trip to crab island

it's actually not a real island,.....well maybe yes,........then again, maybe no. it's difficult to say when everything is on stilts.

my last trip to the island was more than 10 years ago, it was with some friends (one of my friend's uncle was a fisherman there). it was good fun, they place was falling apart, the toilet has a hole, so that everything going into the mud during low tide and sea when it's high tide. 1 bucket of rain water each for bath. it's windy but sometimes smelly, depending which way the wind blows.

fast forward to last saturday.
most of the walkways are now cements instead of wood and they have piped water and garbage collection. the place is actually slightly cleaner, maybe i was ther after the tide has taken/washed away most of the garbage.

this trip we went for a walkabout on the island, had steamboat at my future brother-in-law's parents house, catch some mangrove crabs, watch how salt fishes are made, went on a short 5 mins boat ride (cut short as it was about to rain).

trips are always better when you know a local. you get to see things differently and enjoy privileges you otherwise won't. we had aircond and tv to watch, not to mention a massage chair, went of a fisherman's boat, and had a transit boat come pick us up right in front of our doorstep.

a very tiring but enjoyable trip. even my children enjoyed it and they're the fussiest of little children (not to mention chicken, scared to walk on wooden walkways with tiny gaps).

a wonderful weekend indeed. :)

hari raya open house

reached the open house at 7 plus, there was a jam on the way there and of course we left office late.
actually, house open to only selected people only, not many people i work with were there. i went well with the chairman ( he has no idea who i am ) and it went well, until......the chairman's wife came to sit at the table where i was sitting to do some small talk. as i did not wish her 'selamat hari raya' earlier, i did it now, and by the look on her face you can tell she was going like....i don't know this guy, who invited him in. so i introduces myself and her face lite up. she went Ooooo so you're the mysterious chief...... i've been hearing your name, now i can put a face to it. (aisay, kena tangkap already).
met an old colleague there who've just finished directing a very expensive film and, he sort of brought up how he used to haunt me during he old days, so the chairman's wife said ' and he's still doing it to you now, chief, you've got bad karma.' she could be right except i don't believe in it.

better still,
i went in my friend's BRAND NEW BEAMER ! i'm her 1st passenger !
it's both good and bad.
good - the smell a new car with leather interior, brings back good memories of when my own car was new....and the feeling of joy mixed with fear with pride and all freshness......sort of makes me young again
here comes the bad - she's not used to the car yet, plus of course her bad habit of driving a not so loved car which she have not kicked yet makes you really want to help her with the brakes and steering wheels. i only manage to calm myself co i know how many air bags the car has.
i'm very happy for her. she's been on this subject for quite some time now and had at 1st wanted to buy a CC which i think is both too expensive and not practical.

sniffffff. trying to remember the smell again.........

have a good weekend.

why do you blog ?

interesting question from a friend of mine whom i am trying to recruit to the world of bloggers.
well, why do you do it ?


for me it's partly to pick up something new. after my attempt to maintain a webpage failed miserably, this is the next best thing. :)

i've also read lots of blogs that have inspired me and have given me a diff point of view on things and i hope one day i'll be able to do that as well, touch lives just by penning your thoughts down.

heavy stuff indeed. but i also do it for fun ! just like a hobby that's all.


so, why do you blog ?

invite from chairman

wah, not everyone in the office got invited you know.
invite's for friday 4pm to 7pm. how ?? go early and ppl will think you've no work to do, go late and ppl think you arrogant.
nice to get the invite though. this will be the first year he's doing it at a diff location (new house). it'll be nice just to go see the place.
later go cari gang and then all can go together.

11 down, 11 more to go

well, a good figure for staying late in the office. generally most of my staff that i've spoken to are very positive, a change from previous years where there were more complaints. i hope it not due to the fact that they think there's nothing i can do about those complaints.
my staff here can be roughly be divided into 2 groups.

the 'old' batch which are trying to adapt to the new environment but have kept their lousy attitudes and

a 'new' batch that are very excited to show off their talents but are really not able to do so coz everything here are quite rigidly structured. they can contribute a lot if given more recognition, and this is what i'm & will be trying to do.
i'll really hate to see them one day feel defeated and work here because they have to make a living.

it's sometimes hard to keep yourself motivated when
1) you feel you're doing the same thing all the time. after a while you just go "been there, done that" and it becomes a no brainier.
2) you feel that you're 'there' and nothing to look forward to. when i started out way back in the good old days, i wanted to be an editor and worked really hard for it. for the 1st 3 years of my working life, i had no other life except work. when i got to be very good at being an editor, i thought that's it ?, you work hard to work even harder (money was good i must say). it came to a point that i just had to let it go........ now how did i get here?,

still over all i have a good bunch working here and together we can make it better!
cayalah.

appraisal time

yep, it's that time of the year again. i'll be sitting down with all my staff to do their appraisal and setting their goals for next year. there'll be about 20 of them. and i've to finished them by this week (too much of procrastinating). the hard part is actually setting goals for next year. they've been at it for so long that it should not be considered a goal anymore !
guess what i want for them to do is to better themselves (some of them can sure start with their attitudes). the electronic media is moving at so fast a pace that there are lots of roadkills, more than on the information highway.
speaking of apprasial, my boss will be doing mine next week and i've lost misplaced it.bye, i better go look for it now.

i now can be found !

i now can be found :) -(the biggest grin you've ever seen) on yahoo and google. when i started this blog, i tried to do a search and cannot find myself, as in, if i forget my add, which i have a habit of not doing , i had to go to someone else's blog and sign in from there. yes i know, we all have to start somewhere.
but now i can be found !!

