frutti.gummi

I have been going to bed late almost every night, for the past two weeks. To me, after 1am is late, especially on weekdays. I ended up waking up late and feeling tired. I know I could have gone to bed earlier as I wasn't busy with work and I wasn't even out most of the time. Somehow, I just spent the time at home and by the time I looked at the clock, it was past midnight. Still had to take a shower before going to bed. Tonight, I shall break this routine and go to bed before midnight. I just hope I could fall asleep soon.

After three years of being away from work, my savings is gone. When I decided to go back to school, it never occurred to me that this could happen. I thought that since everything is paid for, I didn't need to use any money. Well, that held true when I was abroad. However, I forgot that I still had ongoing expenses in Malaysia. I've spent the bulk of my savings paying off my car loan, giving money to my parents and buying Europe-Malaysia round trip air tickets. Just the air tickets alone had cost me about 15k!

When I moved back to Malaysia, I was aware that I didn't have much money left. In spite of this knowledge, I still chose to start work in January instead of December. I thought it was enough to sustain me for another month but I forgot to take into account that I need to use money when I go to work (lunch money, toll and gas) and I'd only be paid at the end of the month. Lol, it's amazing how quickly I forgot about these things just after a few years of using almost free public transportation and cooking my own lunch. Anyway, I managed to survive the first month without incurring any debt and was overjoyed when I received my "first" paycheck! :D

Now, after two paychecks, I have a bit more savings and feel more secure. Also feel more comfortable going out and spending a bit more on food. For the past two months, I wasn't very keen on spending more than 10 bucks for lunch and I went home for dinner most of the time. I'm also not in a shopping mode and I think it's mostly because I'm still a bit averse to crowds. So instead of having much social life, I've finished reading 3-4 books and still catching up on quite a few episodes of some tv series that I was watching.

The plan is to stay debt-free, keep expenses low and grow savings as much as possible this year. Hopefully will be able to amass at least 50% of what I had.

My black clothes are covered with an unusual amount of lint. When I want to wear a black top or pants, I have to spend a few minutes getting rid of the lint. Under room lighting, they are not so obvious but under sunlight, they really stand out! Since there's no window in my room, I have to go to the next room and stand next to the window to do that. Even then, I only managed to get rid of some because my house don't get much sunlight in the morning. It'd the totally weird to stand outside the house to do this. Hahahha. Now, I keep a lint remover in my car and I do it in the car. The problem is, if I'm already wearing it, then I can't reach the back. Lol

Anyway, I don't remember having this problem before. I wonder if my place has more dust now and they start sticking on my clothes. They seemed alright after I washed them. I hang them to dry outside under the sun but I don't know if they are covered with lint after they dry coz I'm not the person who collected the clothes. Then,
they usually sit inside a basket for at least a week before I iron and hang them inside my closet. By the time I take them out for ironing, they are already covered with lint/dust. I have the impression that even if I remove them before/after ironing, they will have lint by the time I want to wear them. So now I just remove them when I want to wear them.

I'm going to find out the root cause of this problem and fix it so that I don't have to do lint removal every time I wear black.

My 7-year-old wireless router have started to show signs of aging. The connection dropped suddenly just now. I can still see it on the network list but could no longer connect. I tried with my phone and it also didn't work. So, I restarted the router a couple of times but the phone still wasn't able to connect. I thought that I needed to buy a new router and wondered if the new routers are backward compatible with wireless-B. I know that's ancient technology but I still have a very old Mac iBook running. Anyway, I got an idea to change the SSID and the router is working again! Hehehe. No need to buy new router for the time being.

Now that I think about it, lately,  I had to restart the router as well as the modem about once a week on average when the internet connection dropped. The indicator lights on both the router and modem are blinking fine and no warning message in Windows. However, I just cannot load any website or connect to any IM. Am not too sure that it's the router and modem problem because I know my laptop has problems with wireless connections sometimes.

Having spent the last few years living in non English-speaking countries, I've pretty much got used to seeing words and hearing conversations that I don't understand. Although I don't understand the words, I still could read them because they consist of Roman alphabets. So when I was deciding whether to go to Shanghai, I was a little apprehensive because it's more challenging. More challenging in the sense that I can't read Chinese script, in addition to not speaking much Mandarin. Then I  thought it shouldn't be that bad since it's Shanghai where lots of expats live so people there should understand some English.

