My life with a little Coffee Bean…

Me: One Chef’s Tuna Sandwich please…
Coffee Bean girl: Err.. Tuna, we don’t have?
Me: Hmm.. okay.. what shall I have then? I’ll have one vanilla latte.
Coffee Bean girl: Vanilla latte also we don’t have.
Me: Caramel latte then
Coffee Bean girl: Caramel latte also we don’t have…

At this point, I thought, what do they have then? Teh tarik perhaps?

Coffee Bean girl: How about mocha latte, that one we have…
Me: Never mind lah, I’ll have a caffe latte and a banana muffin…

Ah yes, banana muffin “they have” because it was on the display =).

I digress – I want to start talking about my life here. I live in Seria, the oil town, located near the border of Miri-Brunei. Miri and Brunei is separated by Sg. Belait (River), and the town nearest to Miri is Kuala Belait aka KB.  If you drive to Brunei from Miri, the next town you’ll find after KB is Seria.  Seria and KB is approximately 10 minutes drive. Seria is known as the oil town because it is where most of the administration of the oil and gas business is. I specifically live in Panaga (pronounce as Penaga) and along the stretch of my streets you can see many different sets of housing quarters for the oil & gas big guns such as Shell, Schlumberger, Halliburton, etc.

There’s nothing much in Seria – it’s really calm and quite. The “downtown” has a small shopping mall (which I just recently discovered it actually has a Guardian!) and a food court with a few rows of shop houses of banks, restaurants and shops. The best part about Seria is, a small supermarket about less than 0.5 km from my house called Supa Save (the spelling is Supa, not Super, I’m not kidding!) Supa Save is small but has the coolest imported goods in the entire Borneo! They have Starbucks (the ones in the bottle), Snapple (sadly, they don’t have Snapple Apple my fave), Digestive, Hob Nobs, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, just to name a few.

Unfortunately, they don’t have Coffee Bean! For Coffee Bean, I have to drive to Bandar Seri Begawan (which the locals typically refer to as Bandar) for about 1.5 hours drive (if drive at the correct speed limit). And yes, Bandar is further than Miri from Seria. From my place to Miri “downtown” is about 60 km, but to Bandar it is probably double the distance, but I don’t know why, I never bother to set my meters so I don’t really know!

Why do I drive so far to a Coffee Bean only to find that vanilla latte is no longer available? The thing is, the most decent movie theater is located in Bandar and I went there to watch P.S. I love you.  But a note to you, please don’t see that movie with your significant other because you guys will end up feeling down and sad… But it’s a good movie and definitely worth watching! Alright, I’m tired typing, will continue about my life, my space and this country in general in the next entry… Toodles!

P/S: Please boycott Dutch products (including Shell products), I know I work for that company but what the heck! If that makes the stoopid Geert Wilder apologize, then so be it!

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1 down, 7 more to go…

Overall this week was overwhelming, from backache to recovering and finally manage to finish the work that I anticipated for 2 days which lasted for 5 days!  Who says life is easy?  I’m a little bit of a pessimist that at times while doing my work I don’t think I will manage to finish this project that I’m working on.  The thing is, I am redoing a project that has been done poorly before and I know two persons who involved with it and both are great engineers.  If they didn’t do a very good job doing it together, how can I do it on my own?  In one of my conversation with the operations manager, he asked me whether I’m afraid of this job.  To tell you the truth, I am!  But it certainly won’t help me get any of my work done, so I’m taking it a step at a time and I hope that I’ll get there sooner or later.

I often think of where does my pessimism comes from – I think it’s a typical dilemma of most Malays – we’re afraid of challenges.   Most of the time, we gave up before we even try – but the fact is, how do you know that you’ll fail when you never even try it?  To be honest, which one is better?  You failed or you did not even try?  I choose the former because at least I do have the courage to try, and the ones who give up is just another coward.  And that’s why I’m still here, if I succeed, there’ll be a big reward in front of me, but if I fail, I hope it is a good lesson to learn and I shall move on.

I’m being philosophical today *yawn*… Anyhow, it’s weekend and I am going to see PS I LOVE YOU! I hope it’s good =)

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Backache… Am I getting old?

