When you have a lovely hubby...

...you are going to get this kind of note "Don't even THINK about it" when your crave for a biscuit.

According to hubby, I'm fat enough so I'm forbidden to get all kind of junk foods. However, I can eat as much fruits and vegetables as I want to support the government campaign of "Eat 5 fruits and vegetables per day".

Another day I'm allowed to have junk foods is when there are guests at home. The French serve junk foods as appetizers.

Poor me.

Why I write pay post

This morning I was telling hubby that when I get a job, I will buy myself a LV bag. He said if I do so, he will be very disappointed. I don't know how to explain to him that I don't like to live on someone. LV bag is just a symbol, that I'm able to support myself, that I can love myself with my hard earn money.

Ever since I was very young I started working part time to support myself. I don't remember ever received monthly pocket money like the kids get here. One thing I hate about France is the possibility to get a part time job is super low, even as a sales person in a supermarket, probably because I'm a foreigner. There is a constant "eage" deep from my heart that I need to gain some "bread" by myself.

I knew about paid post from some sites and at the beginning I just ignored it. Then I slowly accepted it, as I have seen that sites where paid posts exist could have interesting contents too. My intention at the beginning was to buy myself some hobby related stuff, like a book or a puzzle.

After 4 months of trying, my paypal account grew from 0 to $164. This is nothing compared with what others have achieved, but at least it is an effort from my part. Do not think this is an easy job. I sincerely think people who manage to earn a lot out of this have to have certain talent in certain way. I tried to make sure whatever I write is related to my experience. I actually enjoy writing some of the posts, it keeps myself updated to some of the products and information available out there.

I was almost giving up at some point, because I only registered with PayPerPost, whom's opportunity could be gone within minutes. I was not motivated to check the site everyday just to fight with someone to get the post. I don't want to write about anything related to gambling or some products I have never used. Recently I joined Blogvertise, I sincerely think they have a better way of approaching the blogger, by sending them email about the task and people can just accept or decline it.

I usually write for post that pays minimum $10 = 7 euros, which can only pay for a sandwich or cheap lunch in France. I have yet to buy anything with the money, but who knows one day I can use my American Airlines Mileage to visit USA again, and these money can pay for my expenses there? :-)

What would you do?

I just got the confirmation from my classmate who participated in the conversation with my professor, that she clearly heard that I said 12pm = noon and 12am = mid night.

So I did express my idea correctly but the professor said I was wrong, unless he learnt his English wrong.

So, if you were me, will you send him an email and tell him that he was wrong?

12am Vs 12pm

We had dinner with our American professor tonight and he was sitting around to make sure he can speak with all the students.

When he was sitting beside me, he asked what was the differences I could tell about the American University and the French University.

I told him I was impressed by the facilities in my University in the USA, that the library was open until 12am.

He corrected me and said, it should be 12pm.

No, I told him, that I meant mid night 12am, and noon = 12pm. Mid night is 12am because it's the beginning of the day.

He said I was wrong. Then he joked that maybe he were wrong that he learnt the bad English.

I checked on the internet, and according to wikipedia, I was right. 12am = mid night
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock

How about you guys, do you have problem with this? What is 12am for you guys? Night or noon?

I hate presentation!

I have a presentation tomorrow and I just hate it. Usually if I know the topic well I have no problem. But this time, the article is a summary from a 2 days forum from OECD, so you get pieces of info here and there. Not much elaboration into each point. I hate to present something I myself don't even understand.

Besides, I do not think this professor deserves my hard work. She is just plain lazy, having us doing the work and teach nothing. According to her, if nobody asks question that means our presentation is not interesting. For Pete's sake, when she lectures nobody asks question, or sometimes she couldn't even give satisfactory answer.

Even internet couldn't help much this time. :-(

Airbus delivers its first A380 superjumbo to Singapore Airlines

After 2 years of delay, Airbus finally delivered its first A380 to Singapore Airlines.


