Keenu & Stripey - my little gliders

Keenu and Stripey are my sugar gliders... actually, I share them with my friend MH coz he helps me take care of them, like cut their nails and feed them live crickets and mealworms (yeeech).

Anyway, let me introduce Keenu and Stripey to everybody. They are sugar gliders. Sugar gliders are nocturnal animals (sleeps in the day and plays, feeds and do most of everything else in the nite) and they belong to the category of marsupials (carries their young in their pouch).

Keenu (the male) is a fully grown adult male and he is more than 3 years old and I have just adopted Stripey (female) from a friend. She is only about 4 months old, a baby. She is still adjusting to the new environment and the new owner (her previous owner is a little 6 year old boy).

Little Stripey is a rather brave little girl glider coz after the 2nd day with me, she is no longer "crabbing". It is a sound that sugar gliders make when they are unhappy. She feeds on apples and a dried honey mixture. She loves grapes but my friend adviced that I should only give it to her sparingly.





This is Keenu when I first got him in Sept 2004.



Of all the other sugargliders that I have known (I have a few friends who also keeps sugar gliders as pets), Keenu is the gentlest and most well behaved glider of all. He is a lovely little fella and I have tried to breed him with some of my friends' girl gliders, but no success (as yet). Maybe when Stripey grows up, she can be Keenu's little love bunny :).

This is Keenu today and living in his brand new cage which I got from Pet Safari. When he first moved in, he was so curious and at the same time apprehensive as there were new toys in there that he has never seen before. I think he quite like his new cage.

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Tagged... and I like it :)

Got tagged by kljs of Codename:Dreams titled "Two Things Meme" on Saturday but was kinda stacked up for the weekend.. so, can only respond today :)

1. Two names I go by: Nancy or Nance
2. Two things I am wearing now : Blouse and pair of Black Pants
3. Two things I want (or have) in a relationship : Love and Laughter
4. Two things I like to do : Sleeping and being a Sloth
5. Two things I want very badly in these moments : Money and a new Job
6. Two things I did last night : Attended the opening of Kechara Saraswati Arts and listen to a dharma talk by H.E. Tsem Tulku Rinpoche
7. Two things I ate today : A Persimmon and A Pasta Salad which I made myself
8. Two persons I last spoke to : Parking attendant and my colleague
9. Two things I am doing tomorrow : Attend Tsongkapa Day's celebration at Kechara House and pray to get a better job soon
10. Two favorite days of the week : Saturday and Sunday
11. Two favorite holidays : Christmas and New Year
12. Two favorite beverages : Chinese Tea and Japanese Tea
13. Two things about me that you may not have known : I have a split personality.. plus an evil twin kept hidden in the closet
14. Two jobs that I have had in my life : An Management Trainee and a Quality Auditor
15. Two movies I would watch over and over : Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter
16. Two places that I have lived : Kuala Lumpur and Clayton (in Victoria, Australia)
17. Two of my favorite food : Sushi and all hawker food
18. Two places I would rather be right now : At home and at Kechara House (or any of it's outlets)

Christmas Meme:
What are the 5 gifts you would buy for yourself this Christmas, if you had unlimited income?

1. A shoplot so that I can give it to my Guru/Lama as his Soup Kitchen
2. An outlet in MidValley to promote my Guru/Lama and the Buddhadharma
3. A holiday trip to Tibet (for me and all who would like to come along)
4. A holiday trip to Nepal & India (for me and all who would like to come along)
5. Can I buy myself a better job??

And now to tag 5 other bloggers....

And they are.....

1. A Tale of Two Superheroes
2. Babe in the City - KL
3. My Random Thoughts
4. fishdiary resurrection
5. See A Lil Bit of Evil

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When your Management Sucks big time!

I really have to get this off my chest so that I can enjoy my weekend without having irritating thoughts at the back of my mind.

This has everything to do with the management of the company that I am working in. The company started very many years ago and under the leadership of one man, the company has come a long way.. from a small group of individuals making up that company to a group of company with no less than 14 subsidiaries. We were all enjoying the good times until a couple of years when our group of companies was merged with another group of company. The man who led us to these great heights had to take a back seat after the merger.

That is when everything started to go downhill. The merged group of company is run by people who don't f**king (pardon me) know which end of our corporate ship is the front and they are practically running this ship to the ground.

