My US trip : Day 4...

 

 

Right after breakfast, We went hiking again at Bear Mountain Park again. 2 days in a row... woo hoo...

 

This time, with a more appropriate "gear", personally I enjoyed the trip much better than the day before. We managed to hiking faster and I managed to take more picture this time. Similarly, we managed to climb up to the top for the breathe-taking view before we hiked back down.

 

 

 

On our way down, we were greeted by a few families who went for their regular Sunday hiking. Some of them brought their dog along with them for the hike. Looking at how much fun they have with their 4-legged friend, it made me miss Tezel even more. My adorable little boy.... I wish I could bring him out to more places instead of that few dog friendly park. Sigh.... bummer right?

 

We head back home for brunch and I had some fun time with AK and his family. It was a simple and relaxing Sunday for all of us as we slowly prepare for the Christmas celebration which is 4 days away. 

My US trip : Day 3......

After a good day sleeping yesterday, I'm still feeling a bit fuzzy and "floating". Perhaps my body is still adjusting to the 13 hours total shift of daily routine.

 

I got up around 7 plus in the morning, had my first homemade waffle, made freshly in front of my very own eyes. The hot yet crispy waffle, coupled with maple syrup and a hot cup of black coffee, that is a superb breakfast to have on a cool 8 degree Celsius morning. Mmmhhhmmm......  

 

     

 

Right after breakfast, TJ suggested to go for a quick hiking in the woods at Bear Mountain. The sky was clear and the weather was chill and windy. So, instead of visiting the city, we decided to explore some nature scene instead. We drove about 30 to 45 mins to Bear Mountain, all excited and ready for nature walk. Some of the picture that I took while we ventured into the woods....

 

Thick brown layer of leaves on the ground

 

 

Clear blue skies with cool wind (8 degree Celsius)

 

 

The view from the top, overseeing a big lake (or river....I forgot.. :P)

  

After a good lunch back home, we decided to drive down to Manhattan city as AK was craving for his favorite burger from Shake Shack. I have to admit, the burger patties at Shake Shack are pretty tasty and good.

 

 Shake Shack @ Manhattan

 

 Menu @ Shake Shack. They even have food for pets...

 

 ShackStack (AK's) and SmokeShack (mine)



 

After we had our burgers, we stopped by Central Park for a quick walk before we go back and call it a night....

Central Park

 

People in their winter clothing @ Central Park





 Museum of Natural History (night view) - main entrance facing Central Park



My US trip : Day 2....

 

After a long 19 hours flight from Guangzhou to New York, both of us were literally worn out. I was literally spending my time watching movie, sleep and eat. We reached New York around 5 am on 18-Dec (local time) and TJ came and fetched us.

 

Once we reached home, TJ made us some breakfast while we unload those food stuff that I brought from Malaysia. This is when I realized that we brought over 2 luggage full of foodie.... cool eh. We had a good long chat over our incident at Guangzhou and the flight during breakfast and this leads us to afternoon.

 

Right after I took my bath, I was feeling sooooo tired and I slept thru the whole afternoon. I was woken up by CJ when she came back from school. We chatted a fair but, settled down with dinner and I continue to sleep thru the night.....

 

PS: I know, this post seems like a lazy post with very minimal elaboration. This is because I had a very long day today - went hiking in the morning and did some X'mas shopping. Well, I would definitely compensate back in my next post on the places I visited and more photo sharing will be on its way........ stay tune.....

My US trip: Day 1.....

I remembered I couldn't sleep the night before the flight. It was close to 1 or 2 am and I was still pretty much awake. I guess part of it was because I'm officially off work for the year 2015 and best of all, I'm off to New York for Christmas...yay

I woke up around 8 something on 17-Dec, doing my last minute packing to ensure all my daily facial stuff are packed. I did a final check on all the luggage, making sure that I have packed everything that I need and I don't missed out those important documents like my passport, Visa and etc.