Having convinced myself that I'll somehow survive, I decided to volunteer in Shanghai for a month at the end of last year. Overall, it was a rather unique experience and I shall expound on that in another post. Coming back to the language challenge, there is another element which I did not take into account. Because I look Chinese, people expects me to speak the language and it takes them a while to realize that I actually don't speak their language and they get confused and don't know where to place me. And this in turn makes me feel like I don't fit here nor there, and sometimes like an outcast. I could sense that they are uncomfortable talking to me but I don't blame them because it is out of their normal experiences. 

I did manage to go about town on my own because the street signs and subway have English words that I can match with my map. However, the English words are not useful for asking the locals where a certain street or place is located because the words have no pinyin intonation. Chinese words can have totally different meaning in different tones and some streets have similar sounding names. So it's possible they point you to a different place! Furthermore, some of the name of the landmarks are in English and not a translation from Chinese, e.g. The Bund, People's Square, and Oriental Pearl Tower. It took me a while to know the respective Chinese names because when my co-workers asked me if I've visited any place, they said the name in Chinese and they don't know the English name. Eventually I managed to match the two together. Hahaha. Besides street signs, the ticket machines for the subway and train stations have English version. So if you can read a map well, you shouldn't have any problem getting around Shanghai.


Besides fast-food and upscale restaurants, most of the restaurants and food stalls do not have English menu and the staff don't speak much English, if at all.  As a result, I had limited choices when I'm on my own. There is a small restaurant around the corner from my aunt's apartment and we order food from there once in a while. I memorized the name of the few dishes I like from the menu so that I could order them when my aunt is not around.  Otherwise, I could still cook instant noodles. Hahahaha.

After spending a month in China, I'm now more comfortable speaking Mandarin, not that my Mandarin improved much though.

I've accumulated a lot of photos during the years which i lived in europe.
Some are photos of social events but the bulk of them are vacation photos.
Some of these photos are my only souvenier of the places I visited.
I have to limit the amount of physical objects I have because it's a hassle to move from one country to another with too much stuff and it gets very expensive.

I wanted to show my family and friends my photo collection and I prefer showing the photos on paper instead of on the screen. I just feel that it's more intimate that way. However, I don't like the standard 4x3 prints because I cannot annotate them. Then i remembered about photobook printing services.

I really like Blurb's BookSmart but they're based in the UK. Their software is very intuitive and you can just drag and drop your photos onto the pages and move around to arrange them. I did a few pages during my last week in Europe but didn't have the time to finish it.

In Malaysia, I found Photobook and saw that they're offering 40% discount.
So, I decided to try their software. It pretty much does the things that BookSmart does, just the interface is not as smooth and sometimes it gets very slow.

I like the idea of the photobook as it allows me to have a combination of photos of different sizes and text on a page. I chose the large square book (11"x11") and managed to fit up to 16 photos in a page. I only have one page with that many photos though. I've managed put together a nice collection of photos into the 40 pages and have them printed into a hardcover book. I received my book in just a few days time. It was delivered via courier and bubble-wrapped in a box. Opening the box gave me the feeling of opening a Christmas present! Hehehe. Well, I was also afraid that I might have made some mistakes and was so happy to see that the book turned out beautifully :D

I got the opportunity to have the whole house to myself this weekend when my family went out of town. After living back home for about 8 weeks, I'm starting to miss living on my own. So I actually stayed home during the weekend and managed to do the things that I enjoy; cooking, sleeping, watching videos. Hehehhe. I cooked chicken porridge for lunch using leftover chicken drumstick from CNY dinner and some mushrooms from the sea cucumber with oyster dish. For dinner, I finally get to eat a big slab of meat; Steak with baked potatoes and some cherry tomatoes and green peas on the side. The steak took a bit more time to cook than I thought but it's sooooo juicy! :D When I set the table, I found out that my house don't have steak knife so I had to use the smaller meat knife to cut the steak into strips first.

