scratch myself like a monkey. 

My recent blood test showed that my platelet count was increasing so the Doctor says that indicates that I’m on the road to recovery. He told me that I should stay at home and rest though until at least next week. That’s good news considering just a few days ago the Doctor was considering admitting me into a hospital.

I don’t know how I took a sudden turn for the improvement but I think it may have had to do with some very very bitter chinese medicine that Princess‘ mum made for me. It was this black soup-like thing made out of some herbs but that was nothing compared to something else I had in the past few days.

Apparently Princess’ mum knew of a remedy that would increase a person’s platelet count during a case of dengue. The remedy lies in this.

Not not the tree, not the fruit… but the leaf.

Princess’ Dad basically went out around her neighbourhood one day to pluck some papaya tree leaves from someone else’s house. (If you live in Subang and your papaya tree is missing some leaves, please just know that they were for a good cause).

Once he brought it back, Princess’ mum washed the leaf, then took it apart and then mashed it up until all was left were little green leaf bits. Then she took those leaves out and squeezed it and out came this little dark green liquid. She put it in a bowl and asked me to drink it up.

It smelled quite fragrant. Really had the smell of just papaya but it looked a little icky when you thought about where it came from. Nevertheless I held my breath and just swallowed the whole thing.

The very same second I felt the green liquid run through my mouth into my throat I realized I had made a mistake. I should’ve mixed it with something… I don’t know what.. root beer or something but SOMETHING. It tasted extremely bitter but I think Hsin Ee put it best.

Even after a full minute has passed after I downed it, the bitter taste of the papaya leaf juice remained in my mouth. Princess’ mum who always had a solution for something came up with a great idea. She took out a packet of those multi-coloured sugar coated sweets and told me to take one.

My mouth felt soooo much better after that.

Was it worth it? Well…. I think it’s all these little things that Princess’ parents did for me that helped me get better a lot quicker. So thank you Uncle and Aunty….

And thank you Princess, for taking care of me these few days. She was so cute.

When Princess and I first got together she said to me

She took care of me really really well.

Now that I’m getting better… I need to celebrate by eating some proper food. Seriously.. days and days of this…

What I need is a good old pot of Klang Bak Kut Teh right now!

My only worry is that I’m still feeling a little weak and lethargic. I worry I might fall asleep on the way to Klang and wake up only to find out that I missed lunch!

1. After 5 days of persistent fever I went to take a blood test yesterday morning.

2. The minute I asked for a dengue test, the nurse said “Ohh yes I can see the rashes on your hands. Sign of dengue.”.

I looked down at my hands and  went

I really didn’t. 

3. Nurse jabbed the needle in me and I felt a sharp excruciating pain for like 20 seconds when I finally thought it was over only to hear the nurse say “Oh… no wonder the blood is not coming out. You’re gripping too tight”.

4. She tried again and got the blood sample out successfully the second time round. Any more than that second time I was going to request she put me on general anesthetic!

5. Lay it bed all day yesterday feeling a little weak. 

6. Test results came back close to 5pm. Tested negative for dengue but nurse said I had a “suspiciously low” platelet count which may indicate dengue although they can’t seem to find the virus yet. Was told to go again the next morning for another blood test (Great!)

7. Had dinner at Princess‘ place. Her parents were really nice to not only cook some nice home cooked food for me but prepare all sorts of chinese remedies to bring my platelet count up. 

8. Princess followed me home that night and stayed with me.

9. Covered myself with mosquito repellent to make sure my Dengue doesn’t spread to anyone else apart from me. The smell of that repellent on my skin reminded me of my boy scout days. Just a torch light and a tent and I’m home free!

10. Woke up this morning, dropped Princess off at work and went to get my second blood test. Fever seems gone this morning but I never really had much of a high-fever in the past few days to begin with. Funny form of Dengue I have.

11. Now I’m at home about to take a nap. Waiting for my test results to come back in a few hours. It’s most likely going to test positive for Dengue by now and I’m probably going to be hospitalized for the next few days.

Will update again when I can. So much to blog about actually. Oh well … next time it is.

They say when bad things happen, they all happen all in one go.

I went to see another doctor yesterday to get a second opinion of my relentless fever. He stuck an ice-cream stick in my mouth, followed by a thermometer and pressed his statoscope around my chest and on my back.

Then he came to a conclusion that my fever was still on and if it doesn’t get better by Monday I will have to go for a blood test to check for Dengue. This is when I started to panic a little bit because I was supposed to go to Phuket the next day (ie today) for a short break with Princess. A much needed break just to get away from the world a little bit.

So I asked

He laughed it off

I imagined myself and Princess walking through Phuket airport with our bags and all after just arriving until we come to the thermal scanner that checks to see if anyone has a fever (which happens to be one of the symptoms of Swine Flu).

They’re going to detect my fever and suddenly you’re going to hear the health officials shouting something in Thai and pointing at me. Before I know it they would all pounce on me and quarantine me for 7 days for fear that I might have Swine Flu.

Princess will be screaming and shouting for help but they’ll just give her some candy and she’ll forget I even went missing until a week later.

That thought was enough for me to decide that I had to cancel my trip. Problem was though… hotels can be changed.. no problem. But my flights were booked with Air Asia which just like any other budget airline did not allow cancellations. So if I don’t show up for my flight it just means I lose the whole fare which was something like RM500 per ticket so it was over RM1,000 bucks.

I called my Dad up to ask for advice and being someone who refuses to fly budget airlines all his life he took the opportunity to lecture me

I was going to say

Then I remembered the recent promotions that MAS had been having recently (Like the Stimulus Package) that really significantly made their tickets very very much more affordable. So in the end I chose to put my head down, shut up and take the scolding from my Dad.

