The bitch strikes again.

Completely disrespectful of me and completely judgmental. Guess that is life, you never have a perfect circle of people surrounding you. Anyway, I gave her a second chance and that was blown right out of the window yesterday by complete bad and rude behaviour. I never call people bitches, so when I do, you know it's valid.

Gotta let my rants out sometimes, but it's always good to let go and do your best not to let the negative and "good riddance" people affect you more than they deserve.

On a happier note, here are some random photos taken over the past few days of my life.

Schrobbenmaster bought an espresso machine and here's my first attempt at making a mochaccino. Kinda put too much milk in it. And also forgot to put in my chocolate powder till after I'd made the whole drink, hence the powder spill among the milk spill.

This is a 24" (the size of my iMac back in KL for those who need a reference), touchscreen MSI machine. It's rather cool, as you can just touch whatever you want without moving a mouse. Typing would be difficult though. Schrobbenmaster was provided this as a product demo for a press event our company is organising.

Okay, because my blog posts have been so lagging and jumping from place to place, most of you probably don't know who this is.

May I introduce you to Pim.

He's the gentlest, silliest cat with the prettiest face I've ever seen. Schrobbenmaster's friend needed us to give him a place to stay for an indefinite period of time, so we took him in about 2 weeks ago. After hiding in various spots in the house from us, he's now very used to being around us and miaowing for strokes on his head and neck.

In fact, this morning, I woke up brushing away some insect on my forehead, only to open my eyes to see Pim staring down at me, asking my forehead for cuddles. He doesn't jump on the bed normally, but apparently this morning, he decided to do so.

The armrest of the sofa has also become one of his new favourite lounge spots. We had to cover the sofa in blankets because of him and his nails. At least yesterday he finally learnt that the scratching pole is his friend.

Ooh, I'm hungry. Brought leftover dinner from last night. I got my first salary yesterday and bought Korean takeaway for dinner. Decided to splurge and order a third dish of pancake with kimchi. Couldn't finish it, of course, so brought it in today.

Can't wait.

Panic in the morning

What an adventure this morning!

Papa Bert was arriving early at our place to exchange bikes with us. So nice of him to offer me his oma fiets in exchange for my bike. When he was downstairs, he gave us a call, and we hurried out of the house to get the bike from the basement.

But amidst all the rush of jacket-wearing, shoe-wearing and getting the rubbish bag to throw, we got so distracted that Schrobbenmaster quickly shut the door after I stepped out and then went all pale.

"Where are my keys?"

We have this really scary door that locks whenever it shuts. I never liked this kind of door because it always made me paranoid that this exact situation would happen. Every single time I went out alone, I'd step out, check my keys are in my bag and only then shut the door. And every time we both go out, I ask Schrobbenmaster if he has the keys, and he always does.

Except for this morning.

Omg, we knew that Moeder Irma had the other set of keys, but they were all the way in Hoorn, over 2 hours drive from Rotterdam. And Papa Bert had an appointment after dropping off the bike. What a mess!

Suddenly, the lightbulb above Schrobbenmaster's head went *bing bing* and he remembered that he'd given a set of keys to eenbrauw for watering the plants while he was in KL. He just wasn't sure if he'd returned it or not.

Thank God eenbrauw was able to answer our call even though he was in a test *sheepish* and told us that indeed, he has our keys in a cabinet in his home. And thank God he has a housemate who was home.

We had to drive a little distance, but we got the keys eventually and all breathed a sigh of relief!

Daymn, if I never experience this sort of panic again, I'll be a very happy lady.

"If you wear Crocs and step into the pond, can you walk on water?" or Hoorn (Part 2)

Last night I went to a birthday party in The Hague. It sounds awfully grand when you consider the World Tribunal is there. Much better than saying, "I went to a birthday party in Putrajaya.". Got loadsa pics from the party, but will blog about that after I'm done with the past few weeks' worth of posts!

Back to Hoorn then...

When we arrived at the house after a horrendous 1-hour drive after work (which normally takes 15 minuts), Moeder Irma was cooking something fragrant for dinner.

Sweet and sour meatballs with noodles. And in the right corner there you can see my new favourite snack, Bali Kroepoek!

View outside from the dining table. I love those two horses. So arty.

That morning at the office, a package had arrived for me. I was so looking forward to receiving it! It was the art piece I'd ordered over Etsy from lauraamiss. Such a lovely piece. She'd previously sold almost the same design, which is the street she lives on in Amsterdam, so I asked if she could make another, and also include my two dogs, whom I dearly miss back in KL, Maxi and Foxy.

She packaged it soooo nicely! I love it when people pay attention to details like these.

So pretty, right? It's all drawn and then sewn in. The lines are threads and the patches of colour are patches of fabric.

Then dinner was ready and we tucked in.

Schrobbenmaster being super full.

And here are a few pictures I found, that should have been in the previous post, about when we cycled into the town centre :P

This is on the really nice bike route we took.

I seriously don't know what's up with Schrobbenmaster's phone camera. I promise, the road is not slanted like that in real life.

