For about 5-6 years now, I have been wearing pants everyday to work.  I guess it started off as a convenience, especially when I needed to get up and down the jeep.

Colleagues who has worked with me for the past 5-6 years has only seen me in a skirt 2-3 times. So rare that when I wore it yesterday, everyone stopped and stared!!

Most of them said I looked nice in a skirt. One of them (man) said that I needed to learn to walk like a girl (!!!) and yet another said that I have huge hips (!!!)

The fact is, I have to admit that I did look good yesterday but I felt so uncomfortable because I’m really not used to wearing a skirt.

We had dinner at CLeaf just now and I saw someone having ABC. That tempted me to have one too. Knowing that I can’t finish one helping of ABC, I told Islam that I only wanted half of it. He told me that he can’t do it and asked me to do it myself.

Fine! I told him. I took out the condiments from the fridge and scooped out the jelly and leong fun into a bowl. Islam was kind enough to give me some left over shaved ice. He also passed me the gula melaka, red syrup and milk so that I could apportion it out onto my funny shaped ABC. I put lots of milk and less gula melaka …. and tada!!! I had my half helping of self-made ABC.

Lunch turned out to be a 3-hour affair today.

It normally takes about 25 minutes to get from my office to PD town but today, it took us about 1 hour to get there!!

There was a great big jam on the way to Lkt … and while it was supposed to take about 5-10 minutes to get there, we took about 40 minutes!!! And what was the jam all about? Well, it was all because of road works, plus, everyone was going extra slow just to see what the road works was all about.

When we came back to the office, it wasn’t as bad cause I think the police intervened and they had someone pose a traffic controller.

We celebrated S-En’s birthday today. She turns 9 today.

When we went to my mum’s place, she was all excited and wanted to open the gate for us to welcome us in but A. Eu restrained her. Told her she could only stay at the porch area and wait for us to come in. “But I’m the host!!!” she exclaimed. Nevertheless, she was obedient enough to wait for us to come in.

When I finally got all the stuff from the car, I asked S-En to open the gate and her response? “But the gate’s already opened”. Well, if my husband were to ask her to do that, she’d immediately do it.

S-En was in high spirits that day, talking and singing and screaming! But the moment she opened her presents, she was just the opposite. Why? She was too busy reading one of the books which her mum gave her.

Prior to that, we sang the birthday song for her and she served the cake to her “guests” (us!!) She had many phone calls from her friends and relatives. There was one from her cousin sister and I heard her say “It’s up to you if you want to buy me a present or not” – so diplomatic of her!!!

My sister in law and mother in law normaly invite us over for dinner just before our anniversary. This year was no different.

Because of my lingering cough, I decided not abstain from any food that would aggravate my throat. So I decided to call my SIL to warn her that I can’t eat a lot of stuff.

She made broth (rolled oats with tomato, carrots and boiled egg) which tasted err… ok but I didn’t finish it cause after a while I jelak. I drank the potato/carrot soup just to fill my stomach. There was chicken rendang (non-spicy) which I added to my broth (only the gravy) to give it an extra flavour.

The rest had chicken rendang (non spicy), idly, pumpkin paste and fruits.

I also declined chcolates and yoghurt … sigh!!! I would’ve loved to eat those.

For my anniversary present, I got a yoghurt maker … tho’ I hope that it would not go to waste.

Because of the festive season, I’ve decided to relieve all my colleagues and come to work – alone. It’s the 3rd day now that I am working alone and it’s super boring. Frankly, I think the office should be closed because the muslims are out celebrating. It’s really a waste of time and resources.

I decided to have breakfast with dear hubby today and as usual, we went to Ah Seng’s place.

I suggested that he drive my car there, after all, he has been hinting a lot that he has yet to drive it, after 11 months of my owning it. The last time I suggested that he drove it, he said that he prefers to drive it during the day time.

It took him quite a while to adjust the car seat and mirrors. I had to sit beside him to let him know where the controls are.

