Afternoon Shift

It has been almost 2 weeks since I started off with my afternoon shift. At first, I was a bit sleepy at night as I haven’t fully adjusted my normal schedule. There are several pros and cons for working on such odd hours.

Pros:
- Less traffic -> save time and petrol
- Cheaper lunch – economy rice at RM3.00-RM3.50 for 2 dishes (1 meat, 1 vege) at Damansara
- Can wake up late in the morning (complete 8 hours sleep)
- Beautiful view of KLCC at night

Cons:
- Other than working hours, most of the time alone on weekdays
- Less time to spend after work
- Expensive dinner at Pavilion
- It’s very dark and quiet after work

Niuzesui

Niuzesui is a shopping area with a lot of shoplots. It is located in Damansara, somewhere near the Putra LRT service station at Kelana Jaya. My friend told me that there's always a serious traffic jam around the area. However, everything is smooth and quiet when I went there last Sunday. As you reach, the first thing that you will see are the trees with beautiful lights.
Most of the shoplots there are still vacant and there aren't many visitors. There's a few restaurants at the front row. Good place for yum cha as there's hardly any people there.

Interesting Places

In my recent exploration, below are some interesting places in KL/Damansara:

Coliseum. The first western food restaurant in KL. Inside the restaurant, there's this old KL feel.

Dim sum shop @ Damansara Uptown. There's a lot of people in the morning. The fried food is not bad, but the steam ones is not tha nice.

Zhi De Shi @1U, Old Wing. This seafood noodle, RM14+ but a lot of ingredients inside. Quite a big portion served.
Rainforest @ 1u. Reminded of Suntech City in S'pore.
A very nice petshop @ Ikano Power Center. The aquariums there are really nice. You will be able to see soft corus there.

Gatherings

Recently, I have a number of gatherings. The meeting with Sok Teng at Ikea was an enjoyable one. It's the first time I had a meal in Ikea's foodcourt. There's a lot of people. Queing up to buy food was a headache. But, I like the design of the trolley for the food. (p/s: the food in the foodcourt is not that nice, but worth trying)

After lunch, we took a walk around Ikea. It was fun playing with the soft toys at the "playground" (There's one section in Ikea selling kids' furniture, soft toys and accessories. It turned out to be a playground for the kids.

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Gathering with my coursemates - Daniel, Jin and Sylvia. It was a really normal gathering, with a dinner and some shopping. As it was a Sunday night and most of us need to work on the next day, it's better to keep it short. Daniel looks the same, still on the cap. As usual, Sylvia grabbed a book from the bookstore. Jin, always order a lot of food.

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Queena's birthday is around the corner. So, we had an early celebration for her at Seoul Garden, Gurney Plaza. As usual, my transport manager Huey Sze drove me there. In the car, she kept me updated with the latest updates in my ex-company. After we fetched Queena along the way, there's even more updates. Haha.. In Seoul Garden, my ex-colleagues kept on stuffing me with food.

In addition, my mentee "showed" us her new partner as well. *Hem hem...* My dear ex-requestor, Jason was also there. It was a crazy shopping day. I bought a number of new clothes. I also met JoAnn, another of my ex-colleague in Giordano.

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Happenings of the Week

This week is a happening one.

Almost every evening, around 5pm, there will be a heavy rain. It has been like this since last week. From the glass of my office, I can see very clearly - the sky becomes cloudy, raindrops pouring down from the sky, getting more and more heavy and mist covering KLCC. These scenes, reminded me of the typical scenes in those end-of-the-world movies.
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Monday night, I met up with Andy whom I haven't seen for more than 2 years. He's down to KL for interviews. It's nice talking to an "old" friend again. There're so many things that we wanted to talk about, but we have less than 2 hours.
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Thursday night, it's the first time I attended my company's monthly birthday celebration. It's nothing grand, we only have 2 cakes, approximately 6kg in total. Everyone in the office gathered and sang b'day songs. It was around 4pm at that time, I feel so full after eating it.