Some info about A380:
Total capacity: 471 passengers
Private suite: 12
Business class seats: 60
Economy class seats: 399

Prices:
From Singapore to Sydney round trip:
Private suite: $5115
Business: 15-20% more than the normal flight
Economy: 1040 euros (I saw this on the news but not sure this price is for Sin-Sydney flight)

So, you can now spend $10,230 for honeymoon on the A380 and sleep comfortably before arriving in Sydney. Now Samantha doesn't have to be disturbed by the flight attendance while dating her rich Richard (a scene in the Sex and the City).

President of France divorcing

PARIS - The president's wife has gone missing. And the question of the day in France on Friday was: Has she gone for good?

Cecilia Sarkozy didn't vote for her husband, Nicolas, in May; she didn't accompany him to lunch with the Bushes in Maine last summer; and the woman at Sarkozy's side at a celebratory dinner after France's victory in the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup a week ago? Not his wife, but one of her closest friends.

The chic former model, in fact, has done nothing official since Bastille Day in July. And this weekend, she is reportedly at a $1,000-night-spa in Geneva while he's in Paris rooting for France in the rugby semifinals.

On Friday, a journalist for the newspaper L'Est Republican, citing sources close to the presidential palace, reported that the couple were getting divorced - something the rest of the media have hinted but not quite said for weeks. "Where has Cecilia Gone?" Le Parisien asked last week.

The French are a tolerant people. Their presidents have had mistresses and even fathered illegitimate children and life went on. But divorce? How ... conventional. How ... bourgeois. How ... unconventional, actually.

But Christine Clerc, a French "first marriage" expert and author, said the French are ready to accept an Elysee Palace divorce. "In fact, it's the first time we can see it like this - with our very own eyes," he said Friday. "Before, the private lives of presidents were all hidden and many things were forbidden to be even discussed. Now we say, "The first lady is gone."

Taken from twincities.com

Could American accepts a divorced president? Does Malaysian Prime Minister have a right to divorce?

Dont fight cos everyone is right

Unavoidably, we need to have group project which leads to group discussion thus argument.

Once we were arguing over the finance term "turnover", "revenue" and "income".

For me, what a company gets from selling it's products and services is called "revenue".

For the French and other foreigners, its called "turnover".

One guy said it should be "income".

Turned out everyone is right.

Revenue is a term used in the USA, turnover is a term used in the Europe, and income is a term used for individual.

So, everyone is right so stop arguing.

But, our professor is from the US and we are in the Europe, which word should we use?

The French and English

We had a conference this afternoon and the speaker was a professor from the USA. I thought about it and realize, that professors who speak English can just give lecture in almost every corner of the world, but a professor who speak only French, would in contrast have very limited opportunities. What is the odd a French professor who only speak French give a conference in the Universities in Malaysia or USA?

Then why, in France, kids start learning English at the age of 10, and it's not mandatory? For student who choose Spanish or German as their second language, they could totally ignore English. Most of the American series and movies are duped in French, so it's kind of hard to watch an English film if you don't subscribe to the private English channels. We Malaysians are just lucky, able to see different program in different languages easily.

Luckily, things are slowly changed. My classmates had asked to have all the classes in English for the second semester. Our in charge professor said he will try, but the main reason why they were not able to do it was due to the reluctance of some of the French professors. These professors do not feel comfortable to teach in English. Actually, some of the professors we have who teach in English do not have perfect English and sometimes make a lot of mistake, but they are eager to try and the students enjoy having classes in English.

I hope in the future most of the French are at least bilingual, her neighbors German, Netherlands, Belgium have achieved a lot more in this field. Let's catch up France!

Naked farmers

This can only happen in France, or most likely happen in France.

The farmers took off their clothes, posting for a calendar. All the profits will be donated to Téléthon, a Television Marathon program to raise fund for different charities organizations. In 2005, they managed to sell 7000 calendars, considered a big success. This year, 6 farmers volunteered to do it. One of the goals is to address the prejudices towards the women farmers, stressing that they could be as attractive and as professional compared to other women.

These are photos from last year. Only men posted last year.





What do you think? I personally think it's a good idea, the farmers really can be as attractive! haha

Note: All photos are taken from the internet.

