the gift of giving

We just had an internal two-day charity lunch in the hotel to help out one of our colleagues who is in need. It was good. Good food, good vibe, good deed, good fellowship... everything good.


For once, the cafeteria looked posh. (quite lah)..


tom yam...........

Huge prawns..........


Fruits and Thai dessert.....


Among others... but my favourite was the chocolate fountain.......

hmm.....

-chef! more!-

-ooh-


-Ons stuff-

Anyways, I feel so bad for taking so much chocolate out of the fountain because it IS for charity but.... but.... was supposed to be for fruit skewers but I actually scooped it onto my waffles...

I also happen to have 4 servings of waffles with ice cream. It is the ultimate treat but I think I sort of over did it a little bit. Everyone who saw me that day (and that would mean the whole 400 strong staff) have changed their perceptions of me...

Taiwen (trainee) : Von... finish la.. gone... your image... gone.


Presee: You know what was my favourite? The tom yam... so good.
Yvonne: You know what was my favourite? The chocolate fountain.
Shiow Ling: Can tell lor.
Presee: Ya.

Lastly, we never let up a chance to cam-whore. All of us.

-OK, act cute!-

learning chinese with jay chou

There is only ever one chinese song which I know and that is Tong Hua by Guang Liang. Of course I know many other songs but this is the only song which lyrics I can remember from beginning till end. That is, in han yu pin yin version. It was during this period where everyone was crazy about this song and Sunway Pyramid was playing it day to night at the skating ring. Thanks to my friends who patiently taught me word by word and even explained the meaning in detail, I could sing along when we went to Red Box.


Anyhow, many years have passed and I was sick of Tong Hua and therefore have decided to sing something else. One day before we went to Red Box, my colleague, who is also an avid Jay Chou fan, asked me to choose a chinese song from his very extensive song collection and even offered to do a duet to cover up my supposed terrible singing (and he is supposedly very Jay). I couldn't read chinese characters ma, so I chose Shan Hu Hai because the "shan" looked like the "shan" in my name. "shan hu" meant coral while "hai" meant sea and so basically it meant Coral Sea.


Wah piang. Such a difficult song to begin with. I sang just reading from the pin yin version which I printed and vowed to learn it by heart to fully appreciate the song. Anyways, I found a webby which has the pin yin of the song and also the meaning of the song. I agree that it is one effective way to learn chinese or mandarin in particular. When you know the meaning of the song, you will appreciate it better and it will also be easier to remember the words, the character and the pronounciation. Anyways, here's a sample:





See what I mean when I said difficult song? I didn't know it was a sad song until I read the translation. See? No appreciation. Anyways, I wanted to choose another song which was not so sad and decided to click on "hei se you muo" which meant Black Humour. Aiya. Also another sad song. Luckily I also have Wang Lee Hom with "Wei Yi" meaning Only One. Lee Hom!! This one, I dunno sad or not but OK lah.

In Wei Yi, to say "it is not easy", instead of "bu rong yi", he sang "tan he rong yi". So we learned something new today!


Anyways, my interest in language have expanded a little to Korean! I learned how to introduce myself from my very Korean-waved trainee, Jonjon.

Anyong aseyo! Yvonne im nida. Manaso pang kap sim ni da!

which meant:

Hi! My name is Yvonne. Nice to meet you.


You just need to replace my name with yours and you are good to go. I also have one trainee from Korea (who was impressed with how I intro-ed myself!:) and she even taught me how to write my name.



Well, they don't really pronounce "v" in Korean and so my name sounding like ee-von is written as yi bon. I remember in college, I have a Korean friend, Brown, who called me yibong throughout the whole degree program and I actually thought he was making fun of me. Another friend, Owen, from China will call me "yi wen". No, scratch that. He called me chou yi wen. Something that's not so good but that's how he call everyone unless he needs their help. Haha! Chou this, chou that. Gosh.


Anyhow, I need to also brush up on my French. There will be some french trainees coming soon and I think it will be good to practice with them.

Btw, I saw this song CD for sale in Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and it features this french song which I can sing! Les Champs-Elysees. My classmates will remember this song because we had to sing this song as one of our oral test.

Je me baladais sur l'avenue, le coeur ouvert.... remember?!


aiya... those were the days...

omg, it is labour day!

*trainees talking of going to Chilis for dinner*
Me: Why do you suddenly want to eat dinner in Chilis?
Trainees in unison : Celebrate Labour Day tomorrow!
Me: Ya wor! It is tomorrow! *in disbelief*
Trainee : Ya! You didn't know? I have been counting down to this day for the whole week.
Me: I knew but I just didn't realise it is tomorrow. WHoa. *still in disbelief, trying to adjust thoughts*
Trainee: Tsk tsk. I'm counting down to Wesak Day next.

Immediately texted for backup plans and ended up with supper in PJ and coming up with next-day-plans of attending a sale. Ah. The bliss of not having to work on a normal weekday.


Anyways, decided to buy Cleo mag for some mindless reading and I came across this question : Are you a sleep-deprived bitch?

-Hell, yeah!-

I think that and add PMS to the whole picture and you get crazy yvonne. No wonder the trainees have recently decided to stock up some chocs in the office snack drawer. Which worked.

