breeding reminder

read these two articles on beebeecee just now. thought it would be a good thing to share especially to all those ladies out there.


first and foremost, a BIG DISCLAIMER. i am not insinuating anyone, just a friendly reminder especially to all the ladies. remember people, health first, aesthetic is bonus. the article title is


Expectant mums 'getting too fat'


Rising obesity trends mean that by 2010, half of all UK mums-to-be could be above ideal weight and a fifth obese, experts warn.

some excerpts reads
Obese mums-to-be are more likely miscarry, experience pre-eclampsia and dangerous blood clots or need a Caesarean section to deliver the baby, which is likely to be larger itself.



According to Confidential Enquiries into Maternal and Child Health, obesity is a feature of 35% of maternal deaths.



Babies of obese mothers also face a higher death risk.

follow the link for full story.

 

there is also this article entitled Rare red ants get a helping hand


Conservationists have been awarded almost £50,000 to help save a rare species of red ant from becoming extinct in mainland Britain.


among the interesting excerpts include The ant (Formica rufibarbis), described as one of the UK's rarest native species, is restricted to one colony in Surrey and a few sites on the Isles of Scilly, 28 miles (45km) off the coast of Cornwall.



"The ants are quite unusual because they form nests that are either all female or all male," said Emily Brennan, ZSL's native species conservation programme manager. (some tips here for the still single people who would like to preserve their genetic tree for future generation). you can also follow the link for the full story but i would imagine this would generate less interest than the article above.

 

what's the connection between these two articles, you might ask. i guess if we don't evolve fast enough from these hunter-gatherer genes, we are going to face the same problem with the ants. or is it supposed to be our natural control of populations explosion in addition to war and natural disasters? i don't know. may be it is the grand design of the almighty god.

a girl that wanted to grow up so fast

if you don't know already, this is alyssa, my five year old girl who is not growing as fast as she would like it to be. she can be very pampered and very independent at the same times that nowadays it is normally pointless to keep asking her to stick around with us in hypermarkets. she would just roam around on her own and somehow will find us after several aisles. i know all those responsible parents out there would say that it is a dangerous thing to let a five year old girl wander around on her own but bear in mind that we are also trying to minimise that as much as we can, but most of the time in vain.



as the title suggests, this entry is one of those instances. yesterday, on friday, driving back from work (with the children that i picked up from their respective child care and elementary school), she spent the whole 40 minutes trying to convince me that she is old enough to go to her kum0n on her own. her ideals would be that i just dropped her off at the parking spot and she would cross the roads, walks among the diners on the ground floor restaurants in the shop lots and walk up the stairs, all on her own without me accompanying her.



she came up with all kind of excuses like we were slightly late, multiple assurances that she will watch out for the oncoming traffic when she crosses the roads, it' too troublesome to bring amelya together to kum0n and she has grown up because she has made advances in her exercises.



[note: ok, this entry is continued on the day after due to the more pressing needs of going back to the hometown. so, continuity might be a bit off and lazydaisy, didn't go to that flora parade. got discouraged to see the hot weather and the many people in the live tv]



ok, back to alyssa. so, in the end, i was only allowed to guide her to cross the road without holding her hands, and then was shooed home and only remotely supervise her going up the stairs of the shop lots from far, among the diners happily munching their dinner alfresco style in the ground floor restaurant. that's one big leap of faith for a father of five in this dangerous, dangerous world that we're living nowadays.



the thing is, i thought that i only have to experience this feeling of already losing her when she is getting married or at least during her secondary school when she would be ashamed to be seen to be pampered among her teenager friends. but at five-year old? definitely didn't think it was coming this soon.

where the *&(%# is the phone?

