I hate running. All sorts of running.Uphill,downhill or flat. So it amuses me when I read that there’ll be people running after big rounds of cheeses…up and down a really, really steep hill. All chasing after a 8lb Double Gloucester. Gila ka?

So, typical of me, I whinged to Bacon about going to the Annual Gloucester Cheese Race…with a wish to actually join in which was immediately dashed after seeing the hill

As the race was on Monday noon, we decided to take a slow trip down south on Sunday, moving on towards Gloucestershire Monday morn. Feeling a little peckish, we stopped by Leicester looking for curry..as it was apparently famous for its Pakistani, Indian and Bangaladeshi immigrants. Walked round and round the city center…no curry house, only chicken house. No dirty thinking here, but Leicester has definately got more than it’s share of takeaways selling chicken..I counted 5 down a 500m strip of road. Those who had clubbed with me will also have come across my yearning for nasi lemak ayam goreng at weekends around 4am :).Either that or tomyum & a piece of fried chicken.

I digress.

We ended up eating at Las Iguana, A Latin Experience. Lovely little place, suprisingly excellent food. I had the sardine starter and Bacon had the cured ham, both yummy over seared slices of baguettes.For our mains, I had the ARROZ CON MARISCOS (Latin paella of squid, mussels & salmon with saffron rice & peas) whilst Bacon had the HUEVOS RANCHEROS ( tortillas topped with two free-range eggs cooked in salsita with chorizo,mushrooms & spiced potatoes).. the typical mexican brunch which I’ve had countless times when I went mexican-crazy in California. Washed it off with a Caipirinha..some sort of Brazillian cocktail which shot straight to my head..we both had headaches after that. Seeing that we are quite heavy drinkers, this must’ve been lethal to force us into nearly passing out after one!!

Arroz con mariscos

huevos rancheros

the culprit

So off we went towards Oxford..with me sulkily nursing my headache.Checked into the hotel at 3.30…contemplated on whizzing off immediately to do some sightseeing…ended up in bed snoozing till 5.30. Only in Britian that everything shuts by 5pm on Sundays…so no point rushing around anyway.

Woke up at around 5…still sulking, we decided to get into town for a little looksee. Lovely little place this oxford. Filled with students, the bicycle traffic is akin to China…with most of them choosing the old fashioned ones with the black basket either in front of behind the bike. All the shops were closed for the day, but we still managed to look around town…stimultaneously bumping into my fav sinful dough..

Was closed,but we popped by the next day for some anyway.

Anyhoo, walked around town many times and eventually settled in a chinese eatery which sells my favourite drink…yin yong! A strange concotion of tea&coffee with condensed milk, this is my addiction from Kim Gary.No pics here as I was too dammed hungry to take pictures before eating. Suffice to say,we left the restaurant very satisfied with our double-boiled soup,mapo tofu and sizzling seafood..Just like the tai-chau used to make.

Heritage vs. commercialisation

Didn’t have much time the next morning after a sit down breakfast, rushed into town to tapau some Krispy Kreme just to find out that they did not have any original glazed…grrr.Beggars cant be choosers, I bought only 4 of their flavoured doughnuts.Damn toolan.

However, did bump into a house-hugging tree..

It was pouring as we headed towards Gloucester, and I was whinging about how I dont want to go anymore..since we were running late anyway..it starts at 12,and at 11.45 we were still lost. We eventually found our way there, and as the sun was shining, I made the stupid decision that we should still go to the Cheese rolling competition…which is a 30min hike from where our car was parked.

Kill me now..

Silly me in my slippers, I trudged alot the path,wishing for my phua chu kang wellies.The final straw came when my foot got stuck in the mud and wouldn’t budge…I had to pull it out quickly whilst nearly in tears with the rain suddenly deciding to pour down on me. Bacon then very gallantly carried me to the open field with his own foot sinking into the mud…better that than me whinging. As soon as we arrived on proper grass, the hailstorm started. Stood in the middle of a field with countless muddy people, holding a brolly to defend ourselves from the stoning that the heavens had decided to bestow upon us, I had no choice but to laugh. It helps that we were witnessing a bunch of crazies tumble down from a godawfully steep hill..not running,not walking,not climbling..just tumbling, head over heels. Ouch.

and we love rollin…esp after cheese

The hailstorm was replaced by sunny blue skies in a matter of minutes - welcome to Britian.

