Say My Name

Little Update

2009-11-13T16:55:00.000+08:00

Not so much of a blogger I am, nowadays. Last entry on 4th.August. Pretty annoyed with a unit trust agent disrupting my peace of mind enjoying the therapeautic sounds of running water in this park. Many things has happenened since even the last few entries so I'll just summarise then here if you still want to know.

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Thanks to that unit trust agent, I have to continue writing this in the comfort of my cubicle rather than in front of that fountain while killing the last few minutes before Solat Jumaat came calling.

Athyra had her second birthday celebration and our raya open house in the dying days of syawal on the 17th.October, one day before her actual second birthday. Many thanks to zan, rotidua, bear, diah and pasha and the single-with-kids screwboy who took the trouble to make it. Really appreciated it despite the diminutive time I got to spend with you people.

Some view from the meeting rooms in the office, not from my cube which is located by a huge pillar in the middle of the building where I could only see the distant windows several metres away.

Nice new office mates, good food, great view

Credits to Irwan, my manager for the photos. It's not my work so I won't pretend that it was. Photos was taken during our quarterly potluck lunch.

What else is newsworthy? Nothing much for now I guess. Till later then.

Meet The Lollies

2009-08-04T15:46:00.003+08:00

For those whom I have not texted or contacted directly and are very much interested to meet the lollies, you are very much invited to a go-dutch, no-purpose-whatsoever-gathering at MidV on Wednesday 12th. August, lunch time. Exact restaurant has not been decided yet but I doubt it would be some super-expensive place, considering my own financial state of mind.

Anybody interested to join, you can email me at suhairims [at] geemail [dot] com or text me at err email first lah. Then I'll give you my number.

Negative Vibes All Abound

2009-07-16T08:53:00.004+08:00

It could be the alignment of the planets and the stars, if those horoscopes or quasi-science astrology were to be believed. Or the aura that has been circulating in this world. Or purely coincidental. Several people that I have interacted with for the past few days has not been feeling particularly happy about various things in their lives. And those are the ones that told me about it. In real life and virtually, as in the case of Mrs. KM here or even the ever-positive and vibrant elisa. And since many people who blogs around my circle of virtual (and not so virtual) friends would normally share about happy happy stuff, the absence of updates could be safely inferred as negative vibes enveloping them as well, no?

Myself included. Have not been feeling on top of the world for the past few days. I guess life is all about balance, especially after having loads of fun which I did not blog about going through this trip with 99% fun and 1% work. But, as usual, will ride through this, kalau umur panjang. No, I am nowhere near of committing the unimaginable. I have a full weekend schedule to go through which should be fun. And it's only Thursday today. One more day to go before the weekend starts. Almost there.

The Musang is a Man?

2009-07-03T21:16:00.002+08:00

For those who are so infatuated with the musang yang bermata kucing, please click on this link. har har har!

But, fret not. Here's an answer to the conspiracy theory. zzzz! Get a life people! More pressing matters to debate on. Like world peace, for example.

Gambar Si Jantan yang Sorang

2009-07-02T23:30:00.008+08:00

As requested by Zan yang dah lama tak submit entry tu.

Since I'm already submitting an entry, might as well list down some of his progress for future references

about 7.5kg weighed on 28th.Jun, one day before he turned 5 months old

can flip on his stomach and back at will

will produce some cooing sounds with some effort and laughs when his kakak plays peekaboo with him

not entirely static anymore. starts to move around quite a bit

can lift up his butt already and has enough bodily strength to go astern

can hold objects with both hands and put into his mouth but has not been seen passing the objects from one hand to the other

can definitely recognise his sedara by exhibiting delighted expressions upon seeing ayah and mama coming home from the office. but peekaboo game can only be performed successfully by alyssa. i have tried and failed miserably

word of caution! athyra has been caught grabbing him by the ankles and pull him towards her on the bed. definitely not safe to leave them together unsupervised especially on the bed, isk!

that's all folks!

The Powder Puff Girls

2009-06-30T15:57:00.004+08:00

Lama dah tak tampal gambar anak kat blog. Here are some when they were the flower girls for my niece's wedding over the weekend. Bigger prospect for cucu's in addition to the 2 boys and 1 girl already. All from wifey's side and long way to come from mine.

No photo of the little anak jantan though. Not very trigger-happy with the crappy 2MP camera phone.

Cocktail of Emotions

2009-06-30T15:36:00.003+08:00

Is the best phrase that I could come up with to describe how I'm feeling right now. Has that phrase been used before in some books, speeches or blog entries? I can't be that original, can I?

I'm hoping that it would rain though this afternoon, so that the open air futsal training that I have to go to would be cancelled. Don't feel like it but somehow volunteered myself. Never had been since the last game of meddling a ball with both of the feet or football if you can call me playing that game several years ago. And the prospect of injuries is always there especially after the long break. Don't fancy getting my other knee reconstructed and screwed. Though the rain wouldn't help in other departments like braving the severely clogged evening rush hour traffic to get home.

Weekend Stuff

2009-06-24T10:45:00.004+08:00

Last weekend was one of the weekends that I did much more than lazying around the house, falling in and out of sleep. Brought about by 2 separate occasions in 2 different places. We had to attend this birthday do by my sister at the ikan bakar jetty on Saturday night and yet make it to the bowling alleys on Sunday morning 10am in the Lengkungan. Not that stressful, I know but definitely requires a lot more commitment then those sombre, easy weekend mode.

Initially, we had planned to detour to the beach home en route to the land of Tidak Melayu Hilang di Dunia even to visit the sis-in-law whom just came back from a Cik Kiah entourage to visit the Queen and maybe pick up some of her English while they were there. Fortunately (ahem!) due to some commitments that she had on her side, the detour was cancelled.

So we duly made our way to the Path of the Elephants after devouring some breakfast at Subaidah. Drove sanely around 120km/h mostly except at the only stretch that should've mattered, underneath that Pedas/ Linggi interchange when I drove slightly above 120 to overtake that coasting Proton in the middle lane only to discover a traffic monitor beaming his laser gun proudly under the shade of the interchange. I just checked the e-gomen service and so far, so good. No saman ekor yet. Arrived only to discover with the exception of my uncle's family, the whole gangbang was already there with the house bursting at its seams containing some 20 adults and adolescences and 25 little children running around minding their own businesses.

It had been been since I last went to those infamous ikan bakar venues. I don't fancy the weekend and long holiday crowds and considering the state is not that big, it will still take me quite some time to get to the other end of state, easily spending almost an hour despite the nicely built, traffic-light infested dual-lane carriageway door-to-door. While the fishes are generally palatable, stingrays were never my favourite fish and was more looking forward to those simple little nasik lemaks that I have failed miserably in finding its rival in the mighty Klang Valley for those little red spicy top. Since it was pre-booked Anjung Batu spot, we did not have to fight our way through the crowd and hung around for some time before making our way back to my mum's picking up some durians from my friends house which regretfully I had to live with the smell for the next 72 hours or so. But hey! At least the scale is still tipped to my side with wifey and Alyssa the durian-obsessed creatures and the durianophobic Amelya, Athyra and myself. And I fell asleep on the sofa in no time.

We had to set the record time to be coming back to KL to be able to make it as opposed to the 6pm norms and surprisingly we did. Shot off around 8:30 and arrived and the Lengkungan at around 9:40, also a record time. I was surprised that the old, twisted cow could still be cruising comfortably without much complain going by the minimum speed of 140km/h (apologies to pb). Somehow with the absence of gart and the prior advise to some of those really terrer people to screw up their games, our group managed secure the no 1 spot. I'm not complaining though while distributing the contents of the hamper among my 4 group members.

The rest of the family couldn't be there to witness my maiden victory because Alyssa had to be somewhere else accompanied by wifey at 12pm. The "workshop" (more like a promotion for their tuition class) about being left/ right brained kept me thinking of how left (means not good in their terms) brained I am.

That was the last real agenda for the weekend so the afternoon was happily spent on the normal itinerary of mass-napping, surprisingly joined by all of the kids up the wee hours of the afternoon.

Community Service Reminder

2009-06-18T17:42:00.002+08:00

Received this from one of my MC friend in our mailing list. Reminds me of how fragile we are and what rezeki from Allah is all about. In just one single twist of fate, everything would go haywire and we are at the mercy of Him.

This event occurred recently while his brother's family were holidaying in London during the recent school holiday. Any advise in alleviating their predicament would also be welcomed actually.

To Xantheusian,

Thank you for the concerns, doa, advise and assistance given.

I arrive in London this morning, saw my niece and able to get a better understanding of the situation.

Basically, my niece was attacked by Pneumococcal Bacteria. So, it was classified as Pneumonia. Last Friday, she had difficulty breathing, and medical assistance was called from the hotel. Subsequently, she was brought to St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London.

Within hours, her condition deteriorated. Her lungs collapse. The bacteria also releases toxins into the body that affected her heart, kidneys and liver. She was very critical. Alhamdulillah, when I saw her this morning, her conditions has slightly improved. She has been taken off the drugs that helps her heart pumping (her heart is now pumping on its own), her lungs have partly able to pump by itself, and partly assisted by a ventilator, her kidneys is still not fuctioning, but generally doctors said it is critical but stable, and describe her conditions as day to day compared to hour to hour previously.

As far as she is concern, we believe she is getting the best medical treatment possible. Our assistance for her is to doa for her recovery. Many people have done solat hajat, yassin hajat and other prayers for her. Hopefully the doa and prayers continues. May Allah grant all the doa and prayers and she recovers back to health.

Her conditions have shown positive signs, and next is for her to be able to breath without machine help. Doctors mentioned that it will take to recover to the extend where she is in any position to be brought home.

According to the Doctor, pneumonia is an illness not covered under the free treatment given by NHS for foreigners. Therefore, my brother have to pay full amount.

Amir, maybe you can help ask your old consultant about NHS coverage on this matter or if any special appeal could be done and considered for atleast some reduction in medical cost.

Currently, the ICU charges is 2500 UK pound a day (almost RM15000 a day). If she improves and able to be put under normal ward, the charges would be around 750 UK pound a day (almost RM4500 a day). At the ICU rate, the travel insurance that my brother took would cover for another 2 weeks. After that, is when we need to have some sort of funds for the medical cost, as we don’t know how many weeks she will be in the hospital until her conditions allows her to come home for treatment. That is why I am trying to find out any form of advice or assistance available in coping with the cost after the insurance runs out in 2 weeks time.

Swiney Thingy

2009-06-17T00:26:00.003+08:00

All these while, I have only been reading about it in the newspapers or seeing and hearing the news bulletin. Well, yeah, it is up to the pandemic level declared by some god-knows officials in the WHO whom are sitting very cosily in their hermetically-sealed office somewhere up there in the Alpines. Or how our own gomen are giving conflicting messages by saying both people should not be panicking because everything is under control and all these cases confirmed in our bolehland are in fact "imported" ones from overseas and no local transmission has been detected. And yet, at the same time, reminding people how easily this disease could be transmitted and proceed everything that you do in life with extreme caution and avoid unnecessary socialising stuff etcetera etcetera.

However, somehow slowly this virus seems to be inching towards home ground. Surely, my desk job, deeply rooted home-bound lifestyle does not much translate much into the risk contracting the disease under foreseeable circumstances (or wifey for that matter). But signs of the impending approaches are already rearing its ugly head. A colleague who came back from the land down under (not the epicentre of the spread though thankfully) was showing signs of either cold or flu symptoms (definitely not observations as made clear by hafiz in one of his entry) such as sneezing, red and runny nose about a week after she came back. And the last I heard (and I don't bump into her that much it seems) she was just dismissing it as a common cold which has nothing to be worried about. True enough, under different circumstances, I'd be one of those last ones to be rushing to the clinic to at the first sign of fever or coughs and would bear through it until wifey would be sick enough of listening to my big baby whining and forced me to get my big butt to the clinic. But this is not a normal circumstance and I surely would hope she would get herself checked. On second thoughts, I did not see her at the office at all today so probably gart or somebody else has finally knocked some senses into her head.

Moreover, I was also informed by my colleague this afternoon that his sister has been sent away to the Hospital Sungai Buloh because she has become a suspect case of one. And she has not been travelling anywhere lately so would she go down the record as the first locally-transmitted swiney case? Only time and some samples of her blood would tell, I guess.

As for now, I am not in the panicky stage yet. Shaqeef has been enduring his cough for about a week. Not those disheartening, consistent cough but more like a little coughing in the morning and almost non-existent throughout the day kind of cough though it did degenerate into those deep, chesty cough but Alhamdulillah he recovered by the time we got back from the office in the evening so considering that he's only turning 5 months old at the end of the month, I have held out the clinic visit for now. Not quite a big fan of drugs especially given to such a small baby unnecessarily.

Or should I be panicking now already?

For Fathers and Mothers too

2009-05-26T10:46:00.002+08:00

I have always been subscribed to Saifulislam.com. One thing that I like most about the ustaz is how he incorporates things that can be viewed as very secular such as watching movies, books, current political and historical events from an Islamic perspective. Here's an excerpts of one of his entry entitled Tidurlah Sayang.

Semasa bermastautin di negara Barat, ada banyak perkara yang saya perhati dan kemudiannya menjadi pelajaran buat diri. Saya selalu berasa teruja apabila berinteraksi dengan anak-anak Irisih yang datang berkunjung ke masjid. Ramai dari kalangan mereka mempunyai budi bahasa yang baik dan tertib semasa masuk ke masjid. Hingga terdetik di hati saya, bagaimanakah cara ibu bapa mereka mendidik anak-anak ini?

Saya yakin, tidak ada cacat dan kurangnya pada Islam. Tetapi mengapa sebagai Muslim, ada kalanya budi bahasa dan ketertiban diri anak-anak itu sukar untuk dicari?

Tanpa Islam, bagaimana mereka mendidik anak-anak dengan nilai yang murni?

Ada sesuatu di sana.

Also from the entry, he quoted a poem by Diane Loomans.

If I Had My Child to Raise Over Again
By Diane Loomans

If I had my child to raise all over again,
I’d finger-paint more, and point the fingers less.
I would do less correcting and more connecting.
I’d take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.

I would care to know less and know to care more.
I’d take more hikes and fly more kites.
I’d stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.

I’d do more hugging and less tugging.
I’d build self-esteem first, and the house later.
I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.
I’d teach less about the love of power, And more about the power of love.

Definitely a food for thought for me.

7 Thingy Tag

2009-05-08T15:39:00.005+08:00

Ok Famy. Another hutang from you. Here it comes.

The 7 Things Tag

7 facts you may not know about me:

I'm short. Well not midget short but definitely not as tall as I would like it to be. Well, apart from aesthetics, would've been nice to be able to spike those volleyball wherever I fancied if only I were taller, and when I could jump before

I had an ACL reconstruction surgery on my left knee a very long time ago, possibly in 1995. A quick check by my ortho friend 2 weeks ago pronounced that it was brilliantly done and my knee is still almost as good new.

I was breastfed until very late apparently. In tandem with my younger brother who is 2 years younger than I am. That should explain the everlasting fascination with the upper torso region of the opposite sex.

I started getting my wisdom tooth really early. Probably when I was 20 years old or so, if I remember correctly. And had the complete set of adult homosapien teeth by 29 years old. All still there, the last time I checked. Biologically aging faster. Ah well. At least somebody told me before I look better as I age :p

Only had 1 other girlfriend before I got married to the One at the age of 28. Somehow I found it difficult to find a suitable one when I was really looking

I used to drive very fast. Not anymore. At least I did not change into those low profile, 17 inch rims for cosmetic purposes only. I have been caught (and got away scot-free) driving at 150km/h in an 80km/h zone

When it comes to appearance, I'm very seasonal. There are times when I just don't really care how I look like and when I am so vain, checking out the mirror all the time. But lately, it's the former rather than latter mostly

7 things that scare me:

Commitment. Refer to no. 5 up there

Road accidents. I have been in a few though Alhamdulillah now all had been material but not mortal damage

Wife?! Bukan takut... sayang...

Going downstairs in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. But then, if the man of the house takut, who else la kan. So, gain enough courage and just go lah

Creepy crawlies really creeping on my feet. I don't mind chasing after or use a broom to brush it off but if those damn lizards somehow landed on my feet, those minute cold paws would bring shivers down to my spine... grrr!

Height. Imagine looking downwards from a 25th floor apartment's balcony. Heavenly.

The opposite sex. Or at least I used to be when I was in secondary school. Now I've learned to live with many of them around.

7 songs that I like the most:

Many, this one. I'll give the first 7 songs that I have in my recent playlist

Dewi by Dewa19

Aku Mau by Once

Ayat-ayat Cinta by Rossa

No Air by Chris Brown

Bohemian Rhapsody by Fugees

Won't Go Home Without You by Maroon 5 (my ring tone also)

Kekasih Gelapku by Ungu

7 phrases that I say the most:

Salam. Standard intro in chats

How are you today? That would normally come after no 1

Adess

ooooo

Ngantuk!!!

I'm hungry!!!

Apa nak makan ni? (while scratching my head thinking of what kind of canteen food that I can stomach for another day while pacing up and down the aisle)

7 of my precious things:

My glasses, definitely can't live (see) without it.

My wedding ring. While the silver ring has many scratches due to the normal wear and tear, the amethyst stone is still shining brightly.

My watch, bequeathed from my aruah father. Battery is dead but I am still wearing it everywhere

My pants. I'm not really into a habit of walking around naked you know. Ok should include t-shirt, shirt or anything to wear on top also

My hair! Or should I say the lack of it. Cannot see those receding hairline or thinning population of those black thingy? You're not looking hard enough

Ah well I don't need to be explicit about it. I won't be a man without it.

And of course the cliche, my family ehehehe. Hey I'm running out of smart ideas here

7 memorable first timers:

First time I was away from home at 13 years old in a boarding school. Superbly homesick and was compounded by loneliness because I was isolated in the district hospital. I contracted chicken pox on the first week.

First time the opposite sex expressed her interest in me when I was 16 years old. Rasa hensem, cakap lu. Especially when the woman said something like why was I born 6 years earlier than you are

First time I could not answer the Add Math question that was presented to me, and it was in SPM! Had my first experience of mental block, in the exam. Damn! Sweating profusely. Needless to say, I did not get the coveted A1 that I expected to get :(

First time setting my foot in the land of down under. So gayat and surreal to actually feel cold while the sun is shining brightly in the sky.