We had a great time

The dinner turned out to be great, thanks to the chefs ,cookingninja and Snippets of my life. My in-laws family liked the fact that each time they come visit us, they will taste different kind of cuisine.

Sorry but I didn't have any photos to show you guys. I have to officially announce that:"I LOST MY CAMERA!". Yes the one I bought 6 years ago with my own hard earned USD. This digital camera is worth nothing and is probably technologically outdated, but it has a very sentimental value to me. It was the feeling of having high purchasing power and able to reward yourself with something.

Anyway, like Chinese saying, if the old one is not gone, the new one won't come. I have a peep on the new model and it was not as expensive as I imagine. Arggg, I just miss the time where I can just snap a photo on everything and on every moment!

Happy Birthday to Fabien

Today is Fabien's birthday. Tomorrow his family will come over to celebrate. I already planned for the birthday dinner. Here should be the menu:

Appetizer: Guacamole
Entrée: Tom Yam soup
Main dish:Pineapple fried rice and Thai green curry Recipe from cookingninja
Dessert: Tiramisu from Snippets of my life

I'm pretty nervous as I didn't have experience to cook all these dishes. Guacamole will be handle by hubby.

I have to admit that I'm not a good wife. I didn't prepare him any present, but my argument is that he has everything he needs. He just bought himself a fancy Nokia cellphone and have been playing with his new toy for a while. I don't think I can find him anything that can bet the gift he has chosen for himself.

Zero income tax! It's that possible in France???

Well, France is well known as one of the countries that impose the highest income tax in the world. Unlike the US system where income taxes are withdrawn from your pay check each month, and at the end of the tax year you could gotten back some tax return and be happy about it, the French government will in contrast tell you how much you owe them after you file for your tax return.

So you can imagine my reaction when I received the income tax form. Zero? We owe the government nothing??? How could this be possible, in France?

At first I thought I had a horrible French just couldn't understand what was written in the form and just forget about it and let hubby deals with it. But hubby said the same thing.

The trick? Get married in the middle of the year! That way you divide your income into two since you are now consist of 2 people, thus too low to "qualify" for tax payment.

This could be one of the reasons hubby wanted to marry me?

95 years old lady jumped from a parachut

Photo from here.

A 95 years old French woman made a parachute jump last Saturday. She did that to help raise fund to help the children of Cachemire, victims of the earthquake in 2005.

Can you imagine that? What do you think you can do when you are 95?

I can't do parachute jump even though I'm only in my 30s. :-)

Free call to Malaysia

Starting from today I can call Malaysia for free. This service is presented by my internet provider, Free, who also provide the phone services and digital TV on the same package. They already have free phone calls to countries like US, China and Singapore for quite some time, and now they have expanded this free services to more countries.

I like the fact that internet technologies have made communication less and less costly. However, my mother just told me that they will cancel the fixed phone line at home because each month it costs them around RM50 (around 10 euros) even though she doesn't use it much.

I just wish Malaysia can be as advance in terms of internet services. In US and France, people call fixed phone to fixed phone for free within the country. I'm paying 29,99 euros for TV, phone and internet, but Malaysian need to pay all of these services differently.

Our French Wedding (2)

In my last post about the French wedding I mentioned that my mother wanted me to get out of the house from the main door, but instead I got out from the second door (for concubine in the Chinese culture) since I was wearing extremely high pair of shoes. The result, I forgot to bring my own luggages to the rental property (a farm house) for our wedding, which would have been seen if I got out through the main door. With no choice, hubby went back to the house and picked up what was forgotten, and by the time he arrived in the place where the wedding dinner was held, our guests had been waiting for more than an hour. Lesson: listen to your mother, sometimes they could be right.

Luckily the guests had lots of activities to keep them busy in the farm house, one of them being watching the drooling roasted pork, a famous dish from this farm house.

While waiting for the dinner to start, some of the guests setting up their tents. Basically our friends brought their own tent and camp outside while our family guests sleep in the rooms. Our friends and hubby set up the tents for some of my family member, but due to some miss understanding and the cold weather, we didn't make use of the tents. :-(

People started dancing while waiting for hubby to come back.

