Jan Leow's Blog Page

My Wordpress website in Bluehost is down and out!

Oh, blow me down! It seems I got two script: Wordpress installation and Statusnet is causing Bluehost server to overload and they had to shut down my account which was a big blow since I have several website domains hosted on it. Whenever a script installation takes up too much server webserver resources it will impact on other users and thus the prudent thing to do is to suspend the culprit which this time looks like me!

For Statusnet, I was experimenting with it. Didn't know it was using up so much resources. This one was very easy for me to let go. I just deleted the Statusnet folder where it was installed and that was it. But that was not the end of it. My Wordpress too was also causing server overload, and this installation is very important to me as I am using it regularly to blog. It has 500 posts and does earn me some Adsense income though small it still something. Unfortunately I'm just as in the dark as to what is wrong with my Wordpress installation. And the only way to avoid getting shut down and getting my account terminated was to chuck out my Wordpress installation in Bluehost. Boo-hoo!

Bluehost was very strict with their TOS, and if I cause their server to overload the 3rd time, I will have to find myself a new webhosting company! Well, maybe there is a silver lining in this predicament. Because now I have decided to look for a new webhosting company, perhaps one which is nearer to my locality rather than half a world away.

This time round I decided not to host so many website in one hosting account. Hey it may be cost effective to host unlimited multiple domains but if any one of your website caused an issue then all your other website will be affected. And if the webhosting company decided to terminate your contract, you will be in a big lurch to find a new webhosting company plus shifting all the data and reconfiguring your SQL database etc etc. Now that would be indeed a big disaster!

Since I still got an whole year's worth of hosting with Bluehost (I signed up a 3 year hosting plan with Bluehost as I felt their hosting plan and services was rather good despite being not the cheapest one around) and decided to continue with it till it expires next year. However with the above experience I have decided to split up my websites to several webhosting companies. Actually I'm already using another one, it is a good one, but I would like to try other web hosting companies too.

Locally we have Exabytes which is offering the same unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, but having have several websites, I think it is not necessary to have this kind of requirement. In fact you pay more when you can save with less. After all, how many of us average webmaster will ever achieve resounding super heavy website traffic? If you do and  you are earning good income from it most likely you will invest in an expensive dedicated web hosting in order to cope with the server load.

Since it is unlikely I will have such overly popular website, a shared webhosting will do just fine. Before shifting over to a new webhosting company, I checked the server logs and see just what amount of bandwidth and storage required. Then looked around for a suitable cost effective hosting.

For now, I will just be shifting my JanLeow.com website. When my hosting with Bluehost will be due next year I guess I will be moving out from Bluehost. Well it has been a good many years of usage with them, but in the end I have decided there are better offerings elsewhere and decided to give other webhosting companies a go.

 

MyBlogLog is gone!

Looks like Yahoo! pulled the plug on MyBlogLog.com on the 24/May/2011. Strangely I didn't receive the notice, but found out when my MyBlogLog RSS feed kept giving me error. I had some inkling and forewarnings some six months back when their new CEO announce major revamp to the Yahoo! web business shutting down services or selling them away. Several of their services that I was using like Geocities.com was closed and quite fortunately, Delicious.com was sold to another party.

Since I wasn't sure whether they were closing or selling Delicious I did try to back up all my bookmarks. Now that it was passed on to another company I can rest a little easy. Unfortunately the staff changeover has resulted in reorganization and the new Firefox 4 could not support their extension so I hoping that they will do soon before I'm completely comfy with Xmarks and say sayonara to Delicious for good!

As for MyBlogLog.com, I did have several of my website RSS feeds that went into it get chopped! And now I need to sort out my websites to remove their widget which is now no longer functioning.

Ah! The way dot com companies get shuffled around in the cyberworld you can never be sure who will be handling those services and thus your data and activities will change over time and you have to make adjustment for it. Just don't rely too much on each services I suppose and have contingency where possible (but sometimes it is hard to find an alternative)!

New devices for my PC hobby

Seems like i'm having a shopping spree on my IT gadget devices recently. Although Malaysia is having sales everywhere in the shopping malls. The same cannot be applied for computer gadgets.

With rather limited time, I haven't gotten around to blog about my new found gadgets.

Basically, i bought myself a LiveScribe 2GB Pulse smartpen as they were letting go at RM400 which was within grasp for me to give this smartpen a go. This model may not be new, but still works just as good.

I've also upgraded my modem coz my old wireless-B router already knocked out sometime ago and i was mulling whether to get the Belkin share router modem. But when Aztech recent lauch their new router modem wifi-N with a usb port for NAS, it was 1/2 the price of Belkin, at RM149, so I went for it.

And finally, I couldn't wait any longer and decided to iindulge myself with the SanDisk Cruzer 32 GB. I could only get it from PineApple computer store meeting up with old friends. I use to patronize their shop however their prices are not as competitive against the Low Yatt based shops in Digital Mall. Still they gave me a reasonable price. Which wasn't too bad.

Now preparing it for security and perhaps even install Ubuntu Linux into this thumbdrive since it got quite a lot of space!

Toyota Altis Major Car Servicing

Time to do a major car servicing to my Toyota Altis. Having clocked about 170,000km, some of the engine rubber seals and parts has worn out. Should have known that it was rather serious when I notices spots of engine oil on my house front car porch. It didn't cross my mind that the leak was serious. During one of the my field sales trip for a customer call on a late afternoon, I was suddenly taken in by fatigue and decided to have a pit stop in a Petronas petrol kiosk.