We called our regular cab guy to come at 10.30 am and off we go with 4 big luggage (filled with food from Malaysia), 2 hand carry luggage and 2 laptop. I bought 2 luggage lock at the airport before we dropped our luggage off at the counter. We did have some minor hiccups here and there with the medical equipment that AK needs to bring over but overall, we are good.

After we dropped our luggage off the counter, we are only left with like less than an hour before we need to pass thru immigration, so like always, we had a quick bite at McD and proceed to our departure gate. Here comes to the fun part.....

At the departure gate, we saw a long queue at the gate where the ground staff will do the final round of checking thru your luggage before you board the plane. Well, since we took China airline, I wasn't surprise to see majority of the passenger were China citizens. After I have walked thru the scanner arch thingy, I saw the guy in front of me collected his luggage and was busy checking his document. I could see a lot of luggage came out from the scanner and it was all piling up because of his luggage. He just stood still, checking his document and continue to ignore the whole situation. In normal circumstances, once I said "Excuse me.....could I.....", normally people would quickly excuse themselves or picked up their luggage and apologized or they would offered to hang over my luggage since it's right in front of them. But this ignorant China man, just stood there and continue to ignore me completely. I'm like....WTH....seriously?? I just showed him my annoyed face and pushed my way thru to get my luggage. I don't think he was bothered at all but I'm sure he knows I was annoyed. I texted Mariah and I spent like 10mins ranting to him thru Whatsapp about this incident. How inconsiderate..... Oh well, eventually we boarded the plane and off we go to Guangzhou....a land filled with more ignorant people.... sigh....

It was a 4 hours flight and we reach Guangzhou at 5.50 pm (local time). The weather at Guangzhou was cold and if I heard the captain correctly, I think he mentioned it's 8 degree. Anyways, the air was cold and dry, just the way I like it. Little did I know.....how annoying the next 8 hours will be....

Long story short, a couple of incident that happened in Guangzhou:

• The ground staff gets annoyed with us because we did not truly understand what they were trying to say or explained
• Due to long transit time (more than 8 hours), we were suppose to get onto the shuttle that will bring us to our hotel room but the staff who is supposed to guide us to the shuttle was rushing her way thru the crowd, not putting into consideration that majority of us are not familiar with the airport.
• In total, she was suppose to bring 20 of us to the shuttle but 12 of us were left stranded in the airport because we could not find her. We spent more than an hour asking around but none of the people could tell us where to go.
• By the time we managed to locate the counter and shuttle to bring us to the hotel, it was already 8 pm. 3 hours of running around in Guangzhou airport like headless chicken looking for the mother hen.
• We reached the hotel around 8.10 pm and it took us more than 40 mins to register. Talking about efficiency.... speechless.
• The hotel staff forgot to give us a reminder call to remind us on our shuttle back to the airport

Oh well, after all those hassle, we are all ready to board our next plane to New York at 1.50am. As I was entering the gate, I told myself, I don't think I would ever want to plan a visit to China, unless it is necessary. This 8 hours experience is enough to tell me, China is not going to be a place that I could possibly survive or enjoy......

Prelude : My US trip.....

 

Today while I was taking a warm shower in a cold weather, suddenly I had an idea of having a daily write up of my US trip. Just a thought to make my trip memorable.  I know it had been so long since I blogged but I'm going to try and do this...

 

To simplify things,  I'll list down a couple of people who will pop up frequently during my US trip blogs:

• AK: my 9 years plus partner
• TJ: AK ex-wife
• JJ: AK teenage son
• CJ: AK teenage daughter

 

AK and me decided to spend Christmas with AK family in US. Yes, although both AK and TJ is no longer together but they are still in good talking term and yes, me and her do blend in well in the same picture. Complicated eh.... yes,  I know but let's put this aside for now and I'll share about it topic in another blog post.