:-@ :@ :angry: today, i did something that i haven't done for a very long time. no, not those naughty variety. sorry to disappoint you people.


i have always been forgetful but i have been careful enough to remember most of the things that i have remembered to overcome my forgetfulness (does that make sense at all? i can't remember already) but, right now, i am totally in limbo about where the &*(^# did i leave my lovely sexy phone? and totally in my considerate self, i put that phone in vibration mode during the 9.00am meeting that i had this morning. by now, it should have like thousands missed calls and unfortunately the battery is not really in good health so it might just give up if i keep calling the phone. for now i'm giving up and hoping it is going to follow the path of my treasured wedding ring and come back to me at the end of the day.



and guess what? as i was typing this entry, somebody came to my room and gave back the phone. i did, in my utmost forgetfulness ever, left the phone on the table of the meeting room. unfortunately, he had 2 meetings after which explains why he had only returned the phone now. and since i'm on the verge of finishing this entry, i'll post it anyway.



[p/s- all this swearing reminds me of an article written by that minah salleh in the st*r yesterday entitled who gives a ...?. quite funny and worth a read. but the scientific explanation given was I read somewhere that swear words often slip out under stressful circumstances because the part of the brain that handles language is quite different from the part that handles emotion. According to the experts, swearing “comes from the emotional, instinctual place.” ]

rain, rain please don't go away

somehow, listening and witnessing rainfall from the comfort and dryness of home have always have struck the softer side of me. it is one of the little wonders in life that i've always enjoyed. in fact, one of the most memorable smell that i have is that burning whiff that you get just before the rain comes on a very hot, sun-baked days. it always reminds me of that time when i was still in the primary school and still staying in the wooden kampung house, sitting on the wooden stairs in front of the verandah cursing the rain because i could not roam around and doing the boys thingy a kampung boy would do.



witnessed one of the heaviest rain that i have ever seen around my own house on saturday afternoon. remind me to remove the undergrowth underneath that big fat flower pot in the drain before rain gets hard enough to have a micro flood in my own house. while i am grateful to god that i have never been that i need to remotely worry about flooding around wherever places that i've called home, some people unfortunately do not that have luxury. i have people calling me from ttdi jaya a stroke before midnight asking me whether the rain at my place is heavy enough to bring flood to his place. for the benefit of people who are not in the know, that place is like 15 kms away from my place and we are in the upstream of the river and a huge rainfall in our area could easily flood their area without a single drop of rain falling into that area.



while the rain definitely spoiled alyssa's and amelya's plan who were counting every minute of the day to go to the playground at 6 pm, alyssa discovered one of the prezzies that she had received on her birthday party before (see last entry) which was a sand art pack. while we had carefully hidden the present to avoid the mess associated with sand art, we gave in to let those two little angels have some peace in the house and not ruin anything else to let out their ever-present energy. we spent a good two hours of peaceful time in the house, having the opportunity to let the children exercise their fine motor skills, vocabulary enrichment and even spelling lesson for alyssa, all while doing the sand art activity. the sand art pack even provided an album to store all the alphabetical order finished products. great gift idea and definitely will be one of my birthday gift later. (thanks, whoever the giver was, and apologies because either we lost the card or no card was present). we didn't finish all the 26 alphabets though because by the seventh or eighth cards the sand art is slowly losing its appeal and both of them were starting to coming back to their hyper selves.


alyssa was so into the sand art activity that she wanted to do it again the day after. by the second day, she was already an expert that she did not require our help in taking out the little pieces of stickers that you need to take out before pouring the sand but amelya preferred to play with the strawberry shortcake puzzle in-a-book. we are actually quite surprised that she could actually solved the puzzled which i personally think is quite difficult for her age (again, another great prezzie received during the birthday party, thanks again, people).

weekend activities and more

what an eventful weekend!!! saturday was spent rushing for
the birthday celebration of alyssa and amelya. started on 11.30 in the morning.
woke up not early enough but still need to fulfil the saturday morning quota of
laundry. alyssa though was counting every minute, too excited to wait for 10am to
have a shower and get dressed in that pricessy dress we bought a long time ago.
had to time that to perfection or else she’d be scratching all over with her
sensitive skin starting to get rashes once she started to sweat.

 

had to use plan b where had to send wifey and the two
children first before picking up the cake in ttdi or we would be the first host
ever to be late for our own party. by the time i got there with the cake, the
always reliable gartblue was already there. thankfully wifey was there so she
didn’t look bored.

 

some pictures from the party.

