Sunday, March 29, 2009

I lost an hour time!!!

Daylight's saving started today, meaning we had to move our time an hour later. That means yesterday night I lost an hour of good sleep. Now UK time difference with KL is just 7 hours behind.

Had been starting on a part time waitress job in friend's chinese restaurant for the 3 days. Find it hard memorizing the dishes in English, at the same time to put it down on order for the chef, I'd to translate them to simple Chinese. Hence, having hard time translating between them. Also, as I'm not a regular drinker, I find it hard to learn all the wine, liquor name as well. There's a lot to learn. But I'll take it slowly, but learn it fast in order to be on track.

Oh, I still missed my 1 hour time !!! =)

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Life.Journey.Life

Does the person create the journey?

OR

Does the journey create the person?

A journey is life itself.



Can't recall where I found these quotes. Something worth pondering.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

More sense of gratitude = less suspicious in mind?

Came across this sayings from Jing-Si Aphorism


It's so tiring when you are surrounded by suspicious freak, which not only putting stress on you and at times making you pissed off at some point. I myself trying hard not to be one, and trying hard to have more sense of gratitude from now on. =)

Today is the officially first day of Spring but it's still windy and cold. At least it's not as cold as a month ago now. Also, today is the last day of my work training and on Monday, I'm starting officially as a warehouse picker packer. This is not a stable job for the moment, but I won't be moaning over it here, as I'm already glad at least I got some income for the time being (remember, some sense of gratitude? ). On the journey home from Kent today, scenes of Spring arriving can be seen everywhere - farm starts to be ploughed, sheeps, cows and horse are grazing at the open field.



It's definitely a lovely day for a new season to come by.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Lovely weekend in Oxford

I had a fabulous weekend in Oxford with my primary school friend, Siew throwing her 'advance' 30 year old party. It's a 1 week in advance to suit the guests timing due to next Sunday is Mother's Day (March 22nd) in UK. And I took the chance to spend a day earlier in Oxford to explore the city. We reached Oxford around mid-day, and it's nice of Siew and Stephen to meet us up and took us for a short tour walking around the city. Travelling and photographing has no meaning when you doesn't understands the histories and stories behind it. We are lucky to have Stephen, who is a historian to explain bits and there about the places/ building that we walked past. With the half day on Sat afternoon and half day on Sunday morning, we managed to explore around the city, except going into museums (we can't get the time to go into that as most of the museums only open after mid-day on Sunday) . We gets to visit the famous Oxford Castle, which was used to be a famous prison since the 16th centuries, capturing photos around the cities of different architectures in Oxford colleges were interesting too, also the picturesque Christ Church Meadow with the serene scene along River Thames that flows past it. Overall, Oxford is full of Colleges with unique architectures and lots of churches as well. It's not a very big city but it's a very interesting and busy city with scholars all around. Photos and description can be found here

Siew made us nice Italian dinner with Italian Chicken cacciatora(Chicken stew in tomato puree) with Risotto rice with the guidance of her fiance. Stephen loves to cook and we for the first time gets to eat traditional western food other than the usual 'chinese' food we cook in our flat. Forgot to take pictures on that though.

The BBQ party was great as well, with catching up of old primary school friends. It's just like a mini-gathering shifting from KL to UK. Life's great....

Monday, March 16, 2009

Quality vs Quantity

Have you ever wonder this question when you travel? This just came up into my mind when I was on foot today. It's weird that lately I found myself thinking a lot when I am walking on the street, talking to myself about stuffs around me. Today, I'm asking myself, when ones travel what will they be thinking about, to get to as much places as they can but just be there without understanding what you are looking on; OR to visit one or two places one at a time, taking time to understand the culture, histories etc behind it? The same applies to whether you are getting something at the same prices with more quantity less quality or more quality but lesser quantity. And I realized something too when I'm at training last week doing checking of stuffs and packing them. As this position will be the last stages of preparing the individual packs for the customers, it should look organized and nicely pack. At The Same Time, we are expected to meet certain target by getting to have at least 220 units pack in an hour. And use your imagination when one need to meet that target at that hour restriction, how good can they pack the stuff without having the paper bags get crumpled or stuffs not putting properly with that speed?

Hence, comes again the question --- Quality or Quantity? To me, I rather prefer to go for Quality rather than the latter during traveling or at work But to go for Quantity at times when it comes to food/ things selections.

What's yours?

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

I'm a Warehouse Picker Packer now...

