The lucky date for weddings is this week! I laughed when I read that couples are rushing to tie the knot on 8 August 2008, that’s 08.08.08. Hmm, how cool and superstitious is that !

I guess it should also be a good day to start their honeymoon vacation to some exotic destination like the Mexican Riviera. Wouldn’t that be something?

In fact, Karisma Hotels has many resorts you can choose from, each perfect in its own way for whatever style of reception and honeymoon you have in mind.

The scenic sand, sea and surf would provide the ideal backdrop for an unforgettable event, don’t you think? I think it would complement the lucky 8 date quite nicely .

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Let’s just say part of the joy of eating out seems to have faded somewhat. Since we were out the whole weekend, I didn’t bother to cook. But some of our favorite restaurants are turning against us, it seems .

Did you know Friday’s now charges for extra barbecue sauce? Yes, rm2 per little bowl, to be exact!! WTH!

They have a new menu too but don’t be fooled when you see the prices are the same for the $39.90 set. The portions and quality of the food has gone way down.

The tables weren’t even wiped clean and I ended up with sticky stuff on my elbow. The place was empty on a weekend night if you can believe it so our free drinks refills were very efficiently topped up. So that was good .

Jom Bali Cafe used to offer an extra bowl of rice free with their nasi lemak. No more! To be fair, I think many restaurants are cutting corners to try and make that extra buck. I read that the 10% service tax is supposed to have been scrapped with effect from July 1, 2008 but I still see it on my bills. What’s up with that?

Well, sorta! First off, we didn’t get invited to the wedding of the niece of DH’s longtime friend. DH’s friend didn’t know and innocently told DH he would be seeing us at the church wedding.

This was like 2 days before the wedding, and it set off a series of confused questions, raised eyebrows and debate on whether we should tell his friend we weren’t invited or just play along. To cut a long story short, DH’s friend inadvertently ended up “inviting” us to the church wedding.

His sister was shocked to see us (since she didn’t invite us) and she didn’t hide her surprise either. She pretty much snubbed us. I can’t imagine why since we weren’t exactly excited to be there ourselves. No disrespect but we find church weddings to be extremely boring.

We wasted an entire morning at church, the kids plugged into their MP3s and me playing Solitaire on my PDA phone while DH snored nearby. We left without eating lunch and instead headed for McDonald’s for some much-needed comfort food.

What a laugh we had when DH’s friend messaged later to say he didn’t know the venue of the wedding dinner. And dinner was just hours away! At that point, I decided that we shouldn’t even go. It was quite obvious DH’s friend had accidentally slipped out about the wedding and felt he “had” to invite us.

It’d been awkward enough at the church wedding. I just couldn’t imagine dressing up and spending hours at the dinner afterwards knowing we hadn’t been sincerely invited, know what I mean?

But we did go, finally. But only because by then, DH felt he couldn’t say no since his friend had gone through all that trouble to get us invited. I felt wierd walking in, all dressed up almost expecting to be pounced on and thrown out the front door. It’s my first time gate-crashing, you see, so I guess it’s natural to feel a little paranoid.

Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the dinner. Not one bit. Heck, by the time we got settled in, I didn’t even feel the least bit sociable and had to resort to perfunctory nods and courtesies to get me through the rest of the evening.

Yikes, driving Steev to/from college every day seems to be quite a hazard. Ninety percent of the cars in that area are driven by new and probationary (P) drivers!

It’s like stepping through a land mine literally. Every other car that either moves very slowly, cuts you off from out of nowhere or is speeding out of a junction is a P driver.

Well, P drivers obviously aren’t the only one who take two lanes to turn a corner or who speed up to prevent you from changing lanes.

I pray each morning for the patience to tolerate the pea-brained drivers I meet every day. Om!

I went to a wedding dinner last night. Normally we don’t take the kids because it’s considered rude to bring your whole family and take up precious seats at a Chinese 9-course wedding dinner.

