Intimidated guys?! 

6 Degrees of Separation

Some of you who know me may wonder about the pictures I just posted of my friends. Let me explain the connection.

You see, Darrell is a long time friend who I have known since maybe 4 years old maybe 5. We knew each other from Labuan and I still remember going to Chinese kindergarden with him, we both gave up on learning Chinese, went to St Anne's Kindergarden, then to primary school together. I don't think we were in the same class all the way but we were good friends. We share a common friend by the name of Nelly. Like Darrell and I, Nelly too went through the same footsteps and I am very sure that Nelly and Darrell ended up classmates for a few years before Darrell's family got relocated to Miri.

Many many years later, my family and I got relocated to Miri as well. This happened when I was 15 (right after my form 3). By then, Darrell and his brother had already gone to New Zealand to further their studies. So we didn't quite continue our friendship but knew where each other were from time to time (I think). I went to school at SMK Lutong where I made new friends and enjoyed my 2 years there.

Many many many years later, Shien Wei and I (of course long long story in between) went to New Zealand in May 2003. We met up with Darrell in Auckland. At that point, we had not met for donkey years. Darrell brought us to this divine chocolate cafe and we got to catch up. Guess what?! We found out that again, we share more common friends. Most of my Miri friends were classmates with Darrell before he left for New Zealand. We were both shocked that we knew so many of the same people (get it?). That really got our evening exciting (not that it was boring before). It was like... "Hey, I had a friend in Miri named Ruben..." and I will go like "Say who? Ruben? I know that guy...". And the rest needs no further explanation.

And when I came back from the Kiwi land, I called on my Miri friends and mention Darrell, they went, "How on earth do you know Darrell. He left before you came to Miri". Hahaha...

Darrell came back to Malaysia for a visit in May so I arranged for 2 tiny separate gatherings. One for Labuan friends and another for Miri friends. Such reunion is fun and is worth working on.

So that's the connection my friends. It is indeed a small world. Maybe these pictures will now trigger more connections.

Poor Nicole

Have you ever heard or experienced 8 maids in one and half years? Well now you know that such problems do exist and it isn't something you heard from a friend who heard from another friend who heard from her aunt who heard from her niece! You are hearing it from me and better still, you can read it all from Nicole's blog.

Bear in mind that Nicole has a pair of twins who are nearly Jia Wen's age and are at a stage where they are running about ALL day long and demanding at the same time. She is now without a maid and after all that she's gone through, she is thinking that life may just be a lot easier without "useless" help. I agree with her but I do think she needs help. Maybe having cleaners come to the house a few times a week will be good but I think she will need a full-time maid or she won't ever get to go to the bathroom to shower, can't even go shit man!

Nicole dear, I feel your anger, your frustrations, your exhaustion. You may not feel the exhaustion now but you will in no time. So my advice is, take things easy. If the kids don't want to eat, leave them be. If they don't want to sleep, leave them be. If they want to watch TV all day long and if that keeps them in one place, leave them be. I myself am trying not to stress myself with so little things like this. It's better that way, both for me and for Jia Wen. No point forcing them to do things they don't want to do and at the end of the day, you are the one who will be angry, upset and frustrated. So no point. They are at the age where they cannot yet understand why you want them to sleep, why you want them to eat.

If you need help dear, just ring. I know I live quite far now but I can still help. Take care.

Darrell, Sashi, Ruben and Joe (Miri friends) 

Me and Nelly, my best friend! 

Me, Darrell and Nelly. Darrell is one of our oldest friend from kindy time. He was here in May. 

Isn't she lovely? 

Smile 

Mummy, where are you? 

Look what mummy did to my hair! 

Check out my hairdo for the day 

Sweeter 

So sweet 

Wow! 

This is my chin 

This is my ear 

This is my nose 

This is my eye 

There's powder in my nose Mummy. 

Doesn't this picture look like it was taken sometime in the 50's? 

