A year of surprise projects

In my car, I have a Pikachu hat that Lai Shin gifted to me. It’s the kind that can move its ears when its hands (paws) are squeezed.

SH loves playing with it whenever he sits in my car, so I got the idea of getting him one for his birthday (and making him wear it in the office). He shares a birthday with Danny, so I decided to get a similar hat for Danny, though not a Pikachu, because for some reason Danny does not seem to like that Pikachu hat as much (even though he is a Pokemon fan).

We basically ambushed SH at his cubicle, though it didn’t really work because he suspected something. I even let Danny into the surprise, telling him that we were going to do something to SH, but without letting him know that he would also have a gift.

Anyway, here they are wearing their hats.

Their birthday is on the 18th of February, and the idea had come to me a few months in advance.

But not long before their birthday, I had another idea for Valentine's Day. That was rather last-minute, but I managed to buy the items online and get them delivered in time, then went to the office early on that day to set up my "vase".

The paper says: "PLEASE TAKE ONE if you are dating your work tonight". I think because of that phrase, no one wanted one. :P A friend told me that when she first spotted the roses, her reaction was, "So warm!" But after she read the words, she didn't want the roses.

I did expect that people might not want, or may be too shy to take the roses, so I didn't prepare a lot. That was a season when I had quite a lot of work and had to stay late sometimes, so that evening I went around distributing roses to those who were still working. I left the few remaining roses downstairs at the lobby, but I think the guards were quite surprised at this strange request. I have no idea what happened to the roses after that...I wish I knew, but in these situations, we just have to let go and accept that we will never know...

After these two missions back to back, I felt rather exhausted and thought that was the end of it. But fast forward to the end of the year, and I got struck by inspiration for the duckling mission!

And if you look closely at the photos, one of the ducklings is sitting on a rose from the Valentine's project. ;) 

Because of the theme of this post, I have decided to schedule it for the final day of the year. Happy New Year, everyone!

Gifts from Ondo

To follow up on the previous post of gifts received, let me share the birthday gifts I received from Ondo. 

Since last year (that I knew of), we could claim a birthday gift from Ondo with any purchase on our birthday or one day before or after it. Last year I received this:

I was happy to receive the Japanese pastry thing (I don’t know what it’s called; it’s like a thin crispy biscuit / puff with sugar sprinkled on it). I had seen it a number of times but never tried it, so this was my chance. Nice and crispy, I liked it!

The flossy cakes are one of Ondo’s famous products. But I had already tried it before, so I would have preferred to receive something new to me.

The bread buns were nothing special. :P I had bought the butterscotch flavour before; I think these were a different flavour.

This year, the gifts were a lot more colourful.

the box in the middle contains this cake

grape flavour mochi mousse cup

There were three pieces of mochi on top, which I don't really care for. :P The top layer is mousse, the second is jelly/jam-like sauce, and the bottom layer is sponge cake. Nice and refreshing, but really needs to be eaten cold. If the cold wears off, it doesn't taste so good any more.

I actually had tried another flavour of this dessert before, a whitish colour. Maybe lychee? 

The cake is a black sesame crepe cake. I saw the lady taking it from the display. There was taro (yam) flavour and black sesame flavour side by side, almost the same colour. I was hoping for black sesame, but did not dare to stare while she took it out...happily my wish was fulfilled. 

Edit: I realized I forgot to mention the bread that I received this year. Both years the packaging said it was Japanese soft toast, but this year's is more like toast, because it is a sliced loaf. It is a wholemeal loaf with some raisins and walnut pieces inside. I like it better than last year's buns, because this loaf is softer. It isn't very sweet, so I made sandwiches with jam or cheese. Since it only lasts three days, I froze the last batch and then toasted and buttered it.

Both years, we receive a voucher for RM10 together with the birthday gift, but it can only be used to purchase whole birthday cakes, so it's not a substantial discount. 

Note: Last year I claimed my gift at Golden Triangle 2, and this year it was at Bayana. The gifts don’t really depend on the branch; I think they depend more on our luck of the person preparing the items for us.

Anyway, I hope they continue with this birthday gift promo!

Year-end gifts

This year-end, I’ve been receiving multiple gifts, pretty ones at that. So let’s take a look at some photos! 

My team has been celebrating our birthday with small gifts this year (from the bosses, I'm not sure whose idea it was). Every quarter, there is a different gift. The only consistency is that it is personalized with our name on it (or at least our initials). For the fourth quarter, I was pleased to see that it was a spoon-and-fork set. The previous gifts were a wooden phone stand with a cute cartoon on it, a woven key-chain/charm, and a magnet with a cartoonish picture of us on it. The only one I liked in the past was the first one, because at least it was cute. Mine is not cute, but useful.

just in time to be used to eat my other gift, a cupcake

Except that it is not a cupcake, but a candle!

Our yoga teacher brought several of these, all with different designs, and asked us to pick one each. She made them herself. It was so hard to pick one because they all looked lovely!

