Last Thurs (25 Sep), mum has gone off to KL to follow my dad off for a trip to East Malaysia. The house is all mine and there shall be no mum to nag me for until the end of next week. Friday (26 Sep) - Gosh... landslide of work to deal with and had to sit through a meeting. Bleh... tiring day.

Saturday night... went to Prangin Mall with Jocelyn coz she wanted to buy some stuff from the Thai Fair before they their last day there. Then... we hung about Starbucks for a drink and some scrumptious cake.

Sunday... woke up late and thought "Damn... cannot bathe. No water!"

Then a curious gesture to check if the taps were really dry prooved to give me a pleasant surprise... My house STILL HAS WATER!!! Muahahaha! I can wash my clothes and mop the house and... do all the other mundane stuff... including having a nice cool bath.

F1 Race. US GP, Minneapolis. Rainy day with surprising results... bad day for Williams as Ralf Schumacher spins off while Montoya suffering from a spate of ill-judgement and really bad luck. Meanwhile, the Sauber team has much to rejoice for earning 10 points in this race with Frentzen in 3rd and Heidfeld finishing in 5th. A much deserved break for this team indeed.

The whole of last week was much a blur. For one... there was much to do prior to Gramp's birthday celebration on last Saturday. If there was one word to describe the whole of Saturday - it's "Non-stop". There were relatives coming and going from my house from mid-morning to til the afternoon. There were little kids running everywhere... some of them are just darn cute. *EEeeeeEEeeEEEEe... geramnyer*

At night, it was dinner out at the restaurant and well... again... playing usher and host... and I don't even remember at least 35% of the guests' names or family titles (who are they in the first place?!) and how they are connected to us. hehehe... all in all... was so poofed over the weekend.

Now back at work once more on the 2nd day of the week, it's been busy. Had to take up my colleague's workload yesterday since she was sick and on MC. Again.... damn... bzler... so... forgive the lack of updates.

Arrrrgggh!! It's Monday!

Ok... now that that's over with, let me recap on a few things that have happened since my last blog entry.

Work's the same... except I dunno why I had a sudden landslide coming in on last Friday. Didn't go home til 8pm... and sent some work to my "Yahoo! Briefcase" although I wasn't sure whether I'll have access to a PC at home over the weekend. Luckily, Mal brought my PC back on Saturday afternoon.

Got a haircut on Saturday afternoon prior to going out for a wedding dinner and didn't have much time to get ready after that. I'll go get my hair highlighted sometime during this week if I get home early enough.

Darn it... Italian F1 GP at Monza didn't go the way I hoped it would... but anyways... non-biased view --- It's a good sign for Ferrari that they could still win after a poor showing for the last 5 (or 6?) races... and that Montoya is still close in the race for the driver championship by keeping 2nd place. *Yay!*

5 Aug, Fri: Bowie & I went out to shop for stuff that was on bargains at Super Komtar... and I ended up spending like RM120 for 4 pairs of it. Pretty good buys I'd say.

On the other hand, my home PC is currently under scrutiny at Mal's - troubleshooting in progress as we try to pinpoint which piece of hardware is the cause of system instability... It could very well be because of the motherboard which can only mean... *gasp!*... I might as well look into getting a new PC.

6 Aug, Sat: Went to Komtar again after dinner. This time round - my dad and I went to look for the clear plastic wrappers at Popular Bookstore while mum had her fun looking through the same bargains I was looking at the day before.

Oh yeah... borrowed a laser pointer set to the Jumbuck too... that's the least I can do since I sure as hell am not sure where in the shopping complexes to buy one other than from the pasar malam's around the island.

7 Aug, Sun: Well... smrphhh... I slept for most of the day. In the afternoon - my mum and I went round to Gurney Plaza to pick out something as my treat to her for her birthday. She ended up purchasing a perfume package. Oh yeah, she also accidentally sprayed some perfume she was testing on me, before the purchase, into my eyes. Ow!

8 Aug, Mon: Wha...? Oh it's dark, it's raining... it's... gosh! Monday! Get out of bed you lazy pig! (but it's nice and cold... lemme sleep 5 mins more...)

The road is full of water... luckily there's less traffic on the road during the time I usually am on the way to work... I love school holidays!!! Apparently I escaped being stuck in a jam because *gasp!* ...Well whaddya know? An accident happened lar.

