Shield your love ones with a breath of fresh air

An educational video for anti passive-smoking initiative. Share this video and make the community cigarette smoke free.

Smoking in indoor areas kills not only the passive smokers, but the smokers as well.

Taiping Mali Cafe at Bandar Puteri Puchong

Bandar Puteri Puchong is always not my preference spot for meals as the restaurants in that area are not serving good food but the focus is more in renovation or atmosphere.

I was passing by Bandar Puteri Puchong on 12th November 2010 during lunch time. Without much thought, I decided to have a quick lunch at Taiping Mali Cafe, I do not expect very tasty food to be served by any restaurant in Bandar Puteri Puchong, a simple meal will do.

Taiping Mali Cafe shop front

Well, the menu left me with not much choice. It was a good sign as you really cannot expect the cook is good in preparing all kind of dishes. And I can bet that those restaurants that served up to 100 types of meals are just buying all the gravy and processed ingredients, while you order, they will opened up the packet from the fridge, heat it up and then put on the plate.

I ordered a plate of petai prawn rice while my friend ordered a plate of soya sauce pork rice. Well, the foods served in less than 3 minutes time (more efficient than fast food giant Mc Donald). The foods were cook and prepared in bulk prior to any ordering. Besides, the size of serving is merely 1/3 of what you can get from the ordinary mixed rice stalls.

In short, the food served by Taiping Mali Cafe is like you are buying a lunch plate from mixed rice stall, but instead of choosing 3 dishes + 1 soup of any combination (approx. MYR 4.00 at mixed rice stall), you only choose one and no soup (approx MYR 2.50 in mixed rice stall but Taiping Mali Cafe is demanding for MYR 8.90 for petai prawn rice and MYR7.90 for soya sauce pork rice) .

Cash bill issued by Taiping Mali Cafe

How about the quality of food? Does it taste good? The answer is any ordinary mixed rice stall can put Taiping Mali Cafe in their pocket. 

Achieving work-life balance is easier said than done

What're you working for? Yes, I'm working for a living.

What are you living for? I live for my family.

Thus, work-life balance is important to juggle these 2 main objectives in life.

At mid 30s, I found that my time at this age is most valuable in my life time because I need to spend more valuable time to my golden aged parents, time is scarce to them.

I also need to spend enough time to the growing up children as they are progressing fast everyday and you won't want to miss a single moment of their growing up stages. After they hit 18, they will leave you and treasure their own journey of life.

Hence, since 4 years back, I have persistently improving my work efficiency while appreciate and value family time. But with the working culture and perception of Asian that work long hour is necessary for great accomplishment, and also with the contribution of the lousy traffic of Klang Valley, the work-life balance that I'm striving for is just too far from me.

Even though achieving work-life balance is easier said than done, I will never give up and will continue to make improvement and adjustment.