The week that was

It's almost the end of my one-week leave. One week! It was all I got. It's not that I didn't have enough annual leave days left, it's just that I'm terrible at planning my leave. It's December. A lot of people have already applied for their Christmas or year-end leave. Someone has to stay back and hold fort, said the editor.

Guess who gets to do the honours? The guy who did not have the foresight to apply for leave before everyone else does, of course. Every year I never manage to use up my annual leave days due to bad planning.

But anyway, what a week it has been! Especially for someone who leads for the most part a boring life:

1. Got my boys to come over and stay with me for 2 days. Cooked nasi goreng for them. They hated it. "Wek... tak sedap!" (It's awful!), said my eldest son Syakir. Kids can be so cruel. Note to self: go easy on the chili boh next time you cook for the kids. That, or have it (the chili boh) handy to smother them with the moment they say awful things about your cooking.

2. Went karting with a girl that I met through work. Waited 6 months for it. She's a music teacher in Bangsar. 26. Petite. Actually had a crush on her once. The day went well. Perfect weather, the rain stopped just in time. Would have been a karting date except that she decided last minute to bring along a guy friend. Bummer. But the fella was also nice to talk to (he's a fellow techie) so that was okay. Overall, fun outing.

3. Had 2 las chicas guapas (pretty girls) over at my place for dinner on Thursday. One from Germany, the other from Finland. Julia and Tiia. They're very good friends of mine.

Tiia's in KL to spend Christmas with her family, who have been living in KL for the past 8 years, while Julia works here with a foreign news agency.

Tiia is a vegetarian, so the challenge was for me to come up with something vegetarian for the dinner. I decided to experiment with vegetarian tom yam. I say experiment becos it's something unheard of in Malaysia.

So I bought all sorts of vegetables plus mushroom and tofu and basically just chucked them into the soup. Didn't turn out very well. It was quite tawar (tasteless). I know now that baby corn, pepper and tofu don't go very well with tom yam.

Good thing I whipped up a quick nasi goreng as backup material, otherwise both women would've ran off to nearby Kayu Nasi Kandar for their dinner.