28 Aug, Thu: Met up at the sup kambing place to hang out with Shakila & Peky at about 10pm... and as expected, Dominic performed the concorde on us.

29 Aug, Fri: What did I do on Friday? Hmm... stayed home and hugged my pillow while watching TV and contemplating what else I have to do before I format my PC and upgrade from win98 to either win2k or winXP. Which one shall I pick? Heads - w2k; Tails - XP.

30 Aug, Fri (Eve of Merdeka!!): Traffic around Komtar was already horrendous by noon. Ack! Where did all these people come from?! My mood turned sour for the fact that I have 3 places to stop for errands and its been raining constantly too.

I dunno lar, I feel that I just can't quite tolerate standstill traffic and having to listen to my grandfather making unhelpful (duh! fact) suggestions at the same time - especially when it also involves a suggestion for an additional unnecessary errand plus use of an alternative route that, to my knowledge, will also be jammed...

Decided to follow my parents to dinner at the City Bayview revolving restaurant. The buffet was really good *burp! excuse me* At 10pm, I went out to hitch a ride with my colleague Christabel to go to Soho with her and some others. Parking was a whopping RM5!! That's expensive by Penang standards.

So Christabel, her bf and Jeffrey (our Singaporean visitor) went on to Soho and... gosh golly!! It was packed already. Then suddenly I saw Hooi Keong dancing like a man crazed... and on the other side of the joint - Erhps and Pam. Kewl. Later, Irene came in to join us. The music was ok at first but after the midnight countdown... it started to suck... big time.

31 Aug, Sun (MERDEKA!!!): The day started with glimpses of a 10 minute fireworks show from outside of Soho... and the countdown in Soho itself was late by about 4 mins... it's about time they calibrated their clocks :/

It's very anti-climatic to have a countdown after seeing the fireworks fying in colourful splendour in the night sky. We hung round until about 2am. By then, we have seen 4 girls who can't dance to entertain a crowd dance on the bar... Some of the things they did up there were just plain distasteful. No class at all. The girls dancing on the barstools next to us were way better in dancing.

Next it was a stop at the kedai mamak (sup kambing), home, sleep, and awake again at 9+am. Prayers again. Ack! Ok... I don't fancy all this ancestral prayer stuff but ok lar... I'm in a pretty ok mood today. My 2 grandaunts came over and we also had a surprise visitor in the form of my late grandmother's best friend. Sweet!

The house never sounded more lively - especially since one of my grandaunts is pretty deaf. It's quite a challenge when we all try to communicate with her. She'll smile and look like she understood and then suddenly - she'll ask us a question about something we might have just previously mentioned. It's kinda cute and funny actually.

Later in the afternoon, we went to stock up on Baskins. Even later in the afternoon, my brother and I scooted off to Prangin Mall to shop for some CDs and DVDs. I like what I found!! Just can't wait to find time to watch them.

1 Sep, Mon: Ooh! It's Monday and it's a holiday!! O yeah... I had a hiking appointment with Shane, Ah Siah & Bowie. We went up a trail from the Youth Park to some stop on the hill. It had a pretty good view of the town from there... the day was cloudy so it was nice. No worries about sunburn.

Anyhow, there was something interesting about what we saw. There was a small gap among the clouds that gave the sea a great big blob of sunlight... the like reflected off the sea's surface sorta looked like a footprint of some sci-fi alien aircraft. ;P

Anyhow, it started to drizzle lightly and we decided to hike our way down before it pours. When we got down - it stopped drizzling so we all went round the park to check out the newly installed facilities... including the new Xstreme sports arena. It's really huge! Too bad we didn't see any stunt skateboarders or rollerbladers there.

After exercise, pump up the calories! That seemed to be the case since Siah wanted to go to McDs... luckily we all got our Big Breakfast sets a good 10mins before the great Malaysian blackout. Hehehe...

Well whaddya know? First it's North America; then London; and guess who joins in the fray for a major blackout... Our very own TNB. Kiasu, I say *chuckles* *just kidding*

It seemed like some areas also had their water supply and telephone lines (those on digital transmission) cut off during the blackout. This prooves that too much technology may not always be good. Luckily, power came back 4 hours later. Hurray! ...and the first thing we did - was to switch on the TV... XP