First time breaking up with a girlfriend. Heartbroken wa cakap lu. Cerita lama sangat dah tu

First night sleeping with my newly-wed wife only to find her sleeping on the floor. She could not sleep due to the melodious orchestra that I would conduct in my sleep. Ah well, no more complaints nowadays. Alah bisa, tegal biasa.

First time holding my own daughter. I'm not really a baby person but when it comes to my own, a different sensation altogether.

7 people I would tag:

Da Little Fella

2009-05-04T14:37:00.007+08:00

I am bored obviously. So I'm submitting another entry today which is not quite like me. But anyway, I have not submitted smiling photos of the little fella. So here they are at 3 months old.

As you can see, he can already smile widely with those both dimples showing (though not visible in the photos) and will make those funny faces with big widened eyes, enlarged nostrils and pouty lips trying to squeeze out those ever elusive voice that will occasionally spring out. And yesterday he finally succeeded in turning around, lying on his stomach.

Thoughts of the Day

2009-05-04T09:05:00.004+08:00

If women in stilettos are such sights to behold, why don't women in stilts bring instantaneous orgasmic pleasure?

The Three Tags

2009-04-30T17:23:00.000+08:00

I'd better do some tags before everybody gives up tagging me. Looks like majority of them are already

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Thr33 Things Tag

The three names I go by
- Mosh
- Real Name
- Mohamad

Three jobs I have had in my life
- Waiter
- Cleaner
- Wood Oven Pizza Maker

Three places I have lived
- Kuala Kangsar
- Alor Gajah
- Kota Damansara

Three TV shows that I watch

Not a regular TV buff but will watch if bumped into
- Nip/ Tuck
- House
- Whose Line Is It Anyway

Three places I have been
Today?
- Meeting
- Toilet
- Kak Zah's

People that e-mail me regularly
- Wife
- officemates
- koleq old boys

Three of my favorite foods
- mee goreng mamak
- mum's (and wife's of course) cooking
- tiramisu

Three things I would like to do
- play online games
- play games
- play "games"

Three friends I think will respond.
- have no idea
- same here
- same as above

Things I am looking forward to
- sleep
- weekend sleep
- "sleep"

Eh abih dah? Tu la dia...

Kuala Visit Part 1

2009-04-23T10:42:00.006+08:00

It is Thursday the 23rd already so I have to write about the 20th anniversary trip that I was talking about in the previous entry before I forgot all about it. I think everybody that turned up have the same general conclusion about it, superbly excellent!

I'll give you the rundown of the informal itinerary of the trip. Formal means the planned itinerary for the weekend planned by the MC0BA organizing committee (which is almost identical annually) and informal means whatever that was planned by our very own batch committee to commemorate our own experiences there that would run parallel to the main one.

Ideally we had to be there at 2pm on Friday 17th. Aplril at Safar1 Resort at 2pm even though my initial plan with my car-pool mates were shooting off at 2.30pm from KLSeeSee after completing the Friday Prayers there. Not surprisingly, only me and the driver adhered to the plan and we ended up shooting off from Jalan Doota toll booth after rendezvousing with our final car-mate chauffeured to the toll plaza in his brand spanking new German mark at around 3:30pm.

The trip up north was itself an event. With music from the mid 80's blaring through the very loud sound system dwarfed only the loudness of hearty laughs all around, it was definitely a trip back across time, with 4 almost-40 lads ganging up together, trying very hard to forget the 20 years that has passed by.

Is this love that I'm feeling
Is this love that I'm feeling
Is this the love that I've been searching for
Is this love or am I dreaming
This must be love
Cos it's really go a hold on me
A hold on me

After several stops while we were traversing the highway, we only arrived at our destination around 7.15 pm despite the driver clocking a minimum speed of 150km/h while we were cruising to be greeted by the sights of many almost 40 overgrown boys, laterally mostly, chatting up in the parking lot of the resort. It was not a minute before half hour that we finally offloaded our bags, shaking hands, hugging and reminiscing about old times. As for me, I am glad that I could recall the names or nicknames of almost all of them, save one or two of the pretty inconspicuous ones, despite not meeting some of them for almost 20 years compensating how age has taken the toll on the wrinkles and significant lateral expansions. Looks like my long term memory has not failed me as much as my short term ones. Signs of old age with silverish, receding hairline? Possibly. But at least all of them recognized me at first sights as well :p.

I wanted to choose the upper bunk beds but despite the fan spinning at full speed merely 5 feet above our heads, was a bad choice because in the prevailing hot weather, that would be suicidal considering that you will not feel a thing on the upper decks so naturally I moved into the lower deck of the bunk beds. So there we were, CEO's, SVP's, MD's, Macai's and Kuli Batak's alike bunking in double-decker beds, wet to the bone due to perspirations in those air-conditionless dormitories, sharing showers and toilets.

After maghrib prayers, we performed a solat hajat for our batch-mate who was supposed to come but unfortunately was diagnosed with AML about 2 weeks ago and is currently undergoing chemotherapy session and hospital confinement for at least a month. The solat hajat was also dedicated to one of my batch-mate mother who was at the time has been hospitalised in a semi-comatose state for about 11 months due to a stroke-like attack on the brain triggered by an asthma attack. She passed away on Tuesday 3:30am on Tuesday 22nd. April. Innalillahiwainnailaihiroji'un.

Consequently, there was a BBQ dinner. Courtesy of Gromm Hellscream aka Bawal, here's a cool video clip of the event. Great job Bawal! I can't view the video proper while in the office here so I'll link the video properly when I get home. As for now, anybody curious enough can go with the link here.

To be continued...

edited to add proper yootoob link and XC:XX. Copyright reserved ke? I don't know. Just nicked it off my FB XC Group

Alma Mater Revisited

2009-04-17T11:49:00.003+08:00

All set to go! Kuala here we come!

To be conveniently ignorant, it is really hard to believe that it was 20 years ago I was in form 5 in this school, more than 10kg lighter. While they have this MC0BA weekends every year, I haven't been back for eternity since 2005 when we celebrated our 100th. anniversary of the school. Old school, old boys, old attitude, at least when it comes to the old boys weekend. This is the opportunity to "relive" the heyday days with no worries, no responsibilities and not much care to the world. Forget 3-star, 4-star and 5 star hotels. CEO's, CFO's, office boys and balachi's alike would be staying in dormitories where bunk beds are the not optional and common toilet is the theme of the day.

Furthermore, to commemorate this special year indeed, thanks to the hardworking committee they have prepared additional itineraries for us which includes an open air BBQ and football and hockey matches against the current Form 1 children. Ah well. The current U-18 boys might be too tough to be handled alone so let's see how the coming-to-middle-age boys will fare against the almost-pube ones.

Hopefully will get more interesting photos to be posted about the event later even though I'm not bringing my own camera. As for now, this emergency one would do. You can actually click at the photo to get a larger version if you are curious enough. Weekend's starting early today for me. Have a good weekend, boys and girls. Salam.

Scare Tactics

2009-04-13T11:25:00.004+08:00

If you have bought a pack of cigarettes lately, you would definitely notice a refreshing change on the latest adornments displayed on the new batches of boxes. I am not referring to those toll-free customer service phone number should you have any queries and encouragement on how you are actually contributing gargantuanally to the government's coffers or the missile money to bomb those helpless women and children. Nor I am referring to those stale simple warning of Smoking is Hazardous to Health. I am referring to those gory images that is prominently displayed at the top part of the front and back of all cigarette boxes. While those images serves as shock therapy to all the smokers out there, apparently it has some added bonus to it as well.

I started smoking regularly when I was 18 years old, starting with a pack a week until now to a-pack-a-day basis. Which means I have been smoking for almost half of my entire being and the fraction will only get bigger if I were to continue along. Wow! I only realised that as I am typing this entry.

Apparently, the bad habit (hey! All smokers do realise that it is a bad habit thank you very much) persisted throughout, braving through the thick and thins of my life such as no smoking zone in the office, severe financial depressions (still is), nagging girlfriends (not that many :p) and consistent hourly harassments from a newly-wed wife for several years to name a few.

And these new graphics has brought up a new kind of assault to this evergreen habit of mine. Similar to the last one I mentioned except that it comes from a smaller yet powerful voice of a very persistent 7 year old girl. Now, simply said, I just can't have my relative peace outside puffing the blues away at home without this little noise in the background saying Apasal ayah hisap rokok lagi? Nanti jadi macam kat dalam gambar tu And the irony is that I can't exactly rationalise my bad habit without actually promoting the habit to her, can I? For all you know, before long, the "newly-wed" wife would find a renewed enthusiasm in her fight for a smokeless environment and tobacco-free smell from me seeing the support that she's getting from her smaller counterpart.

Maybe I should quit. It would do wonders to my bank balance.

p/s: photo courtesy of http://www.quitsmokingpainlesslynow.com

A Rare Post About Work

2009-04-01T15:01:00.005+08:00

Did you guys enjoy your Earth Hour on Saturday? Well, we did, for the better part of it. Emitting more COx, NOx and SOx while idling in the gridlock traffic going from Rawang to Bukit Beruntung via the old trunk road without any food only to find out that the candlelight dinner was not a viable option upon arriving at the destination at 8:45pm, 1 hour and 45 minutes later from Selayang Hospital was not exactly the best way to start the Earth Hour. The host ended up turning up the lights at around 9:10 in due sense of pressing demands of hunger, fatigue and restless kids and over-aged adults alike. All for a noble cause of visiting an elderly ailing aunt. According to the the brother of the host, he did his part the night before for 3 hours when the electricity supply was not forthcoming to his house between 12:00am to 3:00am.

How is this about work eh, you may wonder. It is all about work. Working with this KompeniKedekutLetrik, we expected to experience a reduction in demand in relative to the normal demand profile that we normally see on Saturday nights. Well, if you read the papers, our little teapot CEO, our demand dropped by about 550MW as reported here. It is really a gross figure giving the benefit of the doubt saying it in laymen's terms.

And for the benefit of laying, laid, soon-to-be-laid and will-never-be-laid men and women, I give you this little tutorial about Power which is expressed in the units of MW and Energy which is expressed in the units of MWh. If you're observant enough, you'd notice the little h in Energy which is just the measly hour. When you talk about energy, it is fixed and finite. MWh, Joule and kCal all measures the energy. For those counting the calories would know that however fast or slow you devour those teh tarik and roti canai, you would still ingest the same amount of energy that would correspondingly be converted to some milligrams of fat if it goes unused. Power (MW) however, denotes how fast the energy is consumed. So that roti canai and teh tarik would be used up faster when say, you're walking and chatting with gartblue when it is more than 10 minutes to 8:00am or half-jogging your way through swiping the door if your watch is showing the time to be 20 seconds to 8:00am. Even though some fitness buffs might refute my hypothesis, the same amount of energy would be used getting from the exact spot of parking space to that punch clock in both occasions. And the only difference would be ... time taken. Hence the Power (MW) is latter option would be much higher even though it lasts much shorter than the former. Hence I stop there before rambling on and on about the useless stuff. There's always Goog1e and Wik1 if you are curious enough, you know.

Anyway, back to the topic, I did some number crunching on the dip shown in KompeniKedekutLetrik demand profile on Saturday night and came up with this one. And to save my pretty ass, I used relative instead of absolute figures to be published here.

Viola! Err ok maybe it needs a bit of explanation. The blue curve shows the 'typical' Saturday night demand (MW) profile whereas the yellow one is for that particular rainy Earth Hour night starting from 7:00pm to 12:00am. While whatever manipulations that I have made does not account for the difference in weather patterns for those nights that I was comparing, it has minimised it to the point of hopefully not being significant enough. With that assumptions, a host of other assumptions can be derived from the change in demand pattern eh?

So, why don't anybody just give their piece of mind trying to explain the difference in demand. I'll start with one or two first and you can continue later.

1- Some people started way too early. Hey you're seeing the demand dropping already starting 8:00pm. Could it be possible some people were actually confused about the time?

2- Demand only started to recover at around 10:30pm. It seems that many people liked the darkness so much that they remained in the dark for an additional half hour after.

3- Demand never actually returned to their 'normal' level even past midnight. Some people enjoyed it too much or just too occupied to turn on the lights perhaps.

So, what's your take on it?

Si Rambut Lebat

2009-03-21T20:42:00.002+08:00

Due to some requests on the latest photos of si rambut lebat, here they are:

And some more

And a video to boot for a bonus

Disregard the booming sexy voice, thank you.

My Take on Gender Inequalities

2009-03-17T16:57:00.003+08:00

On parenting boys and girls that is. It is now already 40-odd days since my first boy was born on 29th. January. Oh yeah, since I have not been updating, his name is Mohammad Shaqeef by the way.

We are such inefficient creatures: Referring to the utilization of diapers as an example. While girls would thoroughly fill the whole breadth of the diapers, boys would only utilize the frontal portion mostly unless they poop while leaving the rear portion as dry as my butt. Maybe they should produce diapers specifically for boys with those moisture-absorbing materials concentrated mostly at the front portion and leave the rear section with minimal padding. Or, they should design diapers which are fully reversible. Then possibly we could reduce the landfill of diapers by one quarter not to mention being easy on the pockets as well.

All about breasts: I have not seen any babies whom would throw tantrums craving for milk while feeding, except for the baby boy. Though I have to admit my scope of watching breastfeeding mothers closely is albeit limited. He just simply could not get enough of it. Reminds me of my long time dear friend Shankar who said to us once in one hot summer Tu lah korang, kecik2 tak mau menyusu puas-puas. Dah besar barula kemaruk tengok... replying to the bountiful fruiting summer season that we had while strolling in the scorching summer heat in the city. To him I would say, my take is that boys (and men alike) and breasts are simply inseparable. Deny them the right to one, they would throw tantrum, regardless of age.

We are comfort-craving creatures: Despite the tough, hardcore or suave facade, we the male species crave for comfort that comes in the form of the opposite gender. I am perplexed to see that the baby boy cries most of the time when he is awake and I did not think the three girls were as restless as he was at his age. But then again, this is the baby that I have most contribution on my part, not due to the fact that I had to do many things for him but mostly because wifey is so tied up entertaining him that I have to do more on my part to take care of the other 3 including the adorable, gung ho 17-months old rambut lebat.

Smells odd: Seriously! I'm not sure due to the difference in physiology or the fact he has some cradle cap on his head but he sure smells different than the other three as far as I can remember. And I can't recall thinking of the different smells of the three when they were his age.

The mother: Not quite related to the gender of the baby but since it was her first C-Section, err how many days to pantang eh?

I guess that's all I could think off for now. I'm sure I would discover more as he grows older, if I get to see him grow older. Al-fatehah to my dear friend Zul whose passing was described by gart in here.

p/s: To Myra, Famy and Diah, I still know I owe you guys the tags huhuhu. At least niat nak buat tu ada lagi.

p/p/s: I know somebody who read this entry would demand a photo. I'll edit later to include his photo ok? No suitable photos with me as of now.

Are you sleeping, Brother Lah?

2009-02-27T15:28:00.002+08:00

Funny how a person who was chairing a meeting discussing about toll hikes did not realise that the toll rates were going to be increased. Maybe it was beauty nap time when the decision about it was made. Sleeping over the matter definitely will make me be able to clearly imagine what transpired in the meeting.

He is finally here

2009-02-02T22:50:00.003+08:00

I don't know if I can still proclaim myself to be a blogger or not, seeing how I have been away from this blogland for quite some time. I have been reading some of your blogs without leaving any trails, if any of you are still going to read this.

Well, like the title says, my son has finally arrived (but not my maid). He was born at 9.05pm on Thursday 29 January 2007. And like all things last minute, the name has not been finalised yet due to one interesting late entry. Of course, Arman has not been received mutually so we had to find another name and it was almost certain to be Aryth though yours truly is not really in full agreement with it. And the last minute entry that was adored by both is currently Shaqeef but I have googled, wikied, answered and tried many other avenues but could not find a meaning to it. Can somebody more enlightened than me or speak Arabic, Latin, Turkish or whatever language that is tell me it does not mean anything bad or even better means something really well? Thanks in advance.

A little story on the delivery day itself. We went for a regular check-up at around 10am that day when the O&G informed us that wifey was already 4cm dilated and advised us to admit her ASAP. Which we did not because we had to go to the immigration office to get the approval letter for our maid to be sent to the agency. Which we did and when wifey was finally admitted at around 3pm, she was already about 5cm dilated. Settled all the administrative stuff and I had to leave her alone in the delivery suite to mail the documents (and had cendol while I was at it), pick up the other 2 from their daycare and inform Athyra's babysitter if she could stay overnight (well, she had not much choice then). By the time I got back to the hospital at around 6pm, wifey was already 7cm dilated. By 7.30, the midwife told me that she was already 9cm dilated even though the baby was way up the passage and took down my mobile number and told me that I could go for dinner and she expected the delivery would take place at around 8.30pm and I could go out for dinner first. Which I did, with the 2 children when she called me at around 8.20pm saying that the O&G was there to deliver the baby already when I was on the way back to the hospital.

By the time I got into the delivery suite, they were already packing up saying that they have exhausted all avenues (including vacuuming) to deliver the baby normally and wifey will be moved to the operating theatre. At least I was glad to be informed that I could go into the OT.

There I was, suited up and video camera in hand, only to be told by the paediatrician who happened to be the medical director of the hospital that no photos/ videos were allowed in the OT. But at least I got to witness first hand how they actually cut open wifey's womb (not very gently occassionally) to see the elongated vaccumed head of Shaqeef popping out of the incision at around 9pm while maintaining my composure. Well, out of 9 people in the OT, only the paed, one medical auditor who sat in the corner without doing anything and I were the males around and it would be so not cool to be fainting at the first sight of blood and I survived watching closely all the butchery in progress. And the anaesthesiologist where quite a looker too. Digressed too much there.

Only after the paed left, assuring me that the baby is fine, everybody in the room said now I could take some limited videos/ photos of the baby and the mother but not how they stitched her up. Which I did but not quite the ER, Nip/Tuck or GA kind of videos because they did not allow those too.

So, to cut a long story short, while Athyra is such an angel during the day, she is not quite so at night and I ended up sleeping with 3 girls at home during the night. And Alyssa was not even late for school the day after while keeping the breakfast and bekal tradition intact.