It has been more than a year since the merger has concluded and more than half the original set of staff have left. And more are leaving and that includes some of my closest friends. And people are still leaving on an average of at least 2 a month.

It was raining pretty hard yesterday evening and one of my colleagues came over to chat with me just to wait out the traffic jam. She remarked "All those who have left have called her to ask her what she is waiting for...there is a better world outside waiting for her". I asked her "Are you happy to stay here?". Her reply was "I have been here for several years and of late, I have this feeling that the company is just waiting for the staff to resign. They load us with lots of work especially so as it is now the policy not to hire to replace staff who has resigned. I have worked longer hours and weekends handling at least 3 people's workload. When I get sick, not only am I not appreciated or encouraged to carry on, but I get reprimanded for not completing the work on time".

We both noticed that the situation has gotten to a stage where the only way to stay "well rewarded" here is to "tikam" people's back (back stabbing). As long as the staff is excellent at this and "tripods" the boss' balls (our “she” boss is known to have balls of steel), then that staff can virtually get away with anything.

I know my friends have left for very many reasons but the most common grounds for them to leave are:

1) Management has no direction. Each subsidiary has their bottom lines to meet and it does not matter what we sell or into whose territory we encroach .. as long as we make the numbers

2) We are left floundering with no leadership. The company is captained by a CEO who has no business acumen plus his henchwoman who drives the ship with pure accounting figures.

3) Our CEO has no charisma or presence. Most of our existing customers have no idea who he is. Our potential customers are not interested to know who he is. None of the financial analysts have seen or interviewed him. Without presence of the CEO, we as a group of company is virtually invisible on the corporate radar

I could go on and on.... but I think really, unless we practice what most public listed American run companies where the top people get axed when the corporation is floundering... this group of clowns are here to stay until we run aground or they are “pushing up daisies” (dead).

We concluded that there is only one solution left for my colleague and I..... to look for greener pastures and follow our ex-colleagues and friends to graze over the other side… where “ming tien ken how” - tomorrow will be better.

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Tarap Man

My friend MHKK sent me this invitation to watch "Tarap Man" next month at the Annexe Galeries, Pasar Seni/Central Market, KL. He mentioned it before and I was wondering what "Tarap" is. Actually it is a fruit that resembles the cempedak. It's scientific name is Artocarpus Odoratissimus: pungent fruit, indigenous to Borneo

Back to Tarap Man.



It is a journalistic thriller set in Sabah….
A newspaper reporter sets out to discover the truth about a boy,
born during the war, who may have committed a gruesome murder in 1952.
Could he still be in prison?

Directed by Zahim Albakri (award-winning director of Puteri Gunung Ledang The Musical, Spilt Gravy on Rice and more).

Written b y Ann Lee (co-writer of the New York International Fringe Festival critically-acclaimed show


From Table Mountain to Teluk Intan.)


With a murderously-talented cast led by Anne James, Cameronian Arts Award winner and
introducing Sabahan songbird, Mia Palencia in her first acting role.


DATE & TIME:

5th – 8th December 2007 @ 8.30pm
8th – 9th December 2007 @ 3.00pm

VENUE:

Annexe Galleries, Central Market Annexe/ Pasar Seni (Putra LRT),
Jalan Hang Kasturi, 50050, Kuala Lumpur.

BOOKINGS: 017- 651 2126

ADMISSION BY DONATION (minimum RM30, students discount available)

Recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is the recipe which I used for the chocolate chip cookies and it is especially reproduced here for my friend Superhero S of A Tale of Two Superheroes. She so nicely asked for it so that she could bake some for her Superhero W...awww.. how sweet of her.



Ingredients
125 grams of butter
150 grams of brown sugar (may have to reduce this a bit as babe commented that the cookies were a mite too sweet.... which I agree)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence (which I didn't add coz I didn't have any)
150 grams plain flour*
1/2 teaspoon baking powder*
1/2 teaspoon baking soda*
15 grams of cocoa powder*
200 grams chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

* these are sifted together

Method
1. Cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy
2. Add egg and vanilla essence and mix well
3. Add the sifted dry ingredients in the mixture, followed with the chocolate chips and chopped walnuts
4. Mix all these until dough forms. Drop by teaspoon onto greased backing pan (this is to get the Famous Amos sized cookies. For me, I used the spoon we eat our dinner with... dinner spoon??)
5. Bake at 180 degress C for 15 minutes (but don't take my word for it coz it depends on the size of your cookie and the type of oven you have. I have the el cheepo type where you have to keep peeping into it to see if the cookies are done..else, you'll end up with CHARRED chocolate chip cookies)

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All I Want for Christmas is ......