She told us that we had to light the candles, but we all said nooo....

I decided to be the most obedient student. :P 

lighting the candle with my Charizard's flame!

Then on my birthday, Danny gave me a Pokeball!

It's an Ultra ball!

the back of the Pokeball

There's a Wigglytuff inside!
(It was actually in a small black plastic bag with a pack of dessicant, but I removed those before taking the photo)

the possibilities (dang, I didn't get a Pikachu or an Eevee!)
I forgot, was this paper inside or outside that black bag? Probably outside.

cute Wigglytuff

I have a Jigglypuff key-chain on my pickleball bag; here are the siblings!
(Jigglypuff evolves into Wigglytuff)

Then Deseree came back from visiting Comic-Con in KL and gave me this Butterfree.

It's a transparent plaque that is fitted onto a transparent base. The paper that comes with it displays the Pokemon's information.

Placing all these together makes a Pokemon corner in my display cabinet!

(I moved them around a bit for the photo. Not everything is in the photo either!)

Thank you for all the gifts! ♥

Eevee ♥ Charmander

Remember Eevee? At first Eevee was shocked at how some big the other Pokemon were, but he soon settled down and made friends with them. And then one day...

Eevee: Oh! A mug with Charmander's picture on it! I've got to get Charmander to come and see!

Eevee: "Oh no! What happened to you, Charmander? Who shrunk you and trapped you into this box?"

Eevee: "Someone please help my friend! Oh, Charmander, it's you! I'm so glad you're okay!"

A friend gave me that Charmander in the box.

At first I couldn't figure out how to open the box...then one day somehow it managed to open. It seems like the bottom is quite tight, but a certain part can be pressed a bit to loosen it. It's not easy to do, and I'm not sure whether I can do it again (I put it back after looking at all the components).

Here's what's inside! 

the bottom, which can be used as a stamp

switching the Charmander into "suction cup" mode, and its base/eraser as a spinning top

Below are the translations of the six usages of the toy.

In the end, I will be simply using it as an ornament! (as if I've never opened it...haha)

The duckling invasion

I saw this reel on Facebook one day. This lady bought 200 mini ducklings and hid them in her mother-in-law’s house, and she showed us a few reactions from her “victim”. (very happy reactions they were; this MIL loves a bit of fun!)

I immediately decided that I needed to flood the office with little ducklings.

So I bought a hundred ducks. 

the ducks jiggled like marbles inside the bag
(I did not use flash for this photo. I am not sure what AI in my camera setting made the ducks glow so prettily)

Duck army assembled, ready to be deployed!

I received a broken 101st duck; not sure whether it was sent to me because it was broken, or the seller added one free duck in case one broke in transit :P (see it apart from the others?)

They glow in the dark! (some colours glow more than others)

I decided to go back upstairs on a Thursday, after my yoga class on the ground floor, to place the ducks in my team’s office area. I intentionally delayed going upstairs till after 8pm, but unfortunately I bumped into CS coming out. And there were three other people still working!

I was prepared for this eventuality…because I knew that some of my colleagues tend to work quite late (and I didn’t plan to stay later than this!) So I recruited the three people present into the project; they could help if they wanted, but even if they didn’t want to help, I asked them to just act like they knew nothing. All three decided to help!

Now here is where it was quite unexpected…my instructions were just to put one duck per cubicle first (there are less than a hundred cubicles), and then the leftover ducks could be anywhere. Since there were four of us, we split up to the four corners of the area, starting with twelve ducks each (aka covering twelve cubicles before we were supposed to regroup and redistribute which cubicles each one would handle). LC and I quickly hid our twelve ducks (we were to randomly hide some and leave some out in the open, so that at least a few ducks would be discovered and people would start looking for more), but CY and XL were squealing so much back and forth: “Oh look how cute I’ve placed this duck!”, “Look at mine, it’s so cute too!”, “You need to come and see!”, and so on…that they had just done around six by the time we finished our twelve. They were putting lots of thought into where they put those ducks! LC on the other hand, finished her part and then went back to work…she was clearly not as interested in this. :P The rest of us placed the extra ducks all over the place…looking for good or cute hiding places. We don’t even remember where we put some of them.

So what I expected to be a 10-15 minute duck-hiding process on my own, turned into more than half an hour (almost one hour?) Mind you, I’m not complaining…it was fun, they were clearly enjoying themselves a lot, and they found lovely places for the ducks that frankly I wouldn’t have thought of. They even selected ducks to match the colour of the environment.

one of the prettiest, in my opinion (from XL)

CY's handiwork

I placed this; last I checked (a week later), it was still there...

I placed this too, after being inspired by their work

XL's handiwork

I wanted to put a duck at the Christmas tree. XL helped me find a good place. If not mistaken, it hasn't been spotted yet.

XL's, I think

CY's, I think

XL's masterpiece. I love this one, I wonder whether it has been found, but I haven't managed to naturally check it out without raising suspicion.