Toyota Car Servicing Workshop

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.

HP OfficeJet warranty exchange problem

HP OfficeJet J3508 All-in-one Fax Scanner Printer


I was very pleased when my defective HP OfficeJet all in one printer fax scanner was given a one-to-one exchange. But my joy was shortlived after receiving the replacement unit. I don't know whether this was a slip up from the HP warranty service department. I don't know why they gave me a defective unit as replacement, in fact this unit was much worst off then my earlier OfficeJet.

Although my ealier unit could not get a dial tone,it could still print and scan. The replacement unit was a total wipeout. It kept giving me a paper jam message when i haven't even fed any paper. My guess the previous owner was a having a seroius paper jam defective unit. The HP service department didn't do a good job with the repair and they release the unit?

Very poor show on their part. Coz it left me with a poor impression about Hewlett-Packard. In their attempt to discourage people from submitting their defective HP units for warranty claim (they want to charge me $30 for checking a unit stillwithin warranty!) and made me call for phone support and yet they gave me a defective replacement! I was thinking how they could give customers brand new unit, but actually they are just giving reconditioned units which were defective and send it by the previous owner.

Sigh! No choice but to call them again to give me another replacement OfficeJet for the defective replacement OfficeJet that was for my earlier defective OfficeJet.

If the next unit is also defective, it would really show Hewlett-Packard having a very poor on their after sales service.

In fact I'm thinking twice about purchasing HP products in future. In their attempt to cut cost to improve their short term bottomline they are sacrificing their long term goodwill of their customers.  

Got My HP OfficeJet J3508 All-in-one Fax Scanner Printer

Eulogy for Victor Seow Kok Leong

Victor and I shared some good times together, since the time I met his sister, Lena. Victor and I had many similar interests. He like planes and aircrafts and together with Lena went on a holiday trip to Langkawi and enjoyed the LIMA airshow. I didn't know it was a reward by my wife for his visiting the doctor. Later he took up aeronautical maintenance course. The college was located in a very ulu kampong area but somehow that college run by MIC wasn't very good and Victor had to quit the course.

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

Having an Alpha course for our church camp at Genting View Resort. With baby in tow and family members going to be a very interesting time here!

Breakfast at Awana Genting Highlands

Enjoying myself with the complimentary breakfast in Awana Genting Highlands. Breakfast crowd enjoying themselves. A bit of a queue at the egg omelet station, ever popular and one of my fav breakfast in a hotel.
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

Wow it was really a grand affair from what I could catch on Astro. My wife wanted me to record the Prince William and Kate wedding event and it was 4-5 hours long! Fortunately my DVD can record 4 hours of it and not to mention the countdown and behind the scenes documentaries I had to use 2 disc instead. So that would about 8 hours worth of recorded DVD to watch later!

Faulty free gift - USB thumbdrive

If ever a free gift looks too good to be true, this is it. Spend 10 difficult to get points from All IT to redeem a faulty Microsoft free USB thumbdrive gift. Thought I would use it to store MP3 songs for my Red Fox wireless MP3 player. Unfortunately the data kept getting lost after transfer. Even back to exchange for another USB thumbdrive, but that too turn out to be faulty.

The All IT PIC wasn't very keen to entertain me the first time round and to change the second time round to another gift would probably be a bigger hassle. Talk about consumer rights and poor customer service hiding behind the policy of redeemable free gifts are not entitled for exchanges. Looks like I will just end up using this as a useless pretty looking keychain. I guess if I ever want to store important precious data, I should only use brands that I know, at least the defect would be under controlled and at the very least warranty against product defects. Next time I will be more weary about unknown generic IT brands. Always better to pay a little more for peace of mind!

[update]
While browsing around the internet, I found people actually bought fake branded flash drive. How the fake flash drive worked is by showing false capacity, ie if the counterfeiter would make the chip inside the pen drive show up as a 2GB capacity thumb drive, but in actual reality, the memory chip could only hold 512MB of data. I guess the same falls for this faulty thumb drive that I got from All IT.

Why do they do that? To save money from putting in the required memory chips and sell it at the market value of the higher capacity, but in the end the product is faulty and you can't use it at all.

However there are some tools out there where you can fix the reported capacity to the actual capacity and thereby you could still use it but up to the real capacity. Well, kinda too late now that I have thrown it away.

Anyway at the current rate of decreasing price of flash drive, I could get a 4GB thumb drive for as cheap as RM20! Anyway, I have many flash drive and I'm aiming at the high capacity ones with my latest procurement at 64GB! Wow! And yes, it is not cheap!


End of Flock Browser

Aw, shucks. And I really liked the Flock browser. But when I received the announcement in my inbox:



Support for Flock browsers will be discontinued as of April 26th, 2011. We would like to thank our loyal users around the world for their support, and we encourage the Flock community to migrate in the coming weeks to one of the recommended web browsers listed below.


Just too bad for me. Although it uses the same engine as Mozilla Firefox, it has added features to enhance it including the various social website integration. I suppose the Flock browser people decided to pull the plug and not maintain another version of the Mozilla Firefox browser.