A bacon-shaped brolly

By this time, my feet’s so wet I’m slipping on my slippers…

I tried drying my mud-caked feet whilst witnessing the most insane spectacle in my life…people tumbling down after a huge cheese and then the up hill race of people climbing the steep hill to be the first to reach the top; it’s so steep that the participants are falling head over heels down the hill whilst trying to climb up! Totally insane…one guy tumbled down so far I cringed and couldn’t look. All around us, the blare of the ambulances kept comming…but yet the race for the big cheese continued.

a sea of humanlike cows

Total damage? 25 injured, whilst countless others were taken care by the St John’s Ambulance people for sprains,breakages and all that crap. Extreme sports of the country bumpkins.It’s more dangerous than sky diving…at least with sky diving there is a chance you will come out unscathed.

and we roll,just like ants

As we were trudging back, there were dozens of tow trucks pulling out cars from the mud..that was how bad it was. As for me, my feet,hair,face and jeans were all spotted with mud and I’ve never felt more like a cow.Except I don’t lactate.

Muddy and tired, eerily resembling these;

Crazy but true.

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Hungry for more cheese? The rest of pics of the day, with more at bbc website,plus a video!

Update: Donation button has now been enabled with Credit card payment option or Bank transfers and ads are moved to the sidebar to ensure maximum user-friendliness !

Update no. 2:
Any other form of donations are also welcomed (food,shelter,jewelry,flowers), especially volunteers to help me build sourrain.com!

Update no. 3:
Millions of thanks to my first and still sometimes, only reader, Moo as my first sponsor! Now I cannot bitch about not being to afford hosting anymore cause you’re paying!! DO I need to have a tagline “proudly sponsored by mooiness.com”?

Right…since Moo has ad-enabled his blog to help pay for the hosting and YC has a donation button to help her launch the Blackjetta Jewelry collection (which,by the way, is really nice!) , I also want…

I am both kiasu (afraid to lose) and kiasee (afraid to die)…so I have ad-enabled and also inserted a donation button on exordinarily ordinary!!Whahhaha…how more kiasu can I get, not to mention totally and utterly shameless !!

Moo said I need a business case, since both his and YC’s cause are for the betterment of men. So here are my pleading business case:

1. I have yearned for sourrain.com for years. I simply cannot afford the hosting charges which comes up to USD100 a year.
2. My birthday is coming soon…30th of June
3. My dear laptop is 6.5 years old…and the poor thing needs to retire; the main reason why pictures have been slowing down here is because I can barely upload it to my laptop due to lack of space and memory…I am working on a 5G hard drive ok!!!
4. Two weddings in a year; now everything is just transferred on to Mr. Visa & Mr. Mastercard…who are not very nice as they are charging 12% APR.

There are two ways of helping out. First, my blog has been enabled with Adsense, which is targeted advertistment for my blog readers.At the moment it’s all showing up crap adverts, but I’m going to try to ensure that only adverts relevant to my blogs show up. That way, the advertisers are happy to get to their target audience, my readers are happy to receive more information from the adverts, I am happy to receive the $0.00001 per click on advert.

Secondly, donate directly to the needful! There should be a button on my sidebar where anything is much appreciated, even RM1 or RM 0.10.

The more you give the more you get in return! Karma bites! I thank you for every penny! I’m such a simple girl, I will even accept donation of food, a birthday card or HTML skills to help revamp my blog..just say hi at milimail at gmail dot com.

Don’t worry, I have not and never will purposely blog with keywords that pay more to generate more cash…if you’ve read my blog long enough (and I know there are quite a few of return readers!!) , you should know that I don’t promote things for the sake of promotion, and all I ever yap about is me, myself and maybe the cat.

In a true commecialised manner, Paypal accepts Visa & Mastercard if you wish to donate.All in secure encrypted fashion.

(well, if you think my cause is full of shit, at least check out YC’s & Moo’s site to help towards their worthy causes )

Don’t you hate it when people keep getting your name wrong?

Especially since my name is quite simple and not something powderfull like shueh yvung or something along that lines.My parents’ logic is to name me such a simple name so everyone would know how to spell and pronounce my name

No one seem to be able to spell my name. I mean, how hard is MILI? Why am I getting Millie, Milly, Milli and Millicent? It’s like a perpetual circle of craziness. I get called all sorts; Mai, My lay,Mee, Minnie,Mini..

And then now my married name. I keep getting Baker, like as if I bake cakes or make bread. Even my father is spelling it Baker.

