Weekend Update ~ Singapore

Other that I had a flight delay back to Singapore on the cheapo Jetstar plane last Wednesday night, I actually had a nice weekend long weekend back at home catching up with my friends and family. :)

On Thursday, we had lunch with hubby's mum and uncle at my favorite prawn noodle shop on Upper East Coast Road. Then we visited hubby's birth place and childhood home on Onan Road which was to be torn down to make way for some private apartments. It was really rundown and I could feel that hubby didn't like living in it at all. The stairs leading up to the apartment was to him the scariest part of the place when he was young.

We went to some dog farms at Pasir Ris with D in the afternoon. Saw some pretty cute puppies but somehow, none of them were comparable to my Coffee and Cookie. I loved the Golden Retriever puppies that I saw but we do not have the kind of house for them...too bad. I would really love to see how Coffee and Cookie will interact with a Golden Retriever. It will be such a funny sight to see a big Golden Retriever being chased by the tiny Toy Poodles. Imagining the scene is making me smile... :) We didn't buy any puppies but the best part of the trip to the dog farms was a chance-meeting with a Malaysian van with the best durians on sale. It was really tasty eating durian out in the open, the unique Singapore experience.

We had supper with some old colleagues on Thursday night at East Coast Lagoon. Had some very tasty local treats such as satay, tulang, fried oyster omelet, cockles, BBQ stingray, etc. It was such a feast!

On Friday, hubby had to fly back alone because of his classes on Saturday but we managed to squeeze in a lunch with his whole family. His elder brother whom we have not met for a long time came too and I could feel that hubby was more than happy. MIL was really happy too, almost forgetting that her younger son was leaving that afternoon...I thought she didn't even say goodbye to him...

After hubby left for Hong Kong, I met some of my good frineds from school on both Friday and Saturday over some very good food again. Laksa, durian desserts, frog porridge...Yummy! I also managed to window shop at Ion, the latest shopping mall in town. The building structure was kind of special, but I thought that it was not very shoppers friendly inside. It was easy to loose your way inside the mall.

Sunday morning was spent quietly at home with mum and son before the flight. D is so fascinated with the yo-yo at the moment, he can do so many tricks with his yo-yo that I felt a little impressed. Now, if only he can put as much dedication in his studies and piano practices... N was out on a study group with some of her classmates and probably showing off the handphone that I had bought for her the day before. She's in puppy love now and I hope she enjoys her youth as much as possible.

Stinky as a rotten egg

Just came home last night from Singapore and I am still trying to snap myself back to the cruel reality of having to finish up my team assignments and having to concentrate on my work. I have not been productive at the whole morning since sitting here at my desk. I am just trying to figure out what I should do first...prioritise, prioritise...I have already put off writing my weekly report; since it was just 3 days of work last week, I single-mindedly decided that I can don't write anything this week and leave it to next week.

It was kind of a tough week for me. My boss in HK announced to me last Thursday that he has decided to take the VMI Support function out from my department and the woman who is handling it will be retrenched. It was 2pm when he announced it to me and I am suppose to disclose to this woman at 4pm the very same day. It was difficult, especially when this woman is sort of a friend whom I used to meet outside the office. I should have expected this to happen, she was one of those many "old" colleagues that the new management has targetted to cut. They are expensive and unproductive, if I am the boss, I will also choose them to cut.

In order to prevent any bad feelings, I decided to disclose the news to her before the offical time. She took it quite hard, asking to be released immediately from her position even though the company requested her to do a handover of jobs in a week or two. And since I also do not want her to create anymore trouble for me, I released her. She left before the day was over without clearing her things. She came back to the office the next day, but not until almost everyone has left the office. The HR personnel did not agree to do handover with her as she was officially off-duty and told her to come back during office hours. She refused and called me on my mobile to complain to me and requesting me to help her if the HR personnel call me. I was on my way to the airport to catch a flight home and I was totally upset by her. She is really such a bad egg! Why can't she just do as per the company's rules? Why must she give so much trouble to us? In the end, she insisted to pack her stuff and asked a junior staff in the department to help her handover her pass and handphone card to the HR department instead. That's the most annoying part, this junior staff is already helping her with her work and standing in for her to do the transfer of jobs to the Accounting department.

I am very angry with her and I am more angry with myself for choosing her to join my department 1 year ago. I should have just let her be retrenched there and then, why should I bother? I understand that she has pride, but this is not the way to handle things. She is being compensated fully and she has the responsibility to make the transfer go smoothly. In this way, she will only be known for her rotten egg ways and not for any good she has done over these 16 years she had worked in the company. It's such a pity.

Weekend Update ~ Operations Management Final Exams

Completed my 7th subject with the final exams for Operations Management and I have 11 more subjects to go. I was kind of disappointed with the exams question though because it was a really stupid question. Instead of requiring me to write a report using the concepts and theories that I have learnt in Operations Management, it asked me to find data on the trend of Toyota's recent recalls and from that information, find the root cause to the quality issues and recommend some quality management program to Toyota. Most of the theories and concepts we studied in Operations Management comes from Toyota and now for the final exams, I need to recommend Toyota something new? It's ridiculous!