So looks like I will have to revert back to good old Firefox. The latest update to Firefox 4.0 has some updated features. But somehow I noted that the Google Toolbar has some issues with it. I keep losing the Gmail button if I tried to customized the Firefox toolbars.

Well, it was good while it lasted. I have been using Flock for many years now. So will just have to re-acclimatized with the Firefox layout.

Got my HP officejet J3508 all-in-one fax scanner printer

HP OfficeJet J3508 All-in-one Fax Scanner Printer


Just my luck. My 3 year old HP all-in-one fax printer went kaput and I had to get replacement. Opted for HP Officejet J3508 all-in-one fax scanner printer.

This one uses black ink cartridge 702 only. That's all I need as I basically use it for faxing mainly with occassional document printing.

The colour print version, the J3608 is more expensive though it has a higher print speed of 20ppm vs 15ppm for the cheaper model. That's ok for me, no need so expensive. Besides my soho home business is still in the early stages. So not expecting any heavy fax volume.

My old HP officejet all-in-one could still print and scan though. Looks like it will just end up as printer only. I think I'll just place that in my in laws place wher a printer is required.

This HP Officejet J3508 is sufficient at least for now.

HP OfficeJet Warranty Exchange Problem

[update] Aug 2012

My good old HP all-in-one finally went kaput in my in-law's house, instead of getting another HP printer, decided to replace with a simple Epson desktop printer. Simple printing was all I needed in the other house.

As for my current house HP J3508, decided to not leave it on all day long due to lightning strikes. I have lost several surge protectors and it was very inconvenient when the surge protector failed to prevent damage to the fax printer itself. Though fortunately HP replaced a another set with no question asked. But it was not a brand new fax machine, just a repaired version from another user who had a problem with it. I found another solution to my personal fax requirement and that was to subscribe to a virtual fax service. It wasn't so cheap, but it was very convenient and less problematic.

Recently my work place 8 year old Panasonic Laser Fax was not working well. It could not feed in the paper for outgoing fax. Although it was an expensive fax, I thought it was not value for money for the repair. The fax toner was expensive plus every 4 toner changed, the laser drum need to replace and it wasn't cheap!

Nowadays people tended to scan into a PDF file and email over, so the amount of receiving fax was less. So opted to get the cheaper HP J3608 fax printer. It was simple and lightweight (the Panasonic fax was heavy!) and good enough for our simple daily usage. I couldn't find the black ink cartridge version only HP J3508 anymore. Perhaps it was so low priced (I bought the J3508 for RM200) or perhaps not popular, the vendor decided to sell the colour printer version instead (the J3608 was RM270). Since most incoming faxes would be black, the colour cartridge would definitely be under used and become unusable come the expiry date. No matter, the fax machine would still run without the colour cartridge, and if truly needed, it would be cheaper to replace it when compared with Panasonic toners and drum.

The only disadvantage I see is the HP inkjet printout would smear when come into contact with water. So if our hands were wet or sweaty, the fax copy would smear. This incident would not be common so I guess it would still be acceptable.

Cat got sore throat?

Can cat get sore throat? Coz my cat seemed a little weak in her meows and not at all noisy and loud. And the meowing sound sure sounded somewhat hoarse to me.
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.

Benefits of eating Papaya Fruit

Papaya Fruit - new information of goodness added

 

Papaya

 

No need to cry about scarcity of blueberries, strawberries, etc in SINGAPORE.  We have our wonderful payayas, pineapples and bananas, and durians and mangoes are affordable.

 

Papaya was the only studied  food found to halt breast cancer

 

Scientists studied 14 plant foods commonly consumed in Mexico to determine their ability to halt breast cancer cell growth. These included avocado, black sapote, fuava, mango, prickly pear cactus (nopal), pineapple, grapes, tomato, and papaya. They also evaluated beta-carotene, total plant phenolics, and gallic acid contents and antioxidant capacity. They found that only papaya had a significant effect on stopping breast cancer cell growth. (International Journal of Food Science and Nutrition, May)

 

Papaya is a store-house of cancer fighting lycopene

Changing to HTC Desire Z - thinking

I'm considering to change my android phone Sony Xperia X10 mini pro to HTC Desire Z. Sure I've just updated the firmware for this X10 and i liked the new updated stuffs. But there is still one drawback: the tiny fonts. At my age a larger font would go easier on my eyes especially since i do a lot of texting and mobile blogging. I couldn't find the font size adjustment in this Xperia and many of the rich text mail has extra tiny fonts. Fortunately the road sync has very nice comfortable fonts but it only allow one email account though. So my next best option is to plough in some dough perhaps trade in or sell my Xperia X10 and upgrade to HTC Desire Z. I know HTC got font sie adjustment base on my short lived experience of using HTC Wildfire. So it is just a matter of time for me to change my mobile phone.

Wot? My wordpress comment form is not working?

Strange. What happen to my wordpress comment form. One of my visitors pointed out that it gave a javascript and cookie not switched on error. Now i'm scratching my head and tring to figure just what is wrong. Could be a template issue or plugins. Don't know. Will figure out later. Got tons of work to do!



