some things are better left hidden.

The password to all protected posts is the name of the old company that I worked for - if you are a friend, it is quite obvious..

Not a coincidence.

I usually try to avoid talking about work here. Blogging is a pleasure for me, whilst work is not. Work hunting;is even worse.

I have come to the plateau where I am overpaid for what I actually do as work.Not to say that I am not worth the moolah that I am paid,but not in this job - i surf the internet for 3 weeks in a month, and do proper busy work for 1 week in the 4. I want to go back to what I do and what I loved - to work alongside collegues and bosses who actually appreciates what you do rather than blame you for things that are not your fault.

I was questioned over and over again about an overpurchased for the weekend - which was impossible as I only purchase what the forecast told me we would need. When I said that I checked the forecast before and after I have put the purchase through (to make sure all forecast has been fufilled),I was asked how can I be sure. To stop the attack, I suggested that I will screenshot the before and after every single day - which was met with the comment that is only an audit trail and does not prevent mistakes from happening.

Like not my fault in first place wanna find fault??

In the end, it was the forecasting team’s mistake, AS USUAL. NOT mine.But time and time again, I have been put up on the pedestal and blamed again and again.

I sometimes feel that I am being paid this ££ for the sake of having someone put the blame to. It does not help that I am in a very male-dominated industry where the only females are admin staff, which I am not.

I have never been so miserable before in my life. But I am unable to quit without another job waiting, as I need the moolah.And I cannot take a lower paying job-I will be unable to afford my current mortgage. I believe my 3-month notice period is the problem as well when looking for a new job - I am on the verge of saying to all taht I am available immediately and just abandoning this current job. I am so so miserable its unbelivable - comming in to work everyday is like torture and it brings my spirit down and makes me feel worthless and aimless.

I dont know what to do.Help me

With the explosion of the sushi bars and ubiquitios Japanese restaurants in KL, I had always been a fan of Jap food, with my regular visits to Zen whenever I get back to KL. Yummy. So it was a really nice surprise that I found somewhere semi-authentic to eat here in Leeds.

Yo Sushi is one of the best sushi bar in the UK - ableit a chain,but I love it all the same. I have tried others self-standing Japanese restaurant (Si Sushi, which the sushi chefs were actually fighting and swearing in a mix of malay& cantonese&Mandarin = Malaysian sushi chefs!). I never seem to like any others, and always return to Yosushi for a fufilling and happy meal

It also runs really good deals like 50% off all sushi - and that is when me and harajukucat descends on our local Harvey Nicks like flies to a rotten watermelon. This time around did not manage to attack with the cat, but brought the outlaws for their first taste of merry-go-round raw fish.

Of course, I started them off with un-raw food, which I quite like myself.

Beef tataki

Karrage something

The ubiquitious teriyaki chicken

Karaage Ebi

Karaage tori roll

Deepfried selection

After all that ‘fake’ sushi bar food, it was time for more adventures. Alas, even though they totally enjoyed the deepfried stuff, they were still a little reluctant to go for the sashimi stuff which I love..:( .

Tataki toro with coriander & lime

Tataki salmon with sesame seed

And to finish off, I had 3 (it was free refills) of lukewarm miso soup. Yes, lukewarm is never good,but I am not good with hot soups/drinks, so lukewarm is really good in my case

Anyone with a hankering for jap food in the UK, please give YoSushi a go. They have branches all over London, Manchester ect, even odd ones out in the Middle East and Paris

Give Yo a Go!

If you recall one of my pre-007 posts, one of my resolutions for 2007 was to cook more malaysian-type dishes ; food that I grew up with,from scratch, rather than passing off maggi mee goreng mata kerbau (instant noodle with fried egg)as my specialty

Thus masak-masak was born; my Sunday cooking sessions at home.

My first dish was inspired by spotting a well-loved vegetable at the chinese supermarket - it is not often that we get kangkung/water spinach here at hicksville. And of course, there is only one way to cook kangkung - in belacan (shrimp paste)

And I seemed to have lost my pictures documenting this important event!

