Valentine’s Day 2007

Valentine’s Day had just passed and I didn’t really have time to sit down and write a blog about it. A friend of mine asked why there wasn’t any update on our blog about Valentine’s Day. I promised her, “Yes, I will write about it during my CNY break”. So here I am sitting in front of the TV, watching a Cantonese movie on TV2 in Sze’s house. Alright, now to recall what happened on that day…

Early on the morning of Feb 14th, Sze dropped by my place to pick up his lunch. He had left it in my car the night before. Unexpectedly, he gave me a present and a card. Then, almost immediately after he left, I opened the card and felt really happy to know how he felt for me. And while I was stuck in traffic on the way to work, I opened the present. It was a very soft, brown teddy bear. For a few minutes, I was thinking of a name for him. I already have Baron the white dog from last year and decided to call this bear Darren. I hugged him all the way to work.

At about 11 something, my colleague called me in an eager voice but I didn’t suspect anything. I walked from my desk towards the door and saw a delivery man with a big bouquet of flowers. I was excited and started to giggle nonstop. The delivery man got annoyed and rudely said, “Apa gelak-gelak? Cepatlah sign”. I felt irritated by that. Anyway, I quickly signed to get rid of him.

Buying flowers on Valentine’s Day is a very expensive thing to do. If I knew Sze was going to send me flowers, I’d tell him not to. But then again, it is a very romantic thing to do, maybe not that practical but it will surely melt any girl’s heart. Many girls like to receive flowers but then again, I also know of many girls who are more practical. They would choose not to receive flowers but are ok with presents. So, guys out there, understand your girlfriends better!

I am very fortunate that Sze had everything planned for our Valentine’s Day dinner. He booked a table for us at Wings Music Café in Puchong. As we reached there before 8pm, it was still not that busy yet. But as the evening progressed, more people started to arrive. The café had a very nice environment for the event - it was adorned with simple paper decorations, and the table was covered with a tablecloth. The candles made the ambience more romantic and comfortable, while there was a duo singing love songs to celebrate the occasion.

The food in Wing’s Music Café wasn’t superb compared to other places but I was more than happy to spend the evening there without the crowd. The previous year, a colleague of ours had complained about the atrocious service at Victoria Station. Well, what can you expect on Valentine’s Day at a well-known restaurant like that? I know I’d rather go to a quieter place any time, any day.

I also thought of last year’s Valentine’s dinner with Sze at Nikko Hotel. It was a very nice buffet dinner but we had to rush there due to a bad traffic jam in the city. Therefore, I would advise anyone planning for the occasion to find a place away from the city to avoid the rush. After all, you want a relaxing evening with your loved one.

It was a memorable Valentine’s Day celebration for both of us. Hope you had a great one too.

The e-Globalfocus Annual Dinner (Friday, 9th Feb 2007)

Hip Hop Tonight 2007, e-Global’s theme for the Annual Dinner came as a surprise on the day before. I had no idea what I could wear for that. Besides, I was supposed to have an appointment with a client on that day, which means I have to bring a change of clothing for the dinner. I gave it some thought and finally came to a conclusion - I’ll bring a set of simple hip-hop wear and accessories to change before the event, which was to be held at the Courtyard Garden in Damansara Heights.

My client’s appointment was at 3.00pm, which was later postponed to 3.30pm. My bosses and I got there 30 minutes late and our meeting ended at around 6pm. Driving out of KL city after 6pm had always been the hardest thing to do on weekdays. The roads were very congested and traffic was bumper to bumper. Obviously, this also affected our journey to the Courtyard Garden as we now didn’t have enough time to go back to the office first. Thus, I didn’t get the chance to change into my hip hop attire. What a shame! I couldn’t dress up for this event.

My bosses and I arrived at the Courtyard Garden at around 7.15pm. We were among the earliest people to arrive. The place looked pretty nice and secluded from the outside. The interior had been carefully designed too. The ambience was excellent, just perfect for our private function. We had a cocktail “party” while waiting for the rest to arrive. After drinking 2 to 3 glasses of lime juice and fruit punch, we were finally seated. We started ordering food from the menu on the table. I got myself a salad as an appetizer, Auckland Teriyaki as main course and green tea ice-cream as dessert. The salad was decent but I really couldn’t finish the main course. It was not because the portion was too big but because the quality of food wasn’t that great. I also didn’t finish my ice-cream as it was too soft and melted fast.

In between our courses, we had a few lucky draw sessions. Being a “lucky girl”, I received an FTEC pouch. Why did I describe myself as a lucky girl? It is because I have always been very “lucky” in having bad things happen to me. Even my CTO is quite worried that the servers I am looking after will crash. I don’t think this is because of God’s will or just plain bad luck – it probably has something to do with my attitude of not being meticulous enough.

We had a lot of fun that evening. They continued the party at the Rush bistro while I headed home - I had to observe my curfew.

Anniversary Celebration @ Shangri-La Hotel Kuala Lumpur

To read story with pictures, click here.