--- [update 27/6/2011]

Well I thought I fixed after re-installing Wordpress onto a new hosting server. And yet again the comment form was not working. This time I removed another plugin which seemed to solve it for now

Yes, success! Updated sony xperia x10 to android 2.1

This time round managed to update my Sony Xperia X10 Mini Pro from Android version 1.6 to 2.1. It was slow, took about less than an hour but it was done. Customizing and making work as before is going to take longer as i have to set up my gmail account, office account, facebook, twitter, etc plus downloading the apps from Google market again. Not to mention my Angry Birds game. Now i've to start from level 1 all over over again! Bummer! At least the Sony Xperia X10 mini pro is finally updated!


Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro Review

Almost updated my sony xperia x10 mini pro

Attempted again to see if i could update my sony xperia x10 mini pro. Saw some progress at the update progress bar so i know it is working.
Didn't have time as i wanted to go home and the updating looked real slow. So decided to kill the update and try it again later.
At least i could see the progress bar today. The previous day was terrible with nothing happened at all. So hopefully after dinner i will give it another try.
I think it will need a good and smooth internet connection to update well. And today's streamyx  internet connection seemed much better.
Once the sony xperia x10 is updated i'm going to lose those google app for android 1.6. Those were nice to use but the authors did not make any updated versions for the latest android 2.x O/S. But from what i learned there were some new functionality such as facebook contact sync with the main contacts and various other updates.
Will see once i've updated.



Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro Review

Enfapro A+

Incubators and intensive care for babies. My poor son had to have ultra violet lighting to cure his jaundice.

My wife goes Enfapro A+ for our baby who is now about 10 months old. It seems this brand provides very good nutricient for growing babies for ages between 6 months to 18 months old. But it doesn't come cheap!

There are two versions, then Enfapro and the Enfapro A+. The difference of the A+ is the addition of DHA and other additional nutricient for baby.

It seems you can get it cheaper from the Chinese Medical Hall Shops so today I decided to to get one from Vie Onn in Section 14 PJ. I decided to go for the 850 grams big can because I can never get that size in the supermarkets.

The price was about RM76. Not sure if that is significantly cheaper than elsewhere. Will know if I bump into it elsewhere. One thing about purchasing it from Chinese Medicine shop, you have to pay cash coz they don't have credit card facility.
Anyway let's grab it first for now. If I ever find Enfapro A+ large can 850g in the supermarket at a cheaper price then I will know the difference.


Enfapro price Aug 2012

Enfapro A+ DHA+ Step 2
650gm = RM$66.80

Enfapro Regular
650gm = RM$43.70

Related post:
Enfalac A+ Baby Milk

BU4 Playground is almost open

The BU4 playground is almost open finally! It has been a long wait for the residents of BU4, about 15 years! It was in the developer's plan during launching sale at that time and some of my neighbours bought their house because they want a playground for their kids to play in, but they are all grown up and not so interested in it.
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!

Baby Ten Months Old

Got another tip from the Baby Center that I subscribe. Seems like whenever baby goes bah-bah I also mimic him. Looks like that was not such a good idea. Should follow like what Baby Centre suggests, reply with a proper English sentence. That way he will pick up the nuances of the language.

Here was the short tip from the Baby Center newsletter:

Words or word-like sounds may now be spilling out of your baby. When he chatters at you, just chatter right back. Keep your language simple but use real words. The idea at this age is to model the correct pronunciation, not to "correct" him. When he says "bah-bah" for bottle, for instance, you could say, "Yes, that is your bot-tle." He probably understands a lot more than you realise, so you can keep up your side of the conversation by describing daily activities as you do them, reading to him and singing songs.


For baby to learn a language is going to take some time. That's why it is good to start them off early. In Malaysia here where we are multi-lingual able to speak English, Malay, Chinese plus the various dialects, we really need to start to converse with our child so that they can pick up as many languages as possible. The more the merrier!

The more language one can speak, the better standing for job prospect and communication especially for work.

For now, I'm going to need a lot of patience to help baby pick up all the languages!

streamyx internet lagging slow

I'm getting a lot of drop connection from streamyx again today. Either the websites I'm visiting are slow or streamyx has a bad international connection, or perhaps they are in cahoots with BN trying to prevent people from watching opposition video or what I don't know. I'm just trying to do some research and perhaps even trying to update my Sony Ericson Xperia X10 android software to version 2. I think I will do the update next time. For now the lagging part is just too slow!

oh dear, baby got flu!

Oh dear! I think baby caught my bacteria and now he got flu. Probably sore throat too since he sometimes didn't want to drink milk or take baby cereal. I tried to sleep in a different room during my nasty dry cough bout for the whole long month. Well the dry cough get very loud when it was irritated it would wake baby. At the same time reduce the amount of bacteria or virus flying around.

Still it wasn't enough to prevent infection as young baby still have low immunity. I guess the nightly play time with baby could still have germs flying around. The final round that caused the infection was when my wife forgot to adjust the air-conditioner in the master bedroom from 23 °C to a warmer 25 °C and it got very cold in the morning.

Well the weather was very blistering hot lately in the end month of March. So the varying hot and cold temperature would cause many people to become sick.

Anyway, my wife brought baby to see the paediatrician and some medicine was prescribed. That helped to ease and reduce the runny nose and reduce the coughing. Well, despite the runny nose, baby still happily crawled everywhere and made many attempt to stand up with furniture support of course!

Nice to see his bubbly cheerful self! A laughing smiling baby sure perks up your day!

 

 

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!