Jia Wen lazing with her grandma 

Check-out the weather forecast for the next few days. Wouldn't it be nice to just stay in bed the whole day and not have to get up AT ALL? Sepang is the nearest town to us. 

Rainy Weather

As much as I am enjoying the cool weather these few weeks especially these few days, I miss the sun. I miss the strong sun so that I can do proper laundry. Now, with the rain in the evenings and cloudy mornings, you just can't do laundry. Every morning I wake up, I peek through my window to see whether it is sunny enough to do laundry and if it is, whether or not the sun will hold on long enough. Sigh.

Such weather doesn't only make it hard to laundry, it is also a weather that makes me lazy. I have been terribly lazy the past few days that I haven't done anything at home! Nothing constructive. It is just so nice to sit down or sleep. If only Jia Wen agrees with the weather and would sleep also. She's still as energetic as ever even without the sun. The days are cool and the nights are almost cold. I may not necessarily love the rain but I am definitely appreciating the temperature.

Sitting here in my room with the rain pouring outside and the slight cold breeze coming in, wouldn't it be nice to have a bowl of hot soup or a cup of hot chocolate. Perhaps a cup of hot milo. Care for some anyone?

Tirred

I am tired!

Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire 

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire

We managed to catch the 8.30 PM show last night at Sunway Pyramid. Although I think personally I prefer The Prizoner of Azkaban. This one was a bit messy I guess it is because it is not easy to piece everything together nicely when the story is so long and movie can only be this short.

I still don't quite understand why JK Rowling can't put Harry and Hermione together. They seem to care so much for each other and Hermione is so "concerned" about Harry all the time. There were moments where things could have happened and I think she's a better match for Harry.

Of course Cho Chang (played by Katie Leung) is absolutely beautiful and I think she's a tad sophisticated for Harry. Harry needs someone who knows his life history, someone who is intelligent enough to back him up everytime he goes into trouble. Can't believe that in future, Harry will end up with "you know who".

Nonetheless, it was a fantastic movie. As always Harry Potter stories and movies never fail to entertain anyone. Go watch it.

What a disappointment. This is the inside of the A380 that came recently. I thought it would be fully furnished and equipped with all the much talked about features, a gym, etc! 

This is how the cockpit of the A380 looks like. Check out the "batang gembira"! 

Harry Potter Anyone?

Trouble booking tickets to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? Fear no more my friends. For those who have been trying to get tickets to watch the latest Harry Potter this weekend, I'll be your new bestfriend. *grin*

In the spirit of "kia-su ism", I made a few online bookings for the show. Shien Wei and I wasn't sure what our weekend plans were, what time will he be back from work, etc so I made several reservations lah. So for those who is dying to watch it, here are the reservations made:

- Saturday, 19 November 2005 5.15 PM (3 tickets) @ Sunway Pyramid. Booking No: 25896?. Seat No: M17, M18, M19
- Saturday, 19 November 2005 5.15 PM (4 tickets) @ Sunway Pyramid. Booking No: 25997?. Seat No: R9, R10, R11, R12 (made by my sis)

Call me and let me know if anyone wants to take these tickets up. First come first serve! MAKE SURE YOU CALL ME IF YOU ARE TAKING THESE BOOKINGS UP! Call me for the last digit to the booking number.

Are the purple lines straight or bent? 

You should see a man's face and also a word... Hint: Try tilting your head to the right, the word begins with "L". 

Do you see the gray areas in between the squares? Now where did they come from? 

Which circle in the middle is bigger? 

Nauseating! 

Focus on the dot in the centre and move your head backwards and fowards 

Keep staring at the black dot. After a while the gray haze around it will appear to shrink. 

How many legs does this elephant have? 

Are the horizontal lines parallel or do they slope? 

Is this possible? 

Cool! 

Count the black dots! 

A few more compiled 

The plane came as a skeleton. Airbus put water tanks inside to simulate weight. 

Malaysia Airlines' logo was put for promotional purposes 

Will Shien Wei be sent to Toulousse for training? 

