Balik Kampung!

Here comes a long weekend!

04.28
Some will join the Bersih rally.
Some will go on vacation.
Some will attend 叮当 concert.
I will balik kampung!

It has been a long time since I last went back to Tangkak.
This time I am gonna spend a few days in the town – meet some old friends, check out the new house, and celebrate my mom’s birthday.

It is gonna be fun!

Mom and International Women’s Day

It’s International Women’s Day!
I’d love to dedicate this day to my mom.

Mom, thanks for sacrificing your youth and beauty to give birth to me and to bring me up.
I hope you haven’t regretted it yet.

Though I am not earning big bucks now;
Though I have not gotten a grandchild for you yet;
Though I can’t be by your side most of the time;
You know I am working toward these goals.

Mom, you are the best.
I love you! :D

random

My body is still aching after playing badminton two days ago.
Because of this, I couldn’t go to the gym for the past two days.
Judging from my current situation, I don’t think I can make it tomorrow either.
Sad!

I had dinner with tt, capella, roy, tse yong, peng hooi, and bryan at Hickory Park today.
Two hours after the dinner, I am still feeling very full.
Maybe I should have quarter chicken next time instead of half chicken.
I have a tiny stomach after all.

It’s already Father’s Day in Malaysia.
I gotta call my dad.
Ciao!

this coming weekend

Sorry for my inactivity in the past few days.
I wasn’t in the mood to blog.
I am not sure if it was due to what just happened in the office or what happened to a friend of mine recently.
To make things simple, let’s just call it writer’s block.

Even though I didn’t blog, I still tried to write something to Malaysiakini so as to keep my brain active.
Reading and writing that involve critical thinking are essential to one’s success at the workplace.
Or, I should say, the ability of thinking critically or of performing critical thinking is the key to success.

I still remember what my professor told me when I was working for him as a research assistant two years ago.
“An engineer must be able to think critically,” he said.
Of course, that’s not the exact sentence he told me, but that’s what he meant.
And the reason he told me so was because I failed to think like an engineer.
Hope I am different now compared to two years ago.

Anyway, I will be going home this weekend by bus.
I am really looking forward to it.
I just feel like dumping Gelang Patah into dustbin and leave everything else behind.
The main reason to go home is for the upcoming 清明节.
I didn’t know its translation in English.
A friend said it’s Qingming Festival (this is also what the Google Translate gives).
I looked it up in an online dictionary. It says it is Pure Brightness or Tomb-sweeping Day.
To be honest, all three sound lame to me.

Then I checked Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, three of them are correct.
However, Qingming Festival seems to be the official one or the most well-known one.

This coming Saturday I will wake up early in the morning and go to sweep my grandparents’ graves with my family.
I haven’t done so for two years.
My short stay in Malaysia is really worth it.

McDonald’s & KFC; The U.S. & Malaysia

The U.S. is the birthplace of McDonald’s and KFC, which both have franchises in every corner of the world.
Having tasted them in the U.S. and Malaysia, I definitely have something to say.

A McDonald’s meal without a cup of iced coffee is incomplete. You can get the same burgers and same fries in Malaysia, but it is the lack of iced coffee that makes it inferior to its counterpart in the U.S. 
If it is my call to decide where to dine in Malaysia, I would never choose McDonald’s, or at best once in a blue moon.
I went to Coffee Bean to get myself a cup of mocha ultimate after having lunch at McDonald’s yesterday.
That mocha ultimate cost me RM12 but it failed to be a first-rate coffee drink, at least not up to my standard.

Things are totally opposite when it comes to KFC.
Spicy chicken, French fries, cheese wedges, whipped potato, and cole slaw make an excellent feast.
Spicy chicken, the essential part of a great KFC feast,  is not available in the KFC restaurants in the states!
Nevertheless, I don’t mind dining in the KFC restaurant in Ames because it serves buffet!
This is something that the KFC in Malaysia should learn and perhaps emulate.

By the way, there was a rare opportunity for me to have Korean or Japanese buffet yesterday when I was in Malacca with my family.
However, I failed to seize the opportunity.
Why?
It was too expensive for the Korean buffet according to my mom. It cost approximately RM27 per person.
While for the Japanese buffet, it was because my mom didn’t eat sushi.
She actually suggested that we could eat separately with my sister and I having the buffet while my brother and her having lunch elsewhere, but I rejected her suggestion.
It was a family gathering, and hence we should all eat together but not separately; that’s what I thought.
Well, guess where we ended up eating at?
McDonald’s!

I miss my McChicken, McDouble, and iced coffee…