Sometimes PC cannot connect streamyx but it is PC fault

Spend the better part of the morning troubleshooting why my office PC cannot connect to Streamyx. At first I thought Streamyx may be having problem. Then I tried to reset the the modem router by switching off then on again and still my PC would not connect even though I got a steady DSL light on my modem router.

Finally I have to do a reboot but I kept this to the last minute as rebooting Windows takes up 5 to 10 minutes (ya, ya ask Mr Bill why Windows always take so long to boot up…) and that seemed to do the trick.

Somehow something didn't start up correctly during the earlier boot and rebooting seemed to restart the necessary services to get the internet connection.

Computers worked very strangely, though it may work well most of the time, sometimes the logic processer go into a loop and go crazy. Like the other day my house PC display went funny colors and felt as though the graphic card may be on the fritz but actually a simple time consuming reboot did the trick. And why time consuming? Coz I don't know why my house PC takes so long to shut down before re-starting. Not sure it is because I installed the 64bit version of Windows 7 and it gets very cranky with an AMD system. Perhaps an Intel CPU system would be more palatable for Windows. Thus Wintel as some of the publication like to put it.

Well sometimes I buck the mainstream hardware and support AMD. After all why let Intel become like a monopoly like Windows is almost a monopoly. You don't have a Windows in your PC it becomes very difficult to work because of compatibility issues.

Anyway, I got my internet connection back from my good old cranky computer (well most computers whether new or old are cranky anyway).

Cheers!

 

Website down coz Bluehost is moving Data Center

Oh, oh… Looks like all my websites hosted on Bluehost is down. Bluehost is moving their servers to a brand new data center complete with advanced temperature control, custom server racks and dozens of improvements that suppose to provide customers like me with better quality.

Unfortunately it also means they have to take down my web hosting account while moving the web servers physically from one location to another. Due to the time zone difference, I was not sure when my web sites will be down although they said they were shifting to the new data center between 9 PM, March 27th and 5 AM March 28th (MDT). I didn't have time zone checker so to convert the time to my local time.

Fortunately, my subdomains are latched on to various services like Blogger and Tumblr etc. So I can still blog somewhere. Other than that, my main site is down.

Anyway, all my web sites are down for now. So I can't do much tweaking or hacking on my main site for now. I was trying to test out the random text using either the PHP script or CGI Perl script for SSI.

I hope the IP for my website still remain the same, I think something might break along the way. Hopefully not too serious that I cannot fix.

Oh, well, take break and have a Kit-Kat I suppose… J

Trying some Chinese herbs for dry cough

This dry cough has been ongoing for nearly 4 weeks now. I have had enough of this! Yesterday I bought a pack of Chinese herbs called Tan Ke Qing Fei herbal tea from a Chinese medical shop. The preparation was somewhat tedious in that I have to boil and simmer the herbs with six bowls (Chinese rice bowl size) of water, boil and let it evaporate till there was one bowl of liquid left and drink it.

Seemed easy enough until I tried. Somehow it didn't evaporate as plan and I still got about 3-4 bowls of herbal tea. My entire house was filled with the typical herbal smell though I am ok with this kind of aroma, as I kinda like it. The herbal tea preparation may not have gone according to plan, but after taking it, I felt a little better with less coughing. So I was going to give this another go tonight.

My wife was a little sceptical but if it worked then why not give it another go?
Strange was the fact about this dry cough. The Sinseh said the cough could 'turn' from cold to heaty and the heat could be buried within the chest waiting to break out. Hmm... Whatever that means. Anyway as long as I can get rid of this cough no matter the method I'll go for it!



Finally found cure for dry cough using this Chinese herbal drink

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…!

Baby milestone 9 - 10 months old

With so many in family sick, it's a wonder my baby still got the attention. Now at 9 months to ten moths old baby, he finally was able to crawl forward! Initially he could only push himself backwards, now he could propel himself forward to just about anywhere!
So I made a little mini play area by using two sets of foldable mattresses surrounded by the sofa set and TV bench. Where there are gaps in the furniture fencing or danger of hard surface I line the place up with cushion pillows from the sofa set.
Now he got a fairly spacious play area to crawl around! Better than my mom-in-law who just use bare marble floor. Baby knocked on the hard floor so many times already whenever he misjudge his movement and ended up crying a lot!
And from crawling, baby is now able to pull himself up to a standing position too! And he loves to stand up so much!
So, to celebrate he is now able to clap hands too! I'm spying that he could do some waving as well but not sure if baby knows it is for waving goodbye. And when the Disney Playhouse channel breaks into any lively songs, baby would lift both hands and wave them! Wow!
He is also a very curious and inquisitive young child exploring any items that you pass to him or seek out by baby. If his crawling was more steady, bet you that he is going to crawl into every nook and cranny!
Now is the time to learn for the baby as the brain development is the fastest and my wife has bought some expensive language learning kit. Forgot the name, but I'll be sure to blog about it later!
Cheers!