Suddenly, Vicky came out with a movie plan at Pavilion. My poor passenger, Kit need to sacrifice himself by volunteering to take the LRT back. Vicky and I decided to award him with something on his birthday for his "good service". On the same day, I received many shocking news and discovered a very short route from my company to KLCC, thanks to Vicky. The movie of Indiana Jones at GSC, Pavilion was nice. The cinema was almost empty. Vicky and I were talking out loud, commenting on the scenes and actions during the movie, but it's ok. Most of the customers were taking the couple seats. For the normal seating, other than us, only 2 people were occupying them.

We enjoyed our dinner/ supper at KFC after the movie. The environment was really great. It was 9+pm, and there's hardly any customers there.

p/s: Getting lost in Pavilion can really make your legs pain
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Today I was busy doing my work and the others were already gone when I finished them. Thus, I asked my lunchmate to "tapao" for me. I waited till 1pm, expecting them to come back, but no signs of them. I waited again, thinking that they maybe a bit late, but after half an hour, still didn't see them. It was already 2pm, where have they gone ... I was extremely. Anil came back with a black face, telling me that food serving at the restaurant was very slow. *Ouch*

My team meeting ended at 5.40pm. It was already jam at that time. Kit suggested us to have dinner first and then go back later to avoid the jam. Anil joined us for the meal at Food Republic. The Pan Mee, totally not recommended. The soup was very oily. I felt ill after taking it. Now, my tummy is still unable to digest it properly :(
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Weekends @ KL

Last Saturday, I went shopping with my housemate in the daytime to get some groceries and a small plastic table. Tables nowadays sure are expensive. Around 5 years ago, I can this small table at around RM45. But now, it's around RM70! Wow... but it's 2 different places.

My brother came down on Sunday to join me for a bookfair at KL Convention Center. It's the 3rd Chinese Overseas Bookfair organized by Popular Bookstore. The bookfair is basically divided into half. One for English books, CDs and stationaries. While, another portion is for Chinese books. There are many interesting books there, especially the Chinese section. There're Chinese paintings' printouts for sale as well. Some of them are really nice. We were both amazed by the fine paintings. Even from the printouts, we could feel that the paintings are alive.

Just Connected!

Just a week disconnected, I feel like I am really out of this world. I wanted to do some CBTs (Computer-based Trainings) online, but unable to do so. I wanted to chat with my friends via messenger, but unable to do so. After deep considerations, I decided to subscribe the cheapest package of Izzi – wireless broadband provider, the coverage is only Klang Valley. Unlike the usual line connection, wireless is rather unstable. But, I didn’t face problems such as connect and disconnect. The speed is fluctuating and sometimes, it’s a bit slow for downloads.

After moving here for almost a week, I finally get use to the life here. For dinner, sometimes I go tapao or eat out with my housemate.

After my official 1 week training, I was thrown to do projects, departmental training and doing CBTs. Compared to other teams; my team is covering a wide scope. I have being reading a lot, yes, a lot! At times I feel like my eyes are going to pop out and my brain is definitely very exhausted. Not to mention, meetings. Yes, my team has a lot of meetings. But not time wasting meetings, they’re all very challenging.

The relationship between the newbies here are quite good. Vicky always deliver me a bottle of drink (can get all you want from the fridge), hoping to have a chat with me. But, she's always frighten by the scary atmosphere near my cubicle. The Anil/Kit combination is really funny. They 2 always tease each other. Playboy Faiz is always flowery with his words. Many more fun people in there.

Below are some of the photos taken recently:

Chulan Tower, my office is at one of the floors.

Newly open, not nice shabu-shabu shop at 1U. Nice setting though, but taste wise...

