Horsing around with 25 Questions

One of my close friends, Sarah, decided to play this 25 question game and tagged me. So here goes.

1. Do you have a middle name?

Not really. My name is already long enough so I'm glad I don't have a middle name.

2. What was your favourite subject in school?

Math for sure. Followed by chemistry. Least favorite was physics.

3. What's your favourite drink?

Coffee or green tea latte

4. What's your favourite song at the moment?

The one that goes "I keep going to the river to pray"

5. What would you name your children?

I like classical names like Embun. Or if i were to go with a hipsterish name maybe Amerina.

6. Do you participate in any sports?

Not anymore. i used to play lots of badminton.

7. What's your favourite book?

1984. I suggest you check it out. it's out of this world. I also love fight club, great gatsby and wetlands. You need a strong stomach for wetlands.

8. What's your favourite color?

Turquoise. 

9. What's your favourite animal?

Dogs for sure. I love bulldogs, pugs, boxer, pitbulls, shih tzu

10. What's your favourite perfume?

Lady Dior

11. What's your favourite holiday?

Halloween of course. I was a Zombie school girl last year.

12. Have you graduated from high school?

Yes

13. Have you been out of the country?

Yes

14. Do you speak any other languages?

Malay, English and a bit of mandarin like I know enough to save my life

15. Do you have any siblings?

Yes! Three elder sisters

16. What's your favourite store?

Not much of a shopper but i love lovisa(sp?)for accessories and sephora for makeup. wish we has Ulta here in Malaysia. For online shopping my go to site is zalora, from which i only buy stuff that is on sale.

17. What's your favourite restaurant?

I love that thai joint in section 14 pj. not much of a fan of high end restaurants. Another good joint is the. food court in old town pj. omg yum!!

18. Do you like school?

Nope. I disconnect from work pretty easily but not from studies.

19. Who are some of you favourite youtubers?

none. i watch all the make up and hair tutorials but can't remember the names

20. What's your favourite movie?

Total recall. like the old one

21. What are some of your favourite TV shows?

The Mindy Project, Orange is the new black and breaking bad.

22. PC or Mac?

PC for sure

23. What phone do you have?

Samsung s3. time for a new phone i think.

24. How tall are you?

5'3"

25. Any pets?

i have two cats. Michi and Henry

Fussie Cat for those fussy cats

About a year ago, shortly after I moved in to my apartment, I came home to a tiny little kitten meowing her hearts out at my door. At that point I was still pretty much a dog person but that poor kitty seemed like it was in trouble. I often wonder how the little kitten ended up on the 19th floor.

Well I took her in and she acted like she belonged at my place. One thing lead to another and she became my beloved cat named Michi. I got another cat soon after to keep Michi company. Michi's cat is a grey male cat named Henry.

Anyway I just thought I should share my thoughts on keeping cats in an apartment. It will be slightly tougher compared to keeping them on a landed property coz your cats are gonna run, play and shit in your barely 1000 sqr ft home.

When it comes to food I recommend Royal Canin Indoor cats. The food is low in energy so your cats don't need to run so much to burn off the energy. I put my cats on that for a few months. I've seen it work better on other people's cats. Maybe because mine are still too young that they will run a lot no matter what I feed them.

Be prepared to pay around RM 100 for a bag of 4kg and don't expect your regular supermarket to be selling that brand. 

Another important thing to have is good cat litter. By good I mean it keeps your place smelling shit free. I've gone through quite a few brands including Tidy Cats, Fussy Cat, Speedmart cat litter that comes in green bags, Premier and another brand that they sell at Sogo supermarket which sounds like English gone wrong (it was like happy katty with some Japanese writing on it).

Anyway, the best brand was the happy katty but I am too lazy to get it from sogo coz sometimes it's there sometimes it isn't. the next best is Fussie cat (I've seen some shops display it as Fuzzy Cat so I really don't know what is the actual name). This brand comes in multiple different smells including green apple, lemon, lavender (guess this will help me sleep) and jasmine. My favorite is lavender followed by jasmine. I hate lemon smells coz it reminds me too much of bathroom cleaners.

