Receiving a call in the early morning, the news we have dread to hear came to pass. My dad had passed away. He had succumbed to his illness and drawn his last breath.
It was quite a shock as he was responding well to the treatment. My brother and I were already looking for a care home. But I guess it was not to be.
I guess it is a matter of time before we all get infected. Despite all the precautions of sanitizing the stuff we bring outside and wearing face masks when going out. The government has a fine balance between keeping the infection rate low while keeping the businesses open to keep the economy going.
This time round, my entire household was infected, starting with my wife, then spread to me and her mom. Eventually her sister caught it too. I suspected we got it while making a trip to Kuantan during the Chinese New Year. Thus the year of the rabbit made the Covid-19 jump fast and hard!
Galaxy Hotel in Shanghai is quite a nice hotel for business stay. It's quite pricey at RMB¥689, which is far more expensive then PJ Hilton with our company's corporate rate. It is located next to Rainbow Hotel which I've stay once during one my holiday tour to Shanghai.
Flight from KL to Shanghai was rather smooth despite me getting a mild cold. The last many days running around in the hot humid weather of Kuala Lumpur really wore me down. So the 28°C was a nice change. It wasn't too warm and neither was it cold.
The check in counter was located on the second floor so when I arrived I was a little lost as to where to check in! This was the first time coming to Shanghai not on a tour group so many things have do on my own. I was told to take either a taxi or bus, taxi would be quicker but costly at about RMB¥200 while the bus ride cost RMB¥24. Walking around the Pudong Airport I somehow ended up at the bus stop rather then the taxi stand.
Just my luck, I got several electronic device failure one after another. Must be Murphy's Law at work here! First after a battery change, my wife Toyota Wish car remote control didn't work. The Toyota service people should have known better than to change the car remote batteries. Now it needs to be reset in order to work. That's probably minor compared to my car remote when I accidentaly shorted my Toyota Altis car remote while changing the broken casing. Should not have used a screwdriver to pry out the electronics. Now it doesn't work anymore. Next was the old HP fax printer, the modem was strucked by lightning long time ago but still could be used for printing and scanning. While trying to print some documents, the roller was making a ruckus, and finally I got ink cartridge error. I could try buying a new ink cartridge since the current one was already very low on ink anyway. After giving it some thought better not. It could be more than just a faulty cartride because the roller was making such awful noise. Besides ink catridge are expensive and I would have wasted money if the HP printer would not print. So that' the end of life for this HP printer.  And finally the church PC which I was attempting to reinstall Windows XP. Well some people weren't too keen on using Ubuntu Linux though it would be far more virus resistant than Microsoft Windows. So I got down planning to dual boot it. The partitoning went fine without a hitch. Installing Windows XP was a different story. First round I got boot error. Strange, tried reinstalling a second time and the PC just hung after the initial booting diagnostic start up screen. Tried several reboot still got the same "hanging there not going anywhere" leaving me scratching my head. It could be the BIOS going crazy on me. For now the PC is not working. If the BIOS goes, the motherboard is just another dead wood. Schucks! And this good old Pentium 4 Intel 3GHz with an Intel 915GEV motherboard is a rather good piece of hardware. I should know, I picked the parts myself when I bought it in 2005. But now it no longer works. Argh! Looks like I will need some replacement hardware starting with a new printer like this Epson Stylus T13. Oh, well. |
Should have checked my calendar before saying yes. So now I will have to do some work on a public holiday, today. Anyway, it could still be a good point and show willingness to work on off day. I do get a replacement leave for it which was not too bad. However, my timing with wife and son would be a little skewed for matching. Anyway looking forward to another family time together next round. For now, show some work enthusiasm, hopefully would get into the good books of eccentric boss. Bible always says work not unto man for they will have a tendency to let you down but instead, work as unto a worship to Lord and build your treasure in heaven. For now, just be thabkful that I have a job, though it has poor direction, but I still able to sustain through all its misgivings and live through it to tell the tale and get an income from it! |
Yeeach! Shouldn't have parked under the tree, it was splattered with bird droppings! So time for car wash! When will city hall organise a crow shooting coz the population is increasing and now my car is very beautifully decorated! Anyway it has been a long while since my last car wash however being a holiday weekend, most car wash centre around my house has packed for the weekend. Fortunately manage to find one at the Esso station just after the Damansara toll exit. Fortunately the queue wasn't too long as many people has gone for some holiday somewhere or balik kampung to see their family. Usually car wash centers are packed during weekends but this time round was rather short. My car washed and after back home applied the Rain-X for rain repellent. Most likely as luck would have it (in my experience) it always rains after you have washed your car! Haha! Cheers! |
The heavy rain brought about a very massive Friday traffic jam! Took me double the time to get pass rush hour traffic. On top of that, almost had near collision with another car when the car ahead stop suddenly. Fortunately my brand new tires plus my quick reaction avoided knocking the car in front of me. Had to move away from the lane as the two lady drivers negotiate on their compensation. From my quick glance there was hardly any dent. Anyway the slow stop and go traffic made me rather sleepy and tired. And many parts of the road was catching the running waters slowing down traffic further. A flooded road was not so easy to drive. Eventually arrived home in one piece! Phew! Tired but at least home sweet home for now. |
What they doing? Blocking everybody |
It's been a week long and Streamyx is still trying to fix its server or junction box or whatever. The connection is intermittent and if I do connect, is absolutely horrendously slow! Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android |
And yet again, my office streamyx was down again. Just last week we couldn't connect for more than 24 hours due to streamyx server problem. And now due to an exchange junction in Sungai Way the internet was down since 6am this morning.
Couldn't do any work until they fix it. So no choice but to wait for a few more hours. I requested to boss to switch to UNIFI. Perhaps that would resolve some of the frequent downtime of streamyx. The cost will double and there is no guarantee it will have more uptime since it is under the telecom company namely TM.
I have a friend who was complaining like mad about his poor download speed from UNIFI. Never getting the 80-90% of the stated speed. But basically UNIFI should be working according to as much as the stated figure.
Anyway never know until try. But once in will have to use it for the contract period.
Meanwhile my recent upgrade to windows 7 has left my dial-up modem dead. There is no drivers for it. So I can't even use the old slow dial-up to access internet.
Only a quick tap here using my mobile phone to kvetch a little!