Never mind - lets move on to my next installment in masak-masak

Sambal telur (egg in spicy thick sauce)
This is a typical dish available in most Malay eataries around Malaysia. It is also available in nasi kandar (indian muslim rice stalls) restaurants. It is deepfried hardboiled eggs coated with a spice paste. The spice paste is the most important part of the dish, and it varies from cook to cook - some have it really really fiery,spicy and red, and some cook it in a more fragrant and lightly spiced sauce. I was never a big fan of this, but Bacon loves it absolutely completely, so let’s welcome the humble sambal egg into masak-masak.

Step 1: boil about 6 eggs till hard boiled - should take 10 mins?

step 2: Prepare your rempah (spice mix)

I use 4 shallots, 2 lemongrass stalk, juice of 1 lemon, 2 teaspoon belacan,4 cloves of garlic and 3 chillies

step 3: and jig em’ all around - either use a food processor or do it old-skool like me- pestle & mortar. Better still if you can have access to giling it, basically a pestle and mortar but a flat surfaced rock and a rolling-pin like pestle.

step 4:Chop tomatoes (try to de-skin & de-seed it) and squeeze your lemons.Leave aside to add on to sauce later.

step 5: Deepfry your hard boiled eggs (peel first, of course).Make sure they are nice and golden,with nice brown outer skin.

set aside

step 6: tumis (shallow fry) the sambal paste in low fire until fragant - about 5 minutes.

step 7:Add the tomatoes and the lemon juice and continue cooking.Add eggs and make sure it is completely coated with the sauce

tip: add some fresh coriander if you’re a freak like me

step 8: sprinkle ikan bilis (deepfried whitebait/anchovies) and surf’s up!

It was damn freaking good ok…yumm

Mission accomplished, 007.

With much thanks to Moo for helpdesking,bankrolliing,hosting and support. Ok, that’s starting to sound like an Oscar speech.

Please update your bookmarks, o stalkers, and come back again soon. Trying to adjust to wordpress still, so comments please, if you have complaints, accusations or suggestions.

xoxo

This, is Joel, otherwise known as smellie
Don’t know why his mommy call him smellie
But he sure is a cutie
(of course, takes after me :P)

Its always scary when your friends start reproducing - you’re torn between feeling left behind and a tad afraid that the day might finally arrive when you reproduce. I don’t even feel quite adult yet;how am I supposed bring a baby up?

And after 25 hours of labour, one of my oldest friend had produced this:

Hi there.I am a cute char xiu bao

Baby’s first hi-five

Konon looks like he belongs to us…

And then he wee.And then he poo.So we left:).Actually,left to pig out at Zen & Kim Gary. Baby steps ya…let me try out being a kai ma (god mom) first…

With two parents being some IT pros, the baby,of course, has his own personal blog.But warning ahead - do not view if you giggle uncontrollaby at the sight of a breast milk pump (I don’t even know they exist!!)

If you’ve missed any of my previous installments on the track to Australia, well, below is just for you! A summary of Le Barkers’ Australian tour of 2006

Making it from Leeds
Sun, Surf, Lobsters & burgers
Victoria’s Great Ocean Road
Philip Island’s Kangaroos & Penguins
U of Melbourne’s Graduation
Yarra Valley & Lygon St.
Sydney’s Rocks Weekend market & Haymarket
Sydney Fish Market, Star Casino, Aquarium & Towers
Manly Beach
A do-nothing day
Bondi, Coogee & Paddy’s Market

Ahhhhh…I am so proud of myself for finally cataloging this.

This is slotted to be the last in my OZ series. Not many pictures - mainly because my poor camera was literally washed away when a giant surf hit me .

Bacon had insisted that even if it was thundering or raining cats and dogs, there was no way he was going to miss out on Bondi. Thank god the sun was shining and all was well in paradise.

We agreed on,Breakfast on Bondi, Lunch at Coogee, Dinner at Darling. Today it was bus time, and we took a bus from just behind our hotel all the way to Bondi beach front. Initially we wanted to catch the bus to Bondi Junction - apparently that was the bus stop,not the beach.Thank god the driver was very nice and asked us if we were actually heading to the Beach.

After a pleasant 40 mins meandering up to Bondi, we hopped off to be greeted by a long beautiful stretch of beach with a matching row of shops and restaurants. Guess what did I have for breakfast?

