Just before 5.30pm, my Japanese bosses would call me for a meeting. This happens almost everyday. They call it the “Japanese speaking” meeting because it will be conducted in the language of the raw fish eating people. As someone who doesn’t understand Japanese, my main problem would not only be to understand what the discussion is all about but to actually understand WHY they even bother to invite me for such a meeting??! and to make things better, sometimes they even treat me as someone really important that just HAVE to attend it!

The meeting normally takes more than 3 hours and at times it takes a whole day.
For me, I just have to sit through it. It’s an obligation without any responsibility. They do not even care what I do during the meeting. However, sometimes they can still be kind enough to ask me a simple question..”Ok ka??”.. or “Understand ka??” and what I do is answer “OK naa..!!” or “Hait !!..Wakarimashita”.

It doesn’t matter if I actually understand or not!.. the most important thing is to give a positive answer. If I say I don’t understand; they will try to explain to it to me. With their communications methods of Japanese English with sign language; they will confuse me a lot more and also can take up an extra of 1-2 hours of sitting there listening to them chatting.

If I choose to say that I don’t understand; I just say it sarcastically “Kuah-kari-ikan-masin” ( actually, Wakarimas-sen means I don’t understand ). It’s a pretty good joke that of course they don’t understand..still, I can be proud of my stupid joke & smile about it as they go on with the meeting. Their egos will stop them from asking me further about my suspicious grin!! hehe

If I really want to ask them a question just to remind them that hello I am still alive here, I must make sure that it’s not a difficult question and they already know the answer. If I ask the wrong question & they don’t know the answer; they’ll try to answer it as confusingly as possible to make sure that they appear smart and they will explain it until I give up or until it’s already past 5.30pm and say “I understand!!!”

I’m not sure either i like it or not. If the time is still 8am ~ 5.30pm…it should still be fine even though it means i would be wasting my time there doing nothing for the whole day and listen to them talk. I may not understand word by word; but I definitely know most of their conversation is not about work but golf.

However if the time is past 5.30pm.. i really feel like committing hara-kiri..puuiihhh..

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It is strange what strange people can do to you. When my husband’s friend of 13 years confided his bizarre love story to me some three years ago, I cannot help but to be realistically honest in regards of his wretched girlfriend; that I think she is a fake.

If I were to exchange the word ‘wretched’ there to something more accurately descriptive of her; it would take one whole blog entry of its own and once you read the entry; I am absolutely positive that first you will laugh your head off and then we will all vomit blood together.

Let’s just say that our 31 year old very nice very good buddy started to be in a relationship with a girl he knew from Friendster without actually meeting her, only talk on the phone and chatting together on the net. Though she is in my Friendster list; I too have never met her, and only know about her from one or two times he asked me for an opinion about her.

Until today; I do not even know the girl’s name except for her nickname on Friendster, and the last time he discussed her with me; neither did he! She also would not let him know where she works, and where she stays! They both are living a few kilometers apart in different cities in Selangor but she simply refused to meet him. Have you got the gist?

When he decided to dismiss my negative comment about the strange girl and continue to fall very deeply in love with her, I respect his decision, wish them happiness and just let them be. After all what can I say? He did not approach Azman, when he should have, Azman is his close friend from years ago in Asasi; besides he is 6 years my senior, I don’t think it’s really appropriate to advice someone that older about relationships.

When our friend was in cloud nine he changed from the sporting, nice and funny dude to a very solemn person; a whole world of differences from the loveable friend that have always known. In last December he broke the news of being transferred to work in Borneo for a whole year. Much to his new solitary life; Azman and I decided to throw him a farewell dinner, just us and him with perhaps a couple or more friends.

Now if you were to throw Azman a party would you not invite me? Or if you were to dine with Datuk K would you forget about Siti?

I dropped the girlfriend a message in Friendster to invite her to come along. She declined because she had other arrangements. Very well then what can I say. This happened in January.