Priceless

the chinesehokkiens sure knows how to say goodbye in the most elaborate way. had 3 days of prayer involving a small band of taoist priests with their loud instrumental backups. a mansion that comes with maids, butlers, cars, silver and gold mountains and a host of other things. there are also bank of hell notes, credit cards, you name it ! all the stuff you'll need/want to when you're alive.
all in all close to 40 grand for the whole do !
summary
opera show for the dead : 2K
rental of place : 2K
taoist priest : 5K
paper mansion : 7K
dinner for 310 ppl : 9K
wrong name on mansion : priceless

saying goodbye

gee...i was preparing a long post for this and had even tried to draft it out on a piece of paper. how time flies, it's been 3 years. but after having thought over it a short one would be better.
Goodbye dad, rest in peace. mum and all of us are doing well. ZM is 2 years old now and mum is having lots of fun with him.
The hall still feels empty when i visit and thinking of you still brings a tear to my eye. i guess it coz there were so much more that you were able to give and enjoy.
Thank you for being a wonderful father to me,and a generous grandfather to my kids.
Goodbye for now.
The parting is but for a moment but the meeting forever.

at the camp

was at a church camp from sunday till yesterday. it was at concord inn sepang. they should have named it concord motel, sepang. then i would have thought more highly of that place. OK, it's a 3 star hotel meant for people on transit ( why else would ppl want to stay there ). alright.... it's a decent, not to mention cheap place to hold a church camp. still i don't think anyone wants to go there by choice.

we had a good speaker, and a Baptist too. Heheheh..had lots of fun though. it's the people you're with that always makes the difference, not the place.

in so many things we miss the point and pay lots of attention to the 'shell' appearence rather than the content.
KLIA which is a beautiful sight to behold but can't help feeling cold and empty when in it, and has dropped from being no 1 to no 4.
E-village - was said to have world class facilities but came to naught.
Sepang F1 circuit - without any programs to nurture future drivers

like i said before, content is everything.

please take a seat

went to the bank today, lots of fun joining the banking rush before the holiday. anyway, this m bank is quite efficient. as soon as you come in, you move to the 'helpdesk' to get your queuing number and they'll pass you forms you need to fill up before reaching the cashier. next comes the longgggggggggggggggggggggg wait. and wait and wait and wait. finally it was my turn. went to the counter expecting to finish transaction in 5 mins but no such luck. i was made to wait. 'please have a seat' the lady at the counter said ever so politely. trouble was there were bus loads of people there that getting a seat was next to impossible plus, let the older people sitlah, we are very courteous one.
more waiting. until i almost gave up but then hear my name being called. rush to the counter got my stuff and out of there. in all there were 45 mins wait for a 5 mins transaction. not a good ratio at all.
anyone wants to recommend me another bank ??

observations while at the bank

there was a bouquet of flower (must have been sent by well wishers) there that interest me coz there were some stalks of flowers that looks very much like poppy flower. if it indeed is, it must have been sent by a drug lord to the bank as joke ! but this being malaysia, i'm sure it's just a species that looks like poppy flower.

one of the bank guards looked bit nervous which made me nervous, could just be that it's near raya and the busloads of people doing banking. but it still me me felt like there some gun trotting bank robbers were going to rush in anytime (having watched taxi doesn't help). glad to say that didn't happened.

there were people still asking if the bank have new notes, must be the 1,5 & 10s. these last minutes guys ! don't they know by now they're all gone ? sigh.... ( note to self - go change notes early for CNY ).

that's for for the short trip. more on diwali later.

Happy Diwali

i used to get confused as to why ppl here say diwali instead of deepavali. but i was enlightened by one of colleague. both of them are actually correct, one being spoken by ppl from northern indians and the other south. apparently diwali has got a more 'class'lah. since it was used by a tv station, it has gain some ground here in malaysia.
so happy diwali to Jaya, Jaya, Siva, Aru, and .... lets move on to Hari Raya.
Now how is it that everyone in this company knows it'll be on sunday even when it's not announced by the keeper of ...(i forgot), and no looking for the anak bulan ?? have they been looking at the chinese calendar again ?
back in the good old days, my dad used to tease his malay friends as he would know if the anak bulan could be spotted or not using the chinese calendar. not that the calendar have changed but after so many years, it's not a 'secret' anymore and i suspect hari raya is not set based on calendar as well with the looking for the anak bulan becoming a tradition.
more blogging on friday as i expect it to be a light day. most of my staff are malays and most of them start their balik kampung either tonight itself or tomorrow.
so to those who are driving, drive carefully, we wouldn't want the policeman to take away your driving license.