Mouhahahah! It is actually a very famous Scottish delicacy,but I couldn’t find it when I was up at Edinburgh, so of course, I had to have it.Deepfried.Yumm

Can you see the melty nougat centre?OMG TO DIE FOR. It tastes just like a melted mars bar, gooey,chocy,but warm as well - sort of like deepfried ice cream but warm

Stomach satiated (if not a little nauseus) we headed on to Bondi - where a naked photoshoot was going on! Hahahah! Bacon refused to walk in front of the seedy-looking man shooting this blonde with small tits squirming against the hot australian sun. The thing was, there is nothing wrong with nudity/toplessness - sunbathing topless is a almost a requirement on Bondi (and the other beaches that we went to that day) but the fact that after that naked photoshoot she was filmed running down the beach topless made it extremely hilarious!

Sorry, thought it was rude to shoot her.Don’t know why though.They might think that I would sell those softporn pixs off.

Contemplating Bondi

I wanna bag myself a surfer boy…yumm:)

Can you spot yourself a topless one?

Bondi-ed feet

I want to live in one of em…

After lying in the sun for about an hour, it was time to move on again - Bacon wanted to walk towards Coogee (I think a 3 hour coastal walk!!) but I veto-ed it immediately. We then headed to the taxi ranks and took one of them instead to Coogee, which is a located about 15min drive from Bondi and much smaller and quiter. Plus it also seems to be more local rather than touristy snap happy.

One of my fav food in oz is sushi - due to the closeness of many of the major ports,the fish is VERY FRESH.Heck, all it’s seafood are very fresh and delicious..we had a AU2 for any plate sushi for lunch and popped down to the beach immediately to see what the fuss is about with Coogee. Even the cabdriver said that it was nicer than Bo

Man overboard!

Just as I snapped this picture,my poor Nikon was splashed by a giant wave,so we waved it goodbye for a while..I was quite traumatized by it…but seeing that this was our last beach trip, I just shut my eye and tried to enjoy the sun for a little longer.I still like Manly the best from all three Sydney beaches, and if you only had time for one, I would recommend Manly.Sigh…I miss the sand.

We left at 3 to head back towards the city, and seeing that it was a Thursday, bought a monorail day pass and headed towards the famed Paddy’s market by chinatown(haymarket). We were expecting it to be a full fledged market like Victorias’ market was in Melbourne but it falls short of expectations.However, it had a great selection of souveniers - bought some tea towels and oven mitts to bring home. I also went to the shopping centre next door which had a Mambo discount centre - suffice to say, I splurged again,like I was never going to see mambo stuff ever again. I even bought a makeup bag,like how bizzare.At 5pm the market traders were starting to shut - seeing that we were in chinatown I had to have one last bowl of Pho - this time at a hip pho restaurant just outside of Paddy’s.It was decorated with all red and black chinoiserie chic, but ran by vietnamese they produced a pretty decent bowl of pho. Obviously no pictures=no recollection of the restaurant’s name - now I know why I take pictures. My memories are all intact in Flickr’s safekeeping:).

Sigh- wet camera=no pix

Anyway, I don’t know how I do it, but we headed home to change and immediately left for Darling Harbour again, kiasu what,don’t want to waste the monorail day ticket at AU 9 each.This time, in search of another ribhaven -

Camera showing subtle signs of life…thank god.

We ordered nearly the same thing that we ordered yesterday - the ubiquitious rib platter

I want myyy—baby back baby back baby back ribs, sings the big fat blob from Austin Power.

Yummm…it was definitely better than Hard Rocks’ and did not had such a problem with their service, although, our server, which I think is Japanese, could only speak really broken English.

After the huge meal, it was time for one last walk on the harbor. We took it slow, savouring our last view of the beautiful Sydney nightscape.

Christmas was fast descending..

I love fake-looking pictures that is caused by the twilight back light

Sydney is a very special city. It has so many obvious attractions that are just in-your-face; attractions that makes it uniquely Sydney and unreplicated anywhere else. It has the charms of docks and beaches whilst being a fast growing city. It is so vibrant, and filled with character that it sometimes reminded me of San Francisco, with its crooked Lombard St, Fisherman’s wharf ect.

We were both quite upset to leave Australia.

I have been randomly sharing stories of strange (mostly ridicullious) encounters that I’ve had since moving here - because they are mostly short I don’t usually blog about it,but sharing is caring so here you go!