I’m having backache. The thing is I’ve been working on my desk at work for 2 days in a row without fail! My desk is way too low that I need to slouch down each time I’m writing on the desk, and I only realize that I can lower my seat by the time the back has already start aching. I’m hoping to finish the work by tomorrow so that I can sit up straight in front of the screen again!

I watched three movies over the weekend – 27 Dresses, The Kite Runner, and Charlie Wilson’s War. 27 Dresses is waaay cool. I think Katherine Heigl is better off being a nice girl than Dr. Izzie I’m-oh-so-desperate-please-give-me-some-attention Stevens. James Marsden isn’t that cute IMO, but he makes a good scruffy hero in the movie – so girls, this is a must see! Btw, Jane’s (Heigl) sister reminds me of a friend of mine back in Sunway, it’s not about the face, but the character and the hair just reminded me of her – I just don’t know why.

The Kite Runner is an awesome movie! I cried my heart out watching this movie and haven’d done so in such a long time. The movie is sooo good that it was hard for me to believe that it’s a fiction. The story is setup in Kabul in the late 70s about two boys who are childhood best friends, one boy is the son of a rich man and the other is the son of the rich man’s maid. They were separated by the war, the former left for the states and the latter had to go through the war turmoil in their home country. The saddest part isn’t really about the war itself, but it’s about their friendship, so pure and honest. I am planning to read the book at some point cause you know, a movie can never be as good as the original book.

Charlie Wilson’s War? Isn’t as exciting as the other two, so go watch yourself and let me know if you like it. I think it’s pretty decent. Anyway, I still have tonnes of things to say (I always have), but I’ll save it for later. I can’t really stand sitting for so long, the back is hurting. I’m gonna move to the couch and watch tv though nothing interesting is on air *sigh*.

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The tribe has spoken…

I am tempting to write about politics (yes, what else do we think of these days), but then again I’m gonna need so much time to compile all the stuff in my head.  I’m no BN or BA aka BR, I’m neither here nor there.  I could go either way… So I have so much to say about both.  Anyway, I’m not gonna start dwelling into it.  Suffice to say that I’ve seen the cabinet line up and I see some good ones (of course personal preference and no one has to agree with me so I shall not mention who are the good ones).  The only thing that I don’t like is Shahrizat Jalil is made a “penasihat bertaraf menteri.”  What the heck is that?  Seriously dude, dah kalah tu kalah laa and dok rumah buat post mortem ye… Haih, still have the guts to do such thing yah, come on lah, women have been well represented already!  Don’t need another loser, please get out of our way!  Look at Al Gore, dah kalah jadi environmentalist, perhaps you should consider the same… If you think you want to continue fighting for women’s rights, by all means go create a new NGO.  Anyway, told you I can dwell a lot on this, so I shall digress.

I went to visit my colleague who just gave birth to a healthy baby girl.  Poor baby has jaundice so we when we visited, we were just looking at her trapped under a UV lamp with a sleeping mask… Awww… so cuuuute… Now I’m still trying to figure out what to write. Damn, politics have consumed my life that I can’t really talk about anything else!  I shall stop before I drive myself insane for thinking too much of something that I can’t really think of… And I shall continue blog hopping. Toodles!

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It’s a men’s world..

It’s always been men’s world… And if you tell me that women rule, I will have to disagree with you.  Living in this country, and working in this industry, I am certainly the minority in the group.  To say that life is easy without my own gender, it is certainly not true.  Women can’t live without their girlfriends.  Working out is not cool without someone to do it with… Seriously, I’d rather sit at home watch Grey’s Anatomy over and over again then going to the gym on my own… Anyhoo, I’m still trying to fill in the empty spaces that’s filling my life here. I’m thinking of reading, sewing.. very girly and boring, but yet, it doesn’t have to involve another party.  I might start rollerblading or cycling again because those activities don’t require any companion.   I will have to start downloading tonnes of songs now that my playlist is backdated by 3 years at least (oh how time flies by)…

Sometimes I do ask myself, where have all the single female (in this country) gone?

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The day my hometown was painted green…

and teal… Malaysia election fever will go on for another 5 years. And now that I finally see some democracy in my country, I decided that I will vote for the next election. I don’t want to dwell into politics today (what else do we talk about these days?) but I am proud to say that my hometown is no longer under the administration of the “mamat kulit tegang” and co.