make good

going home early after yesterday morning's episode, i stayed late yesterday to finished out the bulk of what was required and finished the rest today. Just finished (but found out there's revision to do tomorrow - sigh, such is life). tonight i can sleep soundly.

today ahem....was a bit of a me save the day day. ( wify help ! )
1. solved a problem with editing suite.
2. helped make some keying stuff look good
3. help troubleshoot an on air equipment that had a sync problem (we were meddling with it earlier but don't tell anyone )
4. oklah...no more, 3 a day enough already

i'm sorry if the above sounds like greek to you but i'm in the post production line and those are the common lingo.

my wife's go me drinking some chlorophyll water and although is does not taste bad it looks kind of yucky. but i'm having some sore throat and a bit of running nose and they're suppose to be good for me. wonder what happened to the green stuff coz when i pee, they're never green.

well i've really got to run now. gaji dah masuk, so taking my wife and children out tonight.

my bad

what can i say, today kena scolding from my big boss. i took things too ease so i deserve it. suppose to finish some stuffs on Friday itself but did not do it coz boss could not make it. this morning he wanted to see what i've done and tada....nothing to show but my pitiful face'muka welfare'. he went into a mini fit and quite a number of us got it. from my avp till the m&e guys (long story). so till now trying to make up for it. sigh, learned my lesson.

still in office

this is becoming a bad habit for me, staying late in office on friday nites. it's partly coz i don't work saturdays and there are usually things to rush out of fridays.
friday is also the day where i can stay up late to work on my blog as i can wake up a bit later than usual ( my children will wake me up at 9am on saturdays, on weekdays, we have to wake yank them out from their bed...has anyone figure this one out yet ? ).
it's getting better now - my blog, with the hits counter and bible quotes and links that opens in another window, have submitted my blog's url to yahoo & google,yada,yada,yada...head getting bigger as well (wify help). it's like i'm kind of settling down in blogspace. you now go to the few regular blog site you like instead of randomly looking into them. if feels kind of cool and scary at the same time. you can only settle down in a real place you know, not in cyberspace.
i also go visit heaps of other blog sites on friday. i used to be intimidated by the numerous blogs which are wonderful to read (i wish i could write like them), i'm now just enjoying them and not 'comparing' my blogging with theirs. hey it's everyone's 15 sec of fame (longer if it's found to be interesting).
ok so much for friday, it's now saturday and i'm gonna go home and get some sleep.

Wolf

you'd think that this only happens in fairy tales to teach children not to tell lies. well, just yesterday nite in the far away land of pj, my wife received a call requesting us to go check on the boy. he had earlier sms a friend to say that he is badly injured. now the boy had had a stroke before and still walks with a limp, knowing he had these disadvantages makes it more urgent. as we rush to the scene, i was expecting to see pool of blood or a limb or two out of place. but....
we say his brother & sister was seated comfortably watching tv. hmm...maybe he's fainted upstairs and they didn't know about it.
the bell did not work so we sort of shouted to get their attention. they, looking out saw a weird guy and a weird gal at their gate and were a bit apprehend in coming out. not after they recognize my wife did the brother came out. as cool as can be.

= where's your brother
- my brother went out with my parents.
( this is bad, he's had and accident and he did not tell us where he was, how are we to locate him )
i tried to call c to see if he can call boy to find out his location, but as his phone was ringing he arrived.
= he sms C and said that he's injured, so we rushed here.
- nolah, he and i were in a heated argument and my parents took him out.
= oic...

some small talk with the boy's brother, c and wife .......
after a while we went off.
i'm thinking to myself, ok.....2 more cries of wolf and you're out !
anyway all was not lost as we took the occasion to tell our daughter who loves to fight with her brother that she should love her brother and not grow up to be like the boy.

bye,bye...SLAM...

Yep, that's what you get for not driving a continental car ! before you get any wrong ideas, that is what happens to me every schoolday mornings (except when my son is on MC). when i reach the kindergarten, a teacher comes, opens the door and makes sure my son gets down ok. then tells my son 'say good bye daddy', which my son says it again even when he has already done so before alighting from the car and before you finished waving goodbye.....SLAM ! actually since i'm driving an iswara, it's more like SLAM. man.., i wouldn't want to be hit by them teachers who do reception duty. no wonder one of my passenger door is out of alignment(i sent my daughter to the same kindergarten as well). guess if you're driving a continental or one of those newer/bigger jap/korean cars it'll probably be ok. i can only be thankful i'm not driving a kancil !

Lili is hungry

In fact she's always hungry on the dot. 12 noon. she'll be screaming murder if you're going out with her and you're late/slow ( which we almost always are ). 12 noon....most of us have not finish digesting breakfast yet ! well, different people are fussy about different things.
the other thing about her is she eats lots of sambal. i mean, we're really worried that one day soon the restaurant owner are going to start charging for extra sambal. yes it's that bad.
infact if she orders yee mee, she might as well tell them sambal yee mee. i mean by the time she's done the leftover soup is all red, sambal red.
maybe that's where she gets her temper from....how come i never thought of this before. i think this must be it.
so lili, cut down on sambal !!!