Wifey would stay at her sister's place until Thursday when hopefully we can borrow her sister's maid and tonight, I'll be sleeping with 2 schoolgoing children alone and hopefully I can wake up myself upon hearing the alarm clock at 6am tomorrow morning.

Some useless trivia for you:

The first C-section delivery for wifey. Some grand entrance he's putting up there.

While Alyssa's and Amelya's age gap is 23 months, they were born on consecutive years (2002 and 2003) whereas the 15 months separating Athyra and Shaqeef are 2 years apart (2007 and 2009).

On wifey's side, 3 of her sisters has only 1 boy in their family while on 1 had none (with 4 girls) and 1 had 4 boys and 3 girls.

On my side, Shaqeef is only the second boy by Arwah Matsah's 3 sons (and 8 girls to go with it). Plenty of boys coming from my sisters though.

At the rate of RM120/ month, my salary would possibly deducted until the boy goes to school by the KompeniKedekutElektrik that now limits the maximum claims for C-section deliveries to slightly more than 3k only.

Quite unrelated to the post but my last entry was posted on 22 December 2008 so this must've been the longest break I took for submitting an entry.

Yearly Planner

2008-12-22T16:03:00.003+08:00

We finally received our annual offerings from the kompenikedekutletrik, the diary/notebook and large wall calendar that will adorn my empty office wall. I have to admit I really like the ring-bound layout of this year's diary cum notebook. It is the "cum" part that I like most because our previous diaries has always been pure diary where there have been days where those tiny daily space was either too little to squeeze in all those notes and useless scribbles you furiously write in the meetings and or too big to write anything at all. So this year, they reduced the overall size to a more friendly size, slightly larger than those generic off-the-shelf flip up notebook and with the other half of the diary/ organiser filled up with blank pages where you can write to you imaginations' content in it instead of bound by the small daily partitions in diary style entries.

To my delight, I also discovered the holidays that we are going to have being in the former national capital would only fall on the days that matters most. I thought we had it good this year with the holidays mostly extending our weekends to some extended weekends throughout the year. However, for the year 2009, it is going to be even better! All 11 days of public holidays for next year (First Raya and First CNY) and the 2 "state" holidays that we would have would only fall on 4 days; Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays so we are looking forward to at least 11 weeks of 4 working days out of the 52 weeks. A nice thought for the new year it will be then. And for those in adjoining state with a Sultan, they would be enjoying a 4-day week for a continuous 4 weeks in December. Lagi la sungguh tak aci...

Lame Update

2008-12-10T12:12:00.002+08:00

Lama tak update blog ni. Hey! At least the blog can still be updated from the office where the proxy has been upgraded lately that it has blocked practically all the interesting access that I have been enjoying so far. After this, no more google talk, no more skype chats and most definitely, my mukabuku account would only be visited once in a while at home when I think about it. Forget about downloading songs or listening the songs that you all share in your blogs and don't even think about watching any videos online anytime soon.

Same old things are happening around my life. Practically no more annual leave left so I'll be camping at the office until the new year comes, enjoying the serenity within and en route to the office while other people are finishing off their annual leave in droves. I did take a day off last Friday to go to Bandung with my family on a trip that was not meant to be initially, the first time I set foot on our neighbouring country. Came back at 2.30pm on Aidhiladha. The original flight on 26th. December was booked some six months ago, before we knew that wifey was pregnant. We had made up our mind to forgo the flight because wifey would be almost 35 weeks pregnant by then and even if we were willing to assume the risk flying, I don't think the airline is willing to do the same for us anyway. However, due to some advanced planning on the airline side saying that our upcoming 26th. December would be delayed by three hours and we had the liberty to change our flight at will without penalty, we brought the flight forward to 5th. December and there we were.

I was not really in the mood for practically anything including shopping so all I got for myself was a cross-trainer, to be used in the office while playing table tennis because at the rate that I'm going, my working shoes were lucky enough to survive even one year of daily use. No photos were practically taken as well and I did not even bother bringing the videocam for this trip. Did I not tell you that I haven't been very enthusiastic lately. Could be another explanation for the lack of updates in here as well.

And to the last few remaining readers of this blog, if any, I would like to wish you all Selamat Hari Raya AidhilAdha.

Alyssa's (and Amelya's) Weekends

2008-11-12T22:39:00.010+08:00

Back to regular programming I guess after those unintelligible entries.

On Saturday 8 Nov, while I spent the whole day cursing and trying to clean up the mess left by those bachelors living in that rented house for 3 years, the girls went for some photography session for those princessy contest (I had no idea what it was all about. Had to google and found some link there) Actually the contest was only for Alyssa only 6 years and above were eligible to enter but of course, we couldn't let Amelya watched while her big sister was being all princessy and photographed so wifey just played along. And yesterday, we received a text message saying that Alyssa had been shortlisted so I have to find my way to that place on Nov 22nd. I am not really a big fan of asking little girls to dress up and being made up trying to imitate stuff adults would have to do such as dancing and singing but I guess I'll just play along as well for now.

The next day, we had to be around my office even earlier than I would normally be on weekdays for Alyssa's kindy graduation day. Amelya had also taken part in one of the performances by 5 year-olds. Alyssa started off by giving a speech as the wakil pelajar that she had been rehearsing at home (at which I found it hard to correct her pronunciation of everybody who was present that day as a present as in gifts rather than presenting your report when she insisted that her teacher taught her the other way but I was gleaming with smiles when she pronounced it correctly (yes!). No photos of that because I used the videocam to tape the whole three and a half minutes.

Then she narrated a story while either 2 or 3 students acted on what she was narrating and I missed the whole thing completely in answering unfinished nature's business call which I thought had been completely taken care of at home.

Amelya participated in a sing-along choir in which unfortunately the best photo that could be captured above those proud parents' head swarming the stage did not really convey her true emotions while singing.

Fast forward towards the certificate conferment(? can't think of the proper term right now), those are the photos that show how those 6 year olds being lined up to receive their certificates, Alyssa being the final recipient of hers. And Alhamdulillah, she was also selected as one of the best students of her graduation year (one from each gender) and that was her proudly receiving her empty tube with no scrolls inside and continuing the tradition of Lollies' and MsKLSentral's firstborns being selected as the best students of the Kompeni's kindy in their time (Phew! Pressure! Pressure!)

And if you were wondering what Athyra was doing during those 3 hours, she was happily roaming around prying into other people bags and stuff and walking incessantly in and around the open space in the big hall. That was an attempt to get her to fall asleep which wifey had finally succeeded just in time to get us to have the refreshments provided in relative peace.

Some Craps

2008-11-10T09:57:00.003+08:00

Hope leads to Disappointment
Disappointment leads to Resentment
Resentment leads to Anger
Anger leads to Wrath
Wrath leads to Insanity

Does it mean that we should give up hoping? I think not. Hope is what drives us human. Without hope there would be no vision, passion, excitement and triumphs. Conversely, without hope, there would be no sadness, pain, suffering and humility. Life would then would be such a dull, infinite void like a ship sailing in a middle of water with no land, no gigantic waves, no violent wind, no captain and no objective. Life would be so stagnant, boring and content.

Eight Is a Generous Number

2008-11-03T12:16:00.004+08:00

Happy Anniversary Sayang!

Though it could've started better, but time waits for no one. Still trying to figure out a way to be absolutely sure it's NOVEMBER and not DECEMBER. Thank God we got married in 2000 or I would have problem remembering it's eight years also. And I can still fit into that Nikah Ceremony baju melayu though :)

All In a Day

2008-10-30T17:29:00.003+08:00

I started the day feeling the exact opposite of Mr Caprio when he shouted "I am the king of the world!" Felt much better after sitting down on my chair for about half an hour and over some little chit chat with my roommate (yeah! I have a roommate in the office now!) More chit chats over breakfast and afterwards and I was basically not productive throughout the whole morning.

Really sweated it out over those little green table with three other men, forgetting lunch altogether. Thankfully nobody complained of anything smelly over the 3 o'clock meeting. Felt really appreciated (in the lack of a better word to describe) after lunch break as though I have the best ears in the world ehehe.

And yet, still do not have desire to plan anything despite it being 3 days away. How ironic it can be that history is repeating itself. Let's just hope it won't be replicating exactly as it happened before. And that is the end of this very cryptic entry of which only I know all the pieces that will make up the whole picture.

Vanity Overkill Part 2

2008-10-24T01:12:00.003+08:00

I feel like singing "Oops! I did it again!"

Yes folks! If you have been following the program, here is the proof that I did not back off my words.

Presenting, my potato head. If you don't believe me, you just have to take my word for it. And if are inspired enough to follow my footsteps, I have a piece of advise for you.

When you go around and see those little corner barber shops, just surrender your head to them and pay whatever good money they're asking of you. Believe me, it will be worth it. Unless you are so much in love with yourself staring at it butt nekkid for two continuous hours, cold, wet and fingers all wrinkled up. Or you don't mind looking like an escapee from a sanatorium trying to blend uncomfortably into the society while you are en route to those barber shops anyway to ask them to finish the uncompleted job. Because those twin-bladed or triple-bladed shavers were never designed to shave anything more than 10mm long in bulk. They would get all cranky and simply glided over those mountains of hair.

Especially if you were halfway through and suddenly you found yourself in a pitch dark bathroom and with only a towel wrapped around your shivering body, you got yourself out half expecting to find somebody trying to pull a prank on you by switching off the lights. Only to discover that the whole suburb were in complete darkness due to some supply interruption somewhere out there and for five long minutes, pondering and unsure of what the next course of action should be. Thankfully those comrades of mine did an excellent job and I was never more appreciative of their efficiency.

The verdict? Loving it and this is definitely not the last time that I would do it.

Vanity Overkill

2008-10-21T10:50:00.003+08:00

Did I tell you somehow I was getting vain lately? It is a bit too early for a mid-life crisis for me, isn't it? Fortunately, I did not go on a shopping spree looking for the latest fashion and adornments and I still use that trusty old bar of soap to "cleanse" my face (and the rest of the body) rather than being metrosexual and look for the latest and most effective skin toning and firming facial cleansers. At least not yet.

However, my vain self was suddenly staring into the mirror 2 days ago noticing painfully how much the rate of receding hairline has somehow accelerated. Which calls for desperate measures! No, I am not going to make our Datuk Sam envious of my even-better planted locks than what he's having right now. That is way too desperate. I am thinking of a more demurred but not so subtle way of dealing with it. Shave it all off. The ones you, and you, and you can see, with the hope that it should revitalize the much shampooed hair of mine.

It won't be the first time though. At last count, I think I have done it at least twice in my adulthood, or the whole life for that matter. I don't think I have been been flashing the epidermis of head when I was a teenager or way before.

Given the gender mix of readers of this blog, I doubt that I could invite anybody to join me with this one. I am thinking of maintaining this one for a much longer period though. Depends on how rajin it is going to be for me to keep it cleanly shaved given current propensity or the lack of discipline to even keep my face clean-shaven. We'll see about that.

Raya Celebration and Pregnancy Background

2008-10-14T14:27:00.001+08:00

I have no excuse for not updating. No time? I have plenty of time, only used it for something else, not updating the blog. No stories to tell? Plenty, if I include ALL the juicy happenings which might not be printable in the first place ehehe. However, Raya and wifey being pregnant are 2 big occasions that are worthy of an entry by themselves. Since I am lazy I'll combine those 2 in this one.

Maybe I'll adhere to pure chronological event and tell a story that I have been telling others countless numbers of times in real life and chat boxes. About the pregnancy.

If anybody had been paying close attention to my blogs that much, they would notice that I have not even made a single passing mention on the worthy subject prior to Athyra is Walking entry. Not that I wanted to keep it as Highly Classified Information (though we'd like to keep the gender secret *wink wink*) that deserves a place under the OSA but simply owing to the fact that we (we as in me and wifey) did not know about it. After getting her menses for the first few months, she mentioned to me that she had missed one and the test came out negative. I had asked her to go to a clinic for a proper check and ultrasound scan just to make sure and throughout, I've always thought that she actually made the trip to the clinic, and she did not. And the menses never came back with innocent breastfeeding as the wrongly-blamed culprit.

In the absence of morning sickness and any other related telltale signs, she was only convinced to actually pay a visit to an O&G only after she felt some kind of movements and I went along just to make sure. Surely enough, she was estimated to be 20 weeks pregnant and the not-so-little worm thriving inside was almost half a kilo already with the EDD around late January or early February. And my sweet little adorable Athyra would be around 1 year 3 months by then.

So, there you have it. Hopefully I won't have to repeat the story again after this. I think I am way beyond broken records already ehehe.

Ok now about raya. Of course, apart from the usual commute back and forth between one PD to another (my kampung is also a PD you know? Grandfather's Swamp), this was the first raya without my father. As much as we would like to remember him in our prayers and celebration, the living keeps on living, right? My fear was mostly for my mother and thankfully she seemed to be strong enough to be going through it alone among the full regiment of my siblings and their children. Again, we did not take a group photo this year (which we did not last year) and those limited photos that I put up in my FB was taken with a measly phone. How I wished I had a proper camera, compact or DSLR to prop up the mood of photo sessions.

I also gave the usual raya BBQ routine that we have on the eve of the second or third day of raya which had been going on for many years this year a miss and I do not even know if they did have one in the first place because by the that time, my Raya time in my kampung has ended as we made our final stop in PD with my in-laws.

We spent the whole day of Saturday visiting wifey's a few of wifey's sisters houses and I spent the night glued to Time Traveller's Wife while wifey needs to come up with the usual things required for a menerima and engagement ceremony. Oh yeah. I almost forgot to mention that I finally unwrapped the book from its pristine, transparent cover and got through it over the raya period. My verdict, a very technical love story, most possibly a tear-jerker for the fairer sex and I like it. Not the run-of-the-mill love story and I am pretty intrigued on the subjects that they do talk about within their daily conversations. Sounds pretty unreal to me but then again, he was a librarian whom thrives on books anyway.

Ok back to the topic at hand. The engagement ceremony was performed on Sunday, the fifth day of raya, complete with dais and my 2 girls were selected as the accompanying flower girls. It went on until around 3 o'clock. After some acts of trying to look busy helping out with the cleaning bit, we made our way back to KL around 6pm. Except for the half hour queue at a right-turning traffic light junction, traffic was smooth on the trunk road and thank goodness I don't have to endure that multiple hours traffic jam in those main arterial highways nationwide.

I guess that's all I can say in this ironically very muted entry. And a longwinded one at it as well

My Last Day Before Raya

2008-09-26T13:59:00.003+08:00

Buah cempedak buah kepaya
Ambil galah tolong jolokkan
Bapak budak mau beraya
Silap dan salah tolong ampunkan.

Selamat Hari Raya. Maaf Zahir Batin.

Three Cheers for Athyra

2008-09-18T13:40:00.003+08:00

Remember in this little update I mentioned that Athyra was already taking baby steps? And now I would like to present.... The Walking Athyra!!! (clap! clap! clap!)

Ok. That may be a little bit of over-dramatization but Alhamdulillah, Athyra is now finally walking, if you can call getting upright, taking a few steps, moving all around to balance while taking those several steps, tumbling and diving into whatever that can be perceived as safe haven and repeat the cycle again as walking. I would love to take Athyra's photo again in that Aqiqah ceremony outfit but this will do for now.

My little Athyra, now taking the gigantic leap towards toddler-hood. Towards being independent. Preparing herself to be a big sister come February 2009.

An Episode Before Iftar

2008-09-13T00:05:00.002+08:00

Today, on Friday, we came back in 2 separate cars, which would not normally happen on weekdays where we would carpool and come back in one car. Typically on Friday, the roads would be more horribly choking than the usual unbearable jam anyway. It was a busy day in the office, clearing the horrible mess resulted from me making half of my room available to another person bunking in so we didn't get to discuss what to have for iftar. She was in the other car with all the children and I was driving alone in the small green car. So, I was practically talking to her on the phone, without handsfree kit, while looking into my rear windscreen in the gridlocked traffic.

Wow! That sounds like a very dull intro. Haven't been writing for a while and I'll try to make it more interesting from now onwards to make it worth your while.

While we would normally go home together and she'll cook just in time for iftar, the congestion was extraordinarily bad. So, we decided maybe to eat outside for today. Until at the very last traffic light junction, I received a quick call from her saying our fasting Alyssa would like to have nasik lemak at home and I am entrusted to buy some ingredients from the local grocery store.

To cut a long story short, I was already in front of the cash register that showed a total of RM4.60. And viola! I suddenly discovered I had no paper money in my wallet at all! Instantaneously, I remembered when it's too late that the last 100 I had in the wallet was given to Alyssa to pay off her kum0n. An I don't need to be a genius to tell that the paltry amount of coins that I had in the wallet would not even cover half of that amount. Blue-faced, I told the cashier to hold on to the goods while I made my way to the nearest petrol station which is within a walking distance from the grocery store. And this was when the iftar time is looming within 30 minutes.

A hurried walk saw me arriving at the petrol pump in 5 minutes. And guess what? I don't even need to go into the convenience store to see the highly visible sign pasted conspicuously on the ATM saying "Out of Order". Oops. Failed on the second contingency there.

So, what did I do now that the deadline has been reduced to a mere 25 minutes? Surely I would take about 15 minutes to go back and forth and secure some money from home. So, I had to make the straightest face and go to the cashier to secure the goods on credit (aka hutang) first to make sure we could eat on time , then come back and pay when the chef was coming up with the evening delicacies.

Which I succeeded since I don't exactly have the face that would scam anybody at first instance. At least I would like to think that I don't.

So, thankfully this story ends with a happy ending even though we had to wait impatiently for about 5 minutes before the rice cooker's switched popped up. And everybody lived happily ever after, up till now at least...

No, I Am Not Linked To Screwboy

2008-09-04T10:15:00.000+08:00

If you think I were somehow psycho-kinetically linked to Screwboy after reading his post here and mine, apart from this tiny little occasion, I would like to clarify that I have never experienced any other twin-like reflexes despite being in the same office with him for the past err 5 years maybe.

I have a confession to make. I am mosh and I am a microsleeper. I had one expensive instance yesterday. I microslept during my little food-less lunch time excursion to submit the reconfirmation forms of my all-grown up Alyssa for next year's coming of age schooling year in which she has been really looking forward to.