I look so pro, biking with one hand like that, but it sure takes some effort. I tried releasing both hands but went a bit dangerously wobbly. Heh.

Cacat camera.

Anyway, after we came back from town, Schrobbenmaster's parents weren't home yet so we sat in the garden with a couple of beers. It was such a nice, sunny day!

If you look closely (or have a good imagination), you can see me on the left side of the mirror there, sitting behind the table.

Two kinky frogs.

One serious work call.

And now ordering our Chinese takeaway dinner.

Hideous menu. It's also quite interesting how on the front of the menu, they decided to insert an image of their delivery motorbikes instead of an appetising dish. I wonder if this is a reflection of the Dutch mentality - they'd rather know this restaurant delivers, rather than knowing it has tasty food.

There were about 200 dishes in there. Schrobbenmaster and I just stared at the menu with our eyes glazed over. In the end, we chose the easiest. The set menu for three.

After ordering, we went all goofy in the garden.

I think he hit his hand on the arch above him.

Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to kick the Croc in my direction...

... as it bounced off me and went straight into the water. Right side up though. Prompted the question, "If you wear Crocs and step into the pond, can you walk on water?"

I made him do it again with a wet Croc.

Being a good boy, watering Mama's plants.

Playing peek-a-boo from the computer room upstairs.

And then dinner arrives...

Do remember that we ordered a set menu for THREE people only.

Don't think this is a lot?

This is after four people had their fill.

Does this remind you of Jesus and the fish and loaves of bread or what?

Hoorn (Part 1)

Hokay, so because I haven't blogged in quite a while, I have a huge pile-up of photos! And now I don't really feel like going through them all to arrange them in chronological order, so I'm crossing my fingers that my next few posts don't get too confusing and jumbled up.

Last weekend, Schrobbenmaster and I went to visit Moeder Irma and Papa Bert in Hoorn. It's a really nice town just outside Amsterdam, but oh my, I wouldn't wanna live there and work in Amsterdam because without traffic, it could be a 15-minute drive, but in rush hour traffic, it's over an hour! Geez!

(One could argue, of course, that we do live in Rotterdam and work in Amsterdam, which is an hour and 15 minutes on the road. But at least we have a clear highway for most of the route.)

We had the Saturday to ourselves while the parents were at a garage sale, so Schrobbenmaster and I headed into the town centre for some shopping and strolling.

I had to use Schrobbenmaster's grandmother's bike because it was the smallest. Regular Dutch bikes for my size are just too big and difficult for me! I feel like the bike is controlling me instead of the other way round.

At least with this old bike, I could actually touch the ground with my toes, and I felt a little more confident about mounting and dismounting. The only problem was... it's an 'oma fietsen' (grandmother bike) and like any bike, you pedal forward to move, but to brake... you have to pedal backward! Daymn, that sure made me insecure, not being used to something like that. I was so nervous that I'd pedal backward to violently and then fly off the bike! So it really helped that I could reach the ground (even if just with my tippy toes).

In the end, after the bike ride into town, where we went on some really nice paths with trees and stuff, I absolutely fell IN LOVE with this bike. I'd previously insisted on keeping my slightly-too-big bike back in Rotterdam because I'd gone through so much with it (read: fallen off, bruised myself, mounted pedestrian sidewalks and scaring people), but after riding this oma fietsen... sigh... I couldn't go back.

What the heck is going on with this picture??

Anyway, we walked around the town, which is really nice, and then we passed by a fresh fish seller and all of a sudden I felt peckish. No idea why.

We bought some kibbeling - fried fish pieces, more like fish nuggets than fish fingers - and they were really fresh and good. I had them with sweet chilli sauce (because no one here eats proper chilli sauce, bah) and we found a spot by the harbour and sat down to watch the boats.

That's a boat with some tourists making its way out of the harbour.

And then we saw some dude having a real summer holiday on his 'boat'.

He actually fit an outdoor chair onto his small motorboat! How cute is that?!

Anyway, I have to rush off now, bed beckons and (ugh) so does work.

The 1-minute revelation

Just like the strategy of some toothpaste makers who make the holes where the toothpaste comes out from slightly bigger than normal so that people use up their tube faster, the makers of the toilet roll we use in the office have made each square piece slightly longer so that they can provide the same sized toilet roll, but which will be finished faster because there are less square pieces.

Guess where I got this revelation.

Battling work and colleagues

Just a quick one to update my thoughts, and so you guys don't think I've disappeared into a cloud.

It's my second week at work, and ups and downs are normal. Won't go into detail at the moment - suffice to say that I struggle with a particular person at work who seems bent on ignoring me and being rude. I was incredibly pissed the whole of last week, adding in the fact that Schrobbenmaster didn't seem to think anything of it... but yesterday that person seems to have changed her tactics. Won't change my mind about her until her behaviour becomes more consistent, though.

Anyways...

I finished two artwork proposals for a campaign for teens and sex. I'm pretty happy with the result, and hope that we get chosen for the campaign so that I can use those pieces :)

And now I'm working on creating a (brand new?) visual identity for the NS Tryout Festival. We did the first festival last year and I wasn't in charge of the branding (not that there was much anyway), but this year, we want to offer a solid identity and guidelines. I'm pondering between being ambitious and creating a whole new kit, which I can be potentially proud of, or refining and following on from last year's work.