I ended up sending Air Asia a letter from my doctor stating that I wasn’t fit to travel. I don’t know yet if Air Asia will end up allowing me to postpone my flights without me having to pay for another full price ticket but I don’t think they’re obligated too anyway. I mean the reason why you get your flights so much cheaper is you give up that flexibility to change them too. 

I guess this episode really made me realize something.

When people compare budget airlines (like Air Asia) to full service airlines (like MAS), they compare the difference in having to pay for the food, in the service, in the slightly further away airport… but seldom do we look at the flexibility in changing your flights last minute if you were to fall sick or should any other form of emergency happen. Why? Because it doesn’t really happen that often but when it does, you end up losing quite a lot of money. 

It’s not that either one is bad or good. Just like anything in life. If you pay more for something you get more, if you pay less then you get less. 

I fly both airlines regularly but it just so happens that I fell sick before an Air Asia flight instead of an MAS one. So I guess that’s just bad luck.

Okay I’ve been bad.

Really bad.

Because I haven’t updated my Project 365 for a while.

BUT BUT BUT!!! 

There is hope… because I have a picture for every day of the past few days. Let me start at 2nd May 2009 where I left off.

This is Princess and me at my bro’s apartment in Singapore just right after we went for dinner.

We hopped on the bus home the next day and she camwhored to take this picture. I’m so glad she did because I forgot to take a picture myself for Project 365. 

This is us in the bus… I think

The next day was a workday for all of us. It was also the first day of work for Jestina, one of our latest Nuffies.

We went for lunch at Berjaya Times Square then dropped by Krispy Kreme to get some donuts. Surprisingly there wasn’t a queue at all. I guess maybe Malaysians have gotten through with the donut crazy phase.

On Tuesday I had the workshop there I was supposed to give about Blog Marketing & New Media.

This is Isabella, one of the participants of the workshop. I think she is damn funny.

See the way she smile haha!

This is almost everyone who were at the workshop I think in total there were 31 people who went, out of the 35 places we had.

Right after we took this picture a few people came out from the toilet having just missed the group photo. So we took another one with the professional camera but not with mine 🙁

Took a picture with some of the Nuffies who went and Kim though.

The next few days following the workshop were terribly dreadful for me. I woke up Wednesday morning at around 6.30AM to go to the gym. But was feeling very tired and with a painful stiff neck, I decided to just skip gym.

Then I woke up a little bit later only to realize that I was having a fever. I took a couple of panadols then went to see a doctor. The good news is that I wasn’t coughing or anything. All I had was a fever that kept coming back so that ruled out Swine Flu *whew*. Plus I haven’t been to any Swine Flu infected countries so I guess that gave confidence to the Doc to say that I’m clear of all that.

I went home that afternoon and lay down in bed to rest but just about every 5 minutes that passed I would get one phone call. So I eventually gave up and decided to turn off my phone to rest in peace.

I spent most of my day on my bed.

Looking back I kinda realized why. The past few weeks or so I have been extremely stressed and busy. I kinda even worked through my long Labour Day weekend.

Here’s how my long weekend for Labour Day went.

On 1st of May I woke up at 6AM in the morning to catch an early morning bus to Singapore. There I had lunch and all then I spent the afternoon in some work discussions after dropping Princess off at Far East Plaza to do her shopping. By the time I got back to the hotel at night I was really tired.

Then the next day I woke up at 8AM to meet a potential business partner in the lobby of my hotel. After that I went for lunch with Pierre and Ming and spent that afternoon as well just in some work discussions in spite of how tired I was.

Then Sunday came and I had to head back to KL and on Monday I dragged myself out of bed early in the morning to go to the gym eventhough I woke up with a stiff neck.

Then I was up early on Tuesday morning again to spend a whole day on the workshop.

I guess it was just a matter of time before my body gave in to all the lack of rest I’ve been getting and I fell sick.

The good news is that I feel a lot better now. The fever has subsided and I’m feeling closer to normal now. 

Was well enough to spend a good deal of my afternoon watching Las Vegas in my living room.

Hopefully I can head back to work tomorrow.

I think I’m desperately in need of a short break to get away from it all though.

Not too long ago I was having coffee with Mathew, a classmate of mine from secondary school. Since graduating from college he had found a job at a telco and had been very quickly climbing up the corporate ladder given his young age. While we were having that coffee he brought up the topic of buying himself a new car. He was driving an old Proton Satria and he had his eyes on the newer Proton Satria Neo.

I never really thought much about the Satria Neo. I mean it looked nice from the outside at all but I’ve never actually been into one before. Then just recently I was put in touch with Roslina from Proton and she wanted to let me test drive the car. She was even going to be nice enough to drive it from their showroom in Shah Alam all the way to my office in KL just to let me have an hour with it.


The minute I opened the car door and saw the very sporty looking seats I was like


“WOAH!!! What’s with the seats? Is this some special edition?”



And Roslina said 
“No… all the Satria Neos are like that”.

The front seats were nice and comfy. The back seats is tight like many other two-doors but it’s pretty comfy too.

I excitedly got into the car and starting pressing all the buttons I could find. Just to explore a little.

Then I put on my seat belt only to see my biggest horror: A manual gear box.

I had not driven a manual car since I passed my driving test.. it had been like… 7 years! 

I warned Roslina that I was probably going to do really badly and she very kindly just said “It’s okay…”.
So off I went. 


5 minutes passed and I was doing really well. Roslina then praised me
“Not bad what… you seem to be doing very well”.

Just 3 seconds after she said that, I released the clutch a bit too quickly and killed my engine. I was at the traffic light and all the cars in front of me had already gone passed. The cars behind me on the other hand were patiently waiting though. They didn’t honk me or anything but I looked into my rear view mirror in the time of crisis and noticed the guy in the car behind me shaking his head.