A Bra Shopping Break

Pooi Lam invited me to join her at a one day Wacoal and Shiseido Sale so i thought why not. I needed to pop into KMT in Piccolo Galleria anyway so it would be great if we could have lunch in Bukit Bintang after shopping. She picked me up yesterday at 10.30 a.m. Oh such luxury to have a driver! The sale was held at American Express at UOA II in Jalan Pinang.

What bras have to do with travel i don't know.

In fact, when PL and i came out of the lift, we were wondering if it was hoax. Maybe it was a marketing gimmick. Sorry, we have no bras for sale maybe you would like to book a holiday? We walked nearer in trepidation and were relieved to see a few shiseido eye shadows on the reception desk. i wonder what Amex's business travel clients thought of that! Was that all the shiseido products, i asked... there were like four compacts and one refill sitting sadly on the desk. Oh and one eye whitening serum. Yes, the receptionist cum cosmetic saleswoman said brightly. Oh we said, wondering if we'd see the same number of bras on offer.

We went in and were led to their conference room which was their bra sales room for the day. It was crammed with women diving into brown cardboard boxes of bras. PL and i walked round the room once and then divided to conquer. The boxes were labelled with the sizes so it was quite well organised. I found my box without much difficulty but was very disappointed to see how ugly they were *sigh*. Oh well, at least they can be perhaps used as anti-rape devices. One look and any libido will droop...

At RM15 a pop, i thought i'd get a couple.

Then i thought i'd shop for Webby and friends. Yes, i know i should've thought of it earlier but.. anyway at the finishing line, i decided to sms Faery, Cookie, Kim and GL. Shirl i thought wouldn't want to hear anything about bras at that moment in time! Cookie was first to reply so i went in search of bras for her. Next came Kim, who's the same size as Webby. That size had the most choices available so i smsed Kim to ask her which color she wanted - white, black, black with embossed print, flesh color, yellowy flesh, pink with polka dots and frills, dark olive green, blue...

She wisely called me back and gave her order. In the end, i bought 13 bras of various sizes. All for RM195. Not bad for an hour's shopping. It appealed to the Penangite in me!

After shopping, we had a nice lunch at Moussandra and strolled over to see KMT's renovated premises. It looked really good but the rest of Piccolo Galleria didn't look as good. The ground floor was turning into central market and many shops had shut down in the floors above.

PL dropped me back around 2 as i had truckloads of work to do. The morning was a lovely break though. And i wish i'd bought more bras...

good cake-ma

After the bad car-ma the night before, we had some good! A lovely surprise arrived on Saturday - an absolutely fabulous cheesecake was dropped by our house - my favourite kind - with the crunchy biscuit base and lemon topping! It was really 'Just Heavenly'! Thanks darling - you know who you are - we'll drive you anywhere anytime...

bad car-ma

Last night, or rather early this morning, when GL and Kim left our place after the Germany-Argentina match, GL called and said it looked as if someone had knocked into Webby's car. We rushed out and sure enough someone had! It had a huge dent on the bonnet and the right front headlight was gone. The street was deserted. So there was nothing we could do but go to sleep and get it fixed in the morning.

We took some photos before we took it to the workshop.

The photo below shows the position of the car on the road. How on earth could someone have hit her car i don't know.

And the fact that the bonnet was hit means it must have been a really big car - a truck or lorry. There is some sand on the floor in front of the white gate on the right of the picture. So we were wondering if some contractor had backed into Webby's car while turning out. We don't know exactly when the accident happened, which didn't help.

The workshop told us it would cost about RM1300 to fix it (including a dent on the side when some girl drove into Webby's car). More experiencing of karma. There was no note on our windscreen from the person who hit the car. Not that i'm surprised. I'm sure loads of people would simply drive off - wouldn't you?

My birthday

This year i had a great birthday. It started off with cooked breakfast in bed - scrambled eggs and sausages and freshly hand squeezed orange juice.. and a newspaper! What more could i ask for.

My birthday also happened to fall on the same day as the Oxbridge 4th Wednesday events so I decided to celebrate at the same time with my friends and invited them along to the event.



We had a fabulous dinner at my favorite restaurant, Cafe Cafe, which was only 10 minutes away from Bangsar, traffic permitting. The ambience is lovely - with crystal droplets floating from the ceiling, rich velvet drapes and European posters. I always feel like i'm no longer in KL whenever i step through the doors.

It was so lovely to see Faery again - who had been missing in action as she went on her Dharma mission to Italy and England. We also hadn't had Cookie's company for centuries - or it seemed like it. She looked so fab - she had lost so much weight, i was so envious! Wills even made it by the skin of his teeth - coming straight from the airport! GL and Kim also made the trek across town - i really appreciated having my friends with me... Andrew Lee, an old friend - i've known him since i was about 6 - also came, and Tze Meng, who was at Cambridge with me.. Pooi Lam and Sian.. Elizabeth..

