just minishorts.

We had a good filling up session tonight. You know that place in Taipan (USJ 10)? We did a double date thingy: April and her boy boy, me and my boy boy, decided to turn complete carnivores for the night. We went to this new restaurant called Meatyhouse.

The star attraction of this quaint little place is PORK cooked the Western way, something you can't get very much of in this country. The other two places I know of in the Klang Valley would be Eurodeli and Mr Ho's Fine Foods, the later being the most expensive of the three. I've not been to Eurodeli yet, but will do soon–SL and me are fervent meat eaters.

That said, the food here was quite good-lah, although the service is rather appalling (the food comes out very slowly, and if you arrive after 6.45pm you'll probably have to spend at least an hour waiting for an empty table). I have to say quite good because there aren't many like places to compare Meatyhouse to.

April had the Ham and Bacon Spaghetti. This one tastes like Bolognese without the cheese, well we did ask for cheese and it came, less than a teaspoon of it, in a chinese-style soya sauce dish.

Hann Yong had the Pork Chop, looks quite fatty yeah, but I think it was quite good as the plate was literally licked clean.

SL had his English Oxford Sausages, which tasted like pork…. These were okay, okay only.

I had the signature dish, the German Pork Knuckle, and at RM29.80, this was HUGE. It was, like Siew Yoke (Roasted Pork), but slightly on the salty side, and very dry. The sauce wasn't enough to drench the meat to my liking, and even this was very salty.

Of course I can't finish the thing, but I've my very own DBKL in SL, so we didn't waste it. 'Cept the poor dude was complaining that his dish resembled a magic pitless plate, 'How come the more I eat, the more food I have?'

In the end all that was left was the huge bone.

Okay if you want to go, it's along Jalan USJ 10/1D, on the same row as The Chicken Rice Shop, just next to Pizza n Satay. If you've going you need to bring more cash–the place doesn't take Credit Cards just yet. And go earlier, it opens for lunch from 12 noon, and for dinner from 6pm. SL and me arrived at 6.30pm and were just lucky enough to take on the last empty table.

Say hello to Sub-woofer! He can bark! He can talk sometimes. And he squeaks in the middle of the night. Best thing is, he's not as cute as minishorts!!!!

It's sickening to be here, sickening I tell you. You've got dreams of becoming a writer, own a column, then write a book, then train some people, then get promoted to a credible editor somewhere along the way, but somewhere along the way a screw got lost, and somehow, you end up in the fastest lane–you've arrived there long before you wanted to.

But it was nice, you know. It was very nice. You got to rub shoulders with the who's who in the line, you met people in the academia you otherwise would only hope to meet–you even had the opportunity to attend cocktail dos with them and pretend to be smart and savvy over a glasses of wine and beer. You got to act smart and believe you're smart, (someone once told me, 'If it sounds good, it is good;' that's how superficial this life is) and made people trust you're smart and hence your judgement was right. You lived behind a brand, and after a while, you became the brand, you're pretty proud of it.

'Take ownership of your titles,' my ex-boss used to tell me. I was clinging on to the line as if it were my life, and at one point in time, I had enough nerves to tell the more important people off for doing ugly things to otherwise pretty covers.

Now?

I come in on Monday, bright, full of hopes, bursting with energy, and a freaking argument over an RM30 allowance claim crushes me into the dust. There goes the rest of the week, just like that.

If you're a manager, I've got to tell it to you, your team's morale depends highly on how you manage them, and it's not about making sure the deadlines are met by hook or by crook. It's about making sure your workers want the deadlines to be met because they honestly want to meet them.

I'm not about to be bothered by deadlines anymore. I don't meet them, I get reprimanded, I meet them on time, I get reprimanded, I meet them ahead of time, I still get reprimanded. I'm not about to be bothered by reports anymore too. I make a good report, you take it, change the fonts and numbers, say it's your report and thanked me for the 'feedback' I gave you. I make phone calls, I get information, and put my personal time aside to get things done, and you tell me it's because I procrastinate in the office so OT is not accounted for because it's justified.

You tell me, what's the difference between working well and not working well?

Eh, have you tried this? Maybe you've got this in one of those office spams, but it's still fun.

step 1:
go here.

step 2:
enter the following line into the translate textbox:

my mom is nice and cool

step 3:
translate from english to spanish.

step 4:
copy the translated text, and translate it back from spanish to
english.

I've been coughing for over a month now.

We've had the baboon for over a month now.

Note the mathematical equation.

The baboon's arrival=1 month ago.

My cough's arrival=1 month ago.

SL has since banned me from talking about the b****. He says that I start to cough everytime I speak about the loon, and as I raise my voice the more agitated I get (while recounting stories from behind the cubicle), my voice slowly diminishes as the scraping of my tonsils against my tongue gets rather apparent.

It's so obvious I can't even meow a proper meow anymore.

*grumble grumble*.

'What can we do, eh? We can't be sitting down doing this every single day? Even lunches get sickening because all we ever do is grumble and shout out our 'unheard' pleas for help.'