The price I had to pay? A lot of pride, a busted driver-side front tyre, some unknown damage to the drive shaft or whatchamajinga under the car and a lot of sweat under the hot sun which liquid would only be replenished 5 hours later and a rude awakening, if I may add. If you are somehow familiar with the Taman Tun area approaching LDP opposite the Green and Yellow/ Red Petrol station with a huge tyre shop right in the middle (how apt!), you would be able to imagine that the road will curve to the left as you approach the LDP. I was not feeling tired at all throughout the journey. And the night before was one of the few nights that had I enjoyed a good 7.5 hours of sleep. So you could either blame it on the hot sun or the lack of nicotine in the bloodstream. Either way, ironically the last thing I remembered was thinking about one of my conversation with my brother-in-law about how car insurances would only pay up only a portion of your claims should you under-insure your car. The next thing I know, there was this loud thud coming from the front of the car and I was climbing the 4-foot-tall earthern road divider, ramming straight into it in my sleep. It didn't take a genius to know that my driver-side front tyre was totally busted and I stopped over in that work clothes to do the manly thing of changing into the spare tyre.

Thankfully, apart from the horribly scratched rims, minor scratches on the bumper and maybe some unknown costs of material damages on the front-right tyre and axle, I don't have to deal with a mangled piece of metal that used to be my car or worse still, deal with a mangled piece of meat that used to be me.

Celebrating Life

2008-08-29T09:39:00.003+08:00

How can a life filled with laughters, loves, friendships, responsibilities, food and other worldly leisures can still be soooo lonely at times? I guess that is the beauty of life in the first place.

p/s: Selamat menyambut Ramadhan to all.

My Guardian Angel

2008-08-28T02:53:00.004+08:00

I am not sure if anything I were to say in here would be against our aqidah. If it were, please feel free to alert the jahil me.

I have always believed that I have a guardian angel consistently looking over my shoulder, watching out for any significant missteps that I am about to execute in the course of my life. We all should have, right? But I also believe that mine has been working hard indeed. Reflecting back, I can think of many many occasions in which some actions that I would have taken or some decisions that I would have made could have steered into the dark, unknown paths that I should not have ventured into in the the first place.

While I was not a troubled child that was consistently bringing pain and heartaches to my parents, I am not a model citizen either. There are things that I have done that would simply serve as membuka pekung di dada if I were to put it down here. However, those things that I have done are either "harmless", as Gartblue has described me, or those are the harmful things purely on short term basis and were in no way would have any grave consequences or reverberating impact on the general direction of my life.

Thanks to this very hard-working Guardian Angel of mine, I am still in the "right" path, God willing. Whenever I was about to execute the milestones that would make me veered considerably into the dark side, those tasks were either simply impossible to perform or there was no way I could proceed with the chosen course of action or it was just simply the wrong timing for it, which I could only attribute it to the work of some unseen hands. There were times when I had to simply get back to the "right" path with no other options left for me to do.

If you are confused, I am too. But at least I know that I am still moving in the correct direction. And for that, I thank you God. Amin.

Athyra's Aqiqah Ceremony

2008-08-25T10:54:00.005+08:00

We went back to our hometown at 3:00pm on Friday, the day before the ceremony. I was somehow too tired to even witness the slaying of the cow. Slept through the whole event and only woke up to help out cut out the meat into edible pieces.

I do notice that this is my third consecutive posts featuring this little, generously-haired little person. However, there were some requests of the photo of the dress being put on the intended person so here it is.

In danger of becoming a trend, I also missed the marhaban ceremony. I was grudgingly negotiating the low pressure shower in the bathroom due to water being utilised extensively somewhere else hence a extended version of the routine (which is quite long in its optimal state. By the time I was properly dressed in that purple baju melayu and adorned with a decorated songkok, the ceremony was already over. The photo that you see of her was captured by some other person and Alyssa whom were entrusted to take photos was more interested to capture the regiment of marhabannis (if I could call them that) instead of taking snapshots of Athyra's crown being snipped away. Thankfully, her thick locks survived the ideal almost unscathed and we have long decided before not to shave it off. If you must know, that photo there was taken after the ceremony and there is not much visible change to her glorious crown.

Despite the last minute notification by a text message in the previous night, 2 missed calls and an unreplied text message from her, Lollies did make it to the event, awakening me from my deep slumber after the marhabban ceremony was done when she arrived at around 1pm. Thank you Lollies! I am not sure whether they had enough to eat or not but I made sure to ask them to the point of irritation whether if they have had enough to eat. And they (Mr Lollies, Lollies and and the Lollies Junior) stayed well over until 4pm when they decided to make a move before I stopped them because Rotidua gave me a call saying that she was still deciding to drop by 5 km away from my parents' en route to her own hometown to pick up her children.

In the end, Rotinotti decided not to stop by despite seeing me from the main road chatting away in those purple baju melayu with Lollies. Lollies' theory was not she was not in her best tudung and mine was that the sight of me could be compared to how it was described by Fahri in Ayat² Cinta as a drop of dew dropping onto his heart, very soothing and clearing off any doubts whatsoever upon his choice of bride. No I have not read the book nor saw the movie and that description was purely a regurgitation of a third party narration and that description could be slightly of-tangent so forgive my ignorance if you must. And due to such an overwhelming feeling, Roti got cold feet and decided not to drop by (ahahaha!).

Anyway, the second photo is the one I took myself after somebody knocked some senses into me and by that time, all the actions were over and our celebrity of the day was getting her beauty sleep to survive another day.

Somehow I have not been in this kind of blogging mood for a while and it is more than obvious that this rambling has been a lot more than necessary to describe a small occasion by any measure of grandness. It could be due to the fact that I have been very well-rested over the weekend despite having to participate in 2 kenduris and 1 birthday party all within the course of 2 days covering some distance in excess of 300kms. With that, I bade farewell, for now, before I go on and on boring all the readers to death.

Invitation to Athyra's Aqiqah

2008-08-22T11:05:00.003+08:00

I haven't been posting many comments lately even though I have been a silent reader for most of the alerts that was received via my reader. Pretty distracted lately with work and other things. Life has been quite a topsy-turvy affair, good or bad depending on your perspective. Nothing much more than that I could possibly put down in here so I'll leave that as that. Notwithstanding, I have been well, should you be wondering. We shall get down to business then.

We would be having Athyra's kenduri aqiqah in the Land of the Mousedeer tomorrow Saturday 11:45am. So if you happen to pass by the area, please drop by and give me a call for direction. If you don't have my number, err how to give out eh? Can try e-mailing me or ask from lollies, gartblue, zan, olab, rotinina and some other people who has my number i think, if they haven't deleted it from their phone book eheheh.

She would be wearing this lilac-laced beige dress, finally completed by wifey last night which I think looked really nice especially considering that she had never been in any formal sewing class. I might not talk much about my wife in here (ehehehe!). maybe 1 day I'll put a compilation of her works in the house. Quite impressive, I'd have to say (puji isteriku sekali-sekala :))

So people, anybody who is interested in attending this gala event, please buzz me. This is not an ajak-ajak ayam kind of invitation. I would really appreciate it if anybody could join us

Little Updates

2008-08-14T10:08:00.006+08:00

Some little updates more towards self-reminder thingy.

Athyra is taking baby steps just now. Hopefully she'll be walking by raya time to wear that little creamy-purplish dress made by wifey last night gracefully.

Atypically received enough sleep for 2 nights in a row. Yesterday night, slept at 8.30pm due to sleep deprivation. Last night? "Forced" to sleep early due to the above. The bane of having the PC and sewing machine occupying the same table.

Hope of weaning Amelya of that nightly diapers somehow disappeared. Few nights ago, she was dry for 4 nights in a row. Not quite for 2 days now.

I know those before bedtime spelling bouts with Alyssa is very beneficial. Let's see how long it could last. Have to think of more intermediate words for her.

note: picture is for illustration purposes only. no relation to entry whatsoever. taken in the car en route to work this morning

Aye aye Sir!

2008-08-08T11:36:00.004+08:00

Always say yes when the boss asks to do anything. Work out the nitty gritty details later or even go back to him/ her if you encounter difficulties of a gigantic scale. But always say yes first

My working life has been based on that simple principle, survival principle I'd like to call it. It shouldn't be hard to adhere to and very workable. Maybe I should tell that to that dumb, always-deviating-from-topic-of-discussion, clueless Senior Manager in the daily morning meeting under heavy artillery from the General Manager who was very much in line, correct and factual about what he was talking about. Even how clueless or pointless you are, being ignored about many irrelevant stuff you brought about, please don't display your foolishness to 30 over people in the meeting room including those 1-month old engineers. An OK followed by some nodding would have been enough to minimise the already decimated image of yours. No I am not angry at anybody even though he made me had my breakfast a good half hour later. I just wonder what he has learnt over 20 years of working, that's all.

Reminiscing Old Times

2008-07-31T17:14:00.003+08:00

I didn't get to catch up with lollies during the bloggers gathering at EE-Kay-Aah on Tuesday because uncharacteristically, my schedule was fully occupied for the first 3 days of the week. So we made an alternative arrangement to meet up today.

We set the venue as KLSentral as it is very convenient for us the Elektrik people and also MissKLSentral. I took the LRT with gartblue, pretty concerned when I saw her 1.5 inch heels which she assured me would not pose a problem for her at all walking from the office towards the LRT station. So there we were at this very Irish-ly named Kopitiam, at 12:45pm (the agreed time was 12:30) and staring at each other, guarding furiously the huge table with a not-so-discrete signboard saying Reserved for More than 5 People. Of course we had to wait for lollies who came about 15 minutes later to fill up the numbers while deflecting all the attempts from waiters and customers alike from our firmly-established territory right in front of main door which will usher in the hot humid air every time those uncivilised people left the huge door open upon entering.

MissKLSentral had an office function so she came much later at around 1:40pm. By then, the chit-chats had gone into full swing. It has been a while since we had this kind of conversation which was a regular feature on a normal weekday err, 5 years ago when all of us were working in the same department. Among the issues that came up was about this signboard when JackJack needed to ease himself, looking for the toilet. Read from afar, the dark blue arrows on a black background is totally invisible and it seemed to read Toilet Information. Ah well, that was the sort of things we chatted about anyway.

All in all, it was good fun. It was nice to be relive the old days once in a while. The last time I met KLSentral was the last time lollies met her during her last summer anyway. Of course, gartblue is still working in the same office but I have to practically walk the whole breadth of the building to get to her place because our rooms are simply at the opposite ends of the buildings and it would burn a reasonable amount of calories to make the trip...

Memememe!

2008-07-30T17:07:00.003+08:00

I don't know why but it seems that efx2blogs is eerily quiet now (the ones that I'm subscribed to, anyway) apart from the updates from screwboy and myra. I have yet to clear my reader alerts so is it possible that almost all of my subscribed bloggers have moved away?

Anyway, back to the original topic. Tagged by myra in here

1st time naik kapal terbang (first time riding a plane)

1st time beranak (First delivery)

1st time gi overseas

1st time duduk jauh drp family (First time staying away from family)

1st time kerja (First time working)

1st time rasa diri gemuk (First time feeling that I'm fat)

1st time bercinta? (First time in love)

1st time rasa diri cantik?? (First time I think that I'm beautiful)

1st time masuk cinema (First time going into a cinema)

1st time admitted in hospital

Who to tag? I'm running out of options actually so whoever feels like doing, leave a comment here and do lah!

phew!

2008-07-17T12:35:00.000+08:00

Three cheers for mosh! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

I have finally transferred all my entries from my previous blog in efx2blogs. Like the physical counterpart, I supposed that provides the all-important milestone that I have moved permanently from the old home to the new one.

I am definitely going to miss the little, friendly and heartwarming ambience that we had there. It was the place that got me hooked to blogging and like they always say, you'd never forget your first girlfriend ehehe. When it crashed the first time, the admin side seeemed to be frantically working to rectify the situation. but this time around, they are nowhere to be seen. and they have been quiet for the past few months it seems. so, I came to the conclusion that the bloghosting facility has been on cruise-control for the past few months and the best decision to be taken in the interest of blogging would be to abandon ship.

while I was copying and pasting the entries into this new house, I came across the entry that I wrote when my father passed away. Call me sentimental but it still brought some tears to me and at the same time, reminded me why entries are important in the first place. Ok, I will try to be more vigilant on submitting entries hopefully from now on.

Gotta go for lunch. Ta ta for now.

A New Beginning

2008-07-15T12:44:00.002+08:00

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.

This is finally my proper entry in this arena (if you can call it a proper entry). If you haven't been tuning into the programme, apparently I have managed to outlive my previous blog (http://moshimoshi.efx2blogs.com) and it seems that nobody would be maintaining that blog host anymore. So I have no choice but to seek refuge in this "condominium blog" (quoting elisa). It was a lovely smallish closed community but all good things must come to an end and I suppose that was the end of it. I have reserved this name for quite some time (ever since the first catastrophe that has engulfed the previous blog before) planning to use it as a backup but never had the discipline to copy and paste. Spend quite a bit of time copying and pasting and i think I'd better write something first before I fell asleep with such repetitive and tedious task. 2 pages of entry lists down, 5 to go. I'll get to the aesthetics part when I am done archiving so in the mean time, you would have to bear with this one.

I'll skip the introductory bit because I would think only the regulars would be visiting this one. Not the most interesting blog this is. Not such much of mind-boggling revelations and not very informative as well.

Well, we shall get down to business then.

Alyssa has several firsts over the last weekend. On Friday, she spotted that her first permanent tooth has sprouted up from her lower jaw. Unfortunately, it has grown quite independently without pushing out the milk tooth. Being as vainly as I am on dental aesthetics, the first thing that we did after lunch on Saturday was to bring her to a dentist. So, her first experience with a dentist unfortunately was not a pleasant one because she had to endure the pain of pulling out a perfectly working milk tooth to accommodate the upcoming permanent tooth. Tears were welling out when she saw the huge anaesthetic syringe but took it in stride without a whimper uttered from the mouth.

I went to that particular dentist because it was within the vicinity of my house. Not by accident also because i happen to know that MissKLSentral also brings her children there. As the dentist was preparing the syringe and looking at Alyssa's card, she said that my name sounded familiar and asked me if the year I was born and then whether I was in the BTU programme before which I attended err 20 years ago ehehehe. And viola! She actually remembered me from those days and I was dropping names here and there while trying vainly to remember any event from those jurassic era that I could relate to her. Of course, I failed miserably that I had to call MissKLSentral to gain some clues on refreshing my memory which again amounted to nil. Possibly that was why I still had to pay RM60 for that tooth extraction :D. Must look for those old photo album when I go back to the hometown.

In the evening, Alyssa had requested me to fix her flat tyres in her abandoned bicycle and take off those small training wheels. She had tried riding on 2 wheels some time 2 months ago and failed miserably and she wanted to try again that day. After searching for a good half hour for a bicycle shop in the neighbourhood, i finally found a motorcycle shop which had a small section in the rear dedicated to bicycle and finally got the tube replaced at RM6! Wasn't it like RM1 during those times when I had to find a replacement tube for my own bike? I know, I know it's a long time ago :p.

When it was good to go, all I had to do was to aid her to get the bicycle moving and viola! Discounting the fact that she was riding over almost everything in her path, she was actually balancing on 2 wheels unaided. Have to reconsider the pledge that I made to her before that I would buy her new bikes when she could ride successfully ehehehe. By Sunday, she was happily zooming out and about and did not require any assistance anymore. That was definitely a lot easier than when I tried to learn myself and I am sure she would appreciate the fact that she did not have to endure the experience of having her private parts knocked violently onto the handle and horizontal bar while cruising downhill without control when trying to learn to ride on 2 wheels.

I haven't posted an entry for a while also and I think this entry is very dry. Ah well, I'd do better next time. This should be enough for my loyal fans (aha!), to know that I am still alive and well in the blogland. Till the next entry, my friends.

ignorance is a bliss

2008-06-30T12:55:00.000+08:00

found this on my peer's table after i came back from a 2-day mid-week break. well not exactly like that but in a much more presentable form with the cookie whole and has a complete M written on it, nicely wrapped in the crumpled plastic bag in the background and tied aesthetically with the ribbon. unfortunately, the morning stomach rumblings got the better of me and i couldn't even think of taking the photo before i downed half of the decorative cookie.

if you can't read the writings, i'll put it down here. it says: MOSH, for being a friend. Love, Secret Admirer

Under normal circumstances, i'd be extremely thrilled to receive such a present. not that i wasn't. it's just that the secret admirer is not really that secret because she texted me the day before telling me that she had left it on my colleague's desk because my room was locked as i was on leave.

what did i do to deserve such a flattering gift? not much. i just ignored her when she took refuge in my room the day before, tired from her fasting until she finally dozed off on the sofa behind my chair. now that is something new i learn about the fairer sex. even ignorance can be appreciated ehehehe.

beautiful start of the week

2008-06-23T15:34:00.000+08:00

despite being awfully unproductive over the weekends in terms of household chores, leaving wifey at her own device in trying to come up with a somewhat presentable and easy-on-the-eyes home that we have lost for quite some time ago, i was hoping today would be a better day. ah well, things don't quite go as planned sometimes.

the usual morning rush had its share of course. while athyra was her usual nagging self in the mornings and at nights, the other two were reasonably cooperative today and it was smooth sailing in their department. we left 10 minutes too late, as usual, and the kind monday morning traffic that we have seen lately after the 40% fuel price hike ensured us reaching athyra's nursery just in time for me to make the 8:00 curfew time. which is when i discovered that i have completely left athyra's bag at home. not much choice there since we can't exactly leave an 8-month old baby with only the pajamas that she was still wearing from the night before and and overloaded diapers to boot without the usual supplement of expressed milk and the poor substitute of feeding bottle that she would usually reject, given a choice.

then, i discovered i had left my access card at home despite the card's permanent base outside working hours being inside that little compartment in the car because athyra had been playing with it and took it with her.

as the car disappeared out of sight, the lightbulb inside my head suddenly glowed when i checked my pocket with those funny nagging feeling that yet again, i was missing something. true enough, i left the mobile phone in the car and anybody wishing to contact me for the day (not that many though; there has been many days i've had the phone lying idle in the drawer with zero activity) would have to get in touch with me via the fixed office line.

all is not lost though. i remembered to take the house key with me. it is all fixed now, thankfully. i had to borrow a colleague's car, get the bag as well as the access card at home, had an early lunch en route back to the office and everything should be functioning as it should be from now on.

i just hope that i won't forget bringing home the only set of house keys that we have outside the house only to discover that we i have left the keys in the office in front of the house gate at the end of the day.

serves him right!

