Monday, September 10, 2007
Yups it's been another un-happening weekend.. how exciting! Haiz realise it's becoming almost routine.. waiting for the weekend to come.. then when it finally comes, find that it's not really enjoyable. Well actually this weekend I managed to get many things sorted out lah..
Fri afternoon, I got a call from Dave of Security... the bikes have arrived! We arranged for them to be delivered to Lonza cos we wouldn't have anyone at home to receive them during office hours mah.. Arriving was one thing.. nxt thing was to find a proper place to leave them till we knocked off! The security guards tekanned me made me move the 4 big boxes here and there till they were satisfied, before I could go back to work. At 4.20pm, we met downstairs to (try to) assemble the bikes. When I heard that we had to assemble them ourselves I was already abit apprehensive leh. Indeed, putting the pieces together wasn't as simple as it seems.. 6pm and we were still out in the cold trying to fit the pieces together.. indeed some of the pieces were broken! Charles' bike was the most severely hit, suffering a broken bell and a cranky front tyre, not to mention a part of the seat which dropped into a shaft and cannot be retrieved. Yingyi's gears were problematic, with a bike chain which came loose whenever the geared were changed. Mine and Wenseen's were suffering with minor hiccups with the brakes, but generally still ok! That was my worst fears realised. When I heard we'd to assemble the bikes ourselves that was what I was most afraid of, and the problems really materialised!
Luckily we've a bike expert in Jack, and thanks to him spending more than a couple of hours later on at night trying to "cure" our bikes of their symptoms, at least we've 2 good bikes now! The other 2.. well Charles tried all means to get the metal rod out of the shaft.. be it banging the frame on the floor, with hammers, tweezers, rubber bands, hairdryer... just wouldnt come out. So we're calling the company to get a refund for that one. As for Wen Seen's one.. she feels that it's too tall for her, so she's refunding hers as well. Yups indeed the bikes are really tall. I can barely touch the ground on it! But this should actually be the correct height to prevent hurting my knees, so its fine for me ;p
Anyways on Fri evening, we had our footy session again! Thking of making it a weekly activity... since most of us are bored to tears after work anyways, and a get-together and an exercise session can't do us much harm! We played with more angmoh teens this time... They really weren't bad.. almost on par with us.. and my touches deserted me for the day... managed to pick it back up later on though... time to train liao... if we can't beat the kids how to play with the grown-up angmohs! After football (not only football of cos.. the other half of the guys/gals were beating a volleyball around and tossing a frisbee at each other haha!) we bought K's Chicken (unhealthy fast food for once!) to Jeff's place to makan. Actually I wasn't really hungry cos we had a new starters induction in the morning/noon, with breakfast and lunch provided, and I had ate with the intention of skipping dinner! The food was good too lor... sandwiches and prawn toast and chips and more nice-but-i-dunno-wat-it-is food! Then I koped biscuits to bring home too haha... Anyways... I wasn't hungry, yet I still ate dinner cos I just couldn't resist K's! Pig hor!! Haiyah nan de I eat so much veggie and fruits and exercise so much here... I'm already leading too healthy a lifestyle for my own good!
After Jack did all the repair work with our bikes we cycled home in the cold at 11+... brrr and it was reeeeeally cold lor.. cos I was still in my shorts and t-shirt! And to make it worse we lost our way cos we've never taken the road home before.. always walked the shortcut!
Saturday was ever so routine for us... the long long walk to Slough Central... headed for the bank... queued for over an hour.. got so angry but couldn't do anything cos it's the"culture" here... then get someone attend to me finally who promises me evrthing I ask for... but I know better than to trust them now. But I finally handed in the form (for a 2nd time in 1.5mths) to remove taxes from my bank interest. Hopefully this time it'll get processed without any glitches lor. We went to the library too to change our residential address, and as usual I got carried away and started borrowing alot of books (almost forgetting we'd to lug them and walk the long way home later!). I borrowed a couple of travel guides, a German language textbook and, lo and behold... a book on the changing face of Slough! History of Slough... now that's interesting... was it really a piece of marshy wetland last time!? After getting our groceries from Tesco, we went to a hardware store to get a new Tefal wok.. this has almost become our hobby le... spotting the best deal (yesh dats how bored we're!)! Wen Seen had the credit this time to have spotted the best deal in that store! I bought a brush for scrubbing my socks (I noe I shouldn't be talking abt this here, but there's really nothing to talk abt le haha!) cos I'm so sick of cutting my hands trying to scrub the socks with the washing powder beads!