I have been looking for somewhere to bring my car this weekend…but my camping plans are ruined by the bout of rain rain rain that we’ve been getting all week. Looking around the web for somewhere to go this weekend, I found myself looking into a cheese rolling festival:

Of all Britain’s weird and wonderful customs and traditions, the annual cheese rolling races at Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire must be among the strangest - and certainly the most spectacular.
It takes place every year on Cooper’s Hill near Brockworth in the last weekend of May, and it sees scores of men and women hurtle 200 yards down a near vertical slope in pursuit of a seven-pound Double Gloucester cheese.

Riteee.

A guest ‘roller’ releases the cheese at his command: “One to be ready, two to be steady, three to prepare - and FOUR to be off”.

In the past the race day has also included a fair that took place at the top of the hill, with ‘grinning through horse-collars’ (also known as ‘gurning), shin-kicking and wrestling. There had been known cases of people getting hurt; the 2000 winner retired in 2002 after a severe roll into a fellow cheese chaser.

There are a few ‘events’ in this cheese rolling festival…with four downhill mad rush for the cheese and an uphill race for only the fittest. Apparently it is an age-old tradition, this chasing after a cheese.

For more info, click here.

I might just be tempted. Cheesy, but true.

……..that I pick up my car!!!

Woot..I have a car. Rather, I am paying for a car. Car’s not under my name due to insurance purposes..but loan is also not under my name, so I can still do a ‘runner’.So technically nothing is mine, I’m just contributing £150 to it….now I sound like lame-o.:/

Anyhoo..we have decided that Bacon will be in charge of all monetary issues like directing payment from our account to the loan. So being the first time loan-payer (does such a word exists?) that I am, I automatically moved money into our shared account so he can direct it as our repayment. Imagine my confusion when he kept thanking me for sending money to him. And then we started going out for meals every night this week…I was brought up on a weekday=home weekend=restaurants, so usually on a weekday we try to eat at home, saving all the MSG laden food for weekends, not to mention minimizing the costs of eating out.

Apparently I was conned - sorta. I thought we have to start repayments or whatever this month…but it’s not till next month. So now he has an extra £350 or so to spend (£150 for the repayment, £200 for the deposit)….that’s why he’s being so generous by us going out for meals.Cheh.

I’m just going to spend spend spend on his credit card then. That’ll teach him. Hmph..

I’ve not owned anything so ‘big’ before in my life…I am still in semi-shock.

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Since my precious rings are still lost, I’ve been whinging to my daddy who took pity on his little girl and decided to help her out. Bacon was speaking to a collegue about how irritating I had become ever since I lost the rings, and the collegue came up with a brilliant idea - he has a metal detector that he can borrow us!! All we need to do is set the frequency as per bacon’s ring to platinum, and it’ll do the work for us! Yay! And if it can’t detect anything, well, that means it’s gone forever..:(

It’s just typical isn’t it? I get so hyped up about it that I left BOTH cameras at home. Sibeh toolan.Decided to take only my digicam with me, so left it to charge together with the Pod.Took the Pod with me, left the camera.Grrrrr..

Got up at 6 yesterday and got home only at 11..I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. Arrived in London at 9, we promptly took a long walk to where we wanted to go..about 2 tube stops away.I slept through most of the intro session..I was so so tired and they were so so boring!Abit useless to send me huh…

By the time we finished at 2.30pm, I was a complete wreck.Pammy don’t even start class till 3pm, so I took the tube to Oxford circus, where Topshop is all three floors of parkson put together. Nice. It was intermittent rain/sunshine/wind…welcome to England.I had three layers out which I keep changing into and out of.Bought a GAP bag off discount at £7.99..bloody bargin.Popped into Esprit, Zara,Dorothy perkins, and ended up in a quiet cafe in Waterstones because I just couldnt keep going any longer..I was so sulky I just wanted to head on home..:((.Then Pammy popped in at around 4.20, and by that time I was like on crack with the coffee.

That woman pulled me around London buying everything.With her ‘10 percent student discount arrrr!’ she proceeded her whirlwind shopping like as if she’s the one who live in Leeds and not me..hahaha! Went for a yumchar/bitching session and then continue shopping till 7..and my train was at 8.30, so I was in a state of panic.Forever confident, Pammy was of the opinion that I still have shitloads of time, so we went to a Malaysian restaurant around Leicester Sq and I had the prawn mee…the nasi lemak didn’t look very nice.But I kinda regret not ‘tapau-ing’ the nasi lemak..i know I crave for prawn mee too…and let me tell you, it is very refreshing to burp prawn mee (or in penang, hokkien mee) and not roast beef!! Hahaha yes, I’m disgusting,so what?