New Room

Hi girls and guys,

I have moved! Last weekends was a busy one - moving and cleaning. Currently I am considering several broadband packages to be installed, still not connected for the time being :( I have 3 housemates - 1 I haven't seen him so far. Parking lot - argh... another headache~

Last Post Before Moving

This is my last post before I move to my new place at Tropicana @ Damansara. Currently there's no internet access there. It will take some time from applying to installing the broadband (I haven't apply yet). Below is a picture taken from my office yesterday morning, a beautiful view of KLCC. I wonder how it looks like at night.

Weekend of Xploration

Last weekend, I went to Banting alone to visit my grandaunt (supposed to visit her with my bro). The whole trip took slightly more than an hour. I was not very sure on the way there, just follow the signboards along the way. Approximately 30 minutes for PJ-Cyberjaya and another 30 minutes for Cyberjaya-Banting. It always nice driving in Cyberjaya, because there's hardly any cars on the road.

Banting is a small town, near to Port Dickson. But, the things there are cheap. Plastic chair, in PJ selling at RM23; Banting, only RM16.80. Plastic rubbish bin, PJ selling at RM4.80; Banting, only RM2! One of the other reason why I like going to Banting is because of the fresh and cheap local fruits. It resembles a bit of Lorong Kulit.

Of course, I visited my bro on the way back to PJ. He only accompanied me for lunch at Dengkil as he's busy preparing for the coming final exams.

Happy Mother's Day to mummy! Hope she likes our special photo :D

1st Week of Work

Finally, my training have reached to an end. From the 3rd day onwards, I will be car pooling with my new colleague, Kit who's staying around the area. I no longer need to walk around KL with the heavy bag ^^ My energy has again regained.

This week is quite relaxing. The training starts at 9am but we're there before 8am to enjoy the free beverages and cookies at the rest place. The seniors normally bring some fried noodles or nasi lemak to the office for breakfast. Nowadays, I walk to lunch with my colleagues instead of driving. I normally hang out with 2 other girls and around 3-5 guys for lunch. So far, my lunch spots are Cosway, UOA and Pavilion food court. Sometimes I sure miss my ex-colleagues, we used to drive out for lunch. I just noticed that I can have a nice view of KLCC from my office. I hope that it looks nice at night.

Next week, we'll begin on a more detailed training based on our job scope. I wonder how it will turned out to be...

Onboard - Orientation

I'll cut short on everything since I am short of time.

New job - tiring. Why is it so tiring? Because I need to carry a laptop around! 20 new employees boarded yesterday, most of them support EMEA (which is a new team). All of us are given a Dell laptop with our logins setup. They have planned a full schedule for the week. 1st day is rather "relaxing" as the managers are busy. I get to go home a bit early.

Some highlights:
1. First time working in KL, I took around 1.25 hour to go to work in the morning.
2. The laptop is heavy, the training booklet which is as thick as a textbook is also very heavy.
3. The managers are very friendly and "active", especially my boss.
4. There's only 3 members in my team with the same shift, including me(it seems!). Other teams have many.
5. It's truely a multinational company, a good mixture.
6. Free beverages and some light food (cookies, oats etc).
7. Free seating, no permanent cubicle. There's 2 LCDs at each cube.
8. There's proper training and briefing on things such as the company's intranet, insurance coverage etc.

Going up and down the staircase, walking around with a laptop at the back for more than 1 hour is definately no joke!

Belated Pictures

Here's some pictures taken since my arrival in KL.

Dim Sum shop at SS2. I still prefer Penang's dim sum.

Mushroom Noodle at Uncle Lim's @ Ikano. Taste not bad, but how come all yellow noodles?!

