A small setback

Didn’t buy the first house that we thought we like it and we actually made an offer for it..

Many reasons.. key one being the house is too old and the on-going maintenance cost is going to be high. Also it is too near to the main road.

We did spend some money to conduct a prepurchase house inspection. Small price to pay to avoid making bigger mistake. It was also a valuable experience to both of us who are newbie in property market. Now we have a solicitor that we can trust and rely on. We have a loan manager who is great, understanding and efficient.

..We will keep looking..

Huge decision

We are making a huge decision. Buying our first home in Sydney. Expensive move. We are quite nervous. If everything is smooth, we might exchange contract next week. What! That is fast and furious! A lot of things to think about buying first home. Especially when both of us are so inexperienced. Wish me luck!

 

海闊天空

感动得久久无法自我。是歌词？是旋律？是家驹？是年纪？还是回忆​？

一直想要的海闊天空，以为自己触手不及。其实自己不曾认真追求

睡不着

睡不着地感觉很不好。好久没有这种感觉了!夜很深了，不能干什么除了听外面的风声，枕边人均匀的呼吸声，努力地说服自己的大脑，＂嘿，您累了！不如早点休息吧！＂

明天，哦不！其实是今天会有一堆挑战等着我。我应该好好睡了！

雪耳红枣莲子糖水

Ben chin, this is specially for you 🙂 I love this dessert as this is really nice to drink and beneficial for skin 🙂

Ingredients:

30g of Lotus Nut (half the nut and get rid of stem in between) (莲子)

30g of Dried Longan Fruit (龙眼干)

30g of red dates (without seed) (红枣)

25g of snow fungus (雪耳)

some rock sugar or can use normal sugar

and of course, water (I used about three bowls of water)

Steps:

1. Soak the dried snow fungus for half an hour or till soft to cut. Trim the hardened yellow part on the bottom and cut into smaller pieces.
2. Rinse the other ingredients.
3. Heat up a pot of water and bring to boil.
4. Add the snow fungus, dried lotus, dried Longan fruit and red dates, reduce to low heat and cook for one hour or more, until all ingredients are soft and tender.
5. Before serve, add some sugar (rock sugar) to your liking.
6. I love to add some Goji berries before serving. Goji berries are good for your eyesight!

雪耳红枣莲子糖水

Another cold day

Another cold day. Hubby fell sick today! Not good.. too cold I guess. He said it is because he stopped drinking coffee two days ago! Haha..

I made 腐竹焖三层肉! This is my first time making this dish! Normally my mum will make this for us! Tasted decent but not as great as my mum’s cooking. I didn’t take a photo! I am getting adventurous with different dishes.

Another day I made chicken curry (M’sia style)! Tasted really good! I think I probably can start a small Malaysian eating shop? Might earn more money than doing my day job now!

Also made 莲子雪耳糖水 another day! Absolutely nice to drink in such a cold day!

 

Tired but worthwhile

Another release down.. this is probably my third major Siebel release.. Let me count.. the first one was Last May – CSP for LNA, then LNWFAM release in Aug and the Feb release (smaller scale) and this one the Siebel 8.1 upgrade release over the 5-days Easter holiday. As predicted, the release was full of challenges. It was tough but we got through it 😉

We have a number of memorable moments where the challenges set us 9 hours behind schedule. Then the unexpectedly smooth database extracts made up all the lost hours and we finished dead on time! Wow..

You might not know what I am talking about but it doesn’t matter. I just want to write these down before I forget them. I want to reflect and give myself a pat on my shoulder. Hey yun, you have done well 🙂

What could I do better?

Hmm.. more preparation. Make sure I got all the facts right. The correct IP address and password!

Dry run dry run dry run.. make sure our dry run is as realistic as possible.

Prepare for unpredictable events like who is going to come in if we had challenges that set us back in schedule. One person could not be possible go on without sleep for more than 36 hours right?

Testing is so important.. cover every aspects of the application, different type of authentication methods. Do not get trapped again, yun!

But hey.. we have done well … we have achieved what we said we want to achieve.. that’s so important! A big thank you to the entire team.. I am so so so happy!

Probably I should buy myself a nice pair of shoes or another bag as reward.. hehe.. let me think..