At 8pm, we ran for the tube, just to end up in the wrong one and going back to catch the correct one. At 8.20, we arrived at King’s Cross, whereby she was off to a different tube to get her home and thus began my mad rush out of the station.I was under the assumption that the tube and the trains are connected…and imagine my suprise when after 5 mins of brisk walking aka jogging, I got out of the station right on the streets of London. EH? Where is the goddamed train station!?!?

5 more minutes to go, I saw a woman running…so I happily followed her running, hoping that she’s trying to catch a train.Which she is.I ran into the train as the doors were closing..bloody lucky considering that if I came in the wrong side of the station it would’ve taken me another 10 mins, but as luck would have it, I ran through the doors straight onto the train platform.

And so goes my second trip down to london..:).We’ll be going for a weekend later in the summer…and no more rushes that time!!

me is going to london.Big bright city lights, paranoid people, thick smoky smog…I like
I have a conference around Euston/Kings’ Cross area next tuesday, and boss had kindly given me permission to wander around London, as the conference finishes at 3pm.

Where to go??Where to go?? I will probably only have like 2 hours with a free pass on Zone 1 metro. Meeting fellow KL party animal after her classes at 6 (so happy!!had not seen her since last August!), and probably hop on a train back soon…last train leaves at 8.05pm, so not much time. Might wander around snapping pictures whilst waiting for her to finish, or like the last time I was there, take picture of all the metro stops.I hope it don’t bloody rain.Probably be in proper business suit with heels..so might try to bring some sneakers to change into.

Any suggestions? Its time like this I miss louyau and his hilarious blogs..:((

Dear football

I am officially conceding defeat to football. Yes, I lose, you win, happy boh ???Now go away.

Being stuck in an office of men, my lifelong curse continues. It started when I was 3………

The Daddy
He used to bring me to footy matches when Penang plays against whatever team. Happily I went, content with my kacang putih (roast chickpeas) that the kacang putih man will roll up in a newspaper cone. Ball? It was more like a feast.Then came the late night FA Cup matches..I could never understand why he don’t want to go to sleep, TV when also can watch what.

The Brother
Screaming around the house 24hrs a day at the sounds of the whole family taunting him ‘gila’, this wannabe sports commentator trudges on..like he had been for the past 10 years. Rain or shine, come or go, win or lose, match or no match, he talks to himself non-stop in his make believe world of an endless football game.Of course, no make-believe would be complete with the kicking of the invisible ball like a spider on crack…which is eerily similar to The Daddy’s favourite hobby of the invisible golf ball.

When he started kicking my basketball in and out of the house and dutifully killing my mother’s flowers, we seriously considered sending him to the nearest Hospital Bahagia, or otherwise known as the local happy mental institution. Preferably one where they treat football-titist.Or any sort of ball-titist for that matter.Failing that, I started sleeping with hidden balls underneath my bed.The last I looked, there are about 5 different variation of a pretend football underneath my bed.

Until today, everytime we speak, he would be asking for a jersey.Like a 2 year old child endlessly asking for candy. When he was 10, he got my father’s business contact to get him a Ajax jersey from Amsterdam. When he was 12, he conned my mother’s friend who was living in England for a England jersey. Then when his sister grew up, he conned all her boyfriends to buy him jersey, threatening them that he will not approve of them otherwise. They silently complied, kissing his already fat ass. Then the sister started to travel to UK…and every trip had been filled with some sort of football paraphenelia…including a picture of his beloved Highbury ground, the home of Arsenal. Which he did not appreciate since I did not buy him a jersey from there.

But his one coveted item still alludes him…the arsenal jersey with Henry tattoed behind. Boohoo..after Arsenal’s loss yesterday in the Champions’ cup to Barcelona…the price might just come down to humanly affordable.

The Bacon

This is the worst yet. Ever. Not only he plays football (or chases after the ball aimlessly like a donkey with a carrot), he watches, he has season tickets and he wears football gear..stinking up the whole house when he takes the sweat-unfriendly gear off

This weekend the Bacon is heading towards Cardiff…5 hours away, for the match of his life.The playoffs (as discussed here) finals…Leeds has at last managed to get so far. With tickets at £60 *gulp* , this better be good. There had been pleads on online boards for tickets…he managed to get his after a fellow mad friend/fan stood on the line outside the stadium for 6 hours.

And I can now hold a conversation in the office on the virtue of football.I can talk about teams, about different cup finals,different division, appreciate a good goal, understand the jubilation of a win. And berate the management for not installing a tv in the canteen for important games. Just in time for World Cup fever.

Yours sincerely,
football widow