Four Ways to make a Bad Job GOOD

interesting article.

click here

am trying to work on no. 4 by eating healthier and exercising more.

now it's just no. 3...

Penang

This is about my wonderful penang trip with my wonderful tj.

Day One
We took a night bus last wednesday, quite uneventful, pretty amazed at how I could totally knock out and sleep through like at least 3 pit stops, which just goes to show how tired I was. Arrived at the bus station around 7am, way too early to go to the hotel to check in, so we decided to grab bfast and figure out our way there... which we did, took a bus to komtar, the tallest building in penang georgetown, and pretty much where everything is centred. since all buses go to komtar, it becomes our focal point and we went there EVERYDAY. we walked to chowrasta market for bfast, and walked around abit. then i cleverly saw Jalan Burma, which my research told me is the address where the 2nd best tau sar piah shop in penang. so we walked along the road to find Hin Heang. which was actually quite silly, cos we were at 26 Jalan Burma, Hin Heang was at 126A... so yah, you could imagine how far we walked, with all our luggage in tow too... but it was worth it as we finally found it in the end, and bought tau sar piah, yummy pepper crackers (i only bought one packet :( though)... and luckily there was a straight bus there to our hotel.

we stayed at paradise sandy beach, a lovely hotel and supposedly the best in tanjung bungah
area where we stayed. check out the lovely pool.
we lazed around the poolside/beach for the afternoon, before heading to batu ferringhi night market for dinner. batu ferringhi is the most happening beach in Penang, but I didn't really like it there as I felt it was a tourist trap for the tons of foreigners. so we retired early for the night.,

Day Two
The good thing about Paradise Sandy Beach, is the delifrance bistro. Our daily free buffet breakfast is at the bistro, which means fresh croissants every morning. Yum! Our agenda for the day was to head for the penang tourist centre in komtar, to get more maps and info before we head out exploring on our own. it wasn't tt easy to find, which makes it less appealing for tourists, but we got a great 1 hour introduction from this girl on attachment there, and she gave us lotsa maps and a good insight into penang. plus since it was on the 56th floor, we got to take bird's eye view pictures of penang.

We only wanted to go Penang Hill today, but since we were too early, we decided to go in search for yummy food. First stop: the best penang char koay teow @ Lorong Selamat. We walked like 20 min in the relentless penang sun, queued up a further 20 min for the fried noodles but it was well worth it (ok tj was the one queueing while I just sat and waited).

The old lady frying the char koay teow (tt's how they spell it. ) she wears safety goggles too!

After 20 min, pure bliss!

We also tried the chee cheong fun (in penang they serve it with prawn paste instead of sweet sauce) and the ice kacang. I love the ice kacang too. It had sarsi in it, and the atap chee and the giant red beans are damn soft. Yum!

We adjourned to Swatow Lane for more food. We tried the assam laksa and rojak. The laksa is very very good. The rojak came with lotsa fruits and prawn paste as well, tasted quite caramelly.

Swatow Lane Hawker, looks old outside, but surprisingly it's spacious and air-conditioned inside

Assam Laksa

After food, we made our way to Penang Hill by bus. It was approximately 45 min bus ride, and we stopped at Air Itam and walked to the railway. Where we took a 30 min ride up 830m to the top of penang hill. Quite a scenic ride, just that it was warm (no aircon ) and it was crowded. Penang hill is lovely, it was cooling and the view was good. Not a bad place to chill out and just chat…

Check out the railway. Super old but still does the job...

Us inside the railway

It was late so we headed off, took our first cab ride to New Lane Hawker Joint, a conglomeration of 3 coffeeshops, with lotsa yummy food to try. We had the lor bak (like fried ngoh hiang), Yong Tow Foo and Fried Oysters. Both good. The soupy yong tow foo is fresh and healthy (esp after all the artery clogging fried food) and the fried oysters… I didn’t care much for the egg, but it came with a lot of very fresh oysters! Yum yum.

Day Three

Walked way too much, decided to laze by the beach and catch some sun before we headed out. The beach wasn’t half bad, but due to the presence of jellyfish, nobody ventured to swim there, and A LOT of foreigners were just lying there sun-tanning. We took some lovely photos too!