Now I’m back to my life in Bruneo. When I arrived in the office today, I was like, where should I begin? Ah yes, the election fever seems to have consumed my life! I realized that when i left the office last Friday, I left a heated argument unsettled. My boss in KL have sent me an email last week that left me fuming, not to mention that I cried after reading every single word that he wrote to me. It’s not so much about the content, but it was about the way he puts things in words.

I only managed to get one message when I first read it, I wasn’t treated as an adult. He sounded as if he was talking to a 15 years old girl, and I am freaking 27! Even as a subordinate, I believe that I deserve to be respected, as a person. I don’t mind the babbling about stuff that I did wrong, but to put everything in red and cross out everything else made me look like a stoopid student. I think I am old enough to understand everything equally well if not better, should all of those words were typed in blue or black.

It’s really hard when you have a boss who likes the sound of his voice and thinks that he’s right all the time. What am I supposed to do? Tell him to write his email in blue or black font? I think I’ll get another nasty email from him. Anyhoo, I guess I don’t care much anymore. Sometimes it’s better to shut up then say anything, but I just hope one day he’ll treat me with respect… Well, he should anyway…

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Bored…

What else is new? Hmm.. I can’t really find anything that I like to do here other than lazing around. I can start doing other things such as taking classes and what nots, but where’s the fun when you have no friend(s) to do it with. These things are like chicken and egg problem, one need to come first before the other and clearly, one has to make the move before something is happening. But oh well, I don’t really care just yet. I will start doing it once I start to bitch about my life like there’s no tomorrow.

I know that I’m talkative for a fact. But then again, I need someone to “switch on” the button before it works. I almost never start a conversation going – unless on a very unusual case, which I can hardly record. Anyways, I might start to write my blog for a change, sometimes when I read my older post, I didn’t even remember writing such thing.. It’s kinda fun to look back once in a while and I’m thinking of starting to go through old clips that I have when I was in the states, that’d be fun! But when that time will come, we will soon find out!

Anyways, I had my development discussion with my boss today. The outcome is open, and is decent. I guess I found my weakness in my interaction with people – I’m so bad at saying “no” to anyone when it comes to criticizing my work. Sometimes, when you are afraid to say “no,” you’re the one who’ll suffer later.. Been there, done that! And yeah, just volunteered for night shift in April – I don’t really know what I’m getting myself into, do I? Well I do, but doing it for a week is seriously a no big deal compared to a year or 13 months!

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The new beginning…

I have to admit that I do have a soft spot for blogging, and I still do. The only problem is I have not been blogging for a while now. I do have a couple of post here and there once in a blue moon, but nothing has been done on a regular basis. But now, I’ve moved to a new place called Borneo, specifically to the smallest country on this island (go figure – if it’s not that obvious, maybe you need a lesson in geography). I’ve been living in cities for most if not all of my life, and certainly doing so is a big change to me – I’m not sure how long I’ll stay content and start shouting “Get me out of here!”

Anyhoo, life has been decent so far – other than the lack of companion around here. I barely have any friends to do anything. I moved to my own place about 3 weeks ago. It’s a very nice 2 bedroom house. Now I’m concentrating half of my time to make it nice. It’s partially furnished, so I still have to buy my own tv, office chairs, racks etc. Currently, I’m working on putting up curtains on the entire house, and so far it’s a bit frustrating because the windows are of weird sizes. I’ll put up some pictures once I have everything nicely put together. It’s gonna be a while though cause I already got my tv, astro and internet and seems like everything else is trivial… LOL!

And I have a garden to think about now. I’m a bit pissed cause my garden is ugly and bare – not much grass. Yesterday, a contractor came to dump a pile of soil on my front yard, which makes an ugly garden even worse. To make it extra annoying, I’ll get door bell rings once in a while to offer grass cutting services – there’s barely any grass to cut, why are they offering me this service. If there’s anything that I need to my lawn, I need someone to plant the grass!

I can go on and on like there’s no tomorrow on my garden, house etc. But I really don’t feel like it now. Plus not blogging or writing for a while leaves me really poor in organizing my thoughts. I’ll put myself together and come up with a better post next time. Till then…

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