Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

—1 Timothy 6:6-10

I told myself "It's okay" again and again but my rebellious mind and broken heart refused to accept what has happened. Well, I lost my  wedding ring, found it and it was not as it was again before. Now I have to really cling on to the Bible's verses above for strength and try to find a way to fix this ring and my heart. *_*

9:30-10:50am 

Hey readers, I'm in the process of giving my blog a rhytidectomy (face lift) but I can't seem to figure out all the things I wanted yet and lots of distraction right now. So don't be surprise by its disfigured looks! Cheers!*_*

3:42pm

I was cleaning up my FB and added "what does your birth date mean" application. The result showed this:

Things dont come easy to you, even though you have the potential and the caliber. Spiritually inclined, you tend to take a step back from the world in introspection. You're very sensitive to what's going on around you, yet you remain composed. Although you are brilliant, it may take you a while to find your niche. Your creativity is supreme, but it sometimes makes it hard for you to get things done.

Then it went on to say this: Now, base on your personality, find the best match for yourself!

So I clicked and it showed this:

Aries goes best with Leo, Sagittarius, Gemini and Aquarius.

We know your match made in heaven. Do you? Find out now!

You match well with..

Ray

 Yakah? Sepa juga ini???

Inilah satu-satunya tempat yang saya suka kunjungi untuk membeli seluar panjang slak kerana tempat ini mempunyai saiz dan potongan kegemaran saya. Pakcik yang memakai baju putih di gambar itulah tukang penjualnya. Dia sangat baik hati dan senang melayan pelanggan-pelanggannya.  

Jikalau kamu hendak tahu, seorang guru menegur saya hari ini dan mengakatakan yang saya lebih cantik daripada dahulu. Saya pun berfikir, apakah maksud tersiratnya itu? Setahu saya, saya tidaklah cantik kerana setiap hari ada sahaja jerawat yang suka muncul di sebelah pipi. Mungkin maksudnya ialah saya semakin hari semakin berisi dan berlemak! Memang betul pun, lemak-lemak semakin suka untuk berkumpul di bahagian punggung dan di bahagian liang lengan. Mungkin juga guru itu cuba memberitahu saya bahawa seluar saya semakin nampak ketat. Apa dah jadi?? Memberi perhatian terhadap isu ini, saya pun bergergas ke pasaraya terbuka dan menghabiskan wang saku yang terakhir sekali untuk bulan ini semata-mata untuk membeli empat pasang seluar panjang slak. Sekarang saya sudah terlalu muflis! Seluar panjang slak yang lama sudah tidak muat kerana bahagian punggung kesemua seluar saya sudah menjadi semakin, bukan lagi semakin tetapi memang sempit. Sukatan pinggang saya kini sudah bertambah 3cm. 

Kesemuanya disebabkan cara pemakanan yang tidak sihat dan kurang senaman ringan dan berat. Antara makanan-makanan yang harus saya jauhi ialah seperti kek, keju, coklat serta makanan-makanan yang terlalu berkolesterol tinggi. Antara senaman-senaman yang harus saya mula lakukan ialah senaman arobik dan senaman kardio terutama sekali duduk atas untuk membakar lemak-lemak di bahagian perut.

Duduk atas???? 

Yay! I'm celebrating since my blog reached 100000 readers today!

I also received loads of chocolates from LS who is studying in the US. Apparently none of those perkindnesses put them in their refrigerator until it reached me! Amazingly none of the packets melted off! Thanks Sum!

My refrigerator is overloaded with chocolates now. Those that my students gave me are not finish yet and I'm trying to control myself as to not eat so much. Thanks to Teddy who reminded me of my zits popping out!

The past week and early this week we have been experiencing foggy weather. The Fog is believed to be passing by this area from China to the southern part of the country. Look at the difference in these photos I took right from where my desk is in our teacher's room...  

2008 will end in no time! Just look at my weekend, time just couldn't emphasize with us human beings. Well, I mentioned earlier that we had a one mid-week break last Wednesday honoring Teacher's day and last Friday we had Teacher's Appreciation week. Thailand seem to have its own special date for Teacher's day so those of us here celebrate it on January 16 every year. The student council had some programs prepared and each of us received a garland of nice smelling jasmine!

I was feeling tired and needed a good meal at the end of the week so we decided to go to the nearby Singapore Chicken Rice Restaurant. Ahh...love the familiar ambiance just like the SCRR we use to go back home. The cost was reasonable and the food was nothing but aroy (means 'delicious' in Thai). I also noticed that they have Rojak Singapore, Laksa, and other familiar taste that we seldom get to eat here. At first we wanted to try several dishes but one dish was reasonably big that it became impossible to finish all if we were to order more. So we went for steamed chicken and steamed vegetables which are the well-known ones. Well, it's just close by, we can come whenever we want to right?

zzzzzz....