Still coughing but getting better

This itchy dry cough of mine is finally on the road to recovery. I'm still ccoughing pretty hard when the throat gets irritated. However the frequency of coughing bout is less frequent now.
When to see another family doctor. This time he prescribe some cough tablet for phlegm control and a very drowsy cough mixture for night time use so I can sleep better. Woke up a bit drowsy though. Perhaps that is due to coughing fits halfway through the night and I have to get up to change my sweaty clothes and take some medicine to sooth my irritated throat to prevent further coughing.
Sigh! I really hate this dry cough. I use to get it every year, but managed to keep my flu package at bay for a couple of years now thanks to my weekly 20 minutes run rounf the park. The jog really strengthened my immunity against the flu package which usually consist of sore throat, cold, fever and then that long winded dry cough which takes several weeks to cure.
This time round the sore throat and cold didn't strike but went straight to the dry cough starting with a slightly mild fever.
Oh, well i'm getting my voice back but I still cough whenever I speak on the phone or do any extended talking. Still sounded like Rod Stewert with that sexy raspy voice!
I guess another few more days should do the trick! Hope so too coz i'm teaching Sunday school and the following week, worship leading! Had to swap my schedule because of this terrible dry cough which disrupted my planned schedule!

Going for Chinese Medicine Remedy for Dry Cough

I have enough of this cough, cough, cough! It is so irritating! I decided to try Chinese medicine remedy for this dry cough instead. Since the antibiotics and other Western medicine is not working may as well try the Eastern medicine instead. It uses herbs and ginseng for treatment.

My 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!

Why so many in the family got ailment?

Why the men in the family are sick? Perhaps we are under spiritual attack or something. My elder brother-in-law has been fighting the tumour in his head for the past 2 years and seem to hanging on with his mostly vegetarian diet and supplements boosting. All of a sudden the sky was thrown at the family and now comes trial and tribulation.

During CNY my dad-in-law has a nasty fall resulting in brain trauma though finally he is given the all clear and checked into a nursing home. My brother-in-law has his Still's Disease flare up during CNY and now still fighting it pretty hard. And myself, maybe consider it mild, but this dry cough of mine is certainly very irritating and I had it for a week already. I'm beginning to suspect that I may have picked up some strong bug while visiting the infirmed in UH.

Then my baby fell from our bed because missus was overly concern with her brother when she pick up a phone call and completely neglected to place baby in a safe place like the baby cot or surround the bed with pillow barrier and he just rolled over to the side. To ensure she don't jump out like that I've muted the fax and phone in the master bedroom. So only the downstairs phone will ring.

Trouble seems to come in waves and this wave is a nasty one. Some dark forces is at work here like a predator hunting for its prey and looking out for weak links in the family to strike and cause terror. Going to have to weather this dark storm till it blows over and let it settle down.

Looking for a good nursing home

Finally my dad-in-law was discharged yesterday after the doctor gave the all clear from his MRSA infection. However he still needs care and the best option now is check him into a good nursing home where they can give the attention and care to him.
Lena brother and sister has scouted a few and decided to check him in to a nursing home just opposite of UH. It was reasonably affordable at about RM1200 per month.
However on the second day while checking up on her dad, they find the care given was rather deplorable. Although this nursing was recommended by an aunt who has stayed there previously perhaps her condition was not as serious as my dad-in-law.
He was almost neglected due to his immobolized condition and the nurses, though qualified did not seem to know what they are doing. They didn't call us when they have run out of his clean clothing and just let him covered with a thin layer of sarung.
Because of the many complaints she decided to look for another good nursing home or bring him back to the house. I think the best bet is still nursing home as there isn't any place on the ground floor unless we do major reorganizing of the furnitures. Besides we don't have the strength and manpower to carry him from the bed to the wheelchair and do physiotherapy.
Anyway will just have to check out the other nursing homes which are priced higher which hopefully provide better nursing care.

MRSA Superbug

My dad-in-law is getting complication after complication. The doctor now says he has MRSA superbug which is an antibiotic resistant bacteria. So any who comes into contact with him must really scrub their hands before they leave the hospital and change their clothes for washing when they go home. MRSA I believe is very dangerous for those who has weak immunity, seniors and children. Because of the bacteria resistance to general antibiotics, there is only a very limited arsenal of antibiotics that can fight off this bacteria.

IE visiting your general doctor in the clinic won't help because the antibiotics have to be dispensed very carefully and in controlled manner in order to avoid bacteria becoming immune to the medicine. Losing the antibiotics ability to kill the bacteria would be a major blow and would bring us back to pre-antibiotic medical age.

The doctors want to discharge my dad-in-law as soon as possible to avoid getting further complication from infection as the hospital has many bacteria and viruses flying around. With my dad-in-law's weaken condition, it is very susceptible for him to catch just about anything.

Because MRSA can be fatal, we need to consider our children's future too and avoid catching such a dangerous superbug. That means my mom-in-law, my wife, the maid who are all involved in looking after toddlers (well she is running a nanny service besides looking after my son and my niece) should not visit the hospital at all. My brother-in-laws too have to avoid as they themselves are fighting off illnesses so their immunity is low. That leaves only my sis-in-law. She will have to avoid visiting the house in USJ after a hospital visit.

This may sound cruel to my dad-in-law with not many visitors but given the circumstances of MRSA superbug risk of exposure and fatality, it is better not to risk it passing on the germs to the young children.

Sometimes it is a tough choice between one whose life journey is at its twilight against another whose life journey has barely just begun. To show love and compassion and yet there are considerations to decide balancing the future of one against that of another is pretty tough.

No choice now but to wait until the doctor gives the all clear against this MRSA superbug before visiting again.

