Books, Books And More Books Part 18

And I have finally completed this.

I'd recommend it to anyone who meet people a lot; need (want?) to impress a lot of people, think they need to catch up on how to have interesting conversations. Maybe for marketeers, star / starlets wanna-be's, socialites etc etc.

Seriously though, yes for marketeers and for those who mingle a lot and need to brush up on their creativity at communicating.

For someone like me who converses in mono-syllables (as if!), it is a good book to get an idea of what de Bono writes.

Read this book if you want to learn about de Bono or if you want to change the way you think or simply because you are looking for smart ideas to not make anyone fall asleep while you are talking!

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UnScrambling The UnFamiliar

We were watching 'French Food at Home - Chateau Special with Laura Calder' when Iman asked what is chateau? And feeling important (feeling important is a role mums have the right to play; ho-ho-ho) I proudly said, a château is a big country house in France.

I double-checked with wikipedia and true enough, it says château is a manor house or a residence of the lord or a country house. It is pronounced sh-a (as in banana)-t-o (as in boat) -- shato. Percayalah, but then again this could be the case of a blind leading the blind.

And the other day I had a tex-mex chicken roll from San Francisco cafe for lunch. I only had that because everybody else had had their lunch and rather than sit alone for mine I did the sandwich roll take-away. Tex-mex is actually short for Texan-Mexican. As the name implies, whatever Tex-Mex has its origin in Texas, with Mexican influences. The things that came to my mind are Tex-Mex food like taco (as in Taco Bell, obviously) and nachos. And also Tex-Mex music aka Tejano music (fyi that is pronounced as Tehano) and the late Selena.

There is this site that I love that has lots of Tex-Mex recipes - check it out here.

And last but not least, everybody's favorite word - voilà. This is (another French) word that literally translates to "here" in English. It's usually used as a slang term to say "taa daa" sort of expression... Also usually pronounced wrong by Americans for some reason, they like to say it like "wala."

And do continue to read this that I got from the net; written by an American, concerning this word.

Walla is a word used by retarded Americans who don't know any foreign languages and barely know their own. The correct word they are looking for is "voila", which loosely translates as "here it is", "there you go", or similar meanings. Of course, the word voila properly pronounced in French sounds a bit like "vwalla", but with the "v" in front pronounced softly, almost like an "f". Being stupid Americans though, they can't pronounce anything which doesn't sound 100% English (not that they can pronounce English either) so in their incredibly lazy way, they don't even try to pronounce it correctly.

So there you are! Or maybe I should just say, Voila!

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Yeay, It Is Friday!

I've just added the fish tank to the blog (and am feeling so pleased with myself!) But while watching the fish swim I wondered, will the fish sleep at night or would they simply swim, swim and (help..) swim even when I shut down the notebook..? Kesian pulak. (Duh, what an insane thought.)

Anyway, it's Friday evening - yeay..


This weekend I will :-
1. make some (more) cookies to be delivered next week
2. beading (I've completed 1 simplest kurung out of the 11 - yeay..)
3. pick up Luq at the station (yeay.. he's back for the end of year break)
4. do my morning walks
5. get replacement for that lost textbook
6. read, read and read some more
7. roll up my sleeves and tackle those weeds on my vege plot (what is left of it anyway..)
8. do I have time to shop for a new T?

Hey, this plan doesnt look half as bad after all. What have you got planned?

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Memoirs Of The Toxic Office

I just want to officially inform everyone that I have deleted my posts on the BFH / BBFH - the worst ones of them anyway, if not all. I cant remember all that I have written on this subject.

Somehow those writings seem very emotional, unprofessional - now. So there are no more of these pix that I love so much then (me ala Jessica Alba was what I had written then of the second photo). I am going to let by-gone be by-gones (no, not turning over a new leaf. Not yet anyway).


Well, that's that. Just so you know.

ps - I suppose Delinn is going to put this under the header of baik-baik..

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Trick or Treat?

I hate being surprised. Because I could get surprised real good.

When Eirfan was 5 or 6 he hid behind the curtains and surprised me as I walked into the house. I got real mad with him. He cried, the poor baby, when all he wanted to do was play.

From there on people in the house knew never to catch me unawares.

I was getting dinner ready the other day when I thought I heard my daughter scream. I listened at the bottom of the stairs but then heard laughs. Satisfied nothing was wrong I went back to the kitchen. Later I thought "someone" was watching me. I turned to the living room and sure enough there is this ugly looking face staring at me. I thought something was familiar - the shirt actually; I recognize the shirt. I said to my son, dont you dare scare me - you never guess what I might do. He laughed, took off the mask and said, that is why I am standing here far enough from you and not there in the kitchen right behind you!