I know, I know.. another 1 whole month to go before Christmas gets here. But no harm wishing out aloud ... maybe Santa is just around the corner.... (in my dreams lah). I was just telling JW yesterday during lunch time as we were walking past the phone shop that I am thinking of getting myself the Nokia n95 8G phone for Christmas...sigh..now, how to get RM2,999 is the problem.

This morning whilst looking at the In.Tech pages, I came across this Amazon e-book reader Kindle. Rather cool looking gadget. I love books and at the moment, believe it or not, i am trying the read my Guru H.E. Tsem Tulku Rinpoche's Gurus for Hire, Enlightenment for Sale, Pearl S.Buck's Bible Stories, Rinpoche Pabongka's Stages to the Path, my Bazi notes, and a trash novel which name is not even worth mentioning and leaving it all over the house and in the car. Now, a gadget like the Kindle reader might just solve my problems of keeping track of all my reading materials.

Amazon's Kindle which is just launched this week is priced at US$399. I know that there are many who are not used to reading books off electronic medias like such. But I have gotten used to it since I read the entire Harry Potter's 7th book off my handphone even before the book was launched (shhhhh).

It was reported that the Amazon Kindle is to ebooks as the iPod is to digital music. Amazon has apparentely integrated a 3G cellular radio into the Kindle and uses its new Whispernet EvDO service to wirelessly transmit e-books to the Kindle. They claimed that it doesn'tt need a PC to make a purchase. All the reader needs to do is to browse the Kindle store and download the reading material. Notably, no service charges or contracts are involved--Amazon covers all of that in the background. But that is in the US. But what about us here in Malaysia leh??

I decided to go to Youtube and search for reviews on the Kindle and these are those which I thought were more interesting.


Here is the review for the Amazon Kindle. The Amazon Kindle is available on Amazon.com for $399.99 It uses the Sprint EVDO network to access data much like a cell phone without a wireless hotspot and most of all, it is free. It has 256 MB of internal storage and provides an SD memory card slot along with a USB mini slot, along with a headphone jack.


Benjamin Higginbotham of Technology Evangelist takes a look at the Amazon Kindle after 12 hours of use. More in-depth reviews as he uses it more and more will be coming.


Plenty more of these from Youtube... but now I am thinking.... phone or book reader..phone or book reader....(not that I can afford either at the moment.. but it's nice to imagine that one has options haha)

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Cookies for the Cookie Monsters :p

Last Friday, JW asked if I wanted to accompany her to Ikea on Sunday. I do like walking around Ikano, popping into Macy and browsing inside Ikea. But I was getting rather broke now that it is the end of the month. Didn't want to go window shopping and accidently end up buying something and bursting my credit card, which is very close to exploding already. So, I told JW that I will be making cookies instead.

So, when Sunday came, I didn't want to be called a liar when I went to work on Monday morning empty handed, I took out the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies. I added chopped walnuts to the recipe as I love that nutty bite in my cookies, muffins, ice-creams...anything.






The first batch I made were the size of the Famous Amos type. As I only have those smaller version ovens, I was thinking that this was going to take me the entire afternoon. I decided to make them bigger. Turned out that I had to make another 2 trays before I can call it a day.

I made the last clump for me, myself and I .... bigger and crunchier. Poured the remaining chopped walnuts into the dough before I stuffed it into the oven. When it came out, I waited for it to cool down just enough and plonked it into my mouth before anyone else saw it and cookie-napped it from me.

watching my cookie "grow"

my cookie

one bigger cookier to rule the smaller ones

Had about 12 small cookies and 18 bigger cookies when I was done. Took some for JW & her sister Jean. Babe stopped by and she tested one. Verdict : a bit too sweet. I have about 5 left in the cookie jar at home. The rest have been gobbled down by the cookie monsters ..... the largest cookie monster being my friend MHKK... he should know who he is when he reads this post :D

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