We started the evening program immediately once hubby arrived. We had a fabulous violin performance and poem by this little girl and her brother.

Fabien telling a joke.

The dinner setting was very simple and friendly with some decorations from Malaysia.

The menu: fois gras with anion; langoustin; apple ice cream with alcohol; roasted pork with vegetables; salad and cheese & strawberry cake. The small red bag is from Malaysia, with some Malaysian candies, junk foods and peanut biscuit.

The fois gras was so good but I couldn't find any photo of it. Here is the langoustin, one kind of shrimp from Brittany region.

We open the ball and people join in.

We had the Brittany/Celtic dance and everybody, young and old joined in. Our guests just love to dance!

Fabien's parents prepared him a drama show. The dad was imitating Fabien when he was teenager and when he was going to the scout camp. It was hilarious!

Finally it was time to taste the roasted pork. Everybody said it was good. For me, I was awaiting roasted pork plus roasted skin, but it just not the way it is here. All the skin were thrown away, and we only eat the meat. The taste just wasn't the same without the skin. My nephew asked why roasted the pork until "chao ta" (burned).

There were several games going on during the dinner. For this game, I selected 6 girls and Fabien selected 6 guys. For each round one of the contestants will be eliminated. They were assigned tasks like finding a lipstick, a kid, car key, and they need to rush back to find a seat, which would always be one person less. People who couldn't find a seat loses, and they would need to do something for us in the month they got. For example, someone had to host our first wedding anniversary September next year.

Our friends prepared another game for us. In this game, we had to reply their questions, like who does the housework, who stays longer in the bathroom, who spends more money...with answer all lead to "me or him/her". Our friends were considered enough to have one person translated the questions into English for my family members.

Our good friends from Nantes presented us a song in French, English, Chinese, Spanish and Breton (a regional language spoken in Brittany). Million thanks to the efforts they put into this.

Revenge time. My BIL was forced to eat Chinese jelly/pudding during our wedding in Malaysia. Now he wanted my sister to try the stinky French cheese. :-)


Champagne time: No celebration will go without champagne in my in-laws family. This huge bottle of champagne was specially ordered for this occasion. I think it costs a fortune.

Time to cut some cakes. These strawberry cake was just awesome. I was so full with other dishes but still manage to finish my share of it.

People went dancing from time to time and most of the guests went to sleep around 2am. Hubby and his friends stayed up dancing until 6am.

Overall, my family especially my mother was very impressed by the French wedding. It was an eyes opening ceremony, with guests participate in games and dances and everyone was happy. My mother actually drunk white, rose, red wine plus champagne in one night, which was something never happened in her life.

French wedding usually last for two days. Stay tunned for the episode of "retour de noce", the day after the wedding.

When you are not fluent in the language

,then you tend to create jokes out of yourself.

Example A:
I have friends (A & V) were getting married and A's family flew in from South America (She is South American). I saw her father once. On the day of the wedding, an old man accompanied her outside the Town Hall for the wedding registration. I approached him but was not sure whether he was A's father.
Me: Vous êtes le beau père de V? (Are you V's father in laws?)
Him: Oui. (Yes)
Since he admitted that he is V's father in laws, that means he is A's father, who was supposed to be a South American who doesn't speak French.
Me: Wow vous parlez bien français! (Wow you speak good French!)
Him: Bien sûr, je suis Français! (of course, I'm French!)
Then I heard hubby laughing heavily. It's just so stupid to compliment a French speaking good French. Apparently that guy is le beau père of V , but beau père has two meaning in French, it could be FIL or step father. So he is the step father of V, not FIL. How confusing!

Example 2:
During the class, I was chatting with my guys classmates.
Guy 1: How long had you married?
me: About a year ago we had our civil wedding, but just recently we had our church wedding.
Guy2: Do you have children?
me: Non, mais on est en train de faire. (no but we are making it)
Then I saw them all trying to hold their laugh, something must be wrong. I didn't dare to ask so wait until home I asked hubby.
Hubby: Of course they laugh lah, you were telling them you were in the process of fucking!
Gosh I swear this was not my intention, I wanted to say we are trying, not fucking.