On Sunday, I made bacon and egg for brunch. Although the bacons are over 100g, about 50% of them are purely fat! I don't mind if the fat is between some meat but the ones I bought, 99% of the fat is on one side. Should've looked properly before buying. Anyway, I ended up discarding half of the fat away since I cannot stomach just the fat alone.


I'm on a meat eating mode lately. Lol. Gonna buy more meat.

Although I had not celebrated CNY at home for the past several years, I can remember the super hot weather and the amount of food that we eat. For those reasons, I don't look forward to CNY and avoided being home if I could.

Well, this year I am home and it has not been a very pleasant experience, mostly because it is extremely hot at home. When my uncle's family came to visit on Sunday, I had to play host since my mom went out. Otherwise, I would have hid inside an aircon room upstairs. I offered them food and drinks and sat in the living room to chat with them. Although I could feel the air blowing from both the ceiling fan and the stand fan, I was sweating. My butt and thigh were especially wet and sticky! Was lucky I didn't have to cook but I did help with the dishes after dinner.

My family don't go out visiting relatives so we've been staying home most of the time. Hence, it's also super boring. At first I tried not switching on the aircon, but I eventually gave in and switched it on. I've been watching tv, videos, and reading books in the room.

After several meals of the same CNY food (chicken, Chinese sausages, roast duck, steamed fish, prawns, mushrooms, abalone, sea cucumber, etc), my dad suggested we go for Subway yesterday. I was so relieved that we can take a break from eating all those food coz I don't really like them. Hehehe. The fridges are still full with all those meat and vegetables and I think it'll take us a week or two to finish everything. There is hope when my mom suggested we make Thai chicken salad last night; instead of just re-heating the plain old steam white chicken. :D As for tonight's dinner, I'll be making spaghetti ai gamberi (prawns). Mom was being super generous yesterday and we bought very expensive tomatoes at cold storage, over RM32 per kilo! For four medium sized ones, they cost about RM15. Those are the kind of tomatoes that I buy in Italy. Hehehe. Hopefully they'll be as good.

So, CNY is not so bad after all. As long as I get to stay inside aircon room and not have to eat the same kind of food every meal. And I get to cook what I like! :D

During the course of my thesis, I was quite sure that I would be moving back to Malaysia after I've completed my studies. Unlike many of my friends, I didn't look for jobs or Phd positions. Instead, an opportunity came knocking on my door. My thesis co-advisor asked me if I am interested in joining his research group. The work that I do could be counted for my PhD when I officially enroll.
Since I've never thought about pursuing a PhD before, this will give me the opportunity to see if it's something I would like to do. After giving it much thought, I decided to give it a try. And so I moved back to Trento in Jan 2009 to start my "PhD".

I worked together with a bunch of other students in an European project and during this time, I found the area that interest me most: Recommendations. Since I had zero knowledge in that area, I had read lots and lots of papers to get to the state-of-the-art. Because it's a multi-disciplinary field, there's so much that can be done. Most of the time, I enjoyed reading the interesting articles and everytime I found a good article I get excited, it's kinda like treasure hunt. Hahaha. I read so much that at one point I neglected writing my research proposal and my advisor told me that it's best I don't read too much so that my brain won't get polluted. It made me realize that I already had sufficient knowledge of what's out there and I should resume my attention in my work, that is recommendations of scientific publications.

This experience has given me an insight into the world of academia. After about 5 months, I knew what I wanted if I were to do a Phd (it's a possibility now) and I realized that the current group I'm with is just not a good fit for me. I know that if I wanted to, I'll manage to stick it out for 3 years to complete the Phd but I'll definately be miserable. After much discussion with friends and family, I decided to put it off for now and just get a job like an average joe. I wrapped up my work in Oct and moved back to Malaysia the following month.

I know I like the research but I also know that I don't have enough passion for it. I guess it's one of the things that can be parked under the "nice to have" category. Hehehe.

It's been over a year since my last post. Occasionally, I did thought about updating the blog but had kept putting it off. Over the last couple of weeks, I get this feeling as though I have not wrap up the work that I have started. I mean, thesis submission is not the end yet!

