halal = healthy?

the other day i got into a heated debate with one of my friends..

it started when she excitedly told me that she just discovered this halal brand that sells vitamins and those herbs and what nots in pills and liquid form..

according to my friend, she has been looking for a halal brand for the vitamins and herbs pills that she has been taking and she cant wait to get her hands on this brand..

i pointed out to her that while yes, it is good and all that the pills are certified halal, but it does not mean those pills are necessarily good for you..at the end of the day, you have to consult your doctor to ensure what you are consuming is suitable and does not give bad side effects..

she looked at me and meanly said she wonders what kind of Muslim i am that i am questioning the goodness of halal products and have i become too modern that i dont even know what halal actually means!

i felt really frustated!

i tried to explain to her...i start first with admitting that i may not be the perfect Muslim and i may not know certain things and of course we are always in the learning process, but my understanding is, when something is labelled halal, it simply just means the production and the content does not include any haram items e.g. pig, alcohol etc and if they use any animal products, it is prepared in the Islamic way. but that still does not mean that items is good for your health!!

i mean for example, if u take a pill right, and its produced halal-ly BUT it comes from some unknown plant, a plant you have never heard of before, would you simply eat the pill? without wanting to know what is its effects? is it suitable for your body? wouldnt you want to consult a doctor first before taking it?

we did not solve this issue in the end and just agree to disagree..

what do you think?

#%$#$#%!!!

This is an extremely LONG “ranting” post..so u know, just fyi..

(oh side story, there’s this one person in office who once indignantly and condescendingly pointed out to me, loud enough for the entire office to hear, that I made a mistake in my email to her, cos I wrote FYA, instead of FYI, like duhhh-nique-everyone-knows-its-suppose-to-be an “I” for “for your info”, "konon belajar kat overseas and all but itu pun tak tau"etc etc..i looked at her incredulously while my officemates already snickering behind her back, and explained that I wrote there ‘fya’ which means its ‘for your action’, and that if what I give is for her info, then I would have written ‘fyi’… she looked at me all pale faced and left my cubicle without a single word...geeeshhh some people, benda simple pun nak kecohh!…)

okey, back to my rants..

i hate hate hate my office!!

Like seriously hating it..no,no not the job or the people, it’s the parking, the walkway to the building, the entire building for that matter, in fact, the whole building area!!

Ok, let’s start with the parking, the company are not able to accommodate parking for all its staff so for new people like myself have to find our own parking space elsewhere. There are two options for the nearest parking to the building; one costs RM7 but u have park your car latest (latest!) at 6.30am!! I’ve had a colleague whom comes into to the office at 6am, and sleep at the surau till 8.30am!! so NOT an option right? the next parking is in the building adjacent to ours, ok, I need to pay RM700 for deposit, RM80 for the card and RM270 for the first month parking and, so forking out a RM1k AND, get this, where u park, your car will be blocked as other cars will double park and u cannot come and go as u please, OR if you’re late u have to double park, and u have to leave yr keys with the dodgy looking parking attendants and they will move yr car for u if the car u block wants to get out, and horror stories of scratches and dents is common!

My other options include parking 15 minutes walking distance away from the office, near main roads or in between people’s houses or in other buildings far far away, I don’t mind the walk but we get robbery reports everyday, every-single-bloody-day and especially for someone like me who always work till late at night, parking at these places is simply not an option! AND don’t even get me started on the public transport here!!

So my only option is, I park in the next building to ours. Its only about 10 minutes walk BUT, the bloody building and parking area is under construction. You would think they give us a discount during this time right? But nope, I pay the full price of RM253 every month to get the following;

1. monthly asthmatic attacks due to the dust and dirt of the enclosed and crowded basement parking,

2. acidic corrosion on the paint of car due to god knows what chemicals dropping from various parts of the ceiling,

3. flooded car park every time it rains, ankle deep flood okeyy, so gross yucks,

4. and I have no fixed spot and have to wait every day for the pakcik parking to tell me where to park (luckily he’s a nice old man, thank god!) and

5. have to endure weird dodgy looking construction workers lingering and working around the parking area!

See how miserable this stupid place is!!

I hate the general area cos;

The walk way from the parking place to the office is sooooo narrow and uneven so klutz like me always stumbled and have felled and scraped my new M&S pants L AND the path way have no cover so always to make a run for it when it rains, so imagine running on that stupid path, AND there are stupid flower plants along the path at shoulder level and the plant blocked more than half of the path, its like oh, nevermind the people who gets scratches and bleeding from the thorns, please don’t trim the bloody flowers!!