To get a feel of the car, he drove around the taman first before heading out to the main road. The entire drive was quite smooth. Because there was no parking on one side of the road, we went all the way to Bomba and took the new road from near Ocean to Rahang.

We went to Ah Seng’s place only to find that the place is full. We ended up sitting at the back, in a small room, which is good cause we had privacy, 2 fans on us and no one blowing smoke into our faces.

I am not sure yet, what I’m going to do for the rest of the day………

Well, today is the first day of Raya and as one who does not celebrate this festive season, I ought to be comfortably relaxed and at home doing whatever needs to be done.

My very nature states otherwise.

I woke up at 6am and was out of the house in 10 minutes to pick up my twin. We arrived at Bkt K at 6.45am. Several other ppl were there and we walked up the steep hill.

When we reached the top, PeterL asked if we wanted to try the jungle trail up and I enthusiastically said “ok”. I thought it wouldn’t be that steep as I’ve seen one of our other friends (who had a knee injury and is much older than I am) took that trail a few months back.

I panted a lot and PterL said that I’m fast losing my stamina. Wel, that’s really true. I haven’t been exercising much lately due to my never-ending cough.

After the strenous exercise, we went to FS for breakfast.

10.30am saw me in church. We had our CM2008 meeting until 4pm. A few depts were involved : co-ordinators, lights, sound, drama and choir. the purpose of this meeting is to figure out how many mics and lights we need for this year to determine what we needed to rent from the supplier.

It was quite a fruitful meeting, though a little draggy towards the end as I was coughing more and more by the minute. I was also feeling rather drained due to the lack of sleep the night before.

After the meeting, I rushed to A.Lily’s place for Raya lunch. I gobbled up some mee soto and nasi impit with kuah kacang. I know the latter is NOT good for my cough but I only get to eat that once a year. My “eat-now-and-suffer-later” attitude kicked in automatically.

I came back after 5pm, tired and exhausted. Managed to sleep for about 45 minutes and felt worse after that. Still, I was able to go to Prayermeet. I know that if I didn’t go out, I’d end up feeling worse.

After church, we went to CLeaf. I ordered porridge but it came so late, I had to have that packed!!!

Well, that was what happened on the 1st day of Raya …. a cery tiring day indeed.

Today has been a fruitful day. Early in the morning, I posted the tax stuff and went to church to measure the stage. Took me two hours!!!

Then I came back, got online …. laze a little before heading out to get my mum’s maid, T.  We cleaned part of my rubbish room. Even though we threw 4 big bags of rubbish, the room still looked messy  – but at least some stuff went out.

Got kinda drained out – after 4 hours of cleaning.

Decided to go out for dinner. Had spaghetti and guess what? When I asked the waitress if I could have any parmesan cheese, she looked at me blankly. Then I dropped the word parmesan in hopes that she would at least know what cheese was. She still gave me that puzzled look and took out a menu. I gave up.

Later, dear hubby saw a male waiter and asked him for some parmesan cheese. Again that same blank look. I told dear hubby that if they gave us that funny look, it means that they don’t have it. A few minutes later, he came with a small saucer of cut up cheddar cheese!!!!

It’s been hot and humid these few days. What is worse is the fact that it’s been two weeks since I fell sick and I am “still” recovering. I think I can safely say that the air around my house is so polluted.

Living a stone’s throw away from the main road, dust and carbon monoxide are no stranger to me. These few months, my neighbours were inconsiderate enough to add to the pollution. They’d burn their rubbish (which sometimes include rubber) almost everyday.

I guess the burning of rubbish caused my cough to linger longer than it should. I really felt like installing a loud speaker on top of my roof and coughing into it to at least hint to my inconsiderate neighbours that some of us are actually suffering from the unclean air.

A friendlier approach of course would be to buy lots of fans and place them outside my house so that when the wind blows toward my house, the fans would blow the smoke into another direction. Well, that would cost me a lot! As it is now, we’re switching on both air-conds just so that the air would be slightly cleaner. Our electricity bill went up about RM30 last month.