A Rare Post About Work

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

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

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.

1. 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.


2. 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.


3. 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.


4. 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.


5. 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?

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

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:

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


2. 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).


3. 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.


4. 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.


5. 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.


6. 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

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

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.