It's making me nervous...

(Why did I bold those words? Cuz I wanna be able to scan through my posts in the future and see what projects I've worked on :P)

New job! Making lemon tea, ordering pizza from Little Italy, buying a new sidetable, Burger King, and tour of our kitchen

Woke up pretty late today after a pretty late night. We decided to celebrate my new job by having some wine after dinner.

Oops, have I not mentioned I have a job?

Haha... that really slipped my mind until I typed it out. On Friday, Schrobbenmaster got the call that the NS (train company) had given the green light to the NS Festival in October. Last year's festival was the first ever, and I had designed the newspaper for it. So this year, Schrobbenmaster's boss wanted to hire me again for the project if it was approved. And on Friday, we found out that I got the contract!

Now I can spend some money without feeling too guilty. I ordered Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren a few days ago from the bookshop. Been thinking about it for a while but kept forgetting. I bought a copy years ago when I was still in Christian Fellowship with the Life Teens in SFX (my church), and it was so cheap then. Now, not so.

Anyway, as always, here are some photos to spice up your lives.

Schrobbenmaster makes fresh lemon tea when the weather gets warmer. He was inspired from staying with me when I always bought Pokka Ice Lemon Tea (which is really delicious) to cool down from the heat. Fresh lemon tea is better though. It tastes much healthier.

Taste-testing. Methinks the lemon in this first batch wasn't ripe yet. It ended up tasting a bit lemon skin-ny, although obviously there aren't any lemon skins in it. Today's batch is much nicer.

I met up with Schrobbenmaster in the city one afternoon after work. The sun was out in full force, beckoning all the European critters out from their homes and offices. Sitting in cafes and on the steps of the World Trade Center.

That is de Bijenkorf, an upscale department store. I like their food and stationery section. Made me wish I had someone to buy Easter chocolates for. I got myself a pack of sticky notes in the design of cupcakes though.

This is the 'shopping gutter' on the Hoogstraat.

That's me Foursquare-ing in front of the little Italian takeaway. We ordered two pizzas and hung around outside till it was done.

The shop next to Little Italy. Really nice exterior, right?

Schrobbenmaster took this photo. Not sure why exactly it interested him, but apparently this bike is higher than usual? Uh... I think he meant the horizontal bars between the steering and the saddle.

The call that told us I got the job!

The pizza is really cheap and quite tasty. Wouldn't say it's the best pizza ever, but still nice. Mine was €6 for a large size.

Yesterday, we went back to Alexandrium, the furniture mall, to take another look at the sidetable we spotted for the office. Decided to buy it because we'd seen hundreds and none were as ideally-sized and coloured as this.

We chose a different, more modern handle for the drawers. Sad thing is, we only get it in 3 months! :(

After looking in some sleep shops for pillows, we found one that seemed suitable. I don't know how to choose pillows, but I really needed a good one because my neck has been in torture for the past few months and I don't know how to cure it besides having nightly neck massages and getting a good pillow.

My pillow was a good bargain too, paid €75, down from €150 because the shop was closing and moving to another mall. Yay!

Before we headed home, we stopped by Burger King because I was craving proper fries. Proper, meaning, American 'french fries'.

Schrobbenmaster having chicken nuggets, which he described as 'potatoes with a taste of chicken on the outside'. Made him light-headed as well, but I told him it's probably because his body is not attuned to the bad stuff in fast food. I advised him to have fast food a bit more regularly :D

This is what they wanted me to sit on! How weird is that? It's like those bars they use in bus stops so that people can at least sit and wait, but uncomfortable enough so homeless people and hooligan youths don't hang out there for long hours. But I'm there to friggin eat, man! Why make it so awkward?

Took a picture of the poster for entertainment purposes. Oddly enough, the time when I was snapping this shot was the only time we didn't have weirdos standing or walking by the window.

We had a family of women just by the yellow bin on the left, finishing their smokes before coming to Burger King. The mother had purple hair and um... odd (to say the least) leopard/snake print boots, like we're still living in the 80s. The also smoking daughter was dressed okay, but she had the oddest body - I thought she might have been pregnant, but Schrobbenmaster said she just had a really weird body, Big, bigger, then big and then bigger. And the aunt, also smoking, had black AND white hair. Not streaked, but like a skunk sort of style.

Bet you wish I had waited to take that shot!

When we got home, Schrobbenmaster made brownies to celebrate my new job.

So I decided to take photos around the kitchen to show you what it looks like...

It kinda looks like curry, but it's pasta meat sauce :P

The brownies baking in the oven.

And to end the post, our handy portable radio/speaker next to Brad, our second basil plant (first one was called Mister B). Btw, if anyone's looking for a portable radio/speaker, this one from Tivoli Audio comes recommended as it's reasonably priced (we paid RM700 in KL for it, but it's slightly more expensive now with the newer models) and good quality sound for something so small.