Our French Wedding (1)

I finally managed to gather some photos for our wedding held more than two weeks ago. Thanks everyone who took time to upload the photos for us.

Unlike the tradition where bride and groom have to sleep in the different house the night before the wedding, we actually slept in the same house and depart from the same house the second morning. While Fabien was busying with the booklets and other organizations for the wedding, I went in the morning for my hair and makeup. When I got home, everybody was busy putting all the luggages (we will go directly to the party place), the champagne glasses, the decor... At this moment, my mother wanted me to get out from the main door, as going out from the side door means you are the second wife or concubine to the guy, in the Chinese tradition. I didn't follow her instruction and later regretted from it.

Our friends decorated their car for us.


Me wearing these shoes, welcoming and face kissing over 100 guests. I thought it would be annoying but I actually had fun doing it.



Waiting to enter the chapel. Unlike what I saw in the American movie, me and my father were in the middle while Fabien and his mother were the one entering the last.


There were some presentations during the ceremony. My family members were singing a Chinese song which broke the serious ambiance when they sang out of tone. :-)


My nephew, brought us the rings during the ring exchange ceremony. The rings were nicely tied to a handmade pillow, made by Fabien's god mother, a tradition in the region.


The singing ceremony. The priest was impressed that my parents signed in Chinese. He thought that Chinese was a language that is not practice anymore, like Latin.


A song sang by friends who used to be scout.


The ceremony lasted like about 35 minutes, we are finally husband and wife, according to both our traditions.

We had photo session with different groups: siblings, friends, cousin... then a group one. I like the background, this place is awesome to take photo.


Right after photo session, we had a cocktail party beside the chapel. The feast started from now!


I tried to talk to people but stay close to my family who couldn't communicate with the guests. The guests were simply fantastic, they didn't want my family to be left out from the party, so they kept talking to my family even though they didn't understand each other. The French are just too friendly! My mother said I'm lucky bcos everyone seems to be so nice to me.


We managed to gather everyone in a circle, and did the Malaysian toast: Yammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm sheng!


The wedding ceremony started at around 2.30pm and the cocktail lasted around 6.30pm. Some of the guests left, whereas those who got invited to dinner, follow us to the rental house.

Stay tunned for the dinner part.

Speak the French English

For the first semester, my classes are in English. So, I have professors speaking the French-English the whole day. Basically for the French, "h" doesn't exist and "s"= "z" if "s" is not the first letter in a word. So, imagine everyday I'm hearing:

Thiz iz a bazic buziness concept.
(H)ere is an example of (h)ow you can implement IT solutionz.
Thiz can (h)elp you understand w(h)o uzez thiz model.

I got so confused whether I was pronouncing English correctly, and realized I did a lot of mistakes. So I actually learn from the French about the correct way in pronouncing certain English words. But, now my problem is, do we pronounce all the plural "s" as "z" like what the French do?

Customerz, imagez, clientz, technologiez....

I need help!

The Malaysians always eat the same thing

The Malaysians love their foods and are proud of them. This can really be seen in my family who missed their foods miserably when they were in France. My nephew already had a list of foods he wanted to eat when he was in Malaysia even before he left France: bah kut teh, nasi lemak, dim sum, cha kuey teoh, roti canai....

This led to a discussion that my family is very closed minded in terms of food. They only eat Chinese Malaysian food at home, not wanting to try other cuisines. That was why they couldn't gotten used to the French food when they were in France. Besides, since they always eat the same kind of foods, they are not used to other ingredients.

According to hubby, in France you can cook different dishes for 365 days. In Malaysia we always eat rice and noodles. My explanation, nasi lemak and nasi kandar is different; curry mee is different than cha kuey teow. But it could be seen as the same for a foreigners.

What do you think? Do we always eat the same kind of foods? How many among you actually go to Malay and Indian restaurants regularly, eat something besides nasi lemak and roti canai? Are we less open minded in accepting different kind of foods?