My PC is rather slow on certain aspects

I'm not sure whether it is due to Windows 7 which is rather slow in my AMD 64 computer or whether my 2 year old hardware is aging, but I feel the hardware part is rather unlikely as I tried booting up the system using Ubuntu Linux and making a comparison. Although I don't get to use Windows 7 in my office, a quick check on my colleague's Windows 7 and her PC is running quick as a breeze. Not every job or application is slow in my house box, only certain aspects of the PC is slow. Boot up speed is expected whether at home or at work, Windows always loads up lots of applets and services which tend to take up some 5 minutes before you are ready to go.

I have two issues with my AMD/Windows 7 setup, large file transfer and shutdown process. My external hard drive, the WD My Book using firewire connection is especially slow when it comes to large file transfer. And the Windows 7 shutdown also takes ages! It takes as long as 10 minutes to quit! Now that is far too long! Even my Windows Vista at work takes less than 3 minutes to shutdown.

Strangely when I tried my PC with Ubuntu Linux live CD, the file transfer was so much faster. With my Puppy Linux, it was blazingly fast! Perhaps too fast as it started to have errors when transfer huge amount of files. So I decided to stick back with Ubuntu Linux for a more stable file transfer environment.

I suspect installing Windows 7 in the 64bit mode is not as good as I thought and might have compatibility issues with an AMD system. The only way to know for sure is to reinstall Windows 7 in 32 bit mode or change my hardware to an Intel based system. I'm neither keen on either mode the former being tedious and time consuming while the latter cost money and I'm not ready to throw in good money for a hardware upgrade just yet.

Since the issue is just file transfer and shutdown, I opted in to install a Linux system using Ubuntu to resolve the former while I just have to grit my teeth and wait for the shutdown process for the latter. I could always just flick the off switch on the mains if I didn't want to wait which is not always a good idea as Windows 7 may be writing something into the hard drive and might risk corrupting the data.

Anyway, just have to work around the slow Windows 7 issues and a good excuse to install Ubuntu 10.10 which I have not come around to do!

Dad-in-law on the way to recovery

My dad-in-law is on the way to recovery. Being a senior I guess many complications can happen while being warded in University Hospital. The head trauma by doctor reckoning is stopped based on observation. However the aftermath of that fall and brain injury caused his kidneys to temporary stop functioning. Now his kidneys were resuming its function, but due to the hospital environment, my dad-in-law contracted pneumonia. Which after a strong dose of antibiotics he is now well into remission.

One thing about the doctors in this neurosains department, they seem rather fatalistic and give worst case scenario causing family members to be anxious that the end is near. Eventually my dad-in-law pulled through. I'm not sure why they give such negative news causing everybody to panic. There was one instance where they told my friend to please urgently come to the hospital because they need to tell them something face to face and not through the phone. My friend rushed over expecting the worst but turn out to be just a decision making question regarding whether to proceed with a certain procedure if something happens.

I think these doctors need a lesson in PR and social etiquette. They might be full of knowledge in treating diseases and ailments but had no idea on how to disseminate information in a tactful way to family member who were filled with anxiety, with situation that was more grave that it actually was.

Anyway, my dad-in-law is recovering and it would be good to discharge him asap as the hospital environment is not good for him to stay. With his liquid diet he is developing stomach ulcers.

The only thing left is to decided on how to go about for his physiotherapy as he has not walked for 2 weeks now and would need to strengthen his muscle to enable him to walk again. There is a possibility that he will need to stay in some nursing home for a short while to regain his strength again. So this will be decided when the time comes.

Pneumonia - a turn for the worse

My dad-in-law was recovering from his head trauma and kidney was going back to its function. Then the situation took an about turn and he was infected with pneumonia! Now that was not good. They have to wheel my father-in-law back to the high dependency ward again for constant monitoring.

Pneumonia is not good for seniors, because bacterial lung infection is one of the leading causes of mortality for seniors. The doctors have given the most potent available antibiotics. We can only hope and pray that the antibiotics administered will do its job.

Proton cars more expensive in Malaysia than in Saudi Arabia



My Dad-in-law recovering

This was rather good news. Received text message that my dad-in-law condition is stabilizing and they have shifted him to a normal ward from the high dependency ward in University Hospital.

 

His glucose level has been reduced from a high of 14 to 9. Still high but not so high. According to the neuro doctor, his kidneys are functioning although initially there was a worry that it was affected from his head trauma brain injury. Seems like all the prayers from everyone helped!

 

There is still a need to take care as he was already suffering from type 2 diabetes and never controlled his food intake resulting in a skyrocket high glucose level. What to do? Stubborn senior who care more about enjoying food then making sure his glucose level is within limits.

 

Every time we tell him not to take salt (which is bad for the pancreas which produce insulin to control glucose) and not simply eat high glucose content food (like nasi lemak, roti chanai, and you know all those heavy carbohydrate foods) and he went around telling his neighbours that his family member didn't give him food to eat! Actually we want him to eat healthily like eat more vegetables (which he don't want to eat), eat less salt or not at all (so he said he never put salt but soya sauce is full of salt! Who's he trying to kid!) and preferably no chillies too because he gets diarrhoea (but he never listens).