This cat litter comes in 10 litre bags and it is priced between RM 24 to 25. All the cat litters i mentioned are the clumping sand type. Just don't get it on damp floors coz it turns into clay and that's a real b*#%€ to clean.

let me know if u have any tips on keeping cats. Or having cats as your master like I do.

Update: The brand of cat litter sold at Sogo is called Ketty Love and they're about RM 16

Saving Water the Malaysian Way

Mother nature has been quite a bitch lately, as seen in the dry months followed by the rainy seasons that resulted in floods. The images of flood made some people forget the water rationing they had to go through just a few months ago.

But hey, she ain't a bitch for nothing. The aggressive logging whether it be legal or illegal is bound to cause all this craziness. I'm not gonna go deeper into what we should do for future flood prevention but I want to share a few tips on saving water, the Malaysian way. Why should wen when water is freaking cheap here? I pay RM 11 every month for water though I know I don't even use more than the bare minimum. But before we get hit again with another round of water rationing let's consider these tips.

That's right. These tips have been customized for Malaysians and the Malays would find most of them relateable too.

Let's start with some easy ones:

1) Turn off the tap when you are doing number two (taking a dump that is).
 If  you think having the water running will keep the smell tolerable, think again. Imagine a pile of shit that is     compact and you put it in a blender  and add tons of water to it (yeah you don't want to ruin your blender     do you?), do you think it would smell better than if you just leave it alone?

And if you somehow think having the sound of water running will help you shit, you are wrong my friend.     Fiber helps you shit. Eat some prunes. Not waste water!

A bit of topic but don't ever think it is okay to squat on a toilet bowl. Even cavemen would shake their       heads if they see you do that

2) Turn down the water if you want it to heat up faster

Since most of us Malaysians use electric water heater, I'm sure you have noticed that the water heats up       faster when it is slower

3) Make sure your toilets have half flush

But if you have one of those really old toilet bowls with only one flush button, which means the amount of water flushed for when you pee and when you shit are equal, then you can try putting in a bottle with water and some pebbles  in it. More on this here

4) Wipe your cars instead of a complete wash

If you are the type who washes their car every week, maybe cut it down to just once a month. In                  between, just wipe off the dirt with damp towels.

5) Only run your washing machine when it is a full load

Self explanatory

6) And for the Muslims, use minimal water for your whudu'

I've seen people who take whudu' and come out looking like they just had a shower. I'm pretty sure the religion is into saving water too

7)Grow less plants at home or keep it to a minimal

Unless you are growing them so you can have some organic produce from your backyard,

Now, let's take it to the extreme

1) Only flush if you just did number two (again that means shitting)

This might stink up your bathroom so if you don't live by yourself i recommend that you don't try it  Or you can try the less extreme version, because there is no place for extremism here in Malaysia! If you are the type who needs the bathroom every hour, you can flush every other time that you use it

2) Wear your clothes more than once

Unless you have a chronic case of body odor. We do wanna save water but we don't wanna kill man kind.

Well that is all I've got. Please share your tips if you have any

Tesco Online Malaysia Yay or Nay?

I finally decided to try out Tesco online soon after I reformatted my phone.

I have also given up on real shopping especially for things that don't really excite me. Seriously, how could shopping for onions and toilet paper be anything other than boring.

So I downloaded the app and checked out the things they have. Well.. they pretty much have everything that is available at the store from raw fish to dvd players. 

First I had to check if they deliver to my area. Just put in your zipcode and u can see which housing areas they go to.  Luckily I live close enough to civilization. If they don't service your area you can try red tick. Just google red tick, you'll see a similar service as tesco.

My first order consisted of cat litter (yes I would hate to carry that), chicken wings, butter and flour. It was easy breezy to compare the brands and the prices. Plus they have a special page for items on discount.

Check out was easy enough. However you can only pay by visa or Mastercard when the stuff is delivered, not on the site. There's a reason for this.

Delivery fee was  jiro, zero, kosong, percuma, nada, free!!! I think this is probably a promotional thing coz how can they possibly make money out of this service?