I hate Labubu, but the duck matches its exercise mat, which is kinda cute.

Tom staring at a new victim? :P
Probably from XL, since this is her zone

I placed this one

CY's. He was real happy with it because the crying figure (whatever that is) is holding/patting the duck.

I'm not sure whether this was from LC (it was in her zone) or it was added later, but this is so cute too!

One of them even put a duck on my paper Pikachu, which I didn't notice until the next day. (or did they move it there after I left that night?)

The next day, I had a MentorConnect session outside the office in the morning, so I didn’t go in till after lunch.

Before lunch, KJ sent me a message “Thank you for the ducks.” SH on the other hand, directly asked me, “Are there two ducks per cubicle, or do some have only one?”

The idea was to pretend I didn’t know anything, so I acted as such. Mind you, none of them first asked me whether the ducks were from me!

When I reached the office, I found that J had left me a message in the office chat: “What is the meaning of ?” (also not asking me whether the duck came from me) A few others also thanked me directly for the ducks, but some did ask.

Basically it seems that they had generally concluded the ducks were from me, after WC (who was in office) denied that it was him (he was organizing an upcoming Christmas party, so it would have made sense if this was the lead-up to that event). As for me, I just kept denying that it was me…it would have ruined the whole experience of discovery if they just had to ask me for answers. (though I didn’t even have all the answers, because I had no idea where some of the ducks were, that the others placed, and also I had forgotten where I put some of them!) I think some people believed me, but some others might still suspect me, even though they have no choice but to take my word for it.

I could have kept this a secret forever, but I want to write about it for my own memory, so here it is!

A wagyu feast

Snorlax treated me to Edo Ichi for my birthday. They had special dishes including a wagyu course meal, which we shared, together with an Edo Ichi pizza. The total bill came up to RM250 (with my company badge’s 15% discount applied to a-la-carte items and not the wagyu set) before service charge and tax, so we were entitled to a birthday dish and ice-cream of the day. The birthday promotion is valid for the whole birthday month, and the waitress actually told us “you can come again this month”. Already trying to get more business before we had even started eating!

Here is the advertised wagyu set:

RM210 before taxes; no discount allowed since it is a promo set

The wasabi came as a pretty leaf.

Then the salmon sashimi arrived. 

Look at those thick glistening slices! I am not a sashimi connoisseur, but I can taste that these are better than cheaper sashimi elsewhere. Even Snorlax said that it was good, and he isn’t a fan of sashimi.

garlic fried rice

truffle chawanmushi

We can see only truffle on the top, but at the bottom there are all the usual ingredients in a high-end chawanmushi: prawn, chicken, naruto, mushroom, gingko nut (not sure whether I missed anything).

miso soup with clams and nameko mushroom

There are several clams and mushrooms inside (the brown thing is the nameko mushroom), together with tofu and seaweed like usual miso soup. I didn’t even realize until I came home and looked back at the description of the wagyu set, that the mushrooms were not regular shiitake mushrooms; I thought they were just small shiitake. They definitely didn’t have the taste of shiitake, but when eating, I just thought that the shiitake taste was masked by the other flavours.

unagi crispy roll, my birthday treat from Edo Ichi

We could choose between a few items; besides this, one was a real main dish of chicken katsu curry rice, and the other two were salmon sashimi and grilled smoked duck. If we didn’t have salmon sashimi in our wagyu set, I would have selected that; but since we already had sashimi, this unagi roll was a good option! I would have preferred it without the sauce; as it was, I scraped off some of the sauce and had it with some wasabi.

Edo Ichi pizza, RM45 before discount or taxes

It is half salmon and half unagi; you can make out the two halves in the photo. The salmon side had more fish, since salmon is cheaper than unagi. But I still prefer the unagi side, because of the unagi sauce!

the star of the day, wagyu on houba leaf

This is my favourite dish of the day (though the sashimi can rival it). I don’t really know how to use the accompaniments; on the right is salt, on the left is spring onion in something that was not soy sauce, and in the middle was a sourish paste that I didn’t like. I dipped the beef into the two on the side, but even without dipping, the beef was good enough. We asked for medium-well, and the doneness was just right.

prawn tempura, nice and crispy

oyster and mushroom baked with mentai sauce and cheese, with salmon fin karaage

The oyster is as big as you can guess from the photo. No excessive cheese bloating it up. The salmon fin had a lovely crispy exterior.

For dessert, two scoops of free ice-cream. One was vanilla, the scoop of the day from the birthday promo. The other was free with my company badge, so we could choose the flavour, and we selected black sesame. 

The first dish arrived a few minutes after we ordered, and the other dishes were brought up gradually within the next half hour. After that we still spent almost another hour eating slowly, before asking for our ice-cream. In the end, we spent more than two hours there enjoying our luxurious meal.

It was quite filling for just the two of us. Luckily we had this for lunch, and I didn't even need a dinner that night; just had a small snack.