And while reading, a little booklet dropped unto my lap. Not unlike dropped-from-heaven style.

- Oh-OH-

Lately, they like to slot pamphlets and catalogs into mags and before this booklet, I already had a Watson's mini booklet and a G2000 booklet dropped onto my lap.

Well, anyways, this catalog booklet seem to have a bigger impact. Why?

-in the red box too!-

Anyways, have found the time to do some proper reading too. How To Be Brilliant! Why be good when you can be brilliant?

-very interesting read-

Well, it is a really good motivational book I must say but really need effort and commitment. I'm starting with baby steps!


Friend: How have you been?
Me: Brilliant!
Friend: Whoa.


Try it! Pass on the inspiration. Sometimes we just need that little bit to kickstart bigger attempts at being our better selves. I think maybe by saying "brilliant!" instead of good or so-so (when you actually do feel so-so) gives you the motivation to live up to what you're saying.


Right now, I'm inspired just by having the day off. Oh, Labour Day. How sweet the sound. It is like finding RM50 in your jeans backpocket but better because you get to bum around for a bit. :D

yvonne has internet!

Yay! After months of uncertainties and 2 weeks of total disconnection, I have decided to get certain and connected. I bought this iZZi internet package of 6 months which absorbs the activation fee and also comes with a little iBurst modem. This is what it looks like:

-my iZZi modem-

Oh well, maybe not as small as the Huawei modem which comes with Celcom or Maxis broadband but it is still pretty small nonetheless. About 3 times the size of those but light. Well, they work the same anyways - using USB. I'm not going to go into techy-talk (because I'm not tech-savvy) but OK lah. Pretty fast and this is (as explained by my friend, the sales agent) because they have one of their "base" at my area itself. So signal strength is always 100% here. Whoopie. Well, more info? All I know is the speed is 1Mbps. Not the fastest around but I guess meets my needs and I guess since it is a 6 months package, I could just use it for 6 months and decide later if I want to continue or not. Maybe Celcom and Maxis broadband would improve later on and have better rates by that time? hmmm. And then maybe DiGi will come around with good deals and say it's Time to Change. Till then, for the next 6 months, I shall be an iZZinet user.

And I like the orange. :)


Whatever. As long as I don't need to drag my laptop to the lobby and listen to little kids squel in absolute delight as they play in the swimming pool everytime I need to check my email or worse to post an entry.


Anyways, I like to squel too when I was a kid playing in the pool. I really don't do that anymore now.


The weather has been horrible lately and one don't get to see squeling kids at the pool. Rain and more rain. Dampening my spirits. Plus my office has become even colder now.

-My usually sun-beamed desk has been gloomily cold-

Anyways, some update about work. We had another successful party/outing for our deserving staff who have done their job well and made guests feel so happy they decided to write a good comment. This time, we went to Pavilion! Conveniently nearby and full of entertainment possibilities, Pavilion was such a good idea. We didn't even need to rent a bus.

We went to Kenko Fish Spa!

-oooh-

-here fishy, fishy, fishy...-

-very nice interior design with instrumental background music-

-some of my deserving colleagues-
Us: We're coming!
Fishes: Wah, buffet!

-I get a free dip too! *squel!*-

ahem.
There were big fishes and small fishes. The small ones were very ticklish while the big ones sort of mean serious business about eating our dead skin cells. The small ones were so small that sometimes I imagine them getting trapped in the hair of some of our more hairy-legged friends.

-my colleague iyzaccq whose feet were so popular amongst the fishes that wherever he sits, the others will not have fishes munching at their feet-

Yvonne: Where are the fishes?!
Iyzaccq: Nah, nah, give you some... *lifts feet from water*

and the mass school of fishes started to swim over to other people's feet.

Yvonne: I think you have a lot of dead skincells

We were required to wash and scrub our feet before even thinking of going near these little underwater friends. While dipping, sometimes we saw the fishes rise up to the surface to sort of gasp for air and I wonder if it was the smell of 20 over people dipping in at the same time. Like it was too much to take. Hehe!

-shiny naturally exfoliated feet-

Anyways, it was very relaxing and after the 30 minutes dip, we proceeded to Red Box Plus to sing our hearts out.

-Bringing RedBox to a new height-

Speaking of RedBox, I joined some of my trainees to RedBox in conjunction with their last training day with us and boy, did they bring karaoke experience to a new height.

we sang... yes...

-JonJon doing some tribal thing, I think-

But I think dancing was the main objective sometimes...

-WeeJian: shu shang de xiao niao pi...-

I never thought that we would be so... so cabaret in RedBox. Oh well, anywhere Jon goes, there will be some sort of dancing or shaking going on. He must have worked for the Moulin Rouge troupe in his previous life.


Apart from these, we also had a bowling tournament thanks to my colleague Bin who patiently organizes these sport activities. All his hard work paid off when we saw the teamwork and the joyful atmosphere as we almost filled up the whole bowling alley.

This dude even managed to pose while I snapped! lol!

And we lifted one of our dear colleagues who was leaving for Maldives the next day.

All the best, Tony!