Bak Kuh Teh near Sunway, quite nice

Transformers @ Cineleisure

8th Day in KL - Gatherings

Today, there's no room viewing. I woke up late and had chicken rice for my breakfast/lunch. My brother and his girlfriend came for a visit at 1pm (normally he's not that punctual). We went out for lunch together at Living Food @ Uptown. I just took a glass of tea while they 2 ordered a bowl of hor fun each. According to them, the taste is just normal. Then, we did some shopping at 1U. The whole day I felt like a walking zombie @.@

I called up WSS for dinner and also made some visits to 7-11 (for room renting notice). I managed to get to SS25 alone! Yay~ We had dinner at a rather big foodcourt/ kopithiam at Taman Megah. The wanton mee is okay, may make more visits there. The normal price for a small plate of noodle in PJ is RM3.80. We visited 3 7-11 shops after that and nearly bump into an accident. Phew~ Certain portions of the road, the street lights are broken and suddenly the road from 3 lanes become 2 lanes. WSS was complaining about it and then he suddenly recalled that I am not familiar with this area. He quickly pulled my sterling when I was about to hit a divider (when 3 lanes become 2 lanes). I tried to be extremely careful when using the same road to go home.

Countdown: 1 more day to go before I start on my new job.

7th Day in KL - Outings & Drama

It's Friday and no room viewings for today. I heated up the noodles from yesterday and took some for breakfast. CC was on leave so he helped me out with the directions to KL (need a 3rd opinion on how to get to town). Approximately 17km using Sprint highway. Not bad.

My brother who is supposed to come in the afternoon "fong fei kei". So, I ended up staying at home watching drama series, "The 7th Day". This HK drama seems to be adopting some of the sad elements of Korean drama series. The pace is rather slow but there's some humour in it. Even though the ending is a bit melancholy, but it doesn't leave you crying till the end. There's some moral to it, a good wrap up. Many of my friends who had watched it felt disappointed but I feel that it's not that bad, still worth watching.

I met up Chris for dinner at around 6.30pm. But, he was approximately 30 minutes late due to the traffic jam. That is the first time I have seen him in KL, also the first time since Chinese New Year. He brought me to Damansara Perdana for dinner and we headed to the Curve after that for a short tea at Gloria Jean's. It was my first visit to the coffee shop. There's no customers when we arrived. I ordered a cup of chocolate with marshmallow. The taste, not bad. But the waiter seemed to have problem understanding customers' requests.

I reached home at around 10+pm and determined to complete the remaining episodes of "The 7th Day" in one go! I completed all of them at almost 4am! It's been a long time since I did this kind of "marathon". But, not that bad to do this once in a while. I sure feel satisfy~

6th Day in KL - Tired

After so many days of room hunting, I really feel tired. Chris told me that it's like that, once settle down it will be okay. Please, grand me a nice place to stay soon~

In the morning, I checked out the notice boards at 7-11, SS21 before test driving to my office. I feel that my sense of direction is okay, but I am unable to recognize any particular route from A to Z. I will surely miss out something the roads that I should be taking. From my experience driving there, I can say that 3 times I go there, 3 different route. Today's is more to a combination of the routes that I took before. This time, the journey is the longest, around 45 minutes for 26km.

Today, I finally feel that KL kopitiam/hawker food is not that bad. Ern brought me to a teow cheow kopithiam, the soup noodle there is quite nice. But, not cheap. In Penang, it may cost around RM10. But in KL, definately impossible. We're very tired, so we went home after that.

5pm went for a room viewing at SS21. Around 7pm, an uncle from the church fetched Ern and I for dinner. It was a nice one and it's relatively cheap for KL price. Uncle ordered 6 huge sized noodles and 9 cups of chinese tea, it only cost RM53. (p/s: I do not remember how to get there, but its in PJ old town, a deserted area)

At night, I need CC's help again for house viewing at SS17 and Suria Damansara.

Room1: House okay, room okay, toilet not okay. It's a connecting toilet and will be sharing with a guy as well.
Room2: Nice place, clean house, got parking somemore. But, the road to the condo is very deserted, deep inside, hardly any cars or people passed by. I will definitely lost my way there, if I am going there alone.
Room3: Clean house, room ok, but seems to have parking problem as there's many cars at that road.

Looks like I still need to go for room viewing~

5th Day in KL - Room Hunt!