 

style='border-collapse:collapse'>

alyssa ever ready with a pose	a rare pose from amelya	the routine- blowing candles

 

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the after-party free-for-all	and the booties

 

 

 

on sunday, it was time to be a hard labourer. had to help my brother moved house. and he had to buy a three-storey house. the most difficult piece was a three-door wardrobe which was on the second floor of their old house that had such a tiny stairway and it took us a good half hour with chunks of the wardrobe and their old house’s ceiling to be brought down to the ground floor. luckily it was a soft board rather solid wood wardrobe or we’re definitely leaving it hanging in the stairway to their own imagination to move it themselves. and it had to go to the third floor in the new house which fortunately had a much bigger stairway. hey, despite the absence of any physical activities for the past two years or so, my body is not aching or anything like that tonight. i guess i will have to wait for tomorrow to be sure. if you don’t see me logging in and blog-hopping early tomorrow morning, i would either be on emergency leave or medical leave and no prize for guessing why it would be so.

 

 

 

this is one of the photo that wifey took when she took amelya to the office . methink it is very nice and i aptly named it peace amid chaos.

still can sleep while other people are so busy doing stuff around her. so like father like daughter. and definitely mirrors what i'm feeling right now at 12.04am after a long hard day of manual labour.

read this entry for a free phone

i received a forwarded mail in one of my recreational mailing list this morning:

align=left hspace=12> guy a:

style='color:blue'>Dear All.

Please pass on to
all your friends and relatives the following mail from S0ny Erricss0n.

S0ny Erricss0n is
giving away phones for free. Sony Erricss0n is trying word-of-mouth
advertising to introduce its product and the reward you receive
for advertising for them is a free phone free of cost. To receive your
free phone all you have to do is to send this email out to 8 people
(for a free S0ny Erricss0n j200i) or 20 people (for a free S0ny
Erricss0n k400i WAP).

 

Within 2 weeks you will receive a free phone. (They will contact you through your e-mail
address).

 

can’t imagine how gullible people could be. of which one guy
replied:

guy b: style='color:red'>Bang xxx, ni betui ka ? nampak macam scam aje...

fair enough. by which theotheraj
replied:

i won! i won!

no lah.. this is an
old scam

i have to get into the piece of action. of which i replied.

Wei, takdela, betoi tu!!! Itu hari pkns pun ada buat lebih kurang macam tu tapi kena hantar kat
tiga ribu orang. So bila aku abih hantar kat tiga ribu orang tu terus je dia
e-mail kunci rumah free sebijik kat seksyen 9 kota damansara rumah yang aku
duduk sekarang...

which then i didn’t check my e-mail for
like one hour or so. little that i know that my e-mail had generated some
interesting responses. when i got back to my place, somebody actually called me
asking me whether was it true that i won a free house!!! duh… it was sooo
difficult for me to hold back my laughter while talking to him on the phone of
which i said i was on the verge of replying my e-mail and please wait for the
answer. among the interesting replies that i saw when i came back:

theotheraj:
haa.. aku rasa kau penah bagitau kat aku pasal menang rumah tu.. lupa lupa.. my bad
(still following my lead)

guy c: mcm mana dia attached kunci kat email tu bang? apa rahsia?? (also following my lead, without my clarification, you’d think this guy think
that i’m serious)

theotheraj:
tekan Ctrl+Alt+Del+K

of then which i replied: style='color:red'>Tak la. Kena tekan ctrl-alt-del-m-e-n-g-a-r-u-t. Semua kena
tekan sekaligus and tak bole tekan yang lain else tak jadi. so susah sikit tapi
try lama-lama bole dapat.

then, the witty guy c replied: woaaaa bang nak tekan semua tu kena pakai 11 jari.. tgn ada 10 jari.. mana jari satu lagi kau ambik??

theotheraj:
itu bukan jari

by this time i was already laughing my head off alone in my room. but with the wise decision of not to prolong this
pointless chain of mails, i’ve decided not to reply anymore before somebody got
irritated being spammed and let it die

who says you can’t have fun sitting alone inside the room? the clean way, i mean (you one-tracked-mind people!!!)

fats, fats and more fats

while everybody would be wondering what
happened during my lunch time yesterday with a superb teaser by dory href="http://dory.efx2.com/view/76819/">here, just to keep the suspense
running high, i am sorry people that this entry would not be about that at all.
*suspense* *suspense*

 

this entry would only be talking about this
interesting article appearing in the st*r entitled href="http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/1/10/apworld/20070110081219&sec=apworld">adults
living with kids eat more fat, study says. the title says it all, doesn’t
it?
picture courtesy of beebeecee. for the benefit of those people who are lazy to
follow the link, i'll copy and paste some extracts throughout the entry.