There are NO ventilation at all once you get into the office, the windows are shut down tight and they turn on the aircond FULL BLAST and the lightings are getting yellower, making me squint all the time and the walls are stupid horrible faded orange AND we can hear the constructions outside every-single-bloody day and the drilling sound is driving me INSANE!!

oh fyi, this company is no.2 in whole entire bloody world in its industry.

sigh...
I am UTTERLY miserable :(

this and that

its confirmed, i have lost my lovely red leather Fossil watch :( i thought i'd misplaced it, and thought i will find it in either my laptop bag, or my prayer bag but after a thorough search this morning, its definetely not there :( that watch meant a lot to me, twas something i bought for myself upon receiving the confirmation that i secured the Chevening Scholarship to UK and bought especially to accompany the start of my new life in uk..now its lost huhu :(

have u heard of the boutique Egg? its located in Bangsar, same row as the McDonalds and next to Blook.. i discovered this amazing shop about 4 years ago, just before i left to uk, then i have rediscovered it again last week..and yes, they still have amazing clothes! and my membership still holds! hehe so i get extra discounts :p bought three lovely tops, perfect for my a week long business + birthday trip to Singapore next week :)

held the BF's birthday party last week, in Bangkok Jazz @ Chulan Square, met missy loady's mr. seeing-somebody hehe (sorry loady :p), the music and food is still fantastic, altho HE is still shy shy about us celebrating his birthday at such a scale, HE was blushing when the whole joint + the band started singing happy birthday hehehe (sayang, happy birthday to you, next time we have a bigger party okehhh :p)

before that we had dinner with Noris at Chillies, i was listening in horror about his experience being drugged and driven all the way to Seremban at knife point..dear, thank god you are okay and they didnt hurt you!! listening to it was enough to give me the shivers! :( really, what is the world coming to? people really are more desperate these days huhu :(

on another more cheerful note, he is all smiles about three major great things, winning the Young Manager's Award (congrats dearie!), secured the scholarship for PhD in London (jealous!! :p) and the fantastic offer from the company..this just goes to show that life works in mysterious ways...our dinner was also to introduce him to the BF, who is interested to continue his Masters in Glasgow, and who better to tell him all about Glasgow other than my dear Glasgow-ian friend himself hehe :p thanks Noris, and remember, when i go to London in Nov, am expecting a home cooked meal from you and Alden hehehe :p

watched Night at the Museum 2 two days ago, somehow, i like the first one better, this one is funny but like they really put an effort into it, the first one was effortless funny..err, okey, maybe u shud just go and watch it hehe

owh, forgot to blog about the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale, BEST SANGAT!!! too bad it happens only once a year, i now made a pact to myself to buy books only during this sale, as their selection is amazing! managed to get some coffee table books too, which will look great on my future coffee table in front of my future sofa in my future apartment :p

is there a nice-not-too-expensive 3 bedroom apartment in Kuching, Sarawak? i need to book it for the family holiday next month and the ones i found online is terribly expensive huhu

eh, bila the next Big Singapore Sale ya?

where to eat?

one of the "privilige" of being a newbie in the department, i am constantly being asked to attend and organize events on the "pretense" of needing to "expose" myself to the stakeholders (i can just imagine the bf's reaction to the word 'expose' haha).

when its my turn to organize, i have been and tried and suggested numerous numbers of restaurants all about town in an effort to impress the boss of my culinary and social knowledge of the most hip and happening restaurants in town, some are quite a hit like La Risata (Italian!) & SAGAR Indian Cuisine at Bangsar and disasters, like Unique Seafood, PJ (good food, but old chinese men and women singing karaoke through the very thin walls of the restaurant spoils the ambience majorly!).

next week i have to organize another lunch and dinner for our regional managers and i am seriously out of ideas!! so the point of this post is;

HELP!! Suggestions please!!!

wish they this in KL tho!

isnin yang haru biru

ilham dari cik zaitul chantal, terasa pulak nak ber-blog dalam bahasa Malaysia...hehe tapi mereka2 yang mengenali saya, mereka tahu bahawa saya teramat lah gagal dalam subjek ini :p

okey..dah tak tau nak tulis ape hahaha gila idea hilang kalau dalam BM..tadi macam banyak jer benda nak tulis :p

nanti lah sambung (^_^)

selamat hari isnin semua!

Angels & Demons

two posts in one day? im on a roll baby (^_^)..

saw this movie last nite..one word to describe it - FANTASTIC!!!

i forgot the ending in the book, having read it years ago, but i think the movie managed to capture the adrenalin rush that was in the book, largely i think contributed by the amazing music arrangement. one thing that i did remember from reading the book was how i really really want to visit Rome and go to Vatican City and see if its really is overwhelming as described in the book and i think, judging from the way it was portrayed and the cinematography in the movie, i will not be the only one making plans to visit Rome soon :p

go and watch it on the big screen please... its well worth it!

huh?

I am very particular about who I add in my Facebook list.

