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('Chor Yee' is the second day of the Chinese New Year.)

Han bought me flowers on Valentine's. Stargazers...the same kind of flowers I had in my wedding bouquet. It's been ages since he's gone out to get something frivolous for me so it was a real treat. :"> I suppose you'd only get to appreciate the enormity of this gesture when you know just how practical Han is most of the time.

We've applied to hire a maid to help us cope with the housework and take care of Brandon when we're away during office hours. Young Indonesian girl, 26 years old with 1 child of her own. Choosing a maid is an interesting experience where you have no choice but judge a book by its cover. All we had to go by was a single-page fact sheet with her personal details, a photograph and if you're lucky, a testimonial about her past work experience. The details could be completely fudged for all we know, of course. Her name is Ratih Anjarwati (what a lovely name!) and I do hope that we'll be good employers to her.

Han and I are in town this chinese new year. We're thankful that we didn't have to sit through the mass exodus from the city on Saturday morning--my family took 3 hours to reach Tanjung Malim which isn't even past the Selangor border! Eventually they reached Penang safely in 7 hours, but not without getting a bit worked up about idiot drivers who sped along emergency lanes while the rest of the populace was stuck along the highway. Meanwhile, those remaining in KL and PJ are enjoying very quiet traffic indeed, as well as very unusual weather--it's been transitioning from thunderstorms to light drizzles, dazzling sunshine and clear blue skies. It's been an uncharacteristically cool CNY so far. I'm not sure if that's a good thing in the long run, but we're enjoying the moment anyway.

I am currently reading 'Managing for Excellence', while Han picked up a copy of Terry Pratchett's 'Light Fantastic' this afternoon. :-< I'm envious...

Ah, I didn't manage to do up the photos from our trip to the Sunway Petting Zoo about a month back, so here they are:

These will be the first critters you'll see as you enter the zoo. They're real darlings.

The parrot had to figure out which bowl concealed some balls, and Han volunteered to mix up the positions of the 3 bowls. Even though he blocked the parrot's view of the bowls while he shuffled them around, the bird still managed to pick out the right bowl in the end (though it took considerably longer to do so as compared to the trainer's demonstration of the same trick).

A lovely albino burmese rock python.

Brain starting to slow down after a heavy dinner at home...it's shower time.