Home sweet home
Time to unpack, take a shower and go for sleep. Back to work tomorrow...
Now at KLIA enjoying cup of coffee
The taxi journey was interesting. Never knew the taxi driver was a millionaire. He made hiis fortune as an engineer in oil and gas exploration. Due to an accident, he quit his job but found retirement too boring and wasted much money to fill in his time. So now to control himself, he decided to take on a taxi servicing.
In life you just don't know a person's background. An assuming person could well be a person very well off!
Well, that's life and for the rest of us, we just have to work our butts off to have any semblence of a lifestyle!
Co Trip to Shanghai
Extreme heavy rain!
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I managed to leave work timely but during the rush hour commute, the cats and dogs could not stay their hands any longer.
The end result was a super duper thunderstorm!
If I didn't get away sooner I probably got stuck in a super duper traffic jam. Now i'm back home and relaxing here.
Yeah!
Mad rush, then car accident
In a fit of insanity, I decided to do a foolhadry overtaking cutting too close with another car.
It wasn't anything serious. Just a scratch. Perhaps God is looking out for me. It could have been pretty bad.
Anyway, now I will have to take him to a car workshop for minor spray paint job.
Them the breaks when you don't have flexi working hours and a boss who enforce every little rule to the letter!
Sigh!
The trouble with maids
Having a maid is suppose to help you out in the house. Sometimes you get good maid and they are really a big help. And sometimes you get one that is too smart for her own good. No doubt she was able to do many of things instructed even using complicated household equipment like that expensive vacuum cleaner that my wife bought and even do fruit juicing.
However she has some very notorious bad habits. She don’t quite like to be a maid and yet she is now stuck in Malaysia due to her contract. Unfortunately she was not able to tough out the 2 years contract necessary to return back to Cambodia.
Rothman circle traffic lights is working
Traffic here is quite heavy to be regulated by traffic light junction.
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Next day, the traffic lights were switched off. I think they were testing it out. From the looks of it, the timing sequence was rather poor. They will have to come up with a better timing sequence if they want to avoid a bad traffic congestion at the former Rothman Circle in Section 19, PJ.
Baby sick and down with fever
Anyway he was down with fever and I could see then he has lost his strength and energy. On top of that, he didn't have much appetite either which will weaken him further. Probably the sore throat will make it difficult to even gulp down his milk.
Tried to sweat out the fever but that made him feel very uncomfortable. Only thing left was the liquid paracetamol medicine which did help to bring down the fever rather quickly.
Children really hate taking medicine and you will need to be rather quick on your hands to shove the medicine into baby's mouth. They know it is medicine time when they see you pour that horrible tasting pinkish liquid. And this baby of mine will shut his mouth real tight and you need to find a way to get his mouth open and when it is open, you have to be quick about it!
Anyway, my wife has got a very lengthy business presentation tomorrow. Since I have no appointment set, I guest I will be the designated parent to bring sick ol' baby to see the pediatrician.
Sometimes work feels just like in Dilbert comics
Sometimes work life can feel like the Dilbert Comics. Like when the top management wants you to grow the business in a certain x percentage. Ask you to take initiative to build new products but when you did find something they disallowed it citing that it is not company policy (whose? Boss or company?) or profit too small (have many small ones and it will grow!) or job too risky (no risk, no profit, my dear!).
Toyota Altis Major Car Servicing
While having a cup of coffee, I was thinking, "Perhaps I ought to give the engine oil level a look since I'm already here in the petrol station." After my coffee break, I open the bonnet and was rather alarmed that the oil level was empty!
I was rather fortunate to check it and bought some engine oil. If the engine was to burn, it would be a major disaster! Anyway the Toyota Altis was due for servicing so may as well send it in to fix the engine leak and service the car at the same time.
Seems like the Toyota section 19 service centre is rather pack for those cars undergoing major servicing and I will have to wait for a full one week before I could get my car back! No choice I suppose.
Although the Fukushima earthquake has affected Toyota parts manufacturers, there is still sufficient Toyota spare parts for servicing and repair. So the delay is not caused by the spare parts shortage but rather so happen there was a large number of cars being sent in for major servicing and repairs.
According to the Toyota servicing staff, such major servicing usually takes about 3 days, but this time round, the car servicing will take longer due to lack of lifting ramp service bays.
Spying at my calendar, I noticed next week there will be a two week long school holiday break. Perhaps that might have something to do with the many cars being sent in. After all, parents would like to take some time off with their children and go for some travel destination holidays locally. Sounds like a plan! Well, my son is still rather young for any long road trip. Perhaps in another month or so then.
Meanwhile, I just have to sort out my transportation issue. In Malaysia it is a big handicap if you don't have a vehicle to move around, the public transportation is just way too unreliable!
[update: May 2012]
Again my engine oil was way empty! This time round I sent it to Kota Ming Motor for checking instead. They checked the engine but could not find any leakages. All the seals are as it should be. So they inform that whenever cars become old, the engine would start to burn off black oil into the exhaust system. The workshop owner joked that my car condition was so much better than his old jalopy!
I bought this car way back in June 2004, so it has been used for 8 years already. So a partial solution to avoid forgetting to check for engine black oil level, was to use semi-synthetic engine oil and have the car serviced every 5,000km instead of the usual 10,000km. A thicker viscosity oil would also help prevent the oil from being burnt away too easily by the engine combustion.
However by using a thicker viscosity, the drive would not be as smooth as a fully synthetic engine oi. I could live with that. After all the car has served me well for so many years and it was coming towards the end of its trouble free driving. You could see the many scars of driving in Malaysia. No way you could keep your car dent and scratch free. If you didn't knock something, someone else would eventually knock into your car, as the saying goes.