 

3 years have passed since our last christmas with his family in US, back in 2012. It was a white Christmas back then and I was hoping it would snow again but unfortunately tjis year is not going to be a white Christmas. *sob sob*

I took 3 weeks off my pathetic work, which I will talk about this in another post (seems like a lot of side stories to cover ya.... so dramatic). I will leave Malaysia on 17-Dec-15, arrive back to KL on 5-Jan-16.

OK. .. let my epic christmas story begins.....

Quarter-end Madness Again.....

It's quarter end again..... Arghhh...

I kept telling myself that I would like to write more positive stuff instead of whining and complaining about work. Anyways, it's quarter 3 ending this month and I'm going tremendous stress at work again. Everyone at work talks about forecast number, shipment and invoicing or revenue maximization. Big BIG sigh for me....

If only everyone will do their part well, things will not be that difficult towards the end. But I guess everyone will only look out for themselves and do what it takes to get what they want with the least effort spent. It has been more than a month I put myself thru rough patch, just to push my counter part in Philippines to do what they need to do. There have been progress but it has not been easy on my end. I have to go all the way to escalate people, picked fight with people, make tons of noise, just to get things done. This is so not me. I hate putting people thru difficult moments at work but I don't have much choice. It's either I wait for it to explode on me directly or push it thru to make it happen. Sigh....this is what draining me out in this job.

Anyways, I will have a new role to pick up starting August. I hope that slowly I can move out from my current role and focus full time on the new role. Finger cross it won't be anywhere near to what I need to do to perform in this current role....

Pray hard...!!!!

My carrot cake...

It has been a while since I pen down my thoughts here.  I have been pretty busy with my "crazy" work. Things has been rather out of control, not only affecting myself but the whole team itself  a lot of changes are hitting us as I'm writing this. Our WW VP and Regional VP have changed. It's just a matter of time when it finally hit us who is in the working level. Anyways, I'll have another separate posting on this. Now I would like to talk about my first successful masterpiece.

I attended a baking class in Jun, that's where I learnt how to make Carrot cake, Chocolate Larva cake and Oatmeal cookie. Among the 3, personally I prefer carrot cake coz it is the closest to Fruit cake. Yes, I lovessss fruit cake, especially those with a bit of rum and tons of fruits and nuts. Anyways, my first attempt was during mid of Jun when I went back to my hometown to celebrate Father's Day. I made a couple of mistakes as below:

1. I wanted to get orange but I got grapefruit instead. Bummer right???

2. I didn't have time to get mixed fruits and raisins, so the only fruity stuff I put in was cranberry, which its not fruity enough

3. The walnut that I bought was of low quality, hence the heavy smell of oil (not too sure how to describe it)

With the above hiccups, I did manage to craft out a lower-than-average-but-edible carrot cake for my family. At least my brother likes it....:) See for yourself.

1st attempt: Virgin Carrot Cake.....

Well, this week was my second attempt. I made sure I get orange, good quality nuts and tons of sweet raisins and mixed dry fruits. Since it was a holiday on Tuesday (15-Jul), I tried to bake the cake again. It took me 2 - 3 hours to make that cake. But I was quite satisfied with the results. I let a few people try and this is what they commented:

RC and bf: The texture is a bit too moist but acceptable. Taste is pretty fruity and flavorful, however I can still add on more sweetness if I like. The only drawback lies in the frosting. The cream cheese frosting is a bit too strong and it has a strong taste of oil.

AK: Taste like fruit cake. This attempt is much nicer than the first one. Love it !!

Mariah: The texture is delicate, light and moist. It has a very fruity and nutty taste with cranberries, raisins, walnut and almond nuts inside. The layer of cheese is just right, not too overwhelming but managed to gives a creamy smooth flavor to the overall cake. 

My personal opinion: I am quite happy this the result. I like the rich flavor of mixed fruits with raisins and nuts. To top it up, orange zest and a small cup of hand squeeze orange juice just took the whole fruity taste to the next level. Best of all, I think the texture is moist enough but I could make it better....next time *wide smile*

2nd attempt: a more presentable result

Complimentary photo by Mariah.....Thanks for the artistic look....