2008-06-18T09:51:00.000+08:00

while i dismissed the initial e-mails circulating around as rumours, i now take it as real news as it finally came out in the mainstream news in [url=http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/6/18/business/21578128&sec=business]printed media[/url] and the privately owned gomen mouthpiece electronic media.

it is kind of hard to get motivated when he is vehemently rejecting our 15% salary adjustment proposal saying that the company would go bankrupt if he concurred while his bosses is defending his and his main lieutenant (whom had a post created specifically for his promotion early this year) a 100% pay increase in the mainstream media *sigh* and if you're wondering how much he is advocating, a GIGANTIC sum of 3.5%...

i would probably go and talk to screwboy later to get more inspiration later.

welcome to the world of capitalism!

test post

2008-06-17T16:18:00.001+08:00

this is simply a test post to demonstrate the capabilities of this blogging facility to a newbie blogger, mr de'magpie. hopefully his venture into this blogland would be a successful one. c'et la vie...

photos of the little one

2008-06-12T11:43:00.000+08:00

since there is not much to story mory and there was a request of the latest photos of the little one, here goes.

you can either read this entry while sitting comfortably at home, in the office or if you have a 3g phone, you can even read this entry while getting stuck in a gridlock traffic jam for 45 minutes with the luxury of turning off the engine and engaging the parking brake. which i don't have at the moment unfortunately because according to my network carrier, i do not only have to change my existing sim card to a 3g one which i have already done at their mt_point but i would also need to apply for a 3g line accordingly. (then why would i take the trouble to go to their service centre to change to a perfectly working sim card to a 3g sim card if i don't want the service as well?)

or alternatively, you can take off your glasses, relax and take a photo.

err hello everybody

2008-06-09T17:55:00.000+08:00

it's been a while since i've been active in this domain. how is everybody doing? great, i hoped. or else probably i would probably receive the news via alternative means, like text messages for example.

i have been fine, thanks for asking. a bit rounder around the waist, unfortunately. give me a minute to let me loosen up the belt to let blood flow to my lower abdomen also... ahhh! better.

so what's my excuse? nothing much actually. of course i've been attending a one-week short course, went to some meetings here and there etc etc. out of the norms of my otherwise desk-bound job. i guess simply because like logis, i have somehow lost my blogging mojo. in fact, arguably this could be my first proper entry for a very very long time.

a bit of updates. athyra the budak-rambut-lebat is currently crawling and relentlessly trying to stand up with support. fell off the bed more once (boo-hoo) with no unforgiving consequences, thank god. we have started to send amelya to kum0n and she's enjoying it so that's good. alyssa is chattier than ever and getting more aware. the other day day she pointed out that my bathroom switch is faulty because it turned the lights on when we flicked it upwards in which i had to demonstrate to her the concept of using 2 switches for the 2 bathroom doors to turn on the light. wifey is , err fine i guess. we're looking for tenants for the 3 bedroom/ 2 bathroom apartments that was finally completed after a 3-year delay. so anybody looking for an apartment in the top floor of Fl0ra Dummansara, overlooking the LDP with the view of country heights Dummansara, give me a buzz will you. rent would be around rm700 a month.

i haven't cleared any alerts for the past few weeks so i have really no idea what's going around in our nice little neighbourhood. maybe famy had neglected another virtual pet, elisa had gone berjalan again to some other exotic countries, lollies had "adopted" another child or oo had become a motivational speaker, roti had found success in leaping across the room from the sofa, ld had another twin on top of the ones she already had, zan finally decided to be a home-maker, screwboy had finally found success in one of his interviews, fd is pregnant again? (aahahah! jgn mare), myra has gained so much weight from those aussie diet, dory found the love of her life, for good or che' chomeyll is the best student in her class despite not much studying or mamarawks is finally in peace in bursa. i'm sure i'll find out after i clear up the alerts ehehehe. till my next comment then comrades.

what a mysterious world

2008-05-20T11:23:00.000+08:00

[i]why don't men/ boys wear underwears when they are wearing kain pelikat? (sarongs)[/i]

maybe somebody can help enlighten my 6-year old girl.

p/s: for the record, i don't "hang it out loosely" before i wear my kain pelikat :p

hold on to your pads/ panty liners

2008-04-25T14:04:00.000+08:00

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

2008-04-14T13:00:00.001+08:00

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

2008-04-11T14:09:00.000+08:00

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

2008-04-07T03:05:00.000+08:00

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)

2008-04-04T12:29:00.000+08:00

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

2008-04-01T13:13:00.000+08:00

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.

zzzzzzz

2008-03-28T09:25:00.000+08:00

this is not an update about my recent trip. i was going to upload the photos last night but unfortunately my streamyx connection by tmnut was on maintenance and hopefully it will be back by today.

slept at around 4:45 this morning and had to pry myself out of bed (inspired by the usual weekday mornings "song") by the usual time, 6:15. that is merely one and a half hour of sleep! and i have a full day today, extending until 8:00pm before i could drag myself home. let's see if i could survive the day without red-templed, which i doubt very much.

why did i put myself in this position, you might ask. after uploading all the photos into the pc last night from the memory cards of one videocam and 2 camera phones, i was left silly and clueless of what to do with the "islanded" pc at home. and i scoured the pc for the downloads that i've made and there it was, the whole season 1 of that addictive tv series, nip/ tuck. while arguably i am the last person that you would call a tv freak (hence season 1, hehehe), my normal compulsive/ obsessive behaviour again took over me last night. it is not exactly a family entertainment show so i waited until all the kids were asleep at around 10pm before i started the marathon.

by the time i just couldn't stay awake anymore, i must've watched like 10 episodes or so (i lost count).

now i am all groggy with that silly euphoric light-headed feeling in the head. i think it won't be long before i start hallucinating. or have i started already? am i really writing this entry or i am just imagining myself doing this? i guess i'll find out tomorrow...

i am back

2008-03-22T09:45:00.000+08:00

anybody missed me? no? hmmm....

i came back from sydney 2 nights ago. as usual, coming back from a long trip, many things to sort out to get back to normal life. will be posting photos, stories (not much though) about the trip later. and will also check out the alerts (numbering 67 now). ok chao for now, just to inform people that i'm still alive, a bit thin on the pocket though.

to all my supporters

2008-03-07T21:36:00.000+08:00

so my advisors, what do you think the chances my meek challenger has against me in the upcoming election?

don't think they stand a chance at all, my dearest miss incumbent.

very well then. unfortunately i won't be able to celebrate my winning because with my supporters because i'll be going to sydeney on the night of the vote count. but never mind, i'll be able to when i come back on the 19^th. march.

yes you will. so, any last words to your rival?

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i think this guy must be glad that today is friday. taken from the spot that i normally use to top up my level of nicotine in the office with the phone that i am currently using. i wouldn't want to be in his shoes any day.

undi jangan tak undi! (vote!!!!)

2008-02-20T09:00:00.000+08:00

just a little community service reminder. no political campaign here. anybody who would like to check where they'd be voting (or registered at all) can go

HERE

if you don't know that already.

naturally, applies to malays1an only.

p/s: looks like i'll be voting this time around, for the first time ever. don't think the place i'm supposed to go is difficult to find, unlike the last one *sigh*

the chronicles of julia

2008-02-11T10:47:00.000+08:00

*this is going to be long. so if you're interested to read, spare some time. it is a chronicle after all

i am a princess born in the middle of bandar lampung kingdom 41 years ago. my kingdom however is not a very rich one so i decided to venture out to neverlands to seek out new opportunities with the hope of finding a (new) prince charming.

while i was made to imagine by my "consort" in my home kingdom that i was starving, desperate and was in tears begging him to send me to the neverlands for a better future, i truly believe that i was doing rather well in my florist shop and was promised, tailed and persuaded to try out for an even better future in the neverlands by the consort's slaves in my home kingdom. and i caved in.

while my consort had also insisted on saying that he had helped me a lot and treated me very well like i am a part of his family, all i could see was that he was a bad person that had only ordered us around (yes, a few other princesses were also waiting for an outbound journey in the consort's house) and fed us with remnants of food fit only for the pets in his castle while they were enjoying the best catch of the day, making us prepare it for them without even sparing some for us.

i was glad that i was finally out of the hell-hole heading towards the neverlands. my future seemed to be bright.

i was greeted by a family of five in the neverlands. to my dismay, i was informed that i was not to be remunerated for 3 months for my part of the bargain of seeking new opportunities in the neverlands with a much less monthly bounties as promised by my consort even though he insisted that i was not paying attention when explained in details to me before my departure. that was when the thought of returning home crossed my mind and i voiced it out openly to the lords of the neverlands. the lords had spared some sympathy with me and reduced the cooling period down to 2 full moons.

i had my first argument with the evil stepmother upon the third day of my arrival because i was not in favour of the way she was ordering me around. i shed tears for many days and again, i felt the urge to return to my kingdom and for the monies to be lost if i were to return home earlier than expected, the overlords of the neverlands had agreed to reduce my cooling off period for one month only rather than give up the golds to the feudal lords should i return earlier than promised.

what i had to do in the overlords castle was very simple. i had to take care of their 4 months old infants and manage the castle while they go out hunting for the whole day with their 2 preschoolers offsprings, coming home only after the sun had set down in the western horizon. while those stray felines kept getting on my nerve by pooing on the manicured lawn of the castle, i found an ingenious solution by covering up those poops and let them do their business on another part of the lawn and the cycle continued.

i am totally infatuated of the children of the overlords. they were really adorable and liked to accompany me and showed their concerns when they see me crying my eyes out for days for those pains that i had to endure beyond the reasoning of the overlords. i love them so much that i had left the baby once at home alone while she was sleeping to go to a shop that takes at least 15 minutes on foot to try out the news sending device which had lacked credits to be used, loaned to me by the overlords. i had even tried to pacify the crying baby with my own endowments when the evil stepmother was out hunting.

yes, talking about the news-sending device or mobile phone as they call it here, i had requested to get one for my first salary. however, the overlords were kind enough to furnish me with one of their old one which unfortunately, i had forgotten to even say a simple thank you. to make things worse, it became the spark that led to the biggest argument that i had with the evil stepmother in which i had definitely made my mind to return home to my kingdom within that instant. it simply started of as me insisting of buying another mobile phone because it was too complicated for me to use with my-yet-to-arrive remuneration and the evil stepmother persisted of either i use that or go back to the old ways of sending news back home with the red-and-grey pigeon. and the evil kept saying horrible things like i was not grateful to them or even to the fact that i had easy and flexible overlords to work with, not to mention an easy job of taking care of only one infant.

i almost got my wish of going home last monday fourth of february before i found out alongside the now-almost-evil stepfather that while i thought to go home to my own kingdom was as easy as taking the carriage that passes through the castle, i need to go through a lot of processes through the feudal lords in some faraway land in me1aka where the stepfather had bought and resold the ticket to my freedom. the feudal lords in the faraway lands had insisted of me going through all the processes of health checks, working visa and others in this land of opportunity before they would sign a check out memo that spelled out my freedom. with a heavy heart, i returned to the unwelcoming arms of the evil stepmother to go through the medical check-up and hibernated in my quarters all day and would only venture out when they were out hunting. i also found out that i no longer had to care for the baby because the overlords were bringing her out for hunting as well.

i have also been talking to the overlords and servants alike in the nearby castles, confiding them about me not having meals for up to a week, maybe forgetting to state the fact that i had no appetite to eat despite the wealth of raw food left uncooked inside the cold room. i even had to ask for some food from the servants of the neighbouring castle because i didn't feel like cooking.

now feeling totally underutilised and still roaring to go back to my own kingdom with no definite end to my misery in sight, i plotted for my escape. and it was a very easy escapade indeed now that i was staying alone in the castle. armed with the mobile phone, some bread and some 800 golds that i plundered from the drawers which ironically belonged to the person that i was supposed to care for, i took a red-and-white carriage with the promise of going back to my own kingdom without going through the feudal lords' authorisations.

unfortunately it was not as easy as i thought it would be. again, i was swimming in tears all night and with a heavy heart, i returned to the unwelcoming arms of the now-so-furious overlords minus some golds that i had used to pay for the red-and-white carriages charges.

angry to the fact that i was returning home much earlier than expected, my consort had also revealed to the overlords that i had sent news to my home kingdom that i have not been treated and fed well in the overlords castle, hence my premature homecoming. i am amazed myself of how the news could come about in my home kingdom whereas i have limited means of sending news back home as far as my memory could recall. and i am not sure if the overlords still believe in my stories.

fortunately for the overlords, the feudal lords in the near kingdom had insisted that i did not have to go through all the working visa processes to be sent home. now that my presence in the overlords castle was not required anymore, i am spending my time in the faraway lands in the overlords queen's house awaiting for my departure on sunday february the seventeenth while the overlords settles the required documentations with the feudal lords for me to be sent home. i sincerely wish for a prince charming to rescue me from the tallest tower in the castle now before my homecoming trip.

wow!

2008-01-29T21:36:00.001+08:00

when i came home today, i discovered a gaping hole right smack in the middle of my front lawn about 6 inches in diameter and 6 inches deep. when i enquired the domestic helper, she said she needed some soil to fill up some flower pots and that was the only grassless patch of land that she could find.

owh by the way, the bald patch was due to the base plate that she laid upon the lawn to cover up the cat's poop 2 weeks ago to prevent the refreshing aroma of the poop permeating the air in front of my house. i removed it last weekend when i was mowing the lawn.

i was speechless.

shitey weekend

2008-01-28T20:21:00.000+08:00

not exactly the best update i have but can't think of anything else to submit entry.

i came home friday night, tired from the extraordinary jam encountered en route home, i received the kind of news that you wouldn't like to hear upon returning home knackered. the domestic helper told me that the sewage box culvert had overflown and the stagnant, murky raw sewage water has flooded my backyard. on friday night? oh no!!! gone were the days when friday night means fun fun fun till the crack of dawn but i'm expecting to wind down quietly at home at least. but an overflown box culvert on friday night? darn! i get splitting headache just thinking about it.

how i wish i have somebody to tai-chi the job. but wifey? err maybe not. domestic helper? i don't think so. she didn't even clear the cat poop on the lawn and you want to ask her to wade the ankle-deep raw sewage water? though we initially suspected that she had flushed down her sanitary pad much to her denial but that is another story.

so, wading the pool of water that had even overflown into drainage in the moonlit night, i was virtually feeling my way through with a stick looking for the manhole cover while removing the mulchy rotting garden waste that i normally put on top of the manhole cover for composting purposes, failing miserably to not imagine the source of the ankle-deep water that i was walking in. miraculously, i succeeded in opening the square manhole cover and discovering no surprises in there. more murky, stinky water of course.

then i proceeded with my normal modus operandi of clearing blocked drainage (which i had succeeded in doing so several times without having to call the plumber) by trying to insert a rubber hose into the main outlet rather than heading into the house which will bring less headache and less "moisturising" encounter. which of course, i failed miserably because who knows how long the outlet pipe goes all the way into the mains.

after trying several for several minutes without any success, this time my hands basically swimming in the water, i admit defeat. i made a resolution to call the "beautiful water", our sewage and waste treatment provider, after i took a loong, hard shower (mandi wajib siap even though no event related to it whatsoever). and they promised to come within 48 hours.

surprisingly, they were already there on saturday morning. not bad for a company that i have never paid their bill, ever for the past 2 years they've been billing us. ok ok. *make mental note to nudge wifey to go pay now!*

according to the technician, apparently my house is "sewageically" the lowest house in the neighbourhood so if there is something wrong inside the mains, my house would be the first one flooded. upon inspection, he said there was definitely a problem with the mains. while it was a huge relief that it was not a localised problem (hence saving me from some burning hole in the pocket), it wasn't really a comforting thought that i had waded through raw sewage generated not only by my household but a cocktail of everybody's piece in the neighbourhood. *sigh*.

they eventually fixed it after trying for 2 days. now my backyard is back to its green, dry state and my splitting headache had magically disappeared. it is a happy ending after all.

the name thingy

2008-01-21T16:55:00.000+08:00

yes, i'm clearing all the new blog alerts very very slowly and found this out in elisa's, tony's and nonah's. i'll pounce at the opportunity of easy and quick entry...

some of those descriptions is quite true, but *trying to be humble* rather larger-than-life description than i truly am. and for those who are not in the know, that is my real name :)

What Suhairi Means

You are the total package - suave, sexy, smart, and strong.

You have the whole world under your spell, and you can influence almost everyone you know.

You don't always resist your urges to crush the weak. Just remember, they don't have as much going for them as you do.

You are a very lucky person. Things just always seem to go your way.

And because you're so lucky, you don't really have a lot of worries. You just hope for the best in life.

You're sometimes a little guilty of being greedy. Spread your luck around a little to people who need it.

You are truly an original person. You have amazing ideas, and the power to carry them out.

Success comes rather easily for you... especially in business and academia.

Some people find you to be selfish and a bit overbearing. You're a strong person.

You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection.

You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive.

You have the classic "Type A" personality.

You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It's easy to get you excited... which can be a good or bad thing.

You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don't stick with any one thing for very long.

You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start.

You are wild, crazy, and a huge rebel. You're always up to something.

You have a ton of energy, and most people can't handle you. You're very intense.