One thing for sure, a Toyota car has a long durable life span. Even though this Altis car was manufactured in Thailand and not Japan, it still kept much to its quality standard.
Eulogy for Victor Seow Kok Leong
A close family friend, Mr Chan introduced a job as a land surveyor but later Victor took up the challenge of network administrator. Victor have learned a lot from there and decided to venture out on his own to start up a security system company with the support of doctor friend.
Church Camp at Genting View Resort
Breakfast at Awana Genting Highlands
The sky kinda gloomy but the Genting Highlands air is fresh. Not too cold. Probably about 26 ° C. My casio watch probably inaccurate since I'm wearing it, shows 29 °C.
Still a nice day and I could see many golfers going for the round in Awana Genting Highlands.the soothing greens is always nice to view and relax.
Time to go soon, after baby takes his bath!
Prince William and Kate Wedding
Cat got sore throat?
The weather in Malaysia rather hot these few weeks though fortunately the hot spell did have heavy showers once in a while that helped to break the heat for a brief period anyway.
I myself and family members just recovered from cough and flu.
But my cat got sore throat? Now that is something new to me.
BU4 Playground is almost open
Ah, but it is just in time for my baby. Perhaps one of these days I'll bring him for walk in the BU4 park. For now it is very convenient for my weekly regular running exercise. No need to go so far to the park located next to 1 Utama shopping centre.
And much safer too!
Bad bad traffic jam in PJ
I think today's menu for badness is extreme traffic jam. Normally rush hour is still bearable if traffic still moves though slow. But today it is as though somebody decided to throw a cog to the clockwork triple slow the bad traiffc. Congratulations then! Bane of all rush hour drivers.
Not sure what went wrong with the traffic system today. Perhaps some smart alec decided to reprogram the traffic light somewhere and it ripples through like a butterfly effect slingshot back to wherever you are.
Ah, this is when you need the law of attraction for calm and peace. Nothing much you can do but to wait it out. If i can blog about the bad traffic in my car you can know how bad the traffic it is. Hah!
Streamyx kinda slow today
I wonder if Streamyx/TMnet is back to its old tricks again. I find the broadband speed today to be rather laggy and slow. I tried to reset the router modem. Also checked whether my colleague was surfing any YouTube sites, but there weren't any heavy downloading. So the main culprit is Streamyx is slow today!
The school holidays week is underway and as usual there would be a lot of kids surfing the internet downloading stuffs or watching movies online. But that should be no cause for TMnet/Streamyx to do their ungly thing and slow down everybody! I thought that period was passé when competitors like P1 Wimax with their "cut the line" slogan and recently the YTL YES Wimax broadband should shake up Streamyx into improving it services.
Perhaps Streamyx want to make more money by selling their more expensive UNIFI broadband service and give the slower bandwidth guys like us a hard time!
Bah! In terms of speed per payment, Malaysia is still lagging behind many other countries. We should be getting faster bandwidth speed for the amount we are paying! I guess the get rich quick mentality is still alive and kicking in Malaysia. So much for Malaysia Boleh…!
Going for Chinese Medicine Remedy for Dry Cough
So a quick pop in to Vie Onn in Section 14 PJ, a quick consultation with the Chinese sinseh and he recommended this Chong Choe Hou Pui Loh cough syrup. Never heard it before but he says it is more effective than the Pei Pah Gou. Well I was using Pei Pah Gou and it did help to sooth my sore throat and reduce my cough at night, so if this was more potent, so let's give it a try!
Next he recommended some herbs call Pou Sam So, the English translation is American Ginseng Root, which didn't seem to translate it correctly. I guess the West still got a lot to catch up with it comes to Chinese herbal medicine, or I suppose there wasn't a proper English name equivalent for this medicinal herb. I was to take this RM10 pack of herbs, boil it with a pinch of salt and drink it. Since I was a little more desperate than that, I decided to just use the office kettle and pour hot water over it. It may not be so effective to extract the essence but will have to do for now. I got another pack to really give it a boil when I went home.
Later I'm going to give this coke + salt drink to sooth my sore throat. It helps some. And it would be much better than taking whiskey neat which I think would really make my throat more sore than cured though the alcohol would kill the bacteria just the same except that it's going to be tough on my throat!
Let's see if the above remedy will do its job coz I'm rather fed up with the cough!
Dry cough and sore throat getting bad
Can't stand this dry cough anymore. It is beginning to become sore throat as well. This persistent dry cough means I must stay away from air condition room as that would aggravate it. The doctors prescription was completed and yet there was no remedy and relief. The antibiotics should have done the trick but looks like this strain is resistant to it. May as well don't take antibiotics after all that might make the bacterial resistant to it and I don't want that to happen.
Now trying home remedies like drinking apple cider vinegar, herbal drinks and sometimes going to extreme when I can't stand the coughing any more by gargling with super salted water or mouth wash. And the most extreme method by gargling with whisky (and drinking some of it). The burning sensation and hopefully the alcohol will kill the germs. However I don't think doing that was good for my throat either.
Just went to Tesco and bought a couple of Coca cola. Plan to chill it, then mix it with salt and drinking it. However cold drinks are not good for the throat either although it soothes the throat for a little while. The concoction of salt and Coca-cola it seems will provide some relief.
With the help of some off-the-shelf cough medication I hope to kick this dry cough outta my system at the very least.
It's been a long while since my last bout of terrible flu package. This time there is no running nose, which was usually the beginning. Now it just jump right into the cough with a quick mild fever, then the sore throat comes. Symtoms sequence pretty much in reverse compared to last time. Sigh! Of the entire flu package that I usually catch, the dry cough is the most irritating of all the stages!