Today it's movie day, meaning cheaper movie tickets. I went to Cineleisure for the first time to watch 2 movies - Iron Man and Forbidden Kingdom.

Forbidden Kingdom - storyline so-so but I like the fighting scenes between Jet Li and Jackie Chan.
Iron Man - wasn't expecting much but it's better than I thought! The Mandarin translation of the title is really funny... haha...

Shortly after the movie, I grabbed 1 piece of cookie and headed to Bayu Puteri for room viewing. Walau, traffic jam along the way. Then I headed to Palm Spring, again traffic jam. Then, to Pelangi Utama, which is also in Sunway Damansara. I spent around 3 hours for 3 rooms, mainly on the roads. I reached back at PJ around 10+pm, feeling very exhausted. Ern was not at home yet. I immediately went online to seek advise from a friends on the rental etc. There're many different advises. Argh... hard decisions.

Ern, "landlady's" youngest son brought home so leftover chicken, so that's my dinner/supper. He was unable to give me advise as he seldom drives to town.

Tomorrow I'll test drive from Palm Spring to my office with Ern. Let's see how many km~

4th Day in KL - Lost

Today, I attempted my 2nd drive down to KL with Travis and I was quite lost. The route down town via the Federal Expressway seems to be a very long way (at least I feel so). On the way back, this time we 2 feel lost. But, we managed to get back to Damansara. We attempted to watch movie but no suitable slots. Thus, we explored the Sunway Damansara area, trying to find this place called Palm Spring. Again, we're lost, from there we ended up in Tropicana 0.0 With a bit shock, we decided to head back. So, end of the story for today's exploration.

At night, again I contacted CC for help because I do not know how to get to SS2 and Palm Spring for room viewing. As he was busy, the room viewing ended up quite late.

Room1: Quite spooky and scary, no one pick up the call.
Room2: Friend's friend's place, many things in the house, room relatively big for the rental.
Room3: Nice environment, I like the bright lights at the corridor, the house a bit dusty though. Expensive carpark. KIV.

After all the viewing, wah... already slightly over 12am. Time flies~

p/s: Parking rental in condo sure is expensive. Range from RM90-120

3rd Day in KL – Xplore

Other than sitting at home and online, today I have 2 major accomplishments – drive down to my working place from PJ and visited SS2’s night market.

#1
I drove down to town at around 1.45pm with my cousin’s guidance (thanks!). It took me around 30 minutes to reach for an 11km journey. Not bad. The traffic is quite okay, with slight traffic jams at certain areas. Tomorrow I am going to try again.

#2
Yes, 1st pasar malam visit in PJ! Thanks to CC who brought me there. It feels weird to hear people speaking in Cantonese in pasar malam. Maybe I am too used to Hokkien. I am a bit disappointed with the food stalls. Starting to miss my grand’s chai kueh… :( The takoyaki’s mini octopus was a bit small. The yee mee, still okay. I notice a few things: the tactics of selling DVDs and its packaging are different, anime DVDs have more customers than normal DVDs, not many stalls specializing on selling bread, don’t have nice dim sum stalls, got more mini octopus sticks here (taste unknown), many shoes, clothes and fruits stalls.

I am still filling full even though it’s already 11+pm.

2nd Day in KL - The Lock

Only the 2nd day in KL, I was already facing problem with the lock. Due to some technical problem, I was unable to unlock the padlock and open the gate. My relatives fetched my parents and I for breakfast/lunch in the morning and my parents to the bas station after that. I tried to unlock the padlock again soon after a short rest, but nothing workout well.

Luckily, a friend who stays near my place was free. He came over to help me out on the door, and thank god, it's open! Since both of us are free and I wanted to do some area survey, he offered to drive me around. Our short trip unexpectedly turn out to be a bit longer. I even get some of my groceries and dinner done. After talking for a few hours, 2 of us were extremely exhausted that we sat there quietly on the journey back.

My bad day turned out to be a better one, thanks to my long lost friend :)