You definitely are a handful, and you're likely to get in trouble. But your kind of trouble is a lot of fun.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

moshie's angels

2008-01-21T14:54:00.000+08:00

i haven't been updating much, if you care enough to notice. not too many ideas to pen down. nothing of interest to you people anyway.

this entry is just an update of some photos that i managed to upload last night. thought i had uploaded more photos but it seems that i'd dead wrong.

alyssa

that was a photo from our little celebration that we had on alyssa's birthday night. we have made it clear to her this year that there will be no birthday celebration due to her being naughty and all. but (isk) also due to financial constraints :)

amelya

photo not properly exposed unfortunately due to inadequate equipment (and most probably skills as well). photos taken during her birthday do 12 december last year.

this is amelya's first day at school. unfortunately very dark also in the absence of natural light in the early morning. (possibly sonyerr phone would fare better in this department).

athyra

some of her more recent photos, instead of the recycled one that i put up in my previous entry. lollies was right that i had some problem reading the memory card in my pc the last time hence no latest photos. thankfully the problem resolved itself so here are some more recent photos of hers. some of my relatives call her ata-shinchi. can't comment on that one coz i don't watch that show.

in another news, after a long (about one and a half hours) pep-talk that we had in the car, our maid had decided to stay. seeing that her attitude had slightly improved and her work quality is getting better, i have decided to sweeten the offer and she is reasonably happy to accept the offer and stay. saves some money (and bureaucratic headache) for me.

my precious antique

2008-01-16T10:39:00.000+08:00

tagged by miss myra here. since i love soo much to talk about my precioussss, here it is.

What color is your phone?

Who's the first person who comes up under the letter M?

Who's the last person you called?

Who was your last missed call from?

Who's the 2nd person who comes up under D?

Who's speed dial 2?

Who's the 3rd person who comes up under Z?

Who was your last received call?

Who's speed dial number 4?

What is your background?

How many text messages do u have?

Who's in ur speed dial ?

What's the 5th message say in your inbox?

Who's the 1st person who comes up under B?

Who was your last text message from?

Name every person you have text messages from:

Have you seen the 101 Chuck Norris facts?

Who's the 9th person on your missed calls?

What does the 3rd message in your Outbox say?

Who is the first name in your Phonebook?

now now, who to tag? olab, rotinotti, tony and the bapak-baru abi...

lottery halal moshie's edition

2008-01-15T17:17:00.000+08:00

credits goes to screwboy for the title.

my first attempt at the halal lottery unfortunately is not yielding the jackpot. while the consolation prize of her (the live-in domestic helper, for the uninitiated) being somewhat trustworthy and reasonably passionate for my children, she is not exactly in a nirvana state-of-mind.

she claimed that she had been conned by her agents in her home country. she was promised the world by the agent, convincing her to leave her existing job of flower shop assistant for much higher remuneration being a domestic helper overseas. unfortunately, her much-promised pay were definitely beyond a reasonable pay packet that should be awarded to a highly experienced helper, much less to a total novice like her.

and she misses her 14 year old son so much. according to her, she could earn as much in her own country without being separated from her son. and she can ask others to clean up cat's poo in the lawn where she was working before. i am soooo going to throw water to those cats, stray or not.

we will send her back, i guess. no point keeping a half-hearted employee under my roof. i'm dreading the downtrodden path of immigration bureaucracies that i had to go to through twice in procuring her. and don't tell me about the cost. i already know.

maybe 1 down, 25 to go?

2007 summary

2008-01-02T14:26:00.000+08:00

an entry, finally.

well not exactly some big revelations brought to you by me. just a recollection of significant happenings over the year (and can be shared ;) in here) mostly for my own recollection and cross-referencing. i don't know know about you people but i don't find myself that interesting to read each and every single one entry of mine, cover to cover, all the time.

alyssa's/ amelya's birthday: with the exception of this year (err still in (financial) planning stage), the year would always start with the joint birthday celebration of these two. entry here.

almost-one-year-old car broke down: the only time that i went outstation and it had to happen. entry here.

few nights in bangk0k: our only rubber stamp in our international passport this year. entries here and here. looking back, i'm glad that i went with my parents also.

bring it on!: the screaming girl on the right was confirmed to be around. entry here.

paintball game: the first (and hopefully not the last) time i tried shooting other people, legally albeit not lethally. entry here.

blogger meet: first time meeting blogging friends apart from the ones i already knew personally. a precursor to the much bigger meet later. and the honour goes to olab and rotinotti. entry here.

another blogger meet: the initial planning stage (too bad comments are missing after the efx2blogs migration), final plan and the post analysis. we had a good time for sure.

first (almost) chinese wedding attended: a friend of mine married a chinese girl. i was the saksi. entry here.

mmorpg!: august must've been around the time that i started playing this mmorpg game that has currently taken over my life, thanks to pb whom i don't see around it anymore. earliest entry about it maybe here. by the way, pb if you're reading this, i currently have a lvl 41 healer, lvl 40 rogue, a 34 summoner and a 31 knight which i used to perform auto-levelling of the horse :D. thanks to the knight, both my healer and rogue have level 37 horses.

efx2 domain big bang: as we all know by now, it should be around this time around. here's the first (non)-entry i submitted on 20^th. sept. (non) entry because the form to type in the entry did not even go through the office proxy (possibly due to javascript blocking by our office proxy) hence the empty entry with only the title and comments.

puasa/ raya month: our last raya with my dad :(. also had an interesting event of malaysian blog open house with all the frantic preparations mostly done by elisa and an eerie air of quietness over the first 15 minutes of the allocated time that we were wondering whether only the hosts are going to be the only ones turning up :). it was a huge success in the end with a back-breaking alerts and screen refreshes with the added bonus of elisa gaining an orang putih pet.

athyra wuz 'ere: and still is, alhamdulillah. entry (along with the raya wish) was here.

my arwah father: i submitted only 6 entries in november and the last four was on my late father ;(. al-fatehah

my blogging life first ever anniversary: and here's the entry.

well those are the ones recorded in the blog mostly. apart from those, i'm not even sure if i have anything else that i need to remember. ok maybe things like unsuccessfully applied for another job (shhh!), little trips around the country here and there, major arguments that we had (did we? i can't even remember) or yadda yadda yadda. oo yes i almost forgot. it was also the first year (right at the end of it also on the 26^th. dec) that we ever tried to tolerate a live-in maid whom is now very sad for leaving her 14 year-old son and sangat kecewa due to some misunderstandings that she had with her agent regarding the remunerations.

but whatever it was, it would be a year that would be mostly remembered as the year my father passed away about one month after athyra was born. apparently according to past records and highlighted by my cousins (and it still holds), my fathers 8 siblings had always passed away in pairs within one or two months . and now there are 2 of them left and would the record holds till the end? only God knows.

inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi ro ji'un. al-fatehah.

i am obese!

2007-12-06T10:57:00.000+08:00

our kompeni had a free health fair in the hq for 2 days where panel doctors and hospitals come over for free physical check-ups for the employees, courtesy of the panels i guess. all sorts of health barometer checks were provided, ranging from the normal blood pressure, urine sample, blood cholesterol up to a miniature camera probe into your ear canals to display the beauty inside and a rare opportunity to look at your own ear drums and displayed on a huge 29" inch tv for everybody to see.

i have never gone through these physical check-ups after the ones i had before the employment, or was it the check up required for the scholarship many many years ago. the results? nothing spectacular considering the sedentary life that i'm living right now. blood pressure normal at 120/80, urine sample clear of any abnormalities, cholesterol counts slightly above healthy levels, bmi slightly above normal at 26+. i even got to check the strength of my lower back even though i had to go through that little red-faced moment having the cute girl attaching the pad-like electrodes just slightly above the crack of the butt. on top of that, i had to unbuckle and unhook my pants to tuck back my shirt while her face were virtually a few inches behind my bottom in the minuscule makeshift cubicle provided. it must've been that obvious that she assured me there was nothing peculiar while she helped me tuck in the shirt, into the underwear, duh!

however, apparently my body fat ratio is like 26+% also! for the uninitiated, healthy males are supposed to have less than 20% body fat ratio and 20-25% body fat ratio are considered overweight and above that, obese! err, ok i might have the beautiful six-pack hidden nicely under a nice comfortable padding but obese?! let me google the meaning of obese...

from dictionary.com
[quote]o·bese (-bs)
adj.

Extremely fat; very overweight.[/quote]
hmmm! however, the more important fat, visceral fat stands at 11%. not bad considering the maximum level for a healthy man is 10%. just a little bit of exercise and some healthy diet bout will get me within the ideal range.

--------

so, we are not the all superior human being after all. bumped into this news while perusing the in-tech section of thebintang today.

what the?!

2007-12-04T08:41:00.000+08:00

received this text message at 12:41am this morning on my mobile. incidentally, read by wifey while i was busy on the pc in the other room.

for my english readers, i apologise for not translating because the joke would be lost

[quote]nite abg, tlg la bli ubt ilangkn misai dgN kning..min xpnh tgk pun prduk tu. nnti abg dtg shll, min byaq tau.. bring lar ada blu rma bnyk..[/quote]

in case you were wondering, i didn't get into any trouble of any sort :)

his legacy

2007-12-03T11:22:00.000+08:00

some of the things he left behind.

anybody for geese eggs? people came from as far as muar to look for those eggs for it's supposedly medicinal properties. or course he had chickens and ducks but they were camera-shy.

he was truly a cat lover. the others were simply not very interested.

he folds and irons his own clothes because mak doesn't do it as neat as he'd like it to be. i might take one of those black imam jubah for souvenirs. somehow, with the exceptions of tight-fitting sleeves, i could fit into it :)

at almost 11 years old, the payung indones1a (hura crepitans) stands at around 12 feet high. he had always wanted to chop down the tree for fear of the crawling roots to be uprooting the perimeter wall in front of it. my usual replies had always been [i]he doesn't need to worry about that. he'd be long gone before the tree grows big enough to uproot the wall.[/i] didn't know it's going to come sooner than later.

and of course,

the binmatsahs. mostly were (at that particular moment, there has been an additional 2 since) here except for my eldest brother's family. they were berayaing on the other side in phg. unfortunately, this photo was taken last year (and of poor quality as well). we didn't take group photo during this year's eid though everybody was around due to some technical complications :(

heck, somebody saw me cry

2007-11-30T10:59:00.000+08:00

al-fatehah to my dad

wrong timing. wednesday early morning. called my mum. she sounded very sad and ended up sobbing. put down the phone. boss came in to convey his condolences. couldn't even speak to him. damn...

otherwise, i am fine people. life is ok as ok can be. children are healthy. confinement is ending. pockets are burning. and life goes on, likes it or not.

he lives on in our hearts

2007-11-26T10:00:00.000+08:00

Mohammad Shah bin Halijah 13^th.November, 1941 - 21^st.November, 2007. Al-Fatehah

if you read my last post here, you might want to know if i made it in time. i did. i was finally at the hospital at 3:00pm on that 21^st.November, 2007. had to ask my back door neighbour to take care of that &*^*$#*)%#)(* washing machine.

it wasn't a pretty sight. more tubes and wires and instruments of all sorts were to connected to him. he was no longer breathing on his own. tucked in at the corner of his mouth was what it seems to be painfully attached was the breathing instrument that was supposed to supply oxygen directly into his lungs. and i don't even know what it's called up to now.

at around 5:00pm, i received a sobbing phone call from wifey asking me to go upstairs into the icu waiting area, adamantly refusing to elaborate further while i was having my nicotine fix in the car park. when i got upstairs, i saw everybody, including my calm and collected mum sobbing uncontrollably.

my eldest brother asked me to go and see him once more before delicately explained to me that the neurosurgeon had given us three options. the second ct scan had confirmed that his brain had been eerily damaged beyond recovery due to the massive second stroke attack. the first option is to bombard him with full armaments of antibiotics and drugs while the second option is to let him go through another surgery and leave his skull open to ease off the burgeoning pressure brought about by the second attack on his right brain, even suffocating the left side which was operated on sunday morning. while there was no telling that he could survive both options, the doctor had reconfirmed that he would be unable to care for himself if he survived the ordeal, given how much damage that had been inflicted on the brain by the second massive attack.

the third option was a much simpler alternative. bring him home.

while the initial reactions to this option were outright rejections, especially from my mother and sisters, we collectively decided to bring him home when calmness reigned over chaos. my father had told my mum that he wanted to die on my mum's lap during the eid period last month and she took it as a sign as his final request to be brought home.

so, at 7pm, more than half of the family packed up our belongings that had accumulated over the 7-day period in the hospital to prepare the house which has been left at its own device for his homecoming, leaving my mum, my eldest brother, my youngest sister and my parents' eldest granddaughter at the hospital to accompany him. we waited, and waited, and waited at home.

it was around 10:20pm when one of my sisters burst out of the room at home, crying out loud saying that my father had passed away. few minutes later, i received a phone call from my brother-in-law on the house phone reconfirming the news. they had waited for the surgeon to come over before transferring him to the ambulance. he had passed away while still on the machine when the drugs supporting his heart was disconnected, possibly the only reason why his heart was still beating due in the absence of the devastated brain cells. while my mum was on his bedside all the time, he did not have his wish to draw his last breath on my mum's lap.

the body only arrived home at around 1:00am after all the formalities and documentations had been cleared. and we took turn throughout the night to recite our doa and yaasin.

so many people came over the next day to pay him the last visit that people had to walk up to a mile to find a parking space around my parents'. the sight of him lying there in his white kaffan brought down many mighty men, not to mention women, to tears. except for those occasional crocodile tears welling up in the eyes, i could not even remember any event that had occurred in my life i had cried over. on that day and thereafter, i cried with no shame. he had definitely touched many, if not all, hearts of the people whom has had the pleasure of meeting and knowing him. and he had the opportunity to have 2 of the most community-oriented jobs, a teacher, retiring 11 years ago and was still a serving imam of the local masjid.

seeing him lying motionless in the living room could have easily been mistaken as being in a deep slumber, the bathing time was a real revelation to me of his true state like a huge smack in the face. the sight of unchanged expression on the face when water was poured over the face will be something that is going be imprinted in my mind for many years to come.

he was safely buried at 12:45pm on thursday 22^nd.november, 2007 before the dzhuhr' prayer.

he has had a full life. god-willing, to the naked eye, he has also enough preparation for the afterlife. he was such a loving husband to my mum, still holding her hands affectionately even after more than 40 years of marriage and his fatherly traits had simply dwarfed my puny attempt to be one myself. all he had left us were fond memories, blemished by one memory of me showing my displeasure towards him on one minuscule event at my house barely 3 weeks ago of which i sincerely hoped that i have been forgiven.

life has to go on, they say. but at this point of time, my life seems to be dragging its feet lazily, especially when i think about the life that my mum has to go through sans my father. how i wish she has the support of wonderful people around her like what i am receiving now from the others. which reminds me to thank all of you beautiful people for all those well-wishes, comments, phone calls and text messages.

Inna-lillahi wa inna ilaihi ro ji'un. Al-Fatehah.

i am numbed

2007-11-21T09:00:00.000+08:00

received a phone call from my elder brother at 1:30 this morning. unless it is an overseas call, the phone ringing in the wee hours in the morning will never bring good news. never has and never will be.

i was the first person to be informed. my father had another stroke attack on the (good) left side of the brain, while still lying unconscious recovering from sunday's operation. while the much-needed good news trickled in despairingly, bad news seems to barge in like a runaway locomotives. the neurosurgeon explained that if my father survived the ordeal, and that in itself is a big IF, chances of normal mobility and speech is even thinner than wafer.

and yet i'm still here in the office writing this entry, instead of my way back to my hometown. i need to submit the application forms for alyssa and amelya's kindy for next year. and that %^*&%^^&* 1 month-old front loading machine failed us. wifey found out yesterday evening after it finished the complete cycle of washing athyra's clothes, it decided that everyone in this world is a child. it's child-proof door simply won't budge. and it doesn't have a manual release. so we have to wait for somebody from the shop to prise open the door or i'll be an instant fungus and mushroom breeder in the estimated one-week homecoming time.

i will be there, hopefully sooner rather than later.

inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi roji'un.

fateful day

2007-11-19T22:38:00.000+08:00

13^th. November 2007

it was 45 minutes past 8 tuesday morning. i was somehow early in finishing up my early morning routines and i had some spare time before the 9 o'clock meeting so there i was in the canteen having breakfast when i received a call from my sister. her first words were simply ayah kena stroke!. dad had a stroke attack it took me quite a while to swallow the words that i had to ask her to repeat several times to ensure that i heard her correctly.

if you know my father, you would be as surprised as i was. i am not ashamed to admit that he was fitter than i am. he managed his 2 acre orchard by himself on which he had spent his 11-years retirement day in day out, if he's not out and about visiting his children in the city or going out makan angin (sightseeing). my non-smoking, in-shape dad definitely had done multi-fold of the recommended 3 sessions of 45 minutes in a week workout recommended for healthy living. at 66 years old, he has the adult-onset diabetes and hypertension which has been kept under close control through medication and has always been given thumbs up when he goes for his quarterly routine check-up at a local hospital.

and it was his 66th. birthday. my sisters were indeed planning to surprise him with a little ceremony and birthday cake when they were supposed to get home at the end of the day. however, it was us whom were surprised.

he was sitting in the kitchen having breakfast with my mum before going about to manage the orchard when she suddenly noticed that he was suddenly dreamy and had a drastic change in his voice and whitish bubblish saliva started to trickle down the corner of his mouth and was about to fall of his chair. she yelled out loud to my brother-in-law whom thankfully were still at home and they quickly sent him to the local hospital where he was stabilised and transferred over to the state hospital with an ambulance.

upon hearing the news i practically dropped everything, gave a call to wifey (whom i was not in speaking terms at that point of time) to prepare the necessary stuff to go to my parents' and picked up alyssa and amelya whom i had sent to their respective nurseries less than an hour earlier.

arrived at the hospital around noon. i was glad to see him lying down awake while queuing up to do the ct scan. he could still lift his left arm and leg even though he could barely carry a conversation.upon seeing that, the optimistic me kept convincing myself that it was one of those minor one where one would be in and out of the hospital within a week and would carry on the daily life with little or no rehabilitation.

towards the end of the day, he was resting most of the time and with the help of me and my brothers, still insisted to go to the toilet to pass urine, refusing to use the bedpan. determined to fill up my bedside watch quota early, i volunteered to sleep by his bedside that night.

and slept i did. did i tell you that without wifey, i would require a minimum of 2 alarm clocks to ensure that i would make it to the office by 8 o'clock and very little things could wake me up in the middle of the night, sparing wifey's nag and repeated smacks? while they provided a very uncomfortable and battle-hardened chair by the bedside, i slept on a long chair about 5 metres away from the bed. dazed and confused, i was awakened in the middle of that night by the commotion of nurses and attendants rushing into the room to find out that my father had fallen of the bed trying to get to the toilet by himself.

