hold on to your pads/ panty liners

i know, i know i haven't been visiting any blogs. apologies to all.

anyway, this little-hello-i'm-still-alive entry is prompted by this little news article that i read in the matahari today, in between those heavy political news that dominate our newspapers nowadays.

maybe it is a good business sense to start a blood bank on this one. any angel investors who has some milllions to spare for me to set up the bank? or venture capitalists? can i apply the msc-status for it?

chap ayam photographers

no, not me.

if you love photography, you'd love to browse this almost-professionally-taken amateur photographers blog. if you love it enough, maybe you should include it in your rss reader even. feel free to reread my reader unofficial tutorial if you have to :)

owh by the way, the torque (top of the list in the rooster and hens unite!) list is my batch-mate in sekolah melayu jalan stesen, currently working as some IT support systems, development or whatever with our national oil company. that's how i got to know the site. enjoy...

farewell camera phone

remember some of the photos i took for my trip and the accident? somehow, befittingly i had a camera phone handy. while i've been trumpeting the use of my monochrome, i had the luxury of using a camera phone finally for a few weeks, "borrowed" from wifey's office. and today, i have returned this phone. now i am so deep into the whole mess of taking photo of whatever, whenever that i am going to buy a phone, after all these long years.

another farewell also goes to my facial hair. i grew this for about 3 weeks i think and this must be the longest i went without shaving, not counting the period in my final year when i went for the whole year. even alyssa had asked me to shave and when i asked why, she said tak hensem la ayah. this is how it was yesterday. today, i'm sporting the short, crew-cut clean shaven look and this was the last photo taken by the phone *sob sob*. adios red, (anticipated) welcome mr black :D


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*edited*

famy, if you're reading this, sorry i had to delete that previous entry that you commented on. i had this reflex of pressing the [Enter] key whenever i put in the title which will submit a blank entry with a title only along with the blog alert. Here's the real one.

en-route to hometown

i am officially part of the statistics. it was a drizzly day and we started off from home at around 2:30pm southbound. Made 2 stops to a kay eff see drive through, one in near um to get lunch and once more at the one after the toll plaza to get more to appease alyssa's appetite because we didn't buy enough. we reached km 277.5 (before the seremban R&R) at around 4pm due to those frequent stops. athyra was lying in her car seat behind me unbuckled while being entertained by alyssa and amelya was sleeping in the third row. i don't need to say much. pictures say it all.



it was a drizzly day. traffic suddenly slowed down possibly due to an accident that had happened earlier about 10km ahead while we were moving at around 80km/hr in the fast lane. i had enough distance between me and the car in front even though i had to gradually apply the brake while finally needing to floor it and was swerving to the right to avoid a collision before it came to a complete halt. for a moment i thought it was over when suddenly a loud bang was heard at the back. apparently the car behind me did not have enough distance and i was so busy watching the car in front that i didn't realise it was coming in fast.

and this is the perpetrator.

[IMG]http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o67/suhairims/misc/blogs/accident/villain.jpg[/IMG]
only after i crawled slowly to the emergency lane, i realised how bad it was and suddenly remembered that amelya was sleeping in the third row. athyra was pressed against the door's mirror and my headrest and alyssa was crying out of panic. it was such a huge relief when we called out amelya name and she answered followed by a groggy face popping up above the second row seat, unfazed by the whole incident.


it was a multiple car collisions; i could remember as many as 6 with varying damages from a minor dent to a major wreck with fuel spilling onto the highway.

coincidently, my brothers were travelling around 30km behind us and finally reached the site about one hour later due to the jam caused by our accident. i managed to salvage all the bags from the crumpled boot and they picked up my family to continue the journey while i stayed behind to settle all the formalities. many thanks to god, everybody escaped without a scratch even with the exception of a little scratch that i have on my elbow, possibly due to squeezing through my jammed door after i parked the car on the emergency lane.

it was a long queue at the police station and i only managed to submit my report and met the investigating officer at around 8pm. when i was at the seremban bus station, it was no surprise to find out that there is no more bus available. fortunately wifey's sister whom has a spare car at the moment happened to be in seremban and i only reached my hometown at around 11pm incident-free, with the borrowed car.

even though the chassis of the car has definitely taken a beating, i am just thankful that everybody is safely home. amelya even managed to crack a smile when i took this photo, after the incident. there is nothing more to ask considering the margin that she had in the third row and sleeping through the shower of shattered glass unscathed. now i guess i have to learn to live without the car for about a month or so.