A few days ago, the boyfriend approached me in yahoo msgr. And he scolded me! He scolded me for making his girlfriend sad!!!!!! I shall repeat that, for MAKING HIS GIRLFRIEND SAD!

I demanded to know what the hell have I done. He could have answered perhaps I said something wrong to her but nope! He said

‘You tell me!’

Like hell lady! Stop playing dumb; you have hurt my girl’s feeling so you better admit it! Or ‘Sendiri mau ingat la!! Lu kacau awek gua baik lu mengaku aje!’

My jaw dropped to my chest.

I confessed inviting her to the farewell dinner and God knows that was the last time I got in touch with her! I thought hard but could not think of any other time that I have communicated anything to her.

Can somebody please explain to me there are people in this world who find invitations to their own boyfriends’ farewell dinner so bloody offensive until they got hurt so deeply three months later they still cant get over it and send their boyfriends to confront the biatch that did the inviting???????

The urge to vomit blood is very overwhelming.

We are aware that the boyfriend knows what kind of people Azman and I are. He knows that inviting people to dinner is the most natural thing to do; he knows we have friends over for makan-makan all the time but it hurts me much when he ask me not to bother and to leave all the party arranging alone from now on.

Oh how I have sinned.

Just when I could not believe he was saying all this things; he started to state the most unbelievably hurtful things. He explained that the wedding present he gave us was actually from her. Same goes with hotel stay at Penang that he had for attending our wedding was also from her.

So, what did he want me to do? Pay for it back?? Thanks fellas for the present! and I have now learned that paying for wedding presents can make someone an untouchable Goddess. She paid for our present so we must not invite her to dinner. Because that kinda thing irretates her.

And this came from our beloved friend. I am sad. We are sad.

I do not believe the invitation was the actual reason a fully grown up adult came attacking me. She must have made up some stories. I don’t wanna know what that is. She is lucky I am not a freak like her.

25 Comments »

There is a category in this website that discusses food. In some of the entries I even include recipes of the goodies that I cook.

However ladies and gentlemen, they are published not because I would like to share them with you; BUT it is only because I felt like blogging at that time though I had nothing to blog about.

Besides my Father in Law at the kampong is very IT savvy, may he happens to view this website, I want him proud to note that the accelerating development of his son’s waistline and tummy is highly contributed by the clueless Daughter-in-Law-in-skimpy-jeans’ cooking.

This entry however is in a different league. I assure you that I am absolutely not kidding when I write it because Mel ( melvinnaqy@aol.com) has dropped a msg at my shoutbox requesting for the recipe of the “The Ugly Stick Cookie” or more commonly known as “Kuih Batang Buruk”. Except in Malay the name sounds slightly vulgar.

To Mel, I found this recipe from my cookbook and I am yet to try it. May be u can give some feedback once you have. Enjoy!

KUIH BATANG BURUK

Ingredients for the pastry:
400g wheat flour
200g grated fresh coconut ( only the whites) & toast till golden brown, let cool and grind finely
2 table spoons of rice flour
1 egg beaten
2 teaspoon of baking powder
Salt to taste

Enough water
4 tablespoons of margarine
Cooking oil for frying

Ingredients for the filling:
200g green bean

180g castor sugar

Methods for filling:
Roast the green peas in a wok without oil till fragrance. Once cool, grind together with sugar and put aside.

Mix flour, toasted coconut, rice flour, egg, baking powder, salt and margarine well.
Add water and mix into nice dough. Cover the bowl with damp cloth for 30 minutes.

Roll out small amount thinly and cut into small rectangulars (2cm x 3.5 to 4cm). To shape the rolled out dough into cylinder use the stem of a papaya leaf. (God knows where to get this thing so I guess if you can’t find any I think a chopstick or a thick pen will do)

Ensure the dough is not too soft else it will not keep its shape. Fry in hot oil till golden.
Once cool down, stuff the filling inside it.

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