the following day, the ct scan results finally came in. along with the dreaded news that my father had a significant haemorrhage that came with a stroke which required him to be transferred to the city hospital because the state hospital doesn't have a neurologist to perform such operation. while the surgery might be considered urgent, you'd still have to get in the queue as in the norms in government hospital so we decided to transfer him to the nearby private hospital for the surgery. while neurosurgery is not really a palatable solution, it was still the lesser of 2 evils right?

we breathed a sigh of relief when the neurosurgeon in the private hospital decided that we might be able to hold off the surgery for a few days and monitored the extent of the haemorrhage. the good news that came during the following days that the intercerebral haemorrhage was not spreading paled in comparison with the fact that there were virtually no motor control on his left side of the body and he was responding less and less to stimulations and by saturday 17^th.november, he was virtually in a semi-comatose state and looked like he was sleeping the whole day. and more and more drugs were required to keep his upwardly spiralling blood pressure at bay.

on sunday morning 18^th.november 2007, the neurologist informed us that there was not much choice left but surgery. while the haemorrhage hasn't been spreading, he suspected that the cranial pressure is excessively high in tandem with the spiralling blood pressure which was the in-built bodily mechanism in keeping up with the increasing cranial pressure in order to supply the brain with its much-needed blood to carry its food and oxygen. given that we had not much choice left, we consented and he was wheeled into the operating theatre at 1pm for the estimated 4 to 5 hours operation which carries a 20% risk (as opposed to a 10% risk for an open heart surgery according to the neuro, can't exactly google so we had to take in what he said at face value)

my heart nearly dropped when my father's name was called out at 4.30 pm, a wee bit earlier then expected, hugely relieved when the surgeon declared that the surgery was a successful one. looking for any positive signs, we were overjoyed that his (good) right hand which were void of any movement before the surgery twitched.

however, up to now, we are still waiting in vain for him to regain consciousness. unfortunately, i am running out of annual leave and i have to start working again tomorrow, very very reluctantly. i pray to god that i would be able to see my father's eyes when i go back to the hospital this coming weekend.

all these events reminded me so much of how fragile we humans really are. we could be running a marathon one day and be a complete vegetable the day after as easy as a flick of a switch. in the case of my father whom i could never measure up as a father being one myself, i had never imagined him to be in that sorrowful state and the optimistic me had always imagined him to live like his brother whom he had lost 3 weeks ago at the tender age of 82. we humans can only plan and there would always be the higher powers to decide if things will go according to plan. all we can do now is just pray and hope for the best outcome. inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raa ji'un.

photolog

2007-11-07T12:12:00.000+08:00

i am really not in the mood to write anything interesting so i will just dump these photos into the much-needed updates of the blog.

some photos of athyra

[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2247/1891221361_21456de78c_m.jpg[/img]
[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2196/1892068882_35aef3152c_m.jpg[/img]

a rare ppg photo
[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2230/1891236819_ad39caabbd_m.jpg[/img]

alyssa's taska's graduation day

the ever-present plastic smile
[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2204/1892104664_61fd677d42_m.jpg[/img]

the rare natural face
[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2228/1892097010_74dd566116_m.jpg[/img]

amelya the most overdressed audience
[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2052/1891250285_d7db9d79eb_m.jpg[/img]

the 2 princesses
[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2402/1891256721_81e8cbb237_m.jpg[/img]

alyssa the storyteller (cerita semut dan belalang)
[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2404/1891244459_1b252ebe26_m.jpg[/img]

alyssa the pelajar harapan
[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2210/1892062862_b637fe1e12_m.jpg[/img]

one of the prizes for pelajar harapan taken by incumbent
[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2002/1891277801_516c02e7b2_m.jpg[/img]

saved by the bell

2007-11-02T12:03:00.000+08:00

her mobile phone, actually.

today is 2^nd. november. not a significant date? to me it should be. it's a day before my (counting fingers) seventh anniversary. and yes, i wholesomely totally, totally forgot about it yesterday.

as i was snuggling into bed minutes before midnight last night, my journey towards lala land was interrupted by the persistent beeps from her mobile. though one of her well-established job function at home is as my fail-proof biological alarm clock, she was not moved by the beeping phone so i had to get out of the comfortable bed to silence it. and there it was, clearly visible with the blinding backlight in the dark room: [b]Seventh Anniversary[/b]. she must have set that well in advance, a function that i even have with my very "advanced" up-to-date phone that i obviously didn't remember to do hehe.

so, what do i get for somebody whom is home-bound on a shoe-string budget? thought of getting her a long stalk of rose, cliché as it may sounds, it is something that i haven't done for a long time. what colour would be it be? i'll go0gle later for the right colour.

-----------------------------

and by the way, i finally succumbed to the social pressure and are already in the process of procuring a maid. hopefully everything goes as planned and she'll give me more quality time with the children and lastchaos. and she'll take care of athyra as well as we hoped she'd be.

malaysian blog open house proposal

2007-10-29T14:39:00.000+08:00

just in case you didn't realise, i submitted an entry in the malaysian blog here. go give your feedback on my proposal :)

raya and more!

2007-10-29T14:30:00.000+08:00

in case you were wondering if we managed to beraya sakan before the baby came, we DID. well not exactly beraya sakan if you asked me because even though this raya would be the longest break that i've taken so far (in total it will be about 2 weeks off, i wonder if the people in the office still remember my name when i got back), we went back to the hometown for only 4 days. ok, we love live to the max but don't want to risk it too much don't you.

if you don't know what raya is, you can read more about it here. it's a big celebration among the muslims here in malaysia.

yes, me and wifey got to eat so much lemang and rendang and ketupat for raya. if you don't know how a lemang is made, there's one photo of it. we did risk it a bit because on raya eve, wifey said that she felt some contractions already but while we could go back to the city on the day itself, the contraction didn't feel that bad during the day so we continued on until the second day of raya (sunday 14^th. before heading. plus her obigyn was also on raya leave until thursday 18^th. and frankly i wouldn't know where should the baby decided to come earlier.

so, we went back to the city very early indeed on sunday the 18^th. considering that the monday and tuesday are still a public holiday. we had no prior experience of rayaing in the city that we were at loss of what to do. we even thought of going to one private tv station's open house on that monday but shelved the plan because it finished too "early". even our uncles and aunties who were residing in the city went back to the hometown so we stayed at home mostly and did some minor shopping for the the baby's last minute preparation and stock up on dry food which was also difficult because most of the little shops that we normally patronised were also closed while praying all the time that the baby would at least stay in the tummy until thursday for the obigyn to come back from her raya holiday as well.

here's one raya photo for you, with a purple theme, of course! what else would it be?

[IMG]http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o67/suhairims/misc/blogs/raya07/FamilyRaya07.jpg[/IMG]

finally, the long-awaited thursday the 18^th. arrived and we paid a visit to the obigyn. and right on cue, she said that wifey is already dilated by 4 cm and will be admitted directly to deliver on the same day. i must it was one of the easiest helped by the fact that she took epidural (she insisted on trying one even though it has been foreseen that it wouldn't be long that she had to "suffer" because even at 4 cm, no contractions were felt whatsoever) and finally, athyra (final spelling, unlike the name i spelt in the text messages keeping the 'y' convention with alyssa and amelya) came out at 5pm and i this is the first photo i took of her.

[IMG]http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o67/suhairims/misc/blogs/raya07/modified.jpg[/IMG]

and the powerpuff girls are complete. she is definitely the champion among the 3 in terms of birth-weight at 3.68kg, hair thickness and her latest passion, crying her hearts out when she found out that she has nothing in her mouth when she wakes up. i have yet to be able to take her photos with eyes wide open so i guess this one should do for now.

[IMG]http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o67/suhairims/misc/blogs/raya07/athyra_second.jpg[/IMG]

i thank god for listening much to our prayers, giving us a healthy baby and timing couldn't even be more perfect than that for almost everybody. we are happy that we had plenty of time to prepare for the baby, the obigyn is happy that she did not decide to come out in the wee hours in the morning and all my family members are too because it was almost weekend and for those who were not residing in the city, that weekend would be the time for the home-town people to come over to the city to visit their relatives there as well. and to cap things off, another record set by the delivery was that wifey was already discharged on the day after only after spending one night in the hospital for the delivery. and thanks to auntie olab for the visit, present and duit raya. what else can you ask for? she even washed my dishes and cleaned my floor, hehehehe.

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wikied athyra and found this.

easy does it

2007-10-25T09:22:00.000+08:00

first day at the office after two weeks leave. thousands of e-mails, letters and alerts to be cleared. need to crank up those rusty cogs and wheels. feels like a clueless prick. eyes hurts due to the late night last night, thanks to lastchaos. what do i do? submit an entry and add another alert for you people, hehehe

will get there. will get there. it's hard to live in a real after living a fantasy la la land for 2 weeks.

selamat hari raya aidil fitri semua orang

2007-10-09T09:41:00.000+08:00

to all the visitors here i would like to wish:

[SIZE="5"]Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri[/SIZE]

why so early of raya mood, you might ask. because today is my last day working before raya. i'm taking the rest of the week off (and seriously thinking of even taking half day today) plus the whole week off next week... huhuhu! [I]raya sakan![/I]

and guess what? maybe even more off days expected thereafter. the baby is expected to be on the 20^th and i'm really wishing it'd be on the 20^th. so that we'd have a [I]sakan raya[/I] instead of a high-speed car chase scene at the highway.

dengan yang demikian, sepert lazimnya, saya ingin mintak maaf banyak-banyak zahir dan batin kepada semua orang. kalau ada salah dan silap meninggalkan komen yang tidak wajar dan ada yang berasa hati, silalah maafkan. saya pun dah maafkan semua komen² yang tidak membina yang telah saya terima :laugh:

*break into raya tune* Selamat Hari Raya, Hari Untuk Kita Bersukaria, Selamat Hari Ucapan, Moga Girang Hingga Sampai Tahun Depan, Selamaaaat Haaaari Raaayaaaa!

tags of 4

2007-10-05T16:40:00.000+08:00

hehehe. if you're thinking that this is the tag of 5 currently reticulating in efx2blogs, no it's the tag of four that i have to do first coz i got tagged by this earlier than the 5 tags by our qisst. ok?! will do that one later don't worry err che' chomeyll and cikbee.

4 things that scare me

women in the mornings when they wake up! hehehehe
lizards crawling up upon my arms
airborne cockroaches
stray cats getting trapped in my house while nobody's home and pee/ poop in the house

4 people who make me laugh

myself sometimes
the car mechanics while looking at the bills
my daughters, in their good days
wifey, when she's rolling her eyes at my antics

4 things i love

love thyselves
god, parents, family and those
definitely not the car mechanics
my pc at home that had served me unquestioningly while i play the online game

4 things i hate

i do hate myself sometimes you know
have to relieve those bowel motions desperately despite being in not so conducive toilets
red traffic lights all the way home
flat tyre or stranded

4 things i don't understand

myself can eh?
women
cats
dogs

4 things on my desk

buku kod etika
my staff card
some strewn papers/ un-filed documents
the pc's monitor

4 things i'm doing now

not being entirely truthful
talking to a sulking wife
sratching my head
sulking myself

4 things i want to do before i die

all the religious obligations
live a debt-free life
dentures maybe, if i live long enough
die before wifey

4 things to describe my personalities

male lion: sleeping all the time
cockles: grinning for many hours of the day
polar bear: huggable?
panda bear: dark circles, clear sign of lack of sleep

4 things i cannot do

dance, thank god you've been spared the embarrassment of not being my dance partner
sing, ok i can a bit but not in a way that can impress the girl next door but i think much better tone control than my neighbour hehehe.
get below 70kgs, not that i've really tried
play field games like soccer, rugby or hockey. court games ok

4 people i want to tag
this one i want to tiru qisst

first blogger to leave comment
second blogger to leave comment
third blogger to leave comment
fourth blogger to leave comment

with the exception of qisst, of course

love me for who I am ……

2007-10-04T16:46:00.000+08:00

Love me for who I am ……

********************************************************************************************

One evening last week, my girlfriend and I were getting into bed.

Well, the passion starts to heat up, and she eventually says, "I don't feel like it, I just want you to hold me."

I said, "WHAT??!! What was that?!"

So she says the words that every boyfriend on the planet dreads to hear...

"You're just not in touch with my emotional needs as a woman enough for me to satisfy your physical needs as a man."

She responded to my puzzled look by saying, "Can't you just love me for who I am and not what I do for you in the bedroom?"

Realizing that nothing was going to happen that night, I went to sleep.

The very next day I opted to take the day off of work to spend time with her.
We went out to a nice lunch and then went shopping at a big, big unnamed department store. I walked around with her while she tried on several different very expensive outfits. She couldn't decide which one to take, so I told her we'd just buy them all. She wanted new shoes to compliment her new clothes, so I said, "Lets get a pair for each outfit."

We went on to the jewelry department where she picked out a pair of diamond earrings. Let me tell you... she was so excited. She must have thought I was one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because she asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn't even know how to play tennis.

I think I threw her for a loop when I said, "That's fine, honey." She was almost nearing sexual satisfaction from all of the excitement. Smiling with excited anticipation, she finally said, "I think this is all dear, let's go to the cashier."

I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, "No honey, I don't feel like it."

Her face just went completely blank as her jaw dropped with a baffled, "WHAT?"

I then said, "Honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while. You're just not in touch with my financial needs as a man enough for me to satisfy your shopping needs as a woman."

And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, "Why can't you just love me for who I am and not for the things I buy you?"

Apparently I'm not having sex tonight either....but at least that bitch knows I'm smarter than her.

Alright girls. Repost this if you agree. Hell even if you disagree, repost it.

Men, repost this because you have balls.

----------------------------------------------------------

[I]i'm not reposting this as a proof that i have balls. i just think it's funny. and pretty smart guy![/I]

rezeki (bequeaths?) in ramadhan

2007-10-04T14:12:00.000+08:00

i know i have 2 tags to do which comes with numbers 4's and 5's but i'd like to put this much delayed entry first, can eh?

if you were wondering why my blog has been lacking photos that i've been capturing lately, it is mainly due to the fact that the video camera that i bought early october last year (which i am still serving the 24-month interest period by the way similar to the one pictured on the left) has died on me for a very long time ago. the last time i used it was when i got a cracked windshield en route to kluang for my cousin's wedding and i can't exactly remember whether that was 2, 3 or 4 months ago.

no it didn't die a "shocking" violent fate befallen unto dropped items or had any dysfunctional parts due to excessive handlings by my two daughters. it died a slow and natural death of battery drain and was in a prolonged nap like sleeping beauty because the charger could not be found anywhere. the fact that the trip to kluang also included a stopover at my parents', i was at loss to think of the exact location of the last time i used the charger among the three separate venues inclusive of my house.

with the raya and baby impending arrival, it would be silly to have spent (or still spending coz interest-free period is still ongoing) that obscene amount of money and did not get to capture those occasions, because that was the sole purpose of buying it in the first place. so, last weekend, i was all set of giving up on looking for it and was finally going to the shop to get another one.

we planned to look for it on sunday afternoon last weekend at the lengkungan, the place where we bought the videocam. in the morning, i was doing some lightweight cleaning in the lounge room which involved some dusting, collecting strewn papers and pamphlets to be organised for recycling purposes.

there is this little basket in the living room which serves no purpose other than being a supposedly-temporary holding area for little messes and magazines when clearing up the coffee table. somehow as i was membebeling about the magazines being in the temporary place for many moons, i lifted up the magazines to the placed into their rightful places (either recycled or reorganised onto the bookshelf) and viola! the charger is just curling pretty underneath the magazines like a little phyton sleeping with a full tummy. suddenly, my videocam is full of life again and those kids certainly enjoyed the session afterwards looking at the 500+ photos that we have taken throughout the entire life of the videocam.

and all i could say is alhamdulillah. after those months only to find it on the very last day before we were to buy a redundant but surely expensive accessory to the videocam owing to the brand name, it is one of those little things that we sometimes forgot to thank god for the rezeki that He showered us.

this will do, for now

2007-10-02T01:36:00.000+08:00

found out when i was clearing my alerts today that the old style commenting facilities where you can actually see the entries and other people's comments when trying to comment on a post have been implemented by some people. so, full of envy, i browsed through the leaders page looking (and expecting) a simple way of implementing those. so, the next best thing would be to install a new template that will implement that automatically. and viola! all the little customisations that i made previously just vanished into thin air obviously.

furthermore, i found that the right-side column is waaaay too small to my liking. spent the rest of the hour combing the html codes only to find something remotely legible to possible to modify the column width. suspected that it has something to do with the td.rightside thingy finally after several swears and curses. but somehow the very very thin right-side column just simply wouldn't budge!

after trying for an hour and beginning to realise i might have to live with the thin right column which is so not like me, i reinstalled the shoutbox and somehow, magically it expanded. needless to say since it's almost 2 am already, i don't have the luxury to even dwell into the aesthetics part so i guess my blog will stay in this very basic, boring and colourless format for now. at least i got the right-side column to be generously proportioned, right?

and guess what? only after i submitted this entry, and tried to post a testing comment, it does not come with the inline form or whatever they call it as stated by lollies in the shoutbox! damn! well it's too late and i'm going to bed. tomorrow then, bah!

balik kampung! yeay!! yeay!! yeay!!