I had to choose the delivery slot and I chose 8-10pm the next day. You can get your items delivered the day after so if yo mama told you to go get chicken for her to cook for dinner don't think you can tesco online that chicken.

The next day they called me to confirm that I'll be home at the time I booked and roughly what time will I get home (between the 8-10pm period).I said 9.

At 830 they called to say they were already there. Ok you're early but it's alright coz I was home anyway. Got my stuff delivered by one of the nicest delivery guy in town.

They didnt hv the exact brand that I wanted for the cat litter but they replaced it with another brand which I could decline if I wanted to. Aaaaah Eureka!! This is why they couldn't charge me on the app instead. The delivery guy encouraged me to put in another order in a few days for the cat litter if I still wanna try to get the brand I wanted.

Could this man possibly earn delivery fees per destination? I'll ask them next time.

The delivery guy had a small card slot that he attached to his phone and wallaaaa I got my receipt in my email and also via text to my phone. I also got a rebate voucher of 10 ringgit for every 100 ringgit purchase until 15th January 2015(refer to picture). Go ahead don't be shy to use that coupon code.

Awesome!! So let me break it down to who should use this and who shouldn't.

Please use:
1)If you would like to avoid the crowd, fighting the crowd for parking, queueing up to pay for your groceries, carrying stuff from your car to your door (there I said it. It is just too much work #firstworldproblem. Oh wait this isn't instagram)

2)If you have no idea where the nearest hypermarket is

Don't use it:

1)If you are very particular about the brands of the products you want

2)You can't handle disappointment

3)You don't have a credit card. Uh huh. They don't take cash

Overall I was very satisfied with the service. Let me know your experience if you decide to try it.

Happy trying!!

Note: Individual results may vary

3rd Year since 2012(post apocalypse)

Phew! It has been a while I almost forgot I had this blog. Believe my last post was a few years ago.

Since a lot of things have changed, the first thing I considered when I wanted to bring this blog back to life was to change the name. "The Shtuff" sounded too childish. I wanted to change it to "The Sherious Shtuff". Very adult like. Unfortunately I have no idea how I can change it. I'll keep digging.

Another thing I considered was starting a new blog altogether. But considering I have over 70 posts in this blog and that I've had over 1000 page views (800 could've been me looking at my own blog and another 200 was probably from my colleagues who thought it'd be funny to read the old posts... you know who you are!!) and that this blog has captured how I changed from being a college student to being a professional slave, I decided to keep it.

The first day of the new year is probably the best time to start blogging again. So let's start with something light. Things that I am thankful for that happened in 2014.

1) I moved into my 2 bedroom, 856 sqr ft apartment that I bought with my own hard earned money (this is a lie. I did borrow some money from my mom for the down payment. More on this in my future posts)

2) I decided to do the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst for those who don't already know what it means) exams to help with my career development. Guess I'll write about this too one day

3) Got together with my lovely boyfriend who I have been madly in love with for the past few years. I know, I know this is risky to put but heyyy why not?!?!? I think he has taught me a lot in so many different ways (more on this later)) I'll keep most of this private

4) Learned how to fish from my cousin and met a few great people along the way

5) Found one my kitties in front of my apartment one night (all hungry and needy)

That's mostly it. I'm not gonna say my health and my family coz everybody knows that.

And.. my new year's resolution is... to not have one.

Hair

My hair is pretty long now. It falls below my shoulders now. But!! My hair is thinning!! I thought i was imagining this until my sister pointed it out.

Am I really that stressed out from work? Don't get me wrong I love my job but is the stress worth losing my hair for? I don't wanna be bald!!

Hair loss treatment shampoo, say hello to your new friend, Arinah

Fokus!!

I got my study manual in the mail today at work. My manager and I opened the package like we were getting christmas presents. We are self proclaimed dorks.

So here I am sitting at my desk with my laptop trying to study but facebook is distracting me. This is all too familiar. It's like college all over again. Except that this time there's a lot of money at stake.

My company will not reimburse me if I don't pass. So that's a big motivation right there. okay bye bye facebook.