How about a well-structured satchel.. woo.. this is so nice:

Or… I don’t mind this one also:

This is absolutely amazing:

The Big Short

“The ability of Wall Street traders to see themselves in their success and their management in their failure would later be echoed, when their firms, which disdained the need for government regulations in good times, insisted on being rescued by governement in bad times. Success was individual achievement; failure was a social problem.” – Michael Lewis in his book, “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine”.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

I am no financial market expert. This book presents GFC2008 in plain English for a layman like me. After reading this book, I really feel for the people who have very little financial market knowledge like myself who had or have been impacted by GFC2008. It is hard or painful to see how the entire financial market could be manipulated and exploited to their own advantage by a small group of highly selfish and greedy human being. They were/are earning multi-million dollars every year while the average households struggle to see their ends met. I feel for those who were given false hope that they could afford a house of their own by being provided a loan that they could never pay back and eventually lost their home. I feel for those who bought unit trust from bankers who themselves could not even understand what kind of investments those unit trusts actually consisted of.

To me, it seems like the financial market is a big lie. Where are the regulations? I hope someone is still looking into the causes of GFC2008. Someone has to be pinpointed and take responsibilities. Some steps have to be taken to prevent this from happening again. Sometimes, pain could be so easily forgotten as long as I am not the one who suffered the pain.

Happy Chinese New Year

I have taken a little break and went home to Malaysia to celebrate Chinese New Year with my beloved family. It was a fantastic trip. I am really missing them now.

My father lost quite a bit of weight as he finally is doing some real work! Menoreh getah! haha.. i guess the  price increase of natural rubber is a good thing for our family. He is healthier now as he is doing more physical exercise by waking up early in the morning and getting up and down in the estate rubber tapping!

My mum is okay but she looks more tired than before. Must be all the work, driving my siblings around and pressure that she is having recently. I feel so bad for not being at her side, taking care of her.

My little sis and bro have grown up so much. Andy’s voice has changed! haha.. becoming a man now! Sin-er is my precious gal. She is a good gal but too smart and mature for her age. I wrote her a long letter in mandarin which I hope she will get the message and understand my love and care for her.

My little niece can finally address me accurately. She is cute but too clingy to her mum and too “ku bao”! haha.. Hope she will grow up to be a nice and sweet little girl!

Aboy and Lulu are as usual struggling with their training to become a formal teacher. These 2 teacher-in-training made me worried about the future of Malaysian chinese education! Hahah.. just kidding. Be passionate about your work, my dear sister and brother! Do not just敷衍过日子 =)

I wish all my friends who are reading this a very happy, healthy and prosperous Golden Rabbit year!

千事吉祥，万事如意！

 

A Brand New Year!

One week has passed in 2011. I was so determined last Saturday (first day of 2011) that I would do this and I would do that. It is not even one week and I am already slacking 😛 How disappointing.

Work, must be work! I am too busy with work! What a convenient excuse! Today when I was having a jog with dearest hubby, we had a little game, named “新年新气象”! I am not too sure how to translate it accurately. Maybe we can call it “A brand new year”! The game went like this. We each take turn to tell what we have done differently this year or we could also make a new year resolution! I know, we play silly game! But it was really fun and it reminded me that I should treat my new year resolutions seriously and put them into action. Otherwise, why bother making resolutions at all?

Let’s see what I have done differently in the past week?
(+) I have jogged 2 times.
(+) I have finished reading a book.
(+) I have cooked 3 times this week.
(+) I did my make-up twice this week.
(+) I sort-of stick to my daily face cleansing routine (I usually forget to do it in the past).
(-) Still biting my nail!
(-) Didn’t blog or post any journal until today!
(-) Called home only once.
(-) Almost going into a heated discussions with colleague once.
(+) Positive feedback from someone I am working with 🙂
(+) Told hubby a joke today and made him laugh.
(-/+) Gain some weight – must be the nice Peruvian cuisine we had on Wednesday during team dinner. It was such a nice dinner. Thanks to the project we are working on to pay for our dinner 😛

It is fun, isn’t it? Life is made up from small details. I think I should pay more attention to these details. That will make a difference, wouldn’t it?

Sharing a beautiful Harbour Bridge view at Balls Head point, where we saw today during our jogging.

Sunset - Sydney Harbour Bridge