Pre-teachers' Day 'love' notes :) Invitations to class parties tomorrow.

You know it's quite frustrating when you have problems at home, and then you face situations which remind you of underlying family problems, and then you have people around you who are unwilling to help out when help is needed that it sometimes feels like you're better off talking to a block of wood.

I am reminded of a 'vow' I took with myself a few months ago - to help others but never expect anyone to come running to help you when you are the one who needs help.

Lately, I've been feeling that I would much rather prefer being a hermit.

Today was good. Left the house 5 minutes later than yesterday because I hadn't ironed my clothes like I did the day before haha. Was afraid I might be late for kursus, but I actually arrived earlier than yesterday! It's been so nice waking up when the sun has already risen and driving in daylight instead of when it's still dark!!!

Anyway, today was the group project part of the kursus. Take note : on paper, we are supposed to finish the kursus at 4:30. Yesterday we finished around 4. That's later than my usual school-ending time of 3:00.

We were broken up into groups according to the schools we came from, and all us 'sekolah swasta' fellas were in one group. We were given tasks to come up with instruments, or in laymen's term - exercises, for the different bands, or in laymen's term - levels.

Depending on the band you had to write for, each band had different difficulty level as well as different tasks. Our group of about 9 people had 8 tasks to complete. At first we started off doing the first task together.

Then we realized that we could very well split the group into two and divide the job by half. So that's what we did. And guess what? We were done by some time just after the mid-morning tea break!

Mujurlah, kita guru swasta, kan pandai dan efisyen! Muahaha. Besar kepala :p We were the first to finish. Other groups still hadn't finish and thankfully, we didn't have as many tasks to do as some of the other groups either.

So by 11am we were done, and when we asked the organisers, they said that we will be doing only that for the rest of the day (until 4:30pm!) because the other groups still haven't finished their tasks!

Not wanting to sit there with absolutely nothing to do or learn - a total waste of time - (although I brought along a book to read), we requested for permission to leave.

So I was off by 11am! Oh-what-joy. Was contemplating going back to school to teach my class but I knew my relief teacher had already prepared something for my class (she told me so) and I know how unsettling it can be when you've already prepared to teach a class and then suddenly don't have to (Aah, such noble intentions ;)).

So I drove to the hubby's office instead and had lunch with him :) I was in the mood for something healthy and western, so I opted for a bacon and cheese sandwich at the Bavaria in Lot 10's food court!

I could've fooled myself! Yeah, sandwiches sound healthy, but I really don't know how healthy the bacons were!!! PLUS we ordered a side plate of just bacon strips. Talk about a bacon overload!!!







So all in all, you can say I'm enjoying my time in kursus. Haha. I came in pants today (I usually wear skirts) and some of the normal kebangsaan school teachers were saying how they are not allowed to wear pants. Another private school teacher told them that we can wear pants at private schools (ANYTHING decent, for that matter). Yay! :p

Coupled with the fact that we finished our work first and could go home early - Private School Teachers Rule!!! Lol.

Tomorrow, last day at kursus. I'm gonna miss it :)

There's a cool new place to hang out at - Publika Solaris in Mont Kiara. Well, okay, the shopping mall part of the place ain't that cool partly because it's not fully occupied yet and partly because it's the 'uppity class' kinda place, but there's great food all around and a really cool grocers! If you like Cold Storage, you will love Ben's Independent Grocers MORE!!!

So, for things to do at Publika Solaris :

FIRST - dig in to some yummy meals!!!

For scrumptious Pork Ribs, wine and great pasta, try S.Wine; For great coffee - Plan B (as mentioned in the post before this) and Ben's is also here! (besides Pavillion and KLCC.)

For yummy pork (or beef and chicken) burgers, in a semi American way, go for Fat Boys!!!



Pork burger with bacon slices. Slurp! Can it get any yummier? I like their homestyle chips. A fresh change from the standard McD ones!



Their menu



Drinks and desserts menu. The vanilla milkshake is really thick! I'd like to try the chocolate one day!!!



You can even build your own burger! I'd love to build one with guacamole one day! Oh how I miss the bacon guacamole burger at Carl's Jr :(

NEXT : After a good hearty meal, scoot yourself over to Ben's Independent Grocer (B.I.G) and be amused and delighted by the amazing range of products they have.

