Food Glorious Food!

G.B. Shaw once said 'There is no sincere love than the love for food', oh how true those words mean to me. Food tends to dictate my life in many ways. People say we need to eat to live... but I say - Bollocks! we must live to eat for there is nothing more satisfying than to fill one's tummy!

So naturally I'm overweight and arguably borderline obese (if not already). This reminds me of the first few lines of my dad's speech during my wedding reception dinner many years ago that goes 'I watched Ruben grow from a tiny baby to a grown Man today; and I am still watching him GROW!!! Albeit horizontally. To this I replied in my speech later that night, 'Dad, my never-ending growth is thanks to the wonderful diet you have put me on since birth... the Seafood diet... you know, SEE the Food.. EAT it!!!!

So comes to this post. As you know, yer humble narrator enjoys a good cryptic treasure hunt during the weekends. Me team and I signed up for the #AllianzFoodieHunt2015 by #AllianzMalaysia that is scheduled to take place on 17 October 2015. Given the current haze situation and recent cancellation of public events, we are not sure if we will be hunting come the 17th or taking 50 different pictures from 50 different locations in KL and posting them up with the the hashtag '50 shades of grey hazily re-defined'.

Nonetheless, for this hunt, we were tasked to take on social media as part of the pre-hunt challenge. One of the challenge is to create a blogpost and gather about 100 likes, which led to this post which is suppose to be about our team #Team3EkorFoodie and about our favourite food that represents our team.

Our team have been hunting together for many years now. We enjoyed many funny moments, angry moments, genius moments, moronic moments, etc, etc. Most regular hunters can be described as being kiasu or perhaps extremely competitive. We are not. We tend to joke a lot and do non conventional things on hunts like stopping to eat nasi lemak for example. Some of us sleep during hunts and almost surely, some of us will be singing during hunts. We dont check our answers or spelling hence the infamous blue 'oppies' moment that cost us our first grandslam as novices some moons ago - but that's another story altogether.

To find a selfie with food that represents us was a toughie. Hence why this task that started on 25 Sept was only completed today. We decided to take a selfie of me eating McD burrger. So here you go!

Now why this picture? McD is a staple to our team on most hunts. Actually, its really my fault coz I always force us to stop whenever we see either McD or a nasi lemak vendor. As driver, I do have veto powers.

In truth, many McD and nasi lemak moments have helped us solved some of the more twisted puzzles. So I took to task to purchase McD and took a selfie with it this morning and shared the pic with me teammates. Then, Lenny - the real brains in our team, came up with this poem jokingly and I tot - hey - it does explain us and this hunt.. so WHY NOT!:

This burger is actually big, 

but relative to Ruben it is puny,

We're hunting without Kig,

So it's just Ruben, Fei and Lenny. 

Lets see how fast i reach 100 hits. Time to brush up my marketing skills!

#Team3EkorFoodie
#AllianzFoodieHunt2015
#AllianzMalaysia

New beginnings

After some deliberation - I've finally decided to join the commercial world. Opening a restaurant now or diving full fledged into business might not be advisable given the current market condition. Commercial will give me the job and financial security that I have enjoyed all these years.

Its different here. The team functions like a family and everyone including the CEO treats each other like an equal; like family. This is no small 2 dollar company mind you. This is a large multinational with consolidated revenues running into 10 digits! It feels like what it was when I first joined PwC - minus all the redtape and nonsensical policies. So far - everyone's been real friendly and supportive. I should have joined the commercial world sooner if I knew it was going to be like this.

Though only have had a sneak peek of life in the commercial world thus far - I can see more pros than cons. Maybe I'm just lucky to have found this place.

Sure, the resources are a lil bit different and certain systems / databases are a bit more old school here but one thing's for sure, this team invest in its people. Better benefits by a mile and better pantry / coffee facilities (LOL).  The people here have made me feel like one of them oh so quickly. Which I think is very important to ensure job satisfaction. More importantly - it was the main thing lacking when I was still in public practice. Lucky or not - I'm grateful for this opportunity. I will always hold PwC dear to me, but this is what I want and thank God I have it!

Decision final!

I've stopped blogging for a while now. Firstly, nobody reads the shit I posts and secondly, my posts are filled with angst, depression, hate, #toomuchfuckingdrama.

I decided to post something today. Why? Reading my last post - i realised my life has not changed much in the last 3 years. The amount of hate for the system and the powers that be has remained the same.

Then - I stopped fighting the system and decided to comply like a faithful minion. This meant keeping my thoughts to myself. This ate me up further inside. I was merely a pretender - a good one btw. Being part of the system  clearly helped me achieve material success. But was I really happy? Was I.... ME?

However, things have changed over the past year. The arrival of my princess has changed my view of life. I can't hide behind this façade any more.

So I decided to not be a hypocrite. If I don't like the system - I should fuck the system and move on.

In short - I have finally grown a pair of balls to do what I've been wanting to do all these years. Fear of not being able to survive has changed to desire to make things work at all costs.

So after 17.5 years - I finally can step out of this shadow and live the life that I want!