Yes, I'm a warehouse girl now with safety boots on everyday......It's not a hard job and I started training today at a warehouse for a supply chain logistic solutions company. Bodyshop is their main client, where UTI is responsible to pack the products according to orders. Bodyshop operates like direct selling over here in UK where members order stocks from Bodyshop and also there's online orders as well. Hence, our jobs as a picker packer is to get those orders, pick the products and pack them accordingly to order for the customers and consultants. All jobs has to be done by human, there's no machine involved in the warehouse. Jobs is not that boring as compare to factory process (I think so, though I haven't been in a real factory before) since it's rotating between picking products, packing products, and checking of product packed before it's sent for despatch. 2 weeks of training and after that we'll start working in real. At least there's cash flowing in now while waiting for a better one....well, if there's chance I'll get you a photo of my steel toe safety boot...it's so clumsy walking with it every morning to work. Luckily, I stay just opposite the warehouse. Oh, did I forget to say I have shifted out from London, and now staying in Littlehampton, a small seaside town.

Friday, March 6, 2009

I've found a job...I hope so...

Yes, after 2months and 20 days jobless since from Malaysia, I finally got a temporary job in a small town called Littlehampton. It's a job in a factory doing picking and packing. Went over to the small town yesterday going on the train all the way down south out of London for an interview. Got it straight away without much interview, partner say since it's just labour, normally they don't question much. We are due to start the job training for 2 weeks on next Monday. So, our initial planned trip on Brighton didn't work out, since we need the next day to secure a room in Littlehampton for us to shift in before our job start next Monday.

On Wednesday, right after the job offer, we tried to ask around seeing whether the locals know anyone renting out rooms. The locals are extremely helpful and they gives us lotsa suggestion, asking us to check out from the agents, from the local newspapers etc. Since by the time we finished the interview is already 3.30pm and we have to be on foot for around 30 mins before we can reach the town center to collect all the information. Can't find much from the letting agencies as all of them only rent out whole properties which is out of our budget. Most of the shops closed around 5pm and we can't get much infos. The only thing we did was popped at the shops' window and trying luck if there's any notices pasted. At that night, we got hold of two appointments to view the rooms.

The next morning, we had to sacrifice our Brighton sight seeing plan and went back to Littlehampton to try to get hold of a room to rent. The two appointments that we made, turn out to be quite good, just that it's a little far from the factory. Fortunately, we remembered one of the helpful local told us to try at the town council where they had housing development board. Hence there we went to try our luck. Finally we found one which is near the factory and includes all the bills plus with broadband as well and best thing is it's the cheapest among the 3 options we had got. Got some deposit paid and told the landlord that we are moving in this Sunday.

And there goes my little story on job and rooms search. At least it's still not too hard and worth sacrificing the sight seeing plan in Brighton. Since we are working on shift, I had 4 days of work and 4 off days. And I'm going to utilize that 4 off day for a short trips all around UK and maybe Europe....Keeping finger cross...

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

It's XTRA Windy Today

Following my previous post, today weather is extremely cold and very windy. It drizzle all evening till night non stop. Although raining here is only drizzling, you can easily got soak up also if you stay out there for 10 mins and above. And the strong wind make it worse which can really chilled me down the bone. Newspaper predicted that the weather will turn colder and London might have another snow falling towards the end of the week.

Visited Victoria & Albert Museum today. An interesting museum to visit and it's free. It's so big that I can only manage to finish two sections. Partly because I love to learn about the history behind all those displayed antiques and stuffs that make me progress very slow when visiting the museum, reading the captions for each items.

Tomorrow I'll be heading off to Littlehampton and stay overnight in Brighton. Brighton is a very popular tourist attraction during summer situated at the south of London. Lots of people visited here for its beaches as well. I wonder how would the place be during winter time. Will update soon.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

the Window



Every morning when I open my eyes, the first thing that I would want to do is to run to the window and pull the curtains - to check what lies beneath the window, whether it's a blue sky or a cloudy one. It had almost been 2 week plus since I'm here and I had only seen 3 days of blue sky.

This morning one the sky is extremely blue and sunny. We re-visited St. James Park & Trafalgar Square before heading to National Gallery. And to our surprise, the park is filled with flowers blooming all around. Though it's still windy and cold but it's so happy to feel that Spring is arriving soon!!

Anticipating what lies beneath again tomorrow....I'm anxious!!

Sunday, March 1, 2009

What If...



Saw this interesting words on a wall in Portobello Market today.

"What If We are all Living in Someone Else's Dream"

Something worth spending a minute to ponder. As usual, there's always two ways of seeing this.

1st: Wouldn't you feel great if you are able to live on the life that what others have been dreaming on?

2nd: Why would you want to live on someone else dream rather than your OWN dream?

Life's always contradicting, don't they?