Hari Raya

It is Hari Raya today, where our Muslim friends celebrate their equivalent of Chinese New Year.

Hari Raya is synonymous with visiting relatives and friends living in quaint wooden houses on stilts,

  

enjoying beautifully and lovingly made colourful layered cakes,

eating tasty, gravy laden meat with sticky rice cooked in bamboo accompanied by red sugary rose-tinted syrup,

and see people visiting rempit-style.

But of cause food is the most gravitating pull of Hari Raya.

Simply mouth-wateringly delicious!

Wishing everyone Selamat Hari Raya. Have a great one. May this new year  be one of increased mutual understanding and goodwill.

Saturday @ Starbucks

Its yet another Saturday and I was yet at another Starbucks sipping yet another kind of frappucino and writing yet another blog post.The rain was crashing down in droves outside and its was chillingly cold inside.

It had been quite a hectic but enjoyable week. I pretty much like life in Outpatient Pharmacy, with its fast-paced quick fire mood and motley mix of interesting customers. I found out that after having 5 months working experience under my sleeves, I am way more confident this time round and can easily converse and mix with the staffs and customers.

What appalled me was the lack of customer service shown by a few of the pharmacists. They are too robot-like and focusing too much on the medicines  rather than the patients themselves. No smile on the face. No look into the eyes. Perhaps this thing should be really taught well in Uni. I think there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a grateful patient and having them praise you for your attitude.

To pharmacists to be out there, please remember, people who are sick needs a bit of reassurance, they want someone to show they care. A little praise here and there to keep them going. There is no harm done asking how they are coping, whether they are getting better, whether they have any concern with their meds. A little smile and care goes a long way. That’s what I believe.

Oh yeah by the way, i just cut my hair ^^

 

This is going to be relaxing long weekend, if not for the diabetes research. At last I will have the chance to go visiting and eat rendang and ketumpat again for Hari Raya! Missing this very Malaysian tradition in Melbourne.

Cinema experience

The movie was at its climax. The protagonist had his fists out, ready to deal the killing blow.And like a helicopter which rotor had suddenly stopped in mid air, the screen chopped out in perfect rectangle pieces, fragmented like shreds of broken glass and went blank. Not even a lingering flicker remain,  The side-lights went on. Groan mingles with sarcastic laughter.

Camera lit up the cinema as people started to take photos to record this interesting episode. Handphones sounded. I bet a few were twittering. Some were heard telling friends about the experience. Heck when the worker came and explain the situation, someone even recorded the whole conversation with a camera phone.  Surreal. Welcome to the new technology advanced world. Did I mention the movie we were watching? It was none other than Gamer. 

A very unique experience at the new MBO cineplex in The Spring. And I’m reporting it now live haha.

Anyway the projector was dead and un-revive-able. We were upgraded to a first-class cineplex to finish the last 3 minutes of the movie. The seats there feels like massage chairs. But the seats at the normal cineplex was not bad too.Similar to Australia’s. Can pull the arm-rest up and rest my legs over the next few seats which were vacant.

Interesting experience. Anyway I wrote this whole piece in the free wifi zone.   

This whole thing about being able to blog live got me excited like a little kid. Another that got me excited was this:

K-Box is opening soon! ^^

Online-ing @ starbucks

Now that I have a cute and good-looking laptop, I can bring it out and flaunt it at the numerous uber-cool cafes around town.

Here I am now, at Starbucks The Spring, using the free wifi to online and the imbedded webcam to take photos.

My dark mocha frappucino with SeeHua’s sleek Apple Mac and four Japanese girls as background.

 

This is SeeHua, the German speaking to-be-engineer. He is the reason we are here today. He is currently downloading lots of free stuffs.

Me drinking my coffee. Didn’t take the whole photo coz don’t like my hairstyle for the day. It badly need a trim but I’m just too lazy to do it.

Anyway a little bit of update. Had been busy manning the Dangerous Drug Pharmacy for the past two weeks– with the time spent meticulously counting, packing and distributing drugs that are dangerous if being abused, for example midazolam and diazepam, which coincidently contributed to a dead Michael Jackson.

There were 11 new provisionally registered pharmacists reporting to the hospital in the last few days. At last I am not the ‘youngest’ one there and there will be someone to bully!  Come to think of it, I had worked for nearly five months now.

My next station will be the dreaded Outpatient pharmacy. It is projected to be a very busy time as it is near Hari Raya – everyone wants to be alive and well during the festive season. So I’m likely to have lots of exercise soon.

I guess that’s all for now. Time to focus back on my diabetes research. It had been dragging the ground for far too long.. and I am going to watch a movie at the new Spring Cinema in 2 hours!.

Sunday is baking day

Oh well, supposed to carry on with my diabetes research proposal today, but mum kept on insisting me cook something nice. So the whole morning went to doing these:

Shanghai Wo Tie.

Quite yummy besides the fact my brother made the dough a bit too thick, so the water didn’t penetrate in quite well.. that was not enough juice squirting into my mouth when i ate it.

Baked an Oreo cheese cake for my mum to bring to school and boast. Besides Oreo selling at the unbelievable price of RM2.19 in Ta Kiong, The Spring now. Usual retail price RM3.10. This time I baked it using a water-bath, so the colour looks nicer.

And here’s something I did for my own satisfaction coz dad been complaining no one was eating the apples.

An apple pie with cinnamon and lemon flavour.

 

Tasted just heavenly. Can’t believe it is this tasty. For the first time I liked the crust that I made.

For those who liked a bite, wish you were here. =P