Check out the wing tip. Never seen such shape before 

Shien Wei at the tail 

Check out the wing span 

Shien Wei and his colleagues 

Double Decker all the way 

The A380 

Da Wheels! 

Check out the nose gear! 

Shien Wei hopes to work on this plane (not) 

The Landing Gears 

Huge Majestic but Stout 

Airbus A380 makes a debut in KLIA 

Melati-ria Lane

Have you ever taken a moment and look around your neighbourhood? What kinds of neighbours you have, type of houses, type of renovations done, the characteristics of your neighbour, etc. You may think I am bored and have nothing else better to do or am a busy-body type of neighbour. Call me what you want, I think I am just being observant.

Am not writing this to condemn or to be bad but here's my observation. No names will be mentioned and won't tell you who does what. Hahaha...

As a start, I have loud neighbours. And when I say loud, I mean you can hear them from 2 doors away! They speak very loud and if you actually listen carefully, you can actually pick-up what's going on in their lives! Seriously loud. Other people (besides me) actually go to their own window and wonder where the loud conversation is coming from. This particular lady from this particular house is very loud, loves to entertain outside in her "great big mansion" (hint hint) and speaks Cantonese, Hokkien and English. Too bad I am not busy-body enough to listen out to her conversations or I might be able to pick up her business strategies, etc. You can hardly hear her guests.

Besides having some very dirty neighbours who refuses to use a rubbish bin, they are those who are cleaning all day long. The neighbour next to me sweeps and cleans her porch everyday and minds her garden too. She and her family are very quiet too. Sometimes it is like they don't exist. Can't even hear their TV. The only noise coming out of their house would be their automatic gate which is making some kind of sound.

We have a new neighbour who are a bunch of cabin crew. Very decent looking bunch of crew though I haven't had the chance to meet all of them yet.

Jia Wen has her own favourite neighbour too. She has befriended (sort of) Oscar, a German Shepherd who lives down the road. Almost everday, Jia Wen would walk there (with us of course) to visit Oscar. Nice dog and well taken care of too. Oscar's owner walks him every single day and the other day, Jia Wen got to see Oscar bathe too. Jia Wen hasn't touched or patted it yet as Oscar is a real big dawg!

Oh yes, we have another neighbour who just moved in over the weekend. The live directly behind our house (my kitchen faces theirs). By the look of the house (front and back), we know that they have spent quite a bit on renovation, etc and I must say that it did turn out quite well. The contractor they engaged owns the house next to theirs which happens to be one of our favourite houses in this area. We thought that since the house renovation and colour chosen, etc turned out to be quite well done, the owner and family should be quite decent(?) and of a certain intelligence(?) and mentality(?). I was shocked on morning when I woke up to see that their laundry was being hung behind their house on the backlane pegged on strings tied to a telephone pole and another neigbour's (vacant at the moment) grille! Believe it or not?! Their laundry including their underwears hung on the backlane of the house! At first I thought an Indonesian labourer might have used someone's water to do his laundry and hung them there to dry but later I saw our back neighbour collecting their laundry. I was in awe. I sincerely hope that this will change. I won't go into details to what exactly is being hung back there right this moment but I tell you, it isn't pleasant. My cooking time in the kitchen will never be the same again. Perhaps they haven't got around to buying the clothes-drying rack to put it in front of the house or perhaps they think it is better looking to dry it behind the house where no one can see.

So take a moment and start noticing your neighbours. You may be shocked to see what you don't seem to see everyday.

Me just being observant.

Jia Wen After Swimming 

Jia Wen Swimming With Mummy 

Jia Wen's Swimming Day 

Maestro at work 

Jia Wen into her lego blocks! 

Jia Wen's funny faces! 

Jia Wen in the morning! 