He was wearing that mask below (but that is Eirfan with the mask). And I hate it. He got it for the Halloween do at his office.

He was pleased that he got Iman and Eirfan screaming in fright. Satisfied that I got a bit of a shock..

Later Eirfan gave his father a fright (he said nasib baik bapak tak jerit like a girl). Tried to frighten his abang but according to abang he is too macho to be frightened with such an ugly mask like that.

Eirfan cant wait for his Abang Luq to get home for the semester break so that he can play the same trick on his abang then.

I know I am repeating myself - but I hate that mask.

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Sunday Muddles

And these headaches always curb my activities. On top of that I get cantankerous too. I've already complained the evening is too hot. The net connection too slow. The air-cond not cool enough. And that's just a few examples.

I went out early to Jalan TAR today. I needed to get beads for the kurungs I need to sew. (I've got 11 of those. The girl gave me her baju, her mother's baju and her sister's. So work has got to start now!)

I made kueh lopis for breakfast but didnt feel like any so it was only cocoa for breakfast this morning. Maybe that's the cause for the headache - skipped breakfast.

The sun was out in full blast too as we walked in town. That could be the culprit too.

We had briyani at Insaf. I made a glutton of myself because I was real hungry. Maybe that's the reason for the migraine. The bill was huge because we had lamb shank and chicken and fish roes with the rice. That could be a likely reason for the migraine too.

I need bottles for the cookies I had to deliver this coming week. There's none in Bagus. Neither are they available at Yen's (Yen's is closed on Sunday as I found out just now). Ugh.. And to add misery to the so-called injury, the cookies are not ready yet either.

I hate it when things are messy like this. On top of that the house is in shambles too.. Luckily I have home-made pizza ready for dinner although I do have to visit the book store tonite because someone had to replace his missing loaned text books..

Nevertheless I have completed the beads on my baju yesterday (yeayy - at least I have achieved something this weekend!) No photos of that yet though.

Wish me well. Please.

*****

Net Savvy

When my nephew got engaged, I knew it via his Facebook (I like the phrase 'I heard it on the grapevine' better, come to think of it). Of course we barraged his mother for not inviting, not calling, not.. not.. not.. Turned out she had very good reasons. Anyway.

I do not have an account on Facebook. But my 50-something year old sister has one and is so proud of it (she never lets us forget that). I told her she only signed up so that she can snoop on her daughter who is studying abroad (whom of course, is on Facebook).

Eirfan has an account. I occasionally would poke around the space looking at the list of his friends. What he writes (I am a concerned mother). I worry he might make friends with you-dont-know-who on the net. Or innocently reveals more information than he should. I never want to underestimate the harm that the net could wreak from crafty evil minds.

According to stats, Facebook is probably the most popular social networking site of all (58% of all social networking visits), next is MySpace (with 31%) (http://www.socialnetworkingwatch.com/all_social_networking_statistics/).

Rank	Country	Number of Facebook users	%growth Jan 09 - Sep 09
1	USA	84,596,240	101.04%
2	UK	20,228,480	35.42%
3	Turkey	13,996,380	76.4%
4	Canada	12,667,220	16.62%
5	France	12,032,020	82.66%
6	Italy	10,903,620	95.21%
7	Indonesia	8,786,920	879.55%
8	Australia	6,591,640	52.23%
9	Colombia	6,488,200	78.60%
10	Spain	6,314,220	143.22%
11	Argentina	6,036,060	167.64%
12	Chile	5,465,740	31.61%
13	Philippines	4,832,040	1136.76%
14	Mexico	4,731,700	228.44%
15	Venezuela	4,223,740	125.36%
16	India	3,980,260	271.54%
17	Germany	3,875,800	208.71%
18	Malaysia	2,619,040	207.97%
19	Sweden	2,587,300	52.49%
20	Belgium	2,557,000	54.41%
21	Hong Kong	2,350,460	61.15%
22	Taiwan	2,257,340	1899.42%
23	Norway	2,193,820	50.66%
24	Denmark	2,100,840	18.27%
25	South Africa	1,899,600	106.43%
26	Egypt	1,896,120	130.51%
27	Greece	1,858,620	85.94%
28	Israel	1,782,700	106.95%
29	Singapore	1,650,660	123%
30	Switzerland	1,634,260	45.54%

Facebook usage statistics by country - top 30 countries - 10th Sep 09 (http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/09/facebook-usage-statistics-sep-09-huge.html)

Malaysia is 18th for Facebook although in terms of total population we are at the 46th place with a total of 25,869,719 people in the country. (My, we are ahead in social networking.)

So. Be careful.

*****