My sister says that when she's in B.I.G., she feels like she's not in Malaysia. It has the overseas grocer feel :) Nice!






Racks and racks of all kinds of things!!! From all over the world!



I can't remember what these were, but I think they were jars and jars of different types of pasta sauces.



All kinds of fruit juices! And in cute bottles too!





And check out their veggies:


It's literally growing there! Choose fresh from the soil, grown hydrophonically. As fresh as it gets!



And, have you ever seen poppadum in a can, like Pringles???


Imported from India!

Cool eh? They've also got all kinds of cheeses and a super cold cheese room, all kinds of non halal pork products, soaked wieners and all sorts lah. One MUST make a trip to B.I.G.!

FINALLY : After all that eating and walking, cap it all off with a tub of the new and fast becoming famous Moo Cow Frozen Yoghurt!






This was only my third time to Publika : the first time I went there with my hubby, the second time with my family and the third time with a friend. Next time, Lord willing, I wanna try the chocolate milkshake!!! :D AND bacon and cheese ciabatta. And ... and ... Ok, I better stop talking about food.

It's an interesting week for me. I'm sent out for kursus and it's nice to have a change once in a while :) PLUS not to mention that I get to wake up about 1.25 hours later than usual!!! (altho the day ends later than my usual school day :p)

I think the title for this post is more appropriate if it was 'Celebrating Chek's Birthday' but I thought just 'Ben's' sounds cooler. Lol.

Soooo, one fine public holiday a few weeks ago, we went to Pavillion to celebrate Chek's birthday. The girls wanted to bring her to Ben's because she likes the food in Delicious and apparently, Ben's and Delicious have the same owner.

It's only later on that I found out from my sis that the owner started off with Delicious and then sold of the franchise and went on to start the chain of Ben's stuff all around .... as a Plan B, as it were (pun intended).

I must say its a really successful (and wonderful) business because they've got really nice new restaurants like Ben's (the food IS great!), Plan B (this is what I meant by pun intended) has great coffee (according to my sis), B.I.G. (GREAT supermarket - I'll blog about it in another post and lots more.

Anyway, our day started with Chek wanting to introduce us to Ochado (another bubble tea thingy) coz it has a different type of 'pearl' called 'Pop eggs' which pops in your mouth to release some coffee flavor.

Some photos of us at Ochado :




















The pop eggs only limited to first 50 customers!!! The girls didn't really fancy it but I liked it :D Thanks Chek, for taking the trouble to belanja us :) MUCH appreciated :)

Then, after walking around a bit, we decided it was time for lunch and walked over to Ben's, but guess what???


It was closed!!!!!! Under renovation!!!! Good thing, the night before, I went online to check out the price of the place and stumbled upon very useful information which included blogs of which dish is yummy there, and it's other outlets. So I knew there was another one at Klcc. So...after making a phone call to confirm that the Klcc outlet was open, we walked over. Yeah ... WALKED!!! Lol. Good exercise for me :p






That's when I learned there's a covered link bridge from Pavilion to Klcc!!! Über cool!!! It was nicely built, convenient, clean and air-conditioned!!! Nice :)


Almost reaching Klcc. Nice painting inside the bridge :



And here we are at Ben's Klcc :





She's happy!








Table talk cards. Quite fun


















The food. EVERYTHING we ordered was great! Serious! Carbonara, duck confit (the only place I'll ever enjoy duck meat!), fried mushroom (seriously good), quiche.











And then .... Desserts!!! Banofee and Rocky Road :)



She bought the world's MOST expensive popcorn!!!! *faints*


And after our walk back to Pavillion, we ate at snowflake. Haha. Non-stop eating :p

Happy birthday Chek! Hope you had a great time!

p/s Sorry for some lousy pics. Wasn't thinking about angles went taking them. Just simply point and snap. Haha.

Let's do this again ;) Its a lot of fun eating in a big group at new places coz we get to try a lotta dishes....hahaha.

Some 'interesting' things in my life lately :





Being back in a science lab after berpuluh tahun!!!! Hahaha.






My colleagues


Food test!

Another of my colleague, Puan Gong : (incidentally she's my sister's Form 6 Geography teacher and my mom's Teaching Children Course student. Talk about a small world :p



This picture was taken coz she asked me if my iPad could take a photo with a front camera haha.









Music cookie, raptai sukan and sewing my own skirt!!!