Shoe Fanatic

I tell you, my daughter can be quite cute at times. Today, we brought her to I0I Mall and while we were walking in there, Jia Wen walked into a shoe shop. She ran towards the kids' section shouting "buy shoe buy shoe". When she reached the racks, she got hold of a sport shoe (slightly pinkish) and then she brought the shoe to the chair. She then took off her shoes and wanted to try the new one. She kept saying "try shoe try shoe".

How on earth she learn all these tricks but isn't it so cute. The salespeople there were just too stunned at her actions and didn't know how to react. I don't think they have seen such a tiny person walk into the shop asking to buy and try shoe before.

Ain't she cute?

Inconsiderate Neighbours

In our bid to conserve electricity and money, we have been sleeping without the air-con for the past few nights since the nights have been cool enough. Most nights were nice and quiet but last night, Shien Wei and I only went to bed at about 4 AM.

We have a few houses in front of ours which are being rented out and one them was rented out to students (INTI College & Nilai College nearby) and their tenancy had expired so there were moving out. Normal people would move out during the day but these boys decided that it would be real fun to do it in the middle of the night. They were making so much noise, throwing things, etc. This went on till about 3.30 AM! While we were annoyed at the noise they made, we were also worried about the mess they were making.

True enough, when we woke up in the morning, we saw piles of rubbish in front of their house by the roadside. There were all sort of things from papers to boxes to glass bits! They didn't even have the courtesy to bag them up like normal decent people do. It was just thrown on the road waiting for wind to blow the papers away, waiting for dogs and cats to rummage through it and maybe waiting for neighbourhood kids to hurt themselves. Not make things worse, they burnt some stuff as well and guess where the remains were left? In the drain! There's a pile of charred papers in the drain and even the manhole cover (steel) was burnt till black. Why why do people do such things? Don't they have brains?! I acknowledge that they are a bunch of school boys who obviously know no better but such things are common sense! "Kurang Ajar"! I blame such behaviour on their parents who never thought them simples rules in life and never thought them to be considerate. Gosh, if they were my kids, I wouldn't know where to put my face. How are such tragic and brainless dudes / punks going to ever get a job in the real world? Perhaps they should work as a garbage man to know what they did was so inconsiderate to the neighbours and especially to the one who will be unfortunate enough to do the cleaning up. And I know for sure, the garbagemen aren't going to clean up that rubbish!

Those boys weren't the only inconsiderate neighbours I have here. You see, the developer of our housing project incorporated a built-in garbage place for residents to throw into rather than having a garbage-bin outside the house. With this in-built garbage place, residents don't even have to go out of their compound to throw their rubbish - so convenient, so simple. But what do people do with such facility? They either close it up (as if there was never such a facility) or just plain "do not use it". You may wonder why they close it up. Well these unfortunate people as I call them because they don't have brains close it up because they are scared that robbers will crawl into the compartment and climb out into their house. Well sadly you brainless wits, the thieves are smarter than you! Why crawl into a pile of garbage when they can just simply climb over your fence or gate? (slap slap)

So when these people close the compartment up, guess where do they throw their rubbish? Hey, you are right! Outside on the roadside on the road! Not in a rubbish bin but ON THE ROAD! And what happens to the rubbish? Cats and dogs rummage through it and cause mess on the road! Why oh why do we have such brainless wits in our world?! Can someone out there explain to me the rational of such behaviour? Enlighten me please! Do these people really go to heaven? Does it really pay to have big altars in and outside their house while their rubbish (pampers, sanitary pads) are being torn open by cats and dogs?! They dogs can even tell when you are mensturating! And these neighbours are clearly not from the jungle. These are people who have clearly gone to school to a certain level to be able to afford 2-3 cars, a Harrier, extensive renovation, etc!

I am going to the developer's office tomorrow to lodge a complaint and if there isn't anything done I will go to the municipal council personally.

I AM ANGRY and please don't tell me to go clean it up myself! You'd deserve a slap too if you ask me to.