Le Bacons are lazyasses.We don’t like cleaning (vac,toilet,mopping) but it is a fact of life that everyone has to clean sometimes. So I was thinking of hiring a temp maid (well, to be very PC, they call it cleaner)of maybe 2 hours a week to clean toilets,vac and mop the floors.Being the stupidass I am, I advertised it as paying £8 per hour - which will equate £16 for two hours and if you convert that into RM my mommy will probably grill my lazyarse. Seeing that the min. wages are £5.70, I am paying quite a good rate by any standards.

Anyway.I have been getting all sorts of applicants through my email since yesterday and most of it is so bizzare - some send a whole cv which reads:

EDUCATION
Master of Tourism, with a specialisation in Tourism Economy at Higher School of Economy and Tourism in Warsaw

Bachelor of Tourism, with a specialisation in Tourism Organisation and Handling at College of Tourism and Recreation in Warsaw

WHY would someone with a Masters in Tourism want to work for me as a maid??Hell, I’m not even that educated.

Another one states that she has been an au pair/ child minder for the past 12 years (if her cv is to believed) and she has a degree in sports management and she is very ’sportif’.Again, WHY? Maybe I should pay her to be my personal trainer whilst she clean.

Best was,

hi dear..am single man 40yr old looking for apart time job becaouse buzy
some time would verey nice if contact me for more information on
0779xxxxxx ……thnk you

Now,I am not advertising for some porno/stripper shiet,why would you want to tell your ‘potential’ employer that you are single and call her/him dear??bacon’s only response was, “His england not powderfull huh”. He’s sounding more and more like me every single day - so proud:)

I had a couple more applicants from the new EU countries i.e. Poland,Slovakia,Romania and a couple with african-sounding names. I initially thought it was piss hilarious (still do) but obviously I should stop laughing as they are only offering to do menial jobs because they are new immigrants - and jobs are not easy to come by,menial or not.Sides, I pay really well:).

Christmas in the sun V 5

We woke up, went shopping,ate,came home,slept,the end.

You think I’m kidding?

After such a tiring couple of days, we were supposed to take it slow today, and head down to the world famed bondi beach.However, after 3 days of perfect weather, it was bound to happen - it rained cats and dogs all day long. We hopped from one shopping centre to another,not buying anything in particular.In fact,I think the only thing I bought in our ’shopping trip’ was a rip curl luggage…and that’s a shared purchase,so nothing magnificient.

Had lunch at Nandos for their ‘chicken riblets’, which is only available in OZ, tender chicken collarbone meat that is finger lickin good.And that’s about it really! No kidding.Oh.Had a couple of KrispyKreme - found them lurking at the corner of a foodcourt *smirks*

The Swarovski christmas tree at QV shopping centre (next to town hall)

So the pretty…

Did not do much at night,but my handy guidebook speaks of a all-you-can-eat ribs at hard rock café….which is strangely enough located at Kings Cross again.Because we had not purchased any bus all day ride tickets today,I had to make that trek up again..

It is very strange where this Hard Rock is. We went up and down the street looking for it,and passed right by it because it was so inconspicious. Hard Rocks are usually in the middle of town..but anyway

Ordered a full rack of ribs to be shared between us.Due to the utterly non-existant service, I was too hungry by the time the food finally arrived 50 minutes later.When I asked to be seated by the bar area (so I can actually snap pictures with the skylight the rude waitress looked at me like as if I was dumb, “You can either sit ON the bar or at the dining area”. Prick. I then asked what is the area by the bar called,wildly gesturing I WANT TO SIT THERE….she then reluctantly explained herself that the bar area are fully booked. There was about 10 customers at that time in the whole restaurant.Bitch.

This was one of the problems that I would regularly have with restaurants in Sydney.It takes them too bloody long to serve the food up, 45mins is de rigeur.If you are hungry, make sure you snack before to ruin your appetite…because the laidback attitute sometimes translate into the tidak-apa attitute, so servers don’t care what you really want…or they are not very helpful bordering on rudeness.Granted, there are exceptions to the rule, Fullhouse was manned by a very very friendly and efficient waitress and Don Don serves their food up on the double. I just realized that both are asian restaurants.Hmm..

/rant over

The only thing that I manage to snap a picture of is the American brownie, because by then I was satieted enough to not lose it any more

No light=bad picture

ps:this is post 301.I’ve come a long way:)