 

the article started with this intro class=text>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP): Adults living with children
tend to eat more fat than grown-ups in kid-free homes, consuming as much
additional saturated fat each week as found in an individual-size pizza, a new
study suggests. that’s not that much, isn’t it? i mean, don’t you have
pizza like every other week or so, that now that the taste of the pizza at our
own pizz@ hut is already imprinted in my mind like the taste of my canteen
food. it is the type of taste that your mind is already thinking about even before
you take the first bite.

 

It may not exactly be
the kids' fault, but household cupboards are more likely to be stocked with
high-fat convenience foods like cookies, cheese, peanuts and processed meats
when children are around, the researchers said. lang=EN-GB>in my case, that’s not quite true either. i was already a junk food
junkie during my student days. i could easily finish up that very saliva-inducing salt and vinegar 200 grams bag of chips in no time. while
my kitchen (use to be bedroom of course. can’t trust all those vultures in the
house with those delicious junk food) is still stocked up with junkies, definitely
less consumption on my part. dah tua sikit kena la jaga badan… (maintain the
not-so-flattering figure)

 

Before adopting
healthier eating habits, Adamowski stocked the cupboards with those foods,
picked at her kids' leftovers in restaurants, cooked easy-to-fix hot dogs or
grabbed fried fast-food for dinner. now the
part of picking up the kids’ leftover is very true, especially for the man of
the house. i was too well trained by my parents not to waste any food on the
plate. so, all those “wastes” from the children would go to me since i'm
expected to be the municipal council of the house.

 

"Adults pick up
foods that the kids want, so the kids end up driving the nutrition habits of
the household instead of parents,'' she said. "Parents then eat what they
eat, and everyone gets a fatty diet.''  i agree
with this opinion too. while we parents are supposed to be the kings and queens
of the houses, we are actually the puppet monarchy where the real governing is
done by people of the house i.e. children.

 

despite all, i am proud to
say that at least, i have been maintaining my weight. in fact, i am proud to
say that i am actually about 5 kg lighter than i was when i studying despite
the relatively docile activities, walking less, hormone changes brought about
by marriage, stocking up of junk food in the kitchen, wifey’s nagging and
extended hours in front of pc’s thanks to blogging.

all about properties

while this is old news, i would like to
bring to your attention for those people who missed the small article that
shouted rules on foreign property buy eased. for more
complete report, you can find the article in href="http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/12/21/business/16383598&sec=business">thest4r
here. furthermore, if you’re into this economy stuff and want to know more
about our economy (and don’t know yet), you could go href="http://www.mier.org.my/presentations/archives/pdf/NOC06.pdf">here in mi3r
latest economic conference slides. basically, what the news said is that
foreigners can buy properties in Malaysia without seeking foreign investment
committee and there will be no conditions regarding the usage and limit to the
number of units purchased.

while i am all for free market economy of
supply and demand (e.g. why do we have to subsidise the fuel pump price, might
as well use the market price then we’ll be subsidising less of those people who
can afford to have huge-engined mpv’s and luxury cars rather than people on
kapcai and use the money to pay for better schools, build more hospitals and
pay more salary to those blue-collared workers, teachers, doctors, armies,
policemen and politicians with the hope of less corruption when they have more
legal income), i don’t quite agree with this decision. this is one of the
gomen’s decision that would affect me definitely and most if not all of you
malaysi@n readers, including butterflutter
who is considering buying a property. read on if you’re curious to find out why.