Met and Caught Up

Yesterday my sister and I met up with some childhood friends at Bangsar Shopping Complex; Giles, Ngan a.k.a. Chinky a.k.a. Case, Quddus, Seng, Shirlene, Hui Ping, Hui Yee and my brother. It was of course a planned meet up and it turned out better than I expected although there were some who were not present or not too keen to reminisce the old days.

We had a llllooooonnnnggg lunch at Chilli's and I think everyone got to catch up with everyone exchanging career information (I don't have much to tell) and of course there were 1 or 2 topics that came up that gave us all a good laugh. One of it was my accident in Miri. I shall not elaborate as I know Giles will leave some comments later.

For those who came yesterday, thanks for coming. For those who couldn't make it, there'll be a next time.

Driving Week

It has been a driving week for me! Since Monday, I think have driven the whole of Peninsula (or at least from Singapore - Bukit Kayu Hitam). I had to pump petrol twice (full tank = 60 litre).

Here's the whole week's driving routes starting Monday ending Thursday evening:

Nilai - Melaka - Nilai - Taman Megah (PJ) - Bangsar - Plaza Low Yat (KL City) - Nilai - Taman Megah (PJ) - SS2 (PJ) - Nilai - Morib - Kuala Langat - Jenjarom - Morib - Nilai - Bangsar - SS2 - Damansara - 1 Utama - Nilai

Terror right? Don't need to go into details as to what I was doing in all these places but at least you know I call Nilai my home.

Great Friends

After watching shows like F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Sex And The City, Desperate Housewives, and many other shows where friendship is the key ingredient, I often wonder whether there are such friendships who are not only there when you need them - anytime, anyplace but friends who accept you for who you a really are whether you are fat, thin, tall, ugly, beautiful, slim, bad body odour, frackles, bad breath, rich, poor, smart, not so smart, etc. Friends who don't criticize you when you are a target for mockery, friends who will tell you off when you need to be told off and at the same time and yet no offence is taken by either party.

Of course we all have friends but do we really have GREAT friends? Do we have friends who will tell you, "Hey, I don't think that guy you are going out with is good for you". Or do we have friends who will fight for your honour (I don't mean as a couple), do we have a friend who will be there even if you have made wrong / horrifying decisions again and again. Friends who you don't have to hold your tongue when you talk to her or say anything to her even if it means offensive and no offence taken. Friends who tell you things and you don't feel offended. Friends whom you can accept all these from. Friends who you can talk about anything and everything about. Friends who you can discuss and talk about the most intimate secrets and one whom you can trust that it's just between you and her.

In my life, I don't think I have ever had such relationships with anyone. Of course I had good friends in school, best friends too (as we call it) but how many of us has actually maintained such friendships to today? Staying in touch via phone every few months and seeing each other only on festive seasons doesn't quite equate to maintaining a great friendship. I am talking about friends who see each other almost EVERYDAY, friends who call each other EVERYDAY, friends who miss each other EVERYDAY. Friends like Monica, Chandler, Joey, Rachel, Ross & Pheobe; Charlotte, Carrie, Samantha & Miranda; Bree, Gabrielle, Susan & Lynette. That is what I am talking about. I know that many are busy and committed to a different life, a career, a family but honestly these are just excuses.

Great friends are happy for you when you are and sad when you are. A true friend is always there to share your tears, who shares your joy, who loves your family. True friends should never be threatned by each others' successes or even feel the least jealous of each other. Hard isn't it?

I don't know whether I myself can be a great friend to someone. Whether I can be as committed to those who are. Can I actually be there whenver a friend needs me, will I wake up in the middle of the night if a friend just wants to talk, will I babysit his / her kids whenever, will I lend him / her money with no questions asked, I will I ever feel threatned or jealous if my friend wins a million dollar? I don't know honestly but I am willing to try.

A guy may not relate to this too well but I think any girl would and any girl will understand what I mean and how I feel. I do not have GREAT friends as described and to be honest, I am longing for one. I am jealous of Charlotte, Carrie, Samantha & Miranda.