^^ Some neighbour's cat posing on a car.. cats here really do like to perch on cars... easier to catch birds flying by meh!
We struggled home with all the groceries to catch the England-Israel match! EPL dun have... luckily their tv still got show international matches! Later I managed to catch the France-Italy and Portugal-Poland on FootyTube... thanks whoever it is who set up the website... you've managed to put abit of entertainment in my life here!!
^^Sunday's lunch prepared by yours truly! The egg was abit gone case cos our pan was completely the 'stick-on' kind!
Haha Sunday...I dun thk u wanna hear me talk about Sunday unless its past your bedtime and you need some serious hypnotising.. anyways wait wait... Sunday actually came to life at night.. when I fulfilled my promise and cooked my carbonara pasta!! It was tiring, but it was fun.. and I thought it was nicer than the previous time! Of cos credit must go to Wen Seen for giving me advice! No thanks to Jieli for standing at the side and cursing at my masterpiece to go awry! Most importantly.. I've finally got pictures to show for my effort!!I made my meatballs again too, though I thought this time it wasn't as fragrant as the first time ;p After dinner I set to work again cooking lunch for the next day! Fried rice! Ok lah it might be fool-proof.. but it's good training ground leh... alot of preparatory work, and very tedious! I chopped mushrooms, and used some of the mixed veggies (carrots, sweetcorn, peas, green beans) I bought. Then sliced a large piece of smoked salmon (got it at a steal cos it was expiring le... wah super housewife sia me!) Got my assistant (haha!) Jieli to fry the egg on the sidelines. The mushrooms were first to be sacrificed... followed by the veggies. Then I threw in the salmon, and added some pepper and salt and soy sauce. Then in went the rice, followed by more salt and soy sauce. Then lastly, we arranged the egg nicely on top... voila... another perfect meal haha! Hehe I'm starting to like cooking... next time must try to cook more cheem cheem dishes le!
Last night, we were up to our aunty entics again! Heard Elaine say that Asda got marked down prices after 9pm, and off we scooted! So farnie lor I tried bringing something to the Asda boy to get him to mark down cos it's 1 day from the expiry, then he told me to come back to get it tomorrow! Then later he saw us again and kindly pointed us to some potatoes he'd just reduced! Gave us the "yao-gui" kind of look lor! haha but we din care lah.. still grabbed the potatoes.. whole bag for 1p! Why not manz! We got some other good deals too... big loaf of multigrain bread for 14p, French loaf for 10p and 1 box of mixed veggies for 10p (tried hard to prevent Jieli from buying this cos got cauliflowers!) So cold lor when we walked home! Waited till 9+ trying to see which items will drop further... in the end wasted so much time! Came home le still had to cook fish for today's lunch.. I took the easy way out and just rubbed teriyaki sauce on the fish and threw it in to bake.. still turned out quite nice in the end though!
^^ Chopping and cooking the ingredients for my carbonara sauce
^^ The end product! Topped with an egg to look pro! Haha actually it does improve the texture and taste of the noodles ;p
^^ Raw material for production of meatballs!
^^ The "balling" process
^^ Balls for everyone!
^^ Pasta with meatballs!
^^ Material for fried rice
^^ The egg-frier
^^ Dumping the fish into the mix
^^ The mushroom, the fish, then the veggies... a healthy mix!
^^ Concentrate!
^^ Showing some skill
^^ Finally the rice goes in
^^ The final outcome! Healthy living in Slough...
Anyways I slept late again, and in the end spent the whole day in office in a daze today... no chance to go down on plant so it was even worse... sat at the desk reading SOPs I din understand... of cos fall aslp la!! Alrite.. 9+ le.. spent 2hrs typing le... thk I better stop now ;p I promise my next entry will be more interesting cos I'm playing soccer tmr!!
senz posted at 12:16 AM
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