first, let me lay out all the rationale of
what i think why the gomen is doing so. one of the stated reason is to reduce
bureaucracy. while removing bureaucracy in this case is definitely applicable
to foreigners seeking to acquire those properties, the same bureaucracy will
still burden us. so no gain for us. not included however, my theory is that we
have an oversupply in these sectors that our domestic demand couldn’t cope with
the supplies coming on-stream that gomen had to find alternative demands i.e.
foreigners or the residential sector housing bubble would collapse in no time
due to oversupply. looking at all the medium to high-end developments that we
see nowadays, basically all landed properties in good quality locations are
going for nothing less than 300k. while those macro economic gurus would be
cheering saying that this is a good thing and bring more foreign capital into
our very small economy, it is going to be at the expense of us, the local
people. to those uninitiated, there was a limit before (500k) so basically the
gomen has just reduced the foreign limit from 250k to 500k (please correct me
if i'm wrong).

i have to admit that the previous limit of 500k is a
reasonable policy, one reason is definitely because i have not been looking at
such property yet. maybe later, kalau ada rezeki. but when the floor is reduced
to 250k, that is when the price range will be included into my shopping list,
sooner or later. while maybe it will not be affecting me and a lot of other people
per se due to our bumi status and quota stuff (but still, a friend of mine had
some problem buying some 400k+ property which was shown to be available at the local gomen’s office but developer said no such thing and he had to use some political maneuvering to buy the property but that’s a different issue altogether), there would definitely be both short term and long term impact to property prices in our beloved country.

for example, if some “high-end” developer with a reasonably good demand had decided to price its products between 200k to 250k, the announcement would make them having second thoughts and happily rising the price of the package to in access of 250k to be eligible for the foreigners market. similar rationale could also be used for properties of the higher spectrum up to 500k range which would be included into the floor price reduction.

while the policy clearly favours the business climate, we
consumers would definitely be on the losing end. i remembered that when i started working with starting salary of 2k+ and without a rich father to finance me, it would be insane to commit yourself to a 200k mortgage which would leave you to a virtually nothing after the payment of the car finance. don’t need an accountant to tell you that. but still, i was not sane enough that i still committed
to one not long after. but to think of all these new executives who have just
started working with that kind of salary to commit to a 300k (which is about
the price of a reasonably-located double storey house in klang valley
nowadays), it is even more mind-boggling. should the price range goes even
higher to 400k, all those not-so-high-flyer with average earnings executives can
even forget to dream about owning a landed property now and forever.

while foreigners are not to be blamed for our sky-high
property prices, they will eventually take part in making sure that we can’t buy our dream property later. while the other extreme option of not allowing foreigners to buy properties at all is definitely not a good one (you can ask href="http://lollies.efx2.com/">lollies about her nightmare of looking for
a comfortable house with the insane rental rates in doh@ which gomen does not
allow foreign ownership at all), such policy decision should be delayed further
until our buying power itself could compete internationally.

how can our buying power compete internationally hence how long does the gomen need to wait, you may ask. one of the means is to have a stronger currency. let me give you the forex as today to our precious rm (as of
03-jan).

us$1 = rm3.55

uk£1 = rm7.01

sing$1 = rm2.32

so, for rm250k, it’s going to be about sing$107k which is
about 4 years or less of their new execs salary or £36k which is like maximum one year and a half salary of our friends in uk. i am not saying that all the
foreigners now would be buying our properties in no time because now they are
dirt cheap but if they decided to buy a 300k house in kd e.g., they don’t have to go thorough the headache that i went through and pledged slavery to the banks to buy one. and there goes another dream property of somebody who had been waiting to get one just to make sure that they earn enough money to get one.

but of course, to let our currency rise unchecked would not
be economically wise with regards our exporters competitiveness etc. so the
gomen needs to do the balancing act. but in the mean time, please do not let me
do away from my dream of staying in a spacious semi-dees or bungalow or for my children and grandchildren’s dream in the future to own a landed property somewhere especially in the klang valley area. it is high enough as it is
already and we definitely do not need another catalyst to raise it even
further out of our own reach. or do we have to be content with the fact that the generation of our fathers and bosses could afford to buy bungalow houses and now we have to be content with linked houses whereas our children and grandchildren shouldn't even dream of buying landed properties?