Sean came too but he wasn't feeling well - GL was my heroine for the night as she took him home half way through dinner. Really appreciate it, GL.. Susan couldn't do it because she wouldn't be able to (a) find her way back to Bangsar and (b) find her way back to Cafe Cafe.

Anyway, the food, as always, was superb. I had foie gras - if i was going to die tomorrow, at least i would die happy. I tried Kim's risotto which was really very good - especially as i'm not a risotto fan. Elizabeth brought a delicious chocolate mud cake..



At the end of the evening, Wills was my hero for the night as he bought dinner for our table! Such a sweetheart!

A slight hiccup to the day was when Sean locked the bathroom doors and we couldn't find the spare keys... after searching fruitlessly until around 11.45pm, i decided to call it a night and find a locksmith the next day.

i spent the rest of my birthday in blue and yellow lights... the best part of the entire day, i'd say ;)

9/11

Last Thursday, GL had asked me to join her as part of the Soroptimist delegation at the Perdana Peace Conference, at PWTC. I had a thousand and one things to do (and more) but what the heck. It sounded interesting, so off i went without any preconception of what it was about. I didn't know anything about it at all except that Tun Dr. Mahathir was giving a keynote address and that would be interesting at the least.

We arrived on time and the hall was already filling up. Luckily we managed to get a couple of seats - though i did politely ask a sour looking gentleman, i mean, man, whether the two seats were taken and he looked at me as if i had asked if i could take his wallet. GL and i sat down and commented loudly about how could we expect peace on earth if people can't even smile at each other. Anyway, in a few minutes there was standing room only. When Puan Sri Gnanalingam, our SIROM President, arrived, there were no more seats. Except for one, next to the unsmiling man. She asked him if it was taken and he said yes so she retreated to the back of the hall. Forty minutes later, she came over and asked if she could sit there until the person arrived. He suddenly got up, grabbed his bag and stormed out of the hall.

Very bizzare.

Well, at least Puan Sri got her seat!

But i digress.

Tun Dr. Mahathir delivered his speech interspersed with a very strong video on the war in Iraq. There were dead women and children, crying children etc. Yes, many in the audience shed a tear or two. I didn't. I don't know why i didn't. I can cry over the smallest act of kindness but i wasn't moved by the atrocities. I felt that the video was overly biased against the Americans, although their actions were obviously very, very, very wrong - the massacres, the killing of innocent civilians etc. My CNN lobotomised brain automatically thought - what about the innocent people who died in 9/11? What about Iraq invading Kuwait? War kills. Simple. Kills Americans, kills Iraqis and anyone else at the wrong place at the wrong time. Tun Dr. Mahathir was advocating 'Criminalising War' and that by the US and UK invading Iraq illegally - because it wasn't sanctioned by the United Nations, effectively Bush and Blair (hmm i hadn't noticed the alliteration before) should be war criminals.

Dr Denis Halliday and Mr Hans-Christof Von Sponeck then followed with their speeches - they were both former UN Humanitarian Coordinators in Iraq at the Assistant Secretary-General level, and both argued strongly against the US hegemony over the UN. Dr Halliday stated the obvious - Killing is unjust. There can be no just war. I did learn a few things - that the US contributes 22% of the annual budget for the UN, which is less than USD400 million. And that it costs the US over USD5 BILLION per month to keep troops in Iraq. I left the conference with some extra knowledge but being a staunch 'make love not war' person anyway, I didn't feel particularly outraged.

Then coincidentally, on Sunday, i received an email about a documentary on 9/11. I was directed to a website called Loosechange911.com, where there is a video documentary about the whole 9/11 incident which proves beyond a doubt that there are questions which need to be answered. The details would take too long to list here. See the video yourself and see what you think.

It has changed my view of 9/11 forever.

As long as there are people who are above the law - unanswerable to anyone, the world will never be at peace. If Bush, the loudest proponent of war, remains in power - he is there because of the votes of the American people. America - wake up! I personally believe that Bush is there because he sold the soul of America. In order to get the significant Christian vote to stay in power, he agreed to the 'constitutional amendment to protect marriage'.

Maybe to the Christians in America, it's ok to go kill non-Christians. Maybe to the Christians in America, it's even a good thing to kill the 'heathens'. So in exchange for the right to kill, Bush agreed to kill gay marriages. How do gay marriages threaten the institution of marriage? What IS marriage? While celebrities can go around pro-creating at the drop of a hat without getting married, and people like Britney Spears could get married overnight in Vegas and regret the decision the next day, a man who loves another man can never get married because it is viewed as being against the law. What law? Something coming from love is seen as sick and illegal while something else coming causing death and torture is considered acceptable regardless of the cost. What kind of sick world is this?

Sorry - just needed to rant.