4th February 2007 was an eventful day for both of us. Firstly, it was our 1st anniversary. Secondly, it was the day that we officially launched our website. Then thirdly, Sze proposed to me on that day too…

And after all that has happened in the morning, we had to rush for a buffet lunch at the Shangri-La Hotel Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which we had booked earlier. We arrived at the Lemon Garden coffee house at around 1.30pm. It was already packed with people by then. The waitress led us to our table and almost immediately, we started checking out the food. As we were looking around, we bumped into Sze’s cousin… what a coincidence! She was there with her family who were attending a company lunch. Later on, we walked over to her table and met her husband, son and mother too.

We filled our plates and started to enjoy the feast. The variety of food was fairly wide - I don’t usually go for buffet meals but this is a place that I would definitely recommend to anyone. There were separate sections for Chinese, Malay/Indian, Western and Italian cuisine. But the most eye-catching spread that caught my attention was the DESSERT section - they had this huge chocolate fondue fountain! I didn’t want to wait and even considered starting the meal with dessert… hehe. But then again I thought, “I don’t want to end up eating just dessert for lunch”.

So for our first serving, I took some raw salmon fish, sliced lamb and salad with lots of capsicums. I love both lamb and capsicums. This was definitely my favorite plate of the meal. Sze got himself an oriental plate. He likes Chinese food. So what were his thoughts at that time? “I’m hungry. Let’s eat. There’s enough room in my tummy for everything. I’ll start from the left side of the buffet…” Humph…

My second serving was a mixed plate of curry lamb, fish and vegetables, mussels, capsicums (I really love capsicums), salmon and white rice. Sze called it my “Shangri-La mixed rice”… haha.

For his next serving, Sze took a plateful of raw salmon and tuna, decorated with slices of lime. As salmon is an expensive item, it is definitely something you’ll want to eat as much as you can in a buffet. I had another small helping of the salmon, polenta and salad while he had a taste of the roast lamb with mint sauce, fish, polenta and asparagus, plus an additional serving of the Chinese food… (he wasn’t kidding when he said that his tummy had room for everything!)

Finally, it was time for dessert… yay! We took a couple of attractively decorated cakes - Sze thought that the 3 strawberries on one of the cakes looked like… err... “very interesting???” Hmm…

But the highlight of choosing our dessert was, of course, dipping sticks of honeydew, marshmallow and pastry into the chocolate fountain. Again, Sze had a name for it – just like the title from Johnny Depp’s movie, he called it, “Eunice and the Chocolate Factory”…

And while we were “manufacturing” the chocolate sticks, we also saw an interesting-looking prawn and scallop cocktail. It was probably meant to be an appetizer but we didn’t notice it earlier. When we came back from choosing our dessert, the waiter had actually cleared our table, thinking that we had left. Sze thought, “Oh yeah, no need to pay – just walk out now!”

Lastly, we also had a taste of hazelnut and chocolate ice cream. We washed down our meal down with coffee – I prefer black coffee while Sze’s coffee is always “double double” (i.e. double servings of both cream and sugar).

It was already 4pm then, we were totally stuffed, and it was time to go. So we paid the bill (no, we didn’t just walk out after the waiter cleared our table) and left with pleasant memories and plenty of photographs!

Preparing for the Launch

We have about one week remaining before the launch of our website on 4th February 2007. With our busy schedules, we can hardly find time to work on the layout and design of the website. We tried hard to prepare the contents… well, I mean to say, Sze tried hard as I have not contributed as much in terms of contents. But having said that, I did most of the design works. It’s a little funny to think how we both played our roles in this project - Sze writes and edits the contents while I am more inclined towards Photoshop editing and HTML programming. We work really well as a team.

During that week, I got a little tired of editing the layout. The tables were not right and the colors were not suitable. I felt a little fed up and exhausted, but it still has to be done. The relief I felt after we got what we wanted was really satisfying. I then prepared more pictures to be uploaded to our Photo Gallery while Sze worked on more contents. After he submitted the Logic Notes article to ICOM, we published our copy too. However, we found that the downloads did not work. We had to troubleshoot and tried putting up a few other files for downloading and they worked! Only .lso, .pro and .express were not known to the system. We got a little worried as the hosting plan we have didn’t support these file extensions. So I went to work the next day and asked my CTO - he said that there was no limitation to the types of files allowed in the server. He then proceeded to add them to the MIME header and it worked!!!! Bravo to him and e-Globalfocus! Another relief as we knew we didn’t have that much time left. So what’s next?

We both do not have much taste for design. So I asked for opinions from my colleague who is a graphic designer. He said that he could redesign our banner on Friday, which was the last working day before our website launch on Sunday. And guess what?... He was on medical leave that Friday! Okay, so now I have to depend on myself. That evening, although I was tired, I was determined to finish up the banner design and I did!

It’s Saturday and both of us are still writing and designing. We only have one day left. Sze is still working on the 4th Feb story and I am still on the banner design. I have to find a new banner message as Sze didn’t fancy the one I had originally. Since my vocabulary is somewhat shallow, it’s not easy to find a suitable word, but I tried to finish as much as I could. Then later on, I had to change the layout again! It was tiring especially when Mr. Perfectionist was not satisfied with the page formatting that I had changed earlier that morning.

After hours of working, we finally finished what we had wanted to do. Now, we can smile and sleep well. Remember to visit us again for more pictures, articles and blog updates. Bookmark Us! Sze says there will also be a juicy news update tomorrow (Mon, 5th Feb). Hmmm…