After tt we headed off for lunch and sightseeing. Our aim today was to cover the historic sites in Penang. We saw the penang clock tower, Fort Cornwallis, walked by the city hall, visited the Penang Museum and went by the Cheong Fat Tze mansion. All the buildings in tt area were old and had tt distinctive british architecture. Very lovely.

Penang Clock Tower. It really is slanted, happened during WWII.

The cannons in Fort Cornwallis

The City Hall

But it was too much sun and not enough food (somehow there wasn’t any food place open around tt area). So we decided to head off for more food =) On our way back towards Komtar, we unexpectedly passed by Kayu Nasi Kandar (one of the best in Penang) so we absolutely had to go in to try. Nasi Kandar is their version of curry rice. We had yummy chicken bryani and roti canai (tt’s how they call their roti prata). Both very good.

Recharged, we made our way to Gurney Drive (first stop Gurney Plaza for some aircon and shopping), then Gurney Drive Hawker Centre for our real dinner. Love it there, tons of food, open air, by the beach…

Day Four

Our last day in Penang. So we checked out, but left our bags at the hotel, and went in search for things we wanna buy back to Singapore. Naturally Ghee Hiang tau sar piah was on the top of our list. We got 3 big boxes, 2 small ones, 2 bottles of sesame oil, another box of biscuits… haha! Very happy with our loot, we walked on to find lunch at New World Hawker Centre, quite near to Swatow lane and lorong selamat too.

Inside Ghee Hiang

Since we were very tired from walking around that much, we decided to pamper ourselves on the last day in Penang. We went Prangin Mall (next to Komtar) to get our foot and shoulder massage, and a pedicure each! Hehe. Tj says I’m trying to turn him into a metrosexual. Check out his lovely feet

We rushed back to the hotel by bus, got our stuff, grabbed a quick dinner and finally headed home… All in all, a fantastic trip with my fantastic man =)

Things I’ll remember about Penang

The nostalgic bus system. We went everywhere by bus. Cheapest way to get around, and to experience how the people live too. Their buses are not as comfy as Singapore’s but quite cheap (around RM1.50 per trip), and most of the times the aircon is not really working. But we meet nice people on the bus. It was packed (peak hour when we made our way back to the hotel) and we were both carrying tons of tau sar piah and the two pairs of shoes I bought. One very nice Indian lady put her plastic bag on the floor and offered to carry my tau sar piah (she put it on her lap). I was very touched…

View on the bus

Bus terminal at Komtar

How the buses look like

The nice people in Penang. People in Penang were really very nice, from the Indian lady on the bus, the shopkeepers in Komtar who offered to take us to the tourist centre (when we couldn’t find it), the lovely girl at the tourist centre…

The yummilicious food. Penang really has great food and a very colourful culture if you care to walk around in their small streets…

Waiting for lunch and the weekend

Realized tt I haven’t blogged in a month, so I shd thank you if you’re patient enough to be reading this. Rest assured, this blog is not dead yet, just that the author is currently facing a dearth of creative ideas and maybe lack of social life.

Tt mostly means I’m quite busy at work, or too busy having fun. So yeah, planned and went for a holiday during good Friday weekend, which means I was busy clearing all my work and commitments before that. It was totally worth it, as the holiday was a good break from it all, and I’ll blog abt it in a separate post, stay tuned.

Came back from my break to find that all the work tt I was rushing like mad to churn out, was still stuck with my boss. colleague and I were pissed off at how he sat on it for so long, and made us scramble in the end like every other time. And of course tt led to some arguments along the way. Glad to say tt I stuck to my guns for some issue, and the big boss agreed w me =).

Thing I can’t stand most abt him: he preaches to us tt we shd admit our mistakes when they occur, and not try to cover them up… but then time and again his actions speaks of covering his backside and covering his mistakes… which is very dangerous cos the work we do and papers we write go all the way up to CEO, and if we get found out the ramifications can be great.

So yeah, after the storm lies a small calm, and now I’m here blogging and chatting w colleagues thru email, and planning for wat I’m gonna do in the weekend. =)

FSRC

At work, I'm part of this recreation committee in my division, we organised an event involving an amazing race type contest running around city hall --> clarke quay, followed by lunch in some hotel. quite fun and i think overall quite a big success. here's the photo of my committee members