Hey I'm back updating after getting only few hours of sleep due to packing. Nevertheless, let's continue...

So we went to church as usual on Sabbath and was smacked by the sermon a bit since well, to measure ourselves using a scale of perfection isn't easy.

We went out of the church with a crave for Indonesian food. So the easy-on-the-taste bud friend who also happens to like the big and small adventures hoped with us and off we went to look for Bali Indonesian Restaurant. Well, the road was indeed confusing but finally took us to the exact place with stingy parking lots. Argh!! You...take a cab to this place! Well, the modern Jawa ambience so-called shack was about to close and re-open at 6pm and time pointed out to be 2 something pm and the tummies were growling! So we decided to go Korean instead. Ya, blame it on the bunny lava-lava song that got me distracted on directions. My bad ended us up on the sky train that in no time fed us with food! So we each ordered a main course and settled down with kimchee, chonggakmu and korean utensils.

Well, it is easy for you to recognize tuna kim-chee soup and bibimbap but Hobbit could hardly see his stainless steel as food!

*Cold noodles flirting with rough blended ice! Hahahahahahaha!

I was ready to trade but he refused! The wife picked the wrong plate and the husband had to endure. Thanks to Jj's bowl of rice!

Wait, we didn't end with all chilli's stuck to our white jewels though instead someone suggested the next stop would be Buongiorno. Ahhh...Italiana with cake buffet!

*with a big fake appetite... 

*Still eyeing on some more... 

*dizziness kicked in... 

5 x 3=15 was merely a joke! Speaking of high expectations the big dogs had in our tummies!

Hear the background music? It's an Indonesian song sung by Rossa entitled Aku Bukan Untuk Mu.

I have been curious about this song since July last year. During my visit to KL last July, I met up  with my parents and stayed with them in a hotel. It happened that my mom was attending some courses and had to wake up early to study for her material. So before going to bed she would set her alarm to go off at around 4 or 5 early morning. Every time her phone alarm goes off, a beautiful Malay tune would serenade the room. Never heard of the song before, I was actually awaken by the catchy introduction and the whole song itself. Well, the alarm (or the song) went off blasting my mornings throughout my stay that week. So by the time I left for Thailand, without knowing the title of the song or even the singer (didn't bother to ask), I started recalling some lines of the song that managed to register in my head hoping to find the song but never did until today. Well, it is good that I can enjoy it now, although the lyrics and the melody sounded somewhat gloomy...

Mom, I found the song! *_* 

How nice! It's Wednesday and it's holiday! How nice to have a day off in the middle of the week. It's Teacher's Day! What else could I be doing if not catch up with sleep and movies? I should be catching up on my papers but this teacher wants a full fledge holiday!

Guess what? I have totally forgotten the other blog I had like decades ago. So I apologized by telling her of the movies I've watched...

Just this morning I watched No Reservation. Quite good. Catherine-Zeta sure hasn't lost her charm. I wasn't so impress with Zoey's character though. The food featured, man...it just made me drool! If you expect romance in this movie, don't. There ain't scenes that captured a lot of it. French kiss was the furthest it went. Well, for the most part of it...I enjoyed the cooking!

Last weekend, Hobbit and I had another session and so we sat down for Stardust. We bravoed at the end of it. Never thought such fairytale exist in nowadays' film industry anymore but it was all good. I was glowing all along while watching. Nah..you'll catch it when you watch or had you?

Stardust to Stargate which blew off the glow I had on earlier. Rather not talk about it.

Wedding Daze made Hobbit fell from his chair (exaggerated of course!) but really, wanna see the reversed side of life, this movie is totally it. Unless you're already living the reversed.

The Island Princess. How can I forget Dellula dear. She's all fair and hair. Barbie sure has this charm of turning big girls into little ones again, including big boys- there is! Even if you want to dress to kill, please don't get advice from peacocks...although you love rainbows. No, I'm not in a position to say no to lovely feathers but just make sure to make arrangement aside from a fancy fan-like. Barbie...happily never after? A-ah!

Curiosity was the one that brought me to this Indian movie-The Train. Wow, since when did we have a ticket collector inside the BTS that demands 60 'baths'? Is there something wrong with my eyes or ears? Or both? Wanna see Bangkok/Pattaya in an Indian movie? Watch this. Well, the location and the sudden rapid saris didn't bother me, I enjoyed it overall.