I started writing this blog when I first moved to Europe for graduate studies. So I felt it should have a post about graduation; the end of graduate studies. Well, unless I didn't graduate. Hahahha.

The fact is, I did graduate. I received my diploma from Germany in February 2009 with pretty good grades (1.3 for thesis, woohoo!) and another diploma from Italy at the end of April. However, I did not attend the graduation ceremonies. I received my German diploma through the mail as I was living in Italy at the time. As for the Italian diploma, I picked it up from the secretary's office after I got back from my London trip. So yeah, I finally graduated in spring 2009 with two diplomas. :D

Update: The reason why I didn't make any effort to attend the graduation ceremonies is there's no elaborate setting and no graduation gown involved :p

For the first time in my life, I did not get much sleep for one consecutive week. My supervisor only managed to give me feedback on the first quarter of my paper a week before the submission deadline. Over the next few days, while I revised the introduction and background chapters, I also received the feedback on other parts of the paper. By the end of the week, I managed to make most of the major revisions. I wasn't sure how long it would take to make the printed copies so I tried to finish everything by Saturday morning. Then I went to the printers and it turned out that it would take 2-3 hours for the printed copies to be ready. So, I decided to print them the following Monday. I spent the weekend fixing small mistakes and grammatical errors. I'm very thankful for friends who helped me to proof read parts of my paper. Well, I'm glad I managed to finish everything in time but I'm not satisfied with the quality of the paper. It's really a pity that my supervisor didn't have the time to read my second draft earlier when it was ready more than a month ago. Anyway, I've learnt a lot from the experience of writing this thesis. I was so surprised to find out that my writing has become so sloppy.

And with the thesis submitted, I'm unofficially graduated from the master's programme. It's kinda strange that I didn't feel anything special. No joy, no relief, just as if another work has been completed. Perhaps I was already focused on the next task of moving out of my room. I initially planned to have one big box but it didn't work out. I needed two more medium boxes. At last, I packed everything and shipped the boxes to Trento and carried my luggages home to KL. So, goodbye Aachen!

According to my plan, I'm supposed to finalize my thesis today so that I could enjoy two weeks of freedom. However, I still have not received the feedback from my supervisor. Furthermore, I'm still stuck with writing the conference paper because the deadline has been extended till Thursday. I'm starting to get tired from all these writing in the past two months.
I finished a draft of the conference paper on Wednesday with minor changes on Thursday morning. When I met with my supervisor on Friday evening, he hasn't read the paper yet. 90 minutes later, he managed to go through half of the paper and we went through the other half together. So based on his comments, we worked separately over the weekend to complete the paper. This afternoon, he sent an email telling me that the deadline has been extended and we should continue to improve the paper in the next few days.
I hope that my supervisor will still have time to read my thesis and give me the feedback before the end of the week. I really would like to submit it by the end of next week so that I could at least enjoy the weekend.

This week, I have been eating food that can be cooked in a short time, like instant noodles and fried rice. I thought I would also be very busy this weekend writing the conference paper but since my supervisor is not exactly contributing to the paper and I don't know whether I'm headed in the right direction, I decided to take a break. I was also looking forward to the snowfall but there were barely visible. It started again this evening and now I see about 2 inches. I hope it continued over the night and I'll wake up to a nice white scenery :)
For me, a nice day always consists of a nice meal. Hehe. Since I had to finish the chicken I bought, I decided to try making teriyaki chicken. I didn't have the ready made sauce so I googled for the recipe. It's very easy if you have sake and mirin which I don't. So I made up my own version with chicken stock and honey. It's doesn't taste exactly like teriyaki but quite similar. Slighty sweet on top of the saltiness. :D

I finished my second draft a couple of days later than what I had scheduled. It was also partly due to the fact that my supervisor was so busy last week that he suggested we meet on Friday. So I took my own sweet time to complete it. I also continued work a bit on the conference paper by copying and pasting some of the materials from my thesis. Now I have a total of 5 pages without abstract, conclusion, and any figures. I figured it's a pretty good start.