But last night, the kids got a rare treat. Of course, the girls were all excited at the last minute trying to decide what to wear and which shoes to go with the dress, etc.

We got there unfashionably early, of course, like we always do. It’s rude to keep others waiting but we’re the rare folks in this country who seem to think so.

Everyone else only start drifting in way after 7pm with nary an apology. It’s the done thing here. Everyone does it. No one complains because they’ll all in this together.

On the invite, it says dinner starts at 7pm but if we ever get to eat before 9pm, that’s considered lucky. Well, we got lucky. Dinner started 10 minutes before 9. Woo-hoo!

We were practically jumping with joy. Not that we were hungry. We always eat before we go. The kids have their MP3 players each, I have games and songs on my PDA phone so we’re all nicely settled in for the long wait…

These days, I shout a lot. Not because I’m angry with my kids but because they can’t hear me with that mp3 player perpetually blasting in their ear. I’m sure my neighbors can hear me better.

3 teens = 3 mp3s stuck in 3 pairs of ears

Apparently if you’re a teen and you don’t have some wire hanging out of your ears, you ain’t cool! I guess that’s a good way to shut out mom and rock to your own tune, eh?

Kids: You don’t have to shout, Mom, we’re not deaf.

Mom: How else can you hear me with that thing blasting in your ear?!! I said, pick up your clothes, you haven’t done it yet!

Silence.

Mom: Did you hear me??!!

No, you didn’t, that mp3 is too loud!! Grrr!!

I met a mother yesterday at Skye’s school who is perhaps the biggest chatterbox I’ve ever met in my life. The woman just would not stop talking. It’s not like I know this woman, okay? I’ve never met her in my life. Her kids have just transferred over from another school. That’s it.

But apparently it was just my luck that I happened to be standing beside her as we waited for the school bell to ring. The next thing I knew, she was blabbering away like there’s no tomorrow. I kept looking at my watch. She kept on blabbing!! It’s inconceivable that she does not know she’s being a pest. I think she just didn’t care.

It’s not like she had anything interesting or constructive to say. She’s just so full of crap. And I think she might even be quite proud of herself for being so full of IT! Hahaha, poor woman. According to Skye, her two kids are also notorious for blabbering crap non-stop. You reckon they’ve taken after their mom?

When my internet connection went down recently, I spent over an hour listening to crappy music while being put on hold by my ISP. Duh!

Quite honestly, now that the best of Call Center VoIP Phone Systems are so easily available from companies like Xpander Communications, it’s high time employers started looking at improving other aspects of their call service.

Playing more upbeat music would be a start. Employing call operators who understand and speak English would drastically reduce the number of times I have to repeat my problem till I’m blue in the face :roll: .

And if it’s a widespread problem that affects a large group of users, it’d be nice to post an announcement at the beginning of the call to let us know which areas are affected so we don’t get put through the whole hour-long charade for nothing.

Raine was ecstatic when she told me how she was the only one in class who could solve a math problem that her teacher gave. Raine has never considered herself good at math.

But I always thought differently. When I worked through with her the topics she found difficult, I found she knew how to solve the problem. What she lacked was the confidence to know if she’d done it right.

This year, there’s been a huge leap in her confidence level and she’s able to tackle even the more difficult questions with confidence. Like the instance last week when she offered the correct answer when no one else in class got it right. Wow!

Skye’s been having this on-and-off cough since round about June this year. I’ve taken her to our family doctor a few times. The cough would go away for a while, then come back again.

Although our doctor doesn’t make it a habit to dish out antibiotics, I still didn’t like the idea of her taking so much medication on a regular basis.

So I bought her some cod liver oil ‘plus’. The ‘plus’ version comes with Vitamin D and is supposedly more potent than the regular version. After taking one capsule a day for a month or so, her cough was still coming around on and off.

That’s when I decided to double her intake. The instructions were one or two capsules a day. So I thought why not go for the max and see what happens.

It’s working! She’s been on double dosage for more than a month now and her cough is gone. She herself can feel the difference. I just bought her a new bottle last night.