Sad movie (the title?), is a korean movie that depicts about 4 stories tied up with a common theme - sadness. Depressing! Cry? I didn't cry since why waste money on making such depressing movie? Well, didn't really watch it. Skip, skip...skip to my loo!

Love's Unending Legacy is another good watch on Sabbath. It has a sequel to it which will only be release somewhere May 2008. If you love reading Janette Oke's books and Mark' Griffith's movies, here you go. Another one from Janette Oke's movie that was directed by the famous Michael Landon Jr. I watched 2 years ago was Love Comes Softly. Makes me love the past!

What good is a company without the help of a customer relationship management (CRM)? well, some companies can manage to boost their sales and do well in the market place but some are sinking without even knowing they are. I had a bad experience with one sales lady who treated me rudly to the extend of yelling when all I said was "Excuse me, you gave me the wrong phone card."

For those of you who are living in Australia, there is a CRM consultancy boutique called Bright Blue and they deliver quaqlity CRM consulting. They also provide innovative CRM solutions and CRM packages to businesses. Being in this business for almost 10 years, Bright Blue has helped some of Australia's leading organizations to deliver innovative CRM solutions. So if you have a company and would like your company to excel despite your surrounding competitors, then increase customer satisfaction. Tour around brightblue.com for more information o their innovative CRM packages.

Please give me this -- Korean Kimchi Chocolate

All across the country people are mourning for the late HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana. The PM's office announced last Wednesday that officials of government agencies and state enterprises dress in black for 15 days to mourn her death including flags to be lowered to half-mast. So everyday this week and probably next week we will be men and ladies in black. Someone told me that it is some sort of a requirement especially those who works in the government or other sectors. According to the source, if you fail to abide with the rules, you could sleep behind bars for 25 days! Imagine a news headline that goes "So and so was arrested due to dress-code offense" or "A XXX citizen was arrested for wearing yellow"...

Hobbit and I were watching news on several Thai channels a couple of days ago and noticed that certain programs were in B&W. We looked at each other and tried different solutions to fix the problem but hey, there was nothing wrong with the telly! When we switch to Australian channel and other Korean channels, color resolution worked perfectly fine. 'Til later on I found out that some Thai channels joined in the mourning period too! Except for some advertisement. *_*

Another experience was at a restaurant. How do the chefs, waiters and waitress whose normal uniforms are white in color join the mourn? Well, they pin a small piece of black cloth to their left sleeve to show the intention.

The time I remembered having a black piece of cloth pinned to my left sleeve was when my 'Ah Gong',maternal grandfather, passed away. One of my brother, a little kid at that time, lost his piece during the burning ceremony (we had to burn all the black pieces together in a special ceremony after 100 days) and we couldn't find it. A few days past and mom found the piece still pinned to Mitch's shirt. So mom consulted 'Ah Po' grandmother and was told that she needed to burn the piece immediately together with my brother's shirt! The wearing of black mourning clothes is a local Chinese custom with no religious significance. Wearing 'boon tar cloth is a Confucian practice. Whew traditions...

Since the beginning of this year people's eyes have been fixed on news slides which consists mainly of unfortunate events that continuously disabling the restoration of peace that everyone prayed for this year. While news and eyes were busy scanning through Princess Galyani's death, Bhutto's assasination, death toll statistics, England Queen on YouTube, fuel petrol crisis, Man attacked by Zoo tiger, etc, Hobbit and I have been busy scanning through education materials and eye-fixed on our IT projects! Certainly Christmas was just another day except that some traditional gift opening on Christmas morning was observed. The get-together Christmas party sure was a treat for those deprived from families' get-together. The New Year celebration was also flanked by some satay and other bakar or BBQ finger-food. Taste of home I would say but would be more tastier if celebrated locally! *wink* 

So tomorrow marked our last class for this session. I have enjoyed running around like a student again for the past two weeks and has no regret at all studying during this time of the year when everybody I assume are having their own blast! I had a blast too! Those two classes were really great. I learned a lot, sat with wonderful people, and had tons of fun! How nice if only I could take a break from work and be a full time student again? I will, someday.

New year, and I have not coined "resolutions" so well. I don't have one. It's out of the New year's league and I have quit the teenagers game. Perhaps, above all the things I needed to learn this year, one thing is pertinent--that is to have Jesus, and Jesus alone. You might have read or heard people say "All we need is Jesus!" I paused and asked myself one day, why do my "wants" always interferes with my "needs"?  Why can't I be satisfied with "needs" alone?  Why the "wants" seemed to have a longer list? As I searched for answers, this phrase came along. It's easy said than done but I am learning and going to learn this well, to only have Jesus!