2007-09-28T01:00:00.001+08:00

since it's already 1 in the morning and i can't exactly submit an entry tomorrow in the office, i'll do this quickly then, on-the-fly.

sounds like a happy happy title but i'm really hoping it wouldn't be a wishful thinking only for the raya period. wifey went for a check up 2 weeks ago (i know, i know that long ago) and guess what? the baby is already engaged! edd (estimated date of delivery for the uninitiated) is supposed to be 20<sup>th.</sup> october (ok that's only one week after raya) and she/ he (most probably she) can't wait to come out? alaaa please laa my little baby. give me a chance to eat to my heart's content all those cholesterol-brimming home-made lemangs and oil and fats laden rendang please!!! and what should i do with those fireworks that i've spent some good money on? don't go out yet, please my dear baby. i wouldn't fancy celebrating raya in the hospital.

which brings out the other question? should i balik kampung (go back to the hometown) at all, considering that the baby is engaged already and raya is like 2 weeks from now? historically, both alyssa and amelya were induced so not much history there. alyssa however came about around the edd time when the water bag broke and not much choice there but to be induced.

my only feeble justification for balik kampung this time around has always been that the three lane highway has been completed all the way in addition to the short 6km dual lane carriageway all the way to in front of my parents' so hopefully, hopefully we won't be seeing those 3 4 hours of horrible jam every raya balik kampung period for a journey that would normally take about an hour and a half. plus, there are hospitals along the way to deliver the baby right? hmmph! tak mo kawan...

need to pay the fitrah (alms) for 4, for now. even that wouldn't be a problem should the baby come when we were in me1aka. i can just pay that to my father whom is collecting in the hometown anyway.

so, should i? should i? i know seremban also one private hospital beside the highway what..... huuwaaaa!

g00gle reader unofficial tutorials

2007-09-23T02:19:00.001+08:00

*write entry! write entry! write entry!* ok doing well so far...

hah! it takes such great willpower to be on the pc not playing the lastchaos but writing an entry instead here at home :D. so here it goes.

if you were wondering, no i am unfortunately not a shareholder of the internet behemoth to be promoting the use of their reader. not that i didn't dream of buying one when they went public a few years ago. but at usd70+ per share, i could buy the whole lot of penny stock in my local bourse. plus i'm not really into the equity market anyway.

it is funny to be somebody who is almost a virgin in a rss feeder software to be writing about one. but as far as my knowledge goes, there are two types of readers available to be used nowadays. one is a local software based to be installed into the local pc and it will pull all the subscription information from the net once the pc got online. the second type is the web-based one which normally wouldn't need any installation and g00gle reader falls into the second category. the obvious advantage of a web-based one is that you can access it from anywhere and your subscription will not be tied to a local pc only. another nifty feature of this reader is that you don't even need to the website or blogsite that you would like to subscribe to and can do it internally without leaving the reader.

for g00gle reader, no installation is required and all you need is just a valid g00gle username/ password used for gmail or any other g00gle applications in the net. if you haven't got one, give me a buzz and i can use up my 50 invitations that has never been sent to anybody. oh yes, i nearly forgot! the url to go is http://www.google.com/reader

here is how it looks like once you've logged in. ok not exactly true. yours would be totally void of subscription of course. this is how mine looks like.

if you are familiar with the gmail concept of tagging, it is an obvious and simple way of "grouping" your items together. rather than file and folder concept applied by most of file management systems of linux, mac or windows where it is modelled on physical concepts of documents and filing, tagging systems means the same document or item can have multiple tags and will appear in all groups when the selected tags is chosen. confused? let me give you an example with my little nifty subscription here. say i have yeop's and lollie's subscription tagged as blogspotter and i also have lollies subscription tagged as efx2ers, so lollies subscription will appear in when both blogspotters and efx2ers groups are chosen. still confused? try it out then you'll see.

for blogging sites (blogspot and wordpress), blog alerts subscription can be added internally by using that add subscription link highlighted in the screenshot by simply adding the address (works even without the http) such as blogname.blogspot.com or blogname.wordpress.com or myfriendurl.whatever.com. you can rename and group whatever subscriptions that you have to your heart's content to be more palatable to your own eyes.

for comment alerts, it is only slightly trickier. the same add subscription link will still be used though. for blogs hosted in blogspot and using the built-in commenting tools, the url will be blogname.blogspot.com/

feeds/comments/default. but for those people who are not using the default commenting facility of blogspot like our yeop there, you can either jot down the rss feed address while hovering on the link in their blogsite and re-entering the address in g00gle reader or the easier way would be just click on the link and you'll be presented an option of how you'd like to subscribe and please choose g00gle reader if you would like to use it, right?

for wordpressers (the name given by themselves), the url for comment subscription would be blogname.wordpress.com/comments/feed. and voila! you've got yourself all your subscriptions in the reader and no more excuse of not knowing whether your friends blogs have been updated or that little smart comments that you left in their blogs have been answered.

enjoy...

be positive!

2007-09-21T01:00:00.000+08:00

positive thinking, easier said than done. but not impossible definitely. and what could be anything positive that could be coming out of this efx2 downfall, you might ask.

for me, i've learnt to utilise the g00gle reader to keep up with bodies of stars scattered across the blog universe after the efx2 big bang! thankfully, whether they realised it or not, most of the people that i normally get in touch with within the efx2 community with the subscription facilities have built-in rss capabilities in their new blog hosts. initially i thought i would only be able to keep up with their new blog alerts because that is the most obvious way to subscribe to the rss service. but voila! thanks to <a href=http://hafiz238.blogspot.com>hafiz</a> i found out that i can even keep up with the comments posted on each of their entries like the little subscription utilities in our old efx2 service. so now, i've arranged everything nicely into the reader that i am able to keep track of the alerts as easy as it was during the heyday of efx2.

the bonus points? i can even easily monitor the ones i normally patronise outside of the efx2 blogosphere as well, most definitely. so, my little subscription facilities, though not as nicely integrated as the internal service of efx2 even has its own positive points, like previewing the entry without actually going into the website.

so, there you go. again, i would like to reiterate the whole point of this entry; some good will always come out of any mishaps or calamities, no matter what they are.

our pride and joy?

2007-09-07T12:25:00.000+08:00

when i checked my own blog, it seems that the last entry i posted was like 2 weeks ago. no, i am not that busy and i'm sure you know that because you have seen my comments splattered all over other people's blogs. it is just that currently my life is going through that phase that has nothing interesting to be shared with all of you. interesting enough for me that i don't have to peel myself of the bed reluctantly everyday but i doubt those things would make anybody curious, happy or wiser.

that is until the kompeni published this news item in our intranet website. i am not sure whether i am jumping the gun or revealing any p&c info of the kompeni but the models are on public display in our headquarters anyway so i don't think it is such a bad thing to be published here. however, if you get a phone call from me looking for a job after this or put up a job search entry, you know why that would be.

what i am talking about is our new headquarters building as pictured in the artist illustration, to be built within the same proximity that we are now. we are talking about a 36-storey structure to be nestled within the same compound in which at the moment has an 11-floor building as the highest! and to stress the point further, it is in addition, not replacing any of them. what will be displaced would be some very very low density semi-detached staff quarters which includes the building that houses amelya's nursery.

should i be concerned? of course i am. because if you work in this vicinity and trying to beat the punch card or go home during the rush hour, it is simply helter skelter. few minutes before the 8am are always the most treacherous where you would see any clerical or admin stuff, executives, managers and senior managers alike became half breeds of f1 drivers or motogp riders and the crews of the flying dutchmen, in a trance-like state rushing to swipe that silly card which bears not your worst ever photograph before the dreaded display of 8:01.

while not as bad as the morning sessions, the gasoline burnt by those queueing cars to go home everday should be enough to light 1000 houses for one night. add some heavy rain into the formula and you'll get an interesting mix of wet bike riders, car drivers and umbrellaed jaywalkers all jostling for the same, limited exit paths.

so, imagine those multiplied by ten and you'll see why i am a little concerned with the new kid on the block, planned to be fully completed and occupied by 2010. hopefully the relevant people have done their paperwork and have some decency of thoughts to us the commoner who has another life at home and don't spend the whole time in the office.

don't worry, be happy!

2007-08-22T10:05:00.000+08:00

first of all, apologies for not being able to visit any of efx2 pages or even reply the comments that you beautiful people left in my blog. either my proxy or efx2 server doesn't like me very much. i can't even get into any single page without waiting for gazillion of hours and patience is one thing that i'm severely lacking when it comes the internet and or any other IT equipments in general. if fact, it would be a miracle if i could submit this entry.

i must've woken up on the wrong side of the bed (even though it was the same one as yesterday or many days before) because a lot of things that could go wrong went wrong. initially, when i went down to clear up the last few remaining dishes, there was a very scared feline that was running around the house looking for an exit. opened up all doors and windows but the horrified cat just could not think straight and kept bumping into furnitures and brick walls instead. after several minutes of running around, i finally managed to corner the cat and picked it up. the worst thing that you could to a terrified cat. it was gnawing my fingers like it was enjoying its best catch of the day and unfortunately the f word slipped out of my mouth and i seriously hoped that alyssa who was running around with me did not register that into her fairly impressive long term memory.

when that was all settled, i went back to the business as usual routine. i was thinking of sending the car for a regular maintenance service which will also provide me the opportunity to fix the non-functional spare key. i remembered that i stashed the key somewhere around the house so that i could easily find it should the need arises but ironically, i just couldn't remember where that place is. spent a few precious minutes looking for the spare key before finally giving up and postponing the plan for the car service until tomorrow so that i can look for the key tonight.

as i was sitting down to wear my shoes, a loud ripping sound suddenly came from the worst place possible. checked it out and found a good and airy centimetres of split pants. and like most of the people i know, we don't exactly get ready to the office with hours to spare and i simply didn't have the luxury of time to let wifey sewed it up or went upstairs and ironed another one. moreover, it happened in the most obscured place possible so unless i'll be walking around upside down eagle spread the whole day, nobody would notice anyway. so, i'm feeling a little airy today and please don't ask me why i would be sitting with the most civilised poise for the whole duration of the day.

if you're thinking that i would be grumpy with such a bad start of the day, i can tell you that you are very wrong! despite all that, i'm still happy. happy, happy, happy!

persons behind the avatars

2007-08-20T14:32:00.000+08:00

warning, this could be long! proceed with care

before i stand to lose the last few remaining minuscule readers of this semi-stasis blog, i am going to submit a "properly" written entry. but what do i write about when all my life nowadays revolves on lastchaos? about the game, naturally.

and before you hit that 'x' mark thinking that this is about another video/ computer game review, don't! because this is not about a game review. it is the human side of the game and somehow, the wonders of human nature never fails to amaze me, more so when they are safely obscured behind the avatars of the game.

for the uninitiated, mmorpg games stands for multi-media multi-player online role playing game. while you could still play the lone ranger and be oblivious to your surroundings while playing the game, interactions between players are encouraged in the forms of added bonuses, complementary skills and powers between characters to coerce the players to play together. so, what do you get when you team up humans with superpowers to be playing together with practically nothing to lose (especially since it's a free-for-all kind of game?

the first interesting type are the ones whom have serious inferiority complex issues. i am talking about those higher level players that are virtually invincible to the much lower level players and just go around killing lower level players senselessly without any much logical reasons and nothing to gain except bad reputation. that's why the only reason i could think of is serious inferiority complex issues. when one person whom doesn't have anything to be proud of in real life are given powers beyond their imagination in the virtual world, what do they do with it? establish their superiority towards the lesser beings would be a logical step. imagine what would happen if those kind of people are given real responsibilities in real life?

as the cliche goes, there are these group of high-level, good samaritans as well to provide the check and balance. these defender of faiths are the ones that hunt for those inferiority-complexed scums and provide a carefree environment for those lower level players devoid of those void-in-the-donkey's-behind players, also with no apparent tangible gains except for goodwill. doesn't it say a lot about the player behind the avatars?

while theoretically avatars are supposed to provide a gender-free, race-free, age-free and discrimination-free environment, as you all know they don't. the game servers are located independently both in the you-es-ay and bolehland but i have found one s1ngaporean guy whom had relocated from the you-es-ay server to the one in bolehland just to feel closer to home. interactions play a vital role in the game and and when you have to communicate with other people, as always, language barrier notwithstanding, people tend to feel easier and be more open with their own kindred. even though he reaffirmed that the social network in the you-es-ay servers are a lot more helpful than the ones he found in bolehland where people there sometimes go to great lengths to helping him out instead of generally a more kiasu (selfish) crowd at home whom would just ignore him many times he was asking around. reminds me of that hujan emas di negeri orang, hujan batu di negeri sendiri malay proverb (sorry can't think of the equivalent one in english).

when you are dealing a lot with teenagers, those raging hormones definitely provide an interesting mix into play. despite being busy slaying monsters everywhere, believe it or not, you have some of these teenagers suggesting directly or indirectly of different kind of activities that would involve a different kind of excitement. usually, i would just dismiss all these as background chatter but there was this one time that it had became so unbearable that i had to make it stop. not that i'm completely sterilised and became oblivious to that kind of excitement but i was more interested in avoiding her to quit the game altogether and depriving me of the crucial support line that i have been enjoying in her company. oh no! now i beginning to sound like an old man.

i have a lot more pointers to say but i think this should be long enough. hopefully it's enough to keep my readers coming to this blog, or NOT!

jazz i am

2007-08-17T13:18:00.000+08:00

just one of those silly quizzes that i got from a hard-core transformer fan, my normal supplier of a much more "inspiring" stuff whom is floored by a dental surgery, resulting in a much more subdued e-mail garbage.

I AM

61%

JAZZ Take the Transformers Quiz

another gift!

2007-08-14T13:56:00.000+08:00

please excuse my lack of updates. too busy levelling up four characters and chatting with teenagers in the game :D.

anyway, i should have submitted this post last week but ... (no excuse forthcoming). the rezeki that came upon this blogging world seems to be very murah for me. who can claim to have received something from two people that they have never met within one year? i can.

last week, i received another gift from makteh for leaving a comment at the right time as described by her here. so, i would like to say:

Thank you mak teh

the acar buah is nice. sorry no photo. gambar hiasan is the one nicked from makteh's blog. it came by post to my office last week in a bubble-wrapped parcel. my kids and i had fun popping up the bubbles also, hehehe. that's a bonus.

fierymaiden!

2007-08-06T23:41:00.000+08:00

"o fierymaiden! whence art thou'?" uttered the weary knight ShiningArmour "for i fear we are kindred spirits"

i was tagged by yeop the cyborg with his fire tag. the tag says:

Just write ONE sentence with words or even only one word related to "fire" and post it (can be in any language).

Then tag as many people you think reads your blog.

tagging time. of course you know whom you are, the ones reading my blog. since this is a one line tag only, i am therefore tagging everybody who's reading this, hehehe.

--------------------------

you are forgiven for not understanding the sentence at all, for only the fierymaiden a.k.a primarybasic (who seems to have only a header in her blog, not sure why) would understand what i am talking about. unless you are also one of those whom has been sucked into the lastchaos mmorpg game introduced by pb. people, meet my latest cyber world alter ego, a knight that goes by the name of ShiningArmour. but in all those endless hours i spent playing, i have only bumped into her once!

did i tell you why i don't want to play any games nowadays? ok, i am going to tell you again anyway. because if i were to play games, i would be that obsessive, compulsive and megalomaniac game player. i would stop at nothing. hence, no quality time with family, no putting daughter to bed, no household chores, no 8-hour sleep everyday and until recently, no new blog posts! i am hoping i'll be coming to my senses soon enough (and hopefully this post will be the starting point).

here is another snapshot of my knight in action slaying a great horned beast.

-----------------------------

i would also like to use this opportunity to declare officially that i now have an additional nagger in the house. while i have been living with one (and getting use to the nags) for the past 7 years, another one has apparently blossomed to pick up the necessary skill in no time.

apart from the usual nightly nags before she goes to bed with:

ayah, bila nak tidur ni? hari-hari nak main game. hari-hari nak main game. kakak nak tidur dengan ayah. nanti esok ayah and mama lambat pergi kerja. ayah tidur lambat nanti esok mengantuk (dad! when are you going to bed? do you have to play games everyday? why don't you put me to bed anymore? if you sleep late everyday, you'll be tired tomorrow and wake up late and we'll end up being late getting to school and work);

she surprised me with another one today.

but let me give you a little background story. when you have been waiting in a car for an hour, with two very boisterous children, one perfectly healthy and one is coughing non-stop with shortness of breath, and upchucking the whole bottle of milk and her lunch onto her clothes and all over the seat, after issuing a crystal-clear instruction to come home slightly earlier so that we could bring the ailing one to the clinic, patience would naturally run on the lighter side.

so, when the awaited one finally arrived (with a good excuse, mind you), i was delivering my usual sermon when she suddenly interrupted with her very loud voice even though she would usually pretend to not listening and watch the movie or being more boisterous than ever.

ayah! hari-hari ayah nak marah je mama tu. cubalah ayah sayang sikit mama tu. ni hari-hari asyik nak marah je (daddy! why do you have to argue everyday with mama? why don't you show a little bit of compassion to her?)

well, kids are always exaggerating, of course. it's not everyday and i was not even raising my voice! if they say that your children are your mirror image, it's definitely wifey's and not mine :p.

needless to say, my sermon screeched to a halt and we ended up with sheepish laughs en route home.

mini me! (not quite)

2007-07-27T23:57:00.000+08:00

on friday 22^nd. july, i brought alyssa to the hospital mata to see an ophthalmologist. i have always suspected alyssa of not being able to see clearly because she would never last more than 10 minutes when i asked her to read anything before she gets teary-eyed and scratches her eyes.

after waiting for half a day at the hospital, we came back with a prescription of glasses. my suspicion were confirmed because alyssa has astigmatism of 2.25/1.50 on her left/right eyes. blame it on my gene? :rolleyes: maybe :D

anyway, we went to get her the glasses during that weekend and this is the result.

and here is a photo of my daughter and my "son" :D

size definitely matters

2007-07-24T15:52:00.000+08:00

i am not sure whether more males or females would be interested in this news. but like it said in the news article, about 70% of women in the uk are wearing a wrong size. now instead of having to comprehend inches and alphabets, females have to contend with even more permutations? won't that lead to more mistakes in choosing size since, correct me if i were wrong, they can't exactly try it on when buying due to hygiene purposes.

but, as an "interested party", i guess now it is more difficult to impress women with the skills of guessing the right sizes because now we also have to contend with more variations, hence more likely to get it wrong.

i wonder why a developing nation, while a huge one at it too, to come up with the new standards. could be because of this, in keeping up with "burgeoning" demands?

i am also wondering if it is possible to submit a proposal to our women minister or standards departments to set up a similar research centre over here in the country. that would definitely helps alleviate this problem and will surely generate a lot of interests , one way or another. which brings up the question, what kind of qualifications required to take up such research?

not bald, thinning!

2007-07-18T12:35:00.000+08:00

just a photo i nicked off the kompeni's intranet website about the event described by gartblue here. showing off my half-week-old stubbles and thinning hair with amelya looking on curiously. in the background, mr gartblue was busy with gartblue, small enough (lepas ni bole belanja makan) to be hidden behind aliya in the photo.

p/s: btw, the title is quoted from a line by king neptune in the mr sepan movie, hehehe.