Spring cleaning in November???

At last the long awaited long weekend has finally arrived! The last long weekend I had was a mere 3 weeks ago but it felt like an eternity waiting for this one to arrive!

So, what have I been up to today you might ask? Well, I started the day early at 8.30am which is very unusual for me. I went jogging this morning and did 5 rounds around the park. The fresh cool morning air plus bright sunshine somehow energised me to do more than my usual 4 rounds.

After that, I did some wardrobe spring cleaning. The pile of unfolded clothes in my wardrobe sits precariously high that one day an avalanche might happen! I have a lot of unused clothing lying in my wardrobe - some old, some hardly worn, some untouched. It's annoying every time I open the doors of my wardrobe and see lots and lots of clothes that I need to dive in head first to search for something to wear.

While sorting out each and every piece of garment in my wardrobe and separating the 'wanted' from the 'unwanted' in neat piles, I discovered that I have 2 brand new pairs of unused black socks for work, some unworn black T-shirts and a pair of Adidas trackpants and shorts and a pair of Arena swim shorts. Haha! No need to buy new exercise gear. More cash to spend on other things (wants, not necessities)!

What I put aside were mostly clothing from 2005 and before from high school, college and university days. Some are so old and faded, some don't fit, some just look terrible and not befitting of a working adult, and others have just lost their appeal. These days, my clothing choices are very limited. For 4 days, it's working attire (long-sleeved shirts and black trousers), Fridays are casual and the weekend is mostly shorts and T-shirts, with the occasional jeans and dress shirt (but I hate wearing those!).

I feel alot happier now that my wardrobe looks relatively bare compared to before the spring cleaning. I hope to keep it that way for a while until clothes start piling up again, which I predict would be in another 5 to 6 years. I shall donate my unwanted clothes to the less fortunate. Mum's colleague is going on a Mission trip to Cambodia next weekend. I hope they will find a new owner who will appreciate them more than I do now.

The Venetian

In 3 weeks, I will be visiting Hong Kong and Macau for a brief winter holiday. At first I wasn't too excited about spending a night in Macau because I would have less one day of indulgent shopping in Hong Kong, until my family decided to upgrade to a night at The Venetian. Oh yeahh... I know I'm spoilt for the finer things in life! XD







And so, I did a little research on the accommodation, facilities and entertainment on The Venetian's website. It's certainly a privilege to be able to visit the world's largest casino which is also the sixth largest building in the world. There are no such things as standard rooms - there are only luxury suites with the Royale Suites starting at 70 square metres of floor space!



The Venetian can never qualify in namesake if it did not have an authentic Venetian themed interior. It boasts of over 300 shops built around 3 canals complete with gondola rowers, street performers and a vast painted ceiling that resembles a sky with enough lighting to match the time of day. I ran through the directory of shops at The Grand Canal Shoppes which are enough to rival that of a large world class shopping mall. Needless to say, I marked the ones which I intend to visit:

1. Coach
2. Adidas
3. Armani Exchange
4. ck Calvin Klen
5. CK Underwear
6. G2000
7. Hugo Boss Orange Label
8. Massimo Dutti
9. United Colours of Benetton
10. Zara





I hope to have sufficient time to explore The Venetian since I will mostly be touring around the ourdoors to visit some famous landmarks with Ruins of St. Paul being the foremost. I will be arriving and departing Macau via Hydrofoil so I will need to watch the weight of my luggage and not go overboard with the weight of my shopping bags (pun intended)!

In dreams I run away...

I have not been able to sleep properly for the past couple of nights. I'm either running away from something or getting in fights with people, or getting very emotional and breaking down in tears.

If there was a dream interpreter, the interpretation would be that deep down inside, I am running away from some problems in my life. Currently, I cannot see any reason for me to run away from anything. I don't think I am trying to escape from anything at the moment. I'm quite happy with my life. The only time when I constantly dreamt I was running away was last year when I was working in a Big 4 accounting company. Everything about the place was negative to me from the people, the work, the culture and the environment. And so I left to save my sanity!

However, leaving that place hasn't really made me forget about it. It still gives me the shudders whenever I think about it. Just two nights ago, I dreamt I was trying to escape from the Big 4 office stealthily during work hours - silently moving along the corridors in the dark, my body pressed tight against the wall and sneaking into lifts undetected. And I successfully escaped and ended up at the LEGO aisle of a large toy store!

MOOOooo...

Moo Cow Frozen Yoghurt is a relatively new dessert bar concept here in Malaysia which serves frozen yoghurt with flavours and toppings of your choice. After making 10 purchases and accumulating 10 stamps for each purchase, I finally qualified to redeem my free serving of frozen yoghurt. My favourite is the original flavour which tastes subtly sweet and sour, just like how decent yoghurt should be, except that this has the consistency of soft serve ice cream. It’s smoother and lighter than gelato and each spoonful melts in your mouth. Of all the toppings available, I prefer dried cranberries since it gives some kick to mandibles wanting some bite and is not too sweet and overpowering that it detracts from the original flavouring of the frozen yoghurt.

Sanma Kabayaki

There's always a first time for everything. Tonight was the first time I tried a 'sanma' fish at a local Japanese restaurant. The first time I was exposed to a sanma was at a Japanese restaurant in the city. Their pretty menu had a picture of the cooked whole sanma fish, shioyaki style, which looked pretty intimidating to me since the head, body and fins were still intact. The sanma fish is known as the 'Pacific saury' in English. It has a long, elongated and slender body and is a pelagic schooling fish. I have a keen interest on learning about the fish that I consume. So far the common local fish that I eat are coral cod, mangrove snapper, flounder, mackerel and leather jacket. If you hadn't already read my older post on fish, I am a bit of a nutter when it comes to fish but lately laziness has gotten the better of me and I have decided to take a long break from fish keeping again.

I decided to order the sanma this time because the dish pictured in the menu showed a sanma that was cut up, kabayaki style, as opposed to a whole gutted fish! I am always rather hesitant when trying new fish because I have no idea how the flesh would taste. There are several fish which I dislike eating, most of them freshwater species because they taste of mud and stagnant water, and pomfret because of their fishiness. I was pleasantly surprised at how similar the sanma tasted to a mackerel. It wasn't fishy at all and the flesh was nice and firm. The sanma is another oily fish (just like the mackerel) and it did have a distinctive smell similar to cod liver oil. Call me strange or what, but I do enjoy cod liver oil. In fact, I love popping the capsules in my mouth just to feel the oil spurt all over my mouth, and I then lick my mouth clean with my tongue!

Will I order sanma again? Definitely YES! And this time, I might go for the whole fish, shioyaki style!

Two bananas in a banana republic...

It's a long weekend and my friend invited me out to The Gardens for some retail therapy. You see, she had been travelling in Italy for almost two weeks but did not have the time (and Euros) to go browsing for Gucci and Prada in Rome. Off we went on a lovely sunny Sunday morning with very light traffic on the Federal Highway.

I bought a cool preppy looking slate-coloured half-zip four-button pullover from Banana Republic. It's got a high collar that is fastened with a zipper and 4 large buttons. It was also my very first purchase from Banana Republic since I was always under the impression that their clothing was very overpriced. But I was very surprised with what I found today and I can't wait to show it off next casual Friday at work although it's really for my trip to Hong Kong next month.