Anyway, I downloaded the question at around 9pm on Saturday night after coming home from dinner with hubby and basically got so fedup with the question that I slept through it. I woke up at around 7am to do the paper and submitted by 1pm. I don't know how but I managed to squeeze 1900 words out and after that I was totally drained...

Cookie in a soup bowl~

I put Cookie in a soup bowl and took a picture of her. She fitted right in! How cute! She is so tiny!

I gave the 2 of them a bath yesterday in the bathroom sink and they smell great after that. Then I had them on my bed for the whole afternoon while we watched TV and study. Unfortunatelt, they are still not toilet trained yet, so I did get a little pee on my sheets. But I am fine with it, it's part and puzzle of having pets. My mum would freak out though but I seriously think that man and animals can live very well together. Everyone should have a pet! It's heathy!

Bundles of Joy

The two tiny toy poodle puppies have added much joy to our humble home which is now offically a "doggy house". They have been with us for the past 5 nights and so far they have been sleeping through the night. They wake up very early in the morning though...6am on the 1st day, 6:30am on the 2nd day, 7:15am on the 3rd day, 6:30am on the 4th and finally 7:30am this morning. We have decided to give them a late night feed so that they can sleep until later in the morning and I think it is working...

Here's a picture of the 2 of them! :)

Weekend Update - My Tiny Toy Poodles~

I am sorry Oreo, I won't be taking you home... Oreo is the name of the blue toy poodle that I had decided to name when I set off to Causeway Bay yesterday evening intending to take him home. M and his wife came to fetch us at around 5:15pm, they are really sweet, they both love dogs and they wanted to see the puppy that I have mentioned to them the whole time we were bowling on Saturday night.

After arriving at Causeway Bay, I decided to take them to another pet shop selling some tiny toy poodles imported from Taiwan. I know Mrs M loves small dogs, so I thought she would love to see those little darlings. I wanted to make a comparison too, just to make sure that I wouldn't make the wrong choice. The shop owner recognized me from Friday, he picked up the sweet little girl that I had carried and handed it to me almost immediately. Oh, she is so small and so sweet and so cute! Such a little darling! Then another boy was frantically trying to catch our attention, jumping around, playing and disturbing the rest in the cage. Hubby thought that he was so funny and so he brought him out too. Then I was thinking to myself, why not I get a boy and a girl? Both of them will cost less than Oreo alone! Besides, they are in my original intented colour of choice!

We went to see Oreo anyway. He was as usual very active and happy to be brought out of his cage so that he could run around and play with the other adult poodles. There were several other adult poodles around with really beautiful thick coats of fur. Oreo is very, very beautiful, but somehow, I feel that it belong to owners with bigger homes, homes with a spacious living room for it to run around, and that is definitely not my house in Hong Kong. If I am in Singapore, I will probably take him home with me, he will enjoy playing with the kids and running around the house.

I couldn't make up my mind, so we went off for dinner, I needed everybody's suggestions. Mrs M said she prefer the tiny ones, *me too actually*, hubby said he would like to have a boy and and a girl, *NICE*, Mr M said having 2 will be more fun than just 1, *I'm convinced*. So in the end I bought 2 tiny toy poodles instead. \\^-^//

And I have named them Coffee and Cookie. My little darlings!

What is stopping me?

I have fallen in love with this dog which we saw in a pet shop at Causeway Bay. It was really a coincidence that we found this shop after coming out of the MRT station on Friday evening. We were intending to go to some of those pet shops along the streets to see some puppies. We always do that, it's one of our favorite "pass-times" in Hong Kong. We spotted the sign "Gaite Poodle" almost immediately coming out of the station and we decided to check it out. It was on the 2nd floor and after the shop owner opened the door for us, we saw just 2 poodle puppies for sale. One was in the teddy bear colour and the other was black, at least to me it was black at first sight.

However the information written on the cage was "blue toy poodle" and after being showed closely, he was indeed bluish. His coat of fur was amazing! So thick and yet so soft to the touch! I have never touched a coat of fur as fine as his. He was obviously very healthy and very smart. Oh, he is such a sweet, sweet darling! I wished I could bring him home immediately!

To bring him home, the price tag is HKD33,000. Is the price tag stopping me? I would think not as I think he is really worth that kind of money. Then what is stopping me? I guess it's the responsibilities involved. Can I take good care for him? Do I have enough time to play with him? I am working and studying and out of the house most of the time, so how am I going to make sure that he will be happy in my home? Hubby is not helping even though he likes the dog a lot too. He is sleeping the whole Sunday away...I wish to go see the dog again. I am feeling really terribly miserable now, almost like I am being jilted and out of love now... Can I ever forget him?