29 years

That's how long my parents have been married. It was their wedding anniversary two Sundays ago and I decided to cook them a special meal.

One of my favourite chef is Ina Garten also known as Barefoot Contessa. Researched up some of her recipes and looked through my new cookbook "Reader's Digest - Everyday Light Meals". (which mum got at a steal from Groupon)

The 1st appetizer was a Four Cheese Stuffed Mushroom. I learnt this from a different chef during my Pasta & Pizza classes a few years back. Never fails to please a hungry stomach.

2nd appetizer was Crostini with Thyme-Roasted Plum Tomatoes.

 This was what it looked like before it went into the oven for 1.5 hours. 

Voila!

For the main course : Fillet of Beef Bourguinon with Roasted Asparagus. While in the midst of making sure the beef cooked well, I overdid the asparagus. They became so crispy that they literally had a crunchy sound when biting into it. lol.

Dinner was washed down with a bottle of Chianti wine from Italy. 

For dessert, I made a fresh lemon-lime sorbet. Sadly I forgot to take a pic of this. Always a next time for that.

Overall I was pleased with how dinner turned out except that everything was a tad too salty and there wasn't enough gravy for the steak.

But encouragement from parents and J surely motivates me to cook these kinda meals more often.

Chris Botti

Chris Botti.. ahhh I'm officially now a fan!

Nearly 4 months ago I purchased Chris Botti World Tour 2011 tickets for J's birthday present. I didn't know of Chris Botti and have not heard of his pieces before. But I knew that J really wanted to go see him live at the MPO so thought I'd surprise him with it.

And he was pleasantly surprised.

Unlike J, I still was no where near excited to see him.. until the day, 6th Dec arrived. The excitement built up slowly during the day with C posting different renditions and clips of him on FB.

When we reached MPO, we got word that his entire band was here to perform along with him. This was a real treat as we only expected it to be him and our MPO. But to have the whole band.. wow!

Billy Kilson, probably one of the best drummers I've ever seen played.

Image taken from here

I was at the edge of my seats for a few of his numbers and he even brought along 2 guest artist, one of which was Lisa Fischer. She toured with Rolling Stones for 17 years and has been with Chris Botti for the past 1 year. She's one amazing talent!

 Image taken from here

He also brought along Caroline Campbell. This stunning lady has such a wonderful presence when she performs.

Image taken from here

Since S&C had quite a few of Chris Botti's dvd and cds, we decided not to buy any. But paid quite a good sum for a poster of him and then lined up to meet with him face to face and get it autographed. 

Twas a very good night out and I hear that he may be coming to Asia next June again.

Casual Fridays

Got this from a colleague (yes it's ironic I know) but is there is some truth to it? Judge for yourself. Enjoy!

The HR department is well known for their many notes to employees. Here is one below
Casual Fridays:

First week

Effective this week, the company is adopting Fridays as Casual Day. Employees are free to dress in the casual attire of their choice.

3 weeks later

Spandex and leather micro-miniskirts are not appropriate attire for Casual Day. Neither are string ties, rodeo belt buckles or slippers.

6 weeks later

Casual Day refers to dress only, not attitude. When planning Friday's wardrobe, remember image is a key to our success.

8 weeks later

A seminar on how to dress for Casual Day will be held at 4 p.m. Friday in the cafeteria. A fashion show will follow. Attendance is mandatory.

9 weeks later

As an outgrowth of Friday's seminar, a 14-member Casual Day Task Force has been appointed to prepare guidelines for proper casual-day dress.

14 weeks later

The Casual Day Task Force has now completed a 30-page manual entitled "Relaxing Dress Without Relaxing Company Standards." A copy has been distributed to every employee. Please review the chapter "You Are What You Wear" and consult the "home casual" versus "business casual" checklist before leaving for work each Friday. If you have doubts about the appropriateness of an item of clothing, contact your CDTF representative before 7 a.m. on Friday.

18 weeks later

Our Employee Assistant Plan (EAP) has now been expanded to provide support for psychological counseling for employees who may be having difficulty adjusting to Casual Day.

20 weeks later

Due to budget cuts in the HR Department we are no longer able to effectively support or manage Casual Day. Casual Day will be discontinued, effective immediately.

20 days to Christmas

Christmas is probably one of the best seasons for most people.

It definitely is for me. I love every inch of Christmas!

Christmas tree : Checked!
Tags : Checked!
Fruit Cakes : Checked!
Dessert Wine : Checked!
Cards : This weekend and post them out on Monday
Gifts : 2 more and I'm done
Wrapping : Halfway through
Cookies :  Baking start on 21 Dec

Makan sessions are slowly filling up as well.

Christmas Eve Luncheon : Checked!
Christmas Eve Dinner : Checked!
Christmas Brunch : still free!
Christmas Lunch : still free!
Christmas Tea : still free!
Christmas Dinner : Checked!

I'm off the entire week after Christmas but will probably be away in Ipoh to visit mum's side of the family and head up to Fraser's Hill for a couple of nights with J's family.

Ahhh Christmas....

Hand-over

Countdown is now 15 days.

I was asked to start my hand-over and train the person who's going to take over about 60% of my roles at the end of Nov 2011. I've only taught her about 10% so far and have not handed anything over to her yet. Every 2 days I would ask if she has time to learn or when a new request for reports come in, I would ask if she'd like to do it alongside with me so that she could learn hands on. But each time she would either not reply my emails, ask me to do it first and she'll do the next round or keep silent. There aren't many other 'next rounds' coming up. Only 15 days left and there's lot to learn, some of which are quite complicated.

So yesterday I told her to come to me when she is ready to learn. I've done my part.

It kinda annoys me that she's not wanting to learn and there's not much time left. And knowing people here, the rumor would probably be that I just left without doing a proper hand-over.

Capital FM

I've listened to 88.9 for sometime because they play some pretty good music. Moriti used to call it the 'black' channel which I totally agree with him.

Yesterday, they launched it anew, Malaysia's first women's radio channel to go on air. Capital FM - Women The New Capital. Quite a good line up of handpicked celebrity presenters which includes Asha Gill (absolutely love her), Joanne Kam, Xandria Ooi (met her when she was trying out to be a UVJ for Channel 16 on Astro about 6 years back), Patricia K, Sheela Haran, April Kuan, Joey G and our very own Liang.

I've listened to a bit of 2 segments so far - The Jam Break and Talk of the Town. I shall reserve my comments on 'The Jam Break' for now, but enjoyed listening to Joanne Kam and Joey G this morning. They're quite hilarious. Yikes now I've gotto decide each morning if I'm going to listen to them or Noelle Lim from BFM's Breakfast Grille.

And I must say, they've outdone themselves with their selections of songs. They're even better now!

Looking forward to hearing the other segments. 

Betrayal

Hurts the most when it's by someone you love the most.