In the previous Friendster portal, I would add just about anyone (well, except for the psychopaths and nutcases) cos everyone was collecting friends like collecting paper clips, its not about the quality but the quantity that counts :p but in Facebook, I was determined to keep in clean and will only accept those that I would actually call a friend or those I actually have met and know. So if I have never heard of a person's name before and after investigation that person is actually a friend of a friend of a friend, looking to add to your collection, i would just ignore.

So recently, someone unknown wanted to add me as a friend.

The name does not ring a bell, and the picture is too small for me to make out if I have actually met this person or not. I checked through the mutual friend list. And asked around. She is actually the cousin of a friend’s husband’s friend. Complicated huh?

I decided to ignore this person, after all, I do not know this person at all and I don’t see the need to, I even asked my friend and she herself does not know her very well and cant understand why she wanted to add me. Without sounding totally arrogant or condescending about it, no flattery in this situation at all, cos apparently she actually requested to be friends with my other office mates as well, whom she has never met either, so its not like exclusive she wanted to be MY friend. Looks like this is one the those person who actually just want to have a collection.

Today she send me message, demanding to know why I did not accept her as a friend and pointed out on who do I think I am that I had the nerve not to accept her friendship.

Err, hello?? I am thoroughly amused and confused huhu

I have not replied to it yet..and am not planning to.

I don’t think I need to explain myself.

What do you think?

complicated :(

Arguing with your bf on his birthday cant be good right? I know that, I know that it is suppose to be a happy day for him..the present have been bought weeks ago, something that took me a month to agonize over, I was determine to make sure he would like the gift, the plan for the evening was also set a few weeks ago, he knows what he wants to do, so I just make the arrangements, I even bought a new outfit for the occasion, and was happily making plans with him about the birthday dinner..

Then we fought…

I suppose a major fight, as for the first time ever he hang up on me…

It all started when I asked him to pick me up at the office instead, as after that we are both going to town anyway and he can just drop me off.. the reason I asked him to pick me up is because of 2 things, first, my stupid parking place is flooded and under major constructions, more than usual and when I went out at lunchtime, I had a bad asthma attack,..therefore I was seriously tired of going back to the parking place and rather leave the car there and only pick it up the next day... Second, my GM and this another manager just lumped another huge pile of work that is totally none related to what my job actually is, and I hated it , hated being taken for granted, hated that I cant say no, hate it that im always stuck with the bulk of the responsibility and barely a recognition :(

But I didn’t telll HIM all this, all I asked was him to pick me up..

Then I asked if he knows how to get to my office…

He gave a totally unfamiliar route that I have no freaking idea what is he talking about..

Okay, so maybe that’s my mistake, maybe he knows the road better than I do, but his explanation is just too weird..

So I gave up trying to explain.. and told him I will drive instead, cos it sounds too complicated..

Then he gets pissed and asked why I didnt thinking about it first and why do I keep changing my mind…

Then he hang up on me….so now I don’t know if we are even meeting up for his birthday…

Damn it…

It is not suppose to be this hard :(….

long overdue

its a long overdue post, and im deeply ashamed and dutifully apologise :p

its been a hectic two months, with two major events happening (eh, dah happen :p)..

first, i went to Bali! finally! after all these years of whining to all my best friends who ALL went without me, i finally went three weeks ago :) will update with full review later okey, but for now, all i can say is, Bali was absolutely FANTASTIC!! was forewarned by some peeps that 4 days was not enough, but for me, 4 days was enough with the amount of money we had :p my travel mates and i made the mistake of spending too much too early and for not anticipating that there are so many things we are interested in buying! only one thing spoiled the entire trip for us, which is the seafood dinner at Jimbaran, which is so bloody expensive! will tell you guys all about it later, but meanwhile, here's a sneak peek of a couple of my fav pics (^_^)

at Tanah Lot, gorgeous place, too bad twas raining when we when there, so had miss the sunset huhu

at Jimbaran, another gorgeous place, altho i seriously think that the sunset here in Malaysia is way better! or maybe i am already biased cos i hated the place due the expensive dinner we were cheated to have huhu

righto, moving to the next thing, went to Tanjung Jara Resort last weekend, usually i dun like to blog about company events, but thennnnnn that was probably because i used to hate my previous company hehe but i have to blog about this place, its definetely worth the effort of organizing and the migrains and headaches to have our department family day there. being a YTL hotel, the resort was top class all the way, it was a perfect three days! perfect! the people was lovely, everything went almost accordingly to plan which was of course totally fine, its expected, the food was abundance and delicious, the room, aahh, the room, half of me do not wanna leave the room at all in the three days i was there, and the other half wanna go swim in the deep blue ocean, enter a sandcastle competition (i did and won 3rd place!!wuhoo! :p), hang out by the bubble pool, played kites on the beach and relax at those huge white sofas they scaterred by the beach all over the resort!

no pictures yet, as usual, will give the full review later okeh..

post this first lah..nanti lagi lama pending hehe