2+2+1 (part 1)

that was the booking configuration of our flight to sydney, 2 adults, 2 children and 1 infant. thankfully, due to some downgrading of my full economy ticket (and the guy going with me) i ended up forking out less than 1k to bring along the whole gang bang. definitely a huge relief in this financially-testing time.

for those who wouldn't bother to read and just want to look a the photos, you can jump in directly here. i finally uploaded the photos 2 days ago after my streamyx at home was finally fixed (by replacing the adsl modem/ router. how should i know it was not working within specification? the LED's were on and the problem started off with no dial tone on my home fixed line)

my while sydney is a clean, beautiful, modern and touristy city, not much to write about it that you don't already know about, unlike the ancient and cultural cairo, hehehe. but don't get me wrong, i still get my envy glares from some people as well (hi gart!)

i had a 3-day training/ conference in sydney and as usual, i extended my overseas trip to have a holiday as well and we ended up staying for 11 days total. 4 nights were spent in a hotel paid by the kompeni and the rest of day nights were spent bunking in wifey's friend's place (err sorry no photo of that) with a million-dollar view.

the outbound flight were full and the flight was booked only about 2 weeks before. while we managed to secure the bassinet seat for athyra, unfortunately there was only one seat available so we had to be seated separately and wifey found herself squeezed in between 2 gentlemen when we boarded the flight. thankfully, both of them were kind enough to exchange their seats with alyssa and amelya so all the three boys were happily snoring among themselves several rows behind.

no imaging devices were allowed within the airport so our first photo after we touched the ground was this one. i was quite surprised to be paying 55 bucks for the cab fare when i remembered paying only about slightly above 20 dollars on my mostly-annual commute from the melbourne airport to the place i called home many years ago and that was a much longer trip. well, definitely things have changed quite a bit over the past 11 years.



we arrived on sunday morning 9:30am. after a good afternoon nap, we took the compulsory walk around sydney icon, the harbour bridge and opera house. my initial plan was to cover sydney aquarium on that day but we ended up spending the afternoon on bed hehe. you know how it's like to sleep on the plane, don't you?



the following 3 days were mostly work, so they just walked around the hotel and wifey did some grocery shopping as well. thankfully, the third day ended earlier (shhh!) so we took the chance to spend the day at sydney aquarium in darling harbour. while there are many ways to get there, i decided to use the ferry to get there for a refreshing sea breeze change. i had also captured a wonderful view of the city's skyline from the ferry which i only found out now that i did not upload into flickr :). i think until now amelya is still wondering how come she missed the "fairy".

it was a nice place but slightly overrated i'd have to say. our own version here is bigger and offers more albeit smaller/ younger sea creatures. the place is closed at 10pm so by the time we got out it was almost dark. like many other places in sydney, darling harbour is beautiful and the night is livened up by seaside cafes offering refreshing view of the harbour and alfresco dining to empty stomachs. this is the best i could do capturing a stills with the videocam.

we checked out the day after and left the baggage at the hotel to spend the day at taronga zoo. the easiest way to get there is still with a ferry. while the children had a great had great time getting up close and personal with the animals, the thing that struck me most was how it offers a stunning vista of the city skyline being built on a higher ground on the other side of the harbour. unfortunately, you'd have to take my word for it. due to lack of talent and equipment, this is one of my measly attempt to capture that.



oops. i'm running out of time. have to make this a part 1. part 2 will be coming up later. and this computer is acting weird so i'd better post this before it does something funny.

again, higher resolution photos can be found here at my flickr page.

little updates

i haven't been blogging much about myself lately. for those who love to hear about myself (puh-leeez!), here are some brief updates. i'm rushing through this because i'm taking half day leave today. finally, somebody from tmnut called up to set an appointment to fix my streamyx problem, one week after i first reported the problem and last night was the third report i made without the problem being solved. i have the funny feeling that they are more worried about the report number associated with the problem rather than the problem itself. it sounded that way when i talk to either their frontline officers (aka receptionist) or their online technical support advisors or whatever they called it.

ok some updates. everybody is fine. athyra is back to her angelic self right after we came back syney where she cried and cried and cried, refusing us to really enjoy the days. more about that when i finally manage to upload the photos and carry the story with it as well.

but the kids are not really in their top health. alyssa and athyra has some problems regarding minute creatures crawling within the thick jungles on their heads that alyssa is now sporting a short locks. amelya somehow managed to get this urinary tract infection and on augmentin now. she was supposed to be finally living without diapers anymore until this thing struck. the tell-tale sign surfaced sometime last week (or even earlier without us noticing) when she had to go to the bathroom every 15 minutes and somehow over the weekend, it got more frequent until we decided to send her to a doctor when we come back from our hometown. but our suspicion were confirmed when she started having temperature on the same day and amelya with rising temperature doesn't jive very well. luckily, we still have some unexpired suppository fever medication which thankfully we haven't used for a very long time.

wifey was involved in a minor accident last friday involving an abang ala motorcyclist in federal highway in front of angkasapuri. little dents and scratches on the car. some external physical external abrasions to an otherwise healthy looking abang ala. gave him rm150 totally out of compassion to him not being able to work at least for the day and repair some damage to his borrowed motorbike though the fact that he has no business swerving and cutting off the cars within the main trunk of the highway when he should've been inside riding inside the dedicated motorcycle did come into mind.

ooops! time is up. need to go now. sorry rotinina. will do your essentials tag some other time, tomorrow maybe. bye all, for now.