When I met with my supervisor on Friday, there wasn't much of a discussion about the papers. Since he is still going to be very busy, he said he'll try to read my second draft as soon as possible. He also said that it's pretty unrealistic to write the conference paper now that we only have a week left. But since I have already started writing something, he'll try to support me. I tried to discuss about the content of the paper but my supervisor wanted to read what I had written first. I hope he managed to squeeze some time to do that and we can have a short discussion on Monday. Anyway, instead of writing the paper together, I'll be writing it myself and hopefully my supervisor have the time to review it the end of the week because it's due on the 30th.

I was reading my old entries and I realised that I had pretty much stopped updating this blog since I started on my thesis. Anyway, my thesis has been progressing well. I just finished writing the first draft. 70+ pages! I've never written so much in my entire life :D I just hope that it's of the acceptable standard. I'll find out when I meet with my supervisor next week. Pretty much done with the development work. Just a bit of fix here and there when bugs are found. And I have a conference paper to write as well. I hope I could get started on that tomorrow.
This weekend has been rather nice in the sense that I didn't do any work. I just watched a couple of movies, coincidenly both have the word 'sunshine' in the title, and cooked myself some nice meals. It's a nice change considering that I had 2-3 meals of instant noodles in the past week. Plus, I have been staying put here for almost 2 months now and it's a record! Haha.. I did shop once in a while and ended up with quite a significant damage. I definately will have trouble moving all my stuff out when I leave. Aahh I shall worry about that later. Hehe

Was told that the weather was at its best. A couple of days of pure sunshine followed by cloudy days with drizzle and then very wet rainy days. And the cycle continues. Pretty much managed to make the most of the few sunny days. :) In the cities, bagpipes are often heard and I was surprised that they play contemporary music as well! Last minute short trip to the highlands was a wonderful experience. We didn't do much hiking though. The view from above would be absolutely stunning. Hope to return to visit properly, at least a week or so. Oh it's gonna be expensive!

It has been quite some time since I cooked chicken. I guess I ran out of ideas as I've been experimenting with various ways of cooking chicken. This is the first time I ended up with a recipe I really like. :) Or maybe it's just because it's a tomato based sauce. :p And I topped it over plain risotto. I was surprised that the rice still managed to absorb the sauce pretty well despite being cooked 30 minutes earlier and has gotten cold and a bit dry. Oh, I'm also glad that I still managed to cook the risotto just right! :D I haven't been making risotto from scratch during my one year in Italy. That's coz I found instant risotto packets. Hehe.

Happy July 4th!

I didn't go anywhere this month because I have been quite hardworking. :P So I thought I could save some money for traveling in the future. But instead, I went shopping and ended up with a monetary damage comparable to taking a short trip. Well, shopping does feel very good indeed, especially when I managed to buy most of what I wanted. :D And it has been a couple of years since I spent so much on clothes and shoes. A little over one third of the amount was spent on shoes so I don't think it's that bad.
I have been looking for a nice pair of black leather kitten heel and I saw them in the store 2 months ago. I thought it was a bit pricey and since I didn't need it asap, I decided to continue looking. A week ago, I finally gave in to the SALE signs everywhere and stepped inside the stores. Then it occured to me to check if that store would have the shoes on sale. And lucky me, it's 30% off and one last pair of my size. :D
Similar thing happened to another pair of shoes that I bought. I like the design but only the beige color was available for my size. I prefer the dark brown color so I decided to look around for others. A week later, I went shopping in Cologne which has a lot more variety. Still, I couldn't find anything that I like more so I decided to go back to the store to see if that pair of shoes is still available. This time, I saw a pair with my size and the color I wanted. SooOOoo happy!

I had 3 eggs which expires today so I somehow had to cook them all if I don't want to throw them away. So was I thinking what I could make and I remembered seeing my Japanese flatmate made the egg omelette in an interesting way. I googled for 'Japanese omelette' to check if that's what it was and I found recipes for it. Although it looks easy to make, I find it a bit challenging especially to evenly spread the egg in as thin a layer as possible. This can be eaten warm or at room temperature and should still be good the next day when stored properly. :D

Recipe taken from Basics: Tamagoyaki or Atsuyaki Tamago, Japanese sweet omelette