I am Proud and Patriotic of my Bata.

I just couldn't help but smile to myself when I read the article in a local paper. It reminded me of 6 years back where I was in a debate with my SIF-fellows during our stint in Singapore on which country Bata came from. Bata can be seen, well, almost every major supermarket in Malaysia. It is quite clear that I should assume that Bata belonged to Malaysia! My Singapore friend thought otherwise, where Bata should be a Singaporean brand because they too has many Bata shops. Thai friends seemed to think Bata belonged to the Thais. No evidence, no research done, everybody just claimed Bata's theirs as it has always been an established name in many ASEAN countries.

So, a Thai friend decided to do the smart thing: Research (....hmmphhh...i think wiki didn't exist yet, so...I think she just googled). Found out it was a Czech man who found Bata. So, the credit goes to Czech Republic. Ohh, which didn't made it thru' Euro top 8.

I know Bata has been trying to built it's brand but it has always been relayed to as a cheap brand. Or a school shoe brand. I have always wore Bata school shoes in my schooling years as Pallas was always a strap-on. Hated strape-ons as you always wanna show off your shoe string-tying skills.

I am proud of my new Bata. It's sweet:

1Lab + 6Pizzas --> 7Rules Broken

Oh, I had a birthday preview. June 6th, 2008. I realised that Dominos pizzas had a good combo deal if booked online, so I taked-away 6 pizzas and some side dishes for my labmates. We brunched at our lab - the lab largely known for storage of pesticides, used of toxic chemicals, foul fumes of glacial acetic acid, HCl, methanol, chloroform and fungal spores (that's mine). It's such an obscure place to dine, but we had no choice because we had limited food and not everybody was invited (lab also got office politics marrr).

Anyway, nobody sang any birthday song for me because we opened Youtube and let the computer sing Juno's 'Happy Birthday'. Now, that was what I call 'modern civilization' + 'lazyness' (even to sing) to the max!

I had a great party. It's different! I made sure my lab assistants were not around because they would have been furious for feasting in the most toxic lab in the whole faculty. I once drank distilled water from a used beaker. That was desperate times. Now too. 'Thank you', Pak Lah *hugs*.

That's us in Red. My birthday theme. Just maybe, everyone knows I love ManUtd.

Clockwise from left: Arshia, Aishah, Me, Dahlia, Mogeret, Sek Yee, Ina (middle).