 

Also he was given a walking stick so he can walk more stable but he refuse to take it but looking at him  walking even a strong wind could blow him over. Hopefully this hospitalization should make him realize the situation that he was not as strong as he was 20 years ago (which he use to boast often that if he can do it 20 years ago, he can do it now; refusing to admit age is catching up and much faster than others of his same age group coz he didn't take care).

 

So take note, keep yourself healthy and you can be as strong as an ox in your senior years. Be humble and be teachable when people give advice, listen and take heed. You can still enjoy your golden age even though your body is slowing down because your mind is strong, your body is healthy.

 

 

Stupid fireworks woke baby up!

I just managed to get baby to sleep and was about to take a bath, when suddenly, bang! Goes the fireworks! Baby had a great jolt and started crying! The maid also woke up too! Ya, ya, fireworks to be let out in the middle of CNY but this really made silently scream out at those bl***y stupid things! D**n, I have to start all over again and it takes a long time to calm baby and get him back to sleep!

Finally I could calm him down and settle baby back to sleep. For God's sake, no more fireworks please!

Phew hot day! Makes me kinda tired!

The hot weather has returned! I have been running around all day and with the hot weather, sure made me rather tired while running errands.

Now that mom-in-law is back, I guess she would be taken aback at the situation that was recently unfold. Only thing left is to wait for the healing process for her hubby to pull through and for her son's treatment of Still's disease. I should think my brother-in-law would recover much faster given sufficient rest.

Only my dad-in-law's head trauma will take some time. He can respond now, and the neuro-docs believe the hemorrhage has stopped judging by observation.

Since my wife has started work to rush for a proposal, I now have to rush to USJ to pick up baby so that my mom-in-law can go to University Hospital.

All this rushing about on such a hot weather too!

Lemon Cure against Cancer Cells

Lemon Cure against Cancer Cells

Received this message from my dad, looks intriguing. Haven't got time to verify this. So please read this for study and don't take it at face value till you do further research. Of course any health fitness news is welcome but there are also many misinformation in the internet so do your research!

Cheers!

University Hospital, quite a maze!

Finally found my way around University Hospital. This place is like a maze! The various faculties are link up by way of tunnels and overhead bridges and walkways. Even with the signages it is still difficult to find my way around this vast hospital complex!

My dad-in-law and brother-in-law were both admitted to University Hospital but at different ward. The former was due to serious head trauma from a fall while the latter was due to his flare up of rheamatoid athritis.

Walking from one ward to another and of course to the pharmacy to purchase medical supplies, it was such a tiring affair! But it makes for a good walking exercise and I had good sense to wear a pair of sport shoes.

University Hospital is a government hospital and they have many specialist professors and upcominng medical student and future specialist doctors. This hospital is has under constant renovations and upgrade so much that is now a sprawling labyrinth hospital complex!

For lunch, my wife suggested the Secret Recipe Restaurant located on the ground floor near the emergency trauma section in Menara Utama. Took me a long time to find it. I almost decided to have my lunch at the food court which basically serve local fare. But after walking so much I decided to give myself a treat at Secret Recipe Restaurant.

Anyway, I had my lunch now and it is back to walking about University Hospital corrodors to the wards to check up on my in-laws condition.

Serious head trauma

What an eventful Chinese New Year! It was to be joyous occassion visiting families and friends. Unfortunately it was marred by my dad-in-law accident; he fell and hit his head pretty hard on the road.

He has been pretty wobbly and his sense of balance has not been good for the past many months. He fell in the coffeeshop many months ago and even fell on the stairs at home. Now this time was the most severe fall with a serious head trauma. He somehow lost his balance and fell diagonally and hit his left forehead. After rushing him to hospital, the doctor took a CT scan and found some hemorrhaging in the brain. No choice but to check him into ICU as this was rather serious. However there was not much they could do but to observe and provide medication. At his advance age and frail condition operation was out of the question.

Cat scan of head trauma with hemorrhage

ICU is going to cost a bomb! Although he is covered for AIG Personal Accident insurance, nowadays the insurance company like to worm their way out of any liability and may find a loophole to avoid dispersion of funds. Having had poor experience with insurance claims of late we have build a certain distrust of insurance companies.

Anyway no choice now. At least my dad-in-law got insurance cover so hopefully that would amount to something to help the medical financing.

Let's hope the internal bleeding will stop and he can be placed in normal wad and of course return home.

Eventually some decision has to be made on his daily gallivanting routine and his refusal for a healthier lifestyle.

Seniors should keep healthy both physically and mentally

Seniors should keep themselves occupied or their cognitive function goes downhill. My dad-in-law if you compare with other seniors of the same age range should be, well, mentally good. Unfortunately his lack of keeping himself healthy is bringing about poor cognitive function. His comprehension is going downhill so much sometimes you wonder what to do with him.

His stubborness in refusal to maintain healthy lifestyle has resulted in very poor cognitive ability.

Like, in the bath, he kept putting water in the body wash container so much that the entire bottle is so diluted that he may as well just bath with water.

The other day when he was in my house he thought he was in his house and wanted to drive his car into the car porch.

And speaking about cars, his driving judgement is rather poor and you can see all the scratches on the four corners which he whole heartedly proclaim that other people did it to his car!

Well, the doctors says there is 2 ways to about this. Control him and try to force him to maintain a healthier lifestyle which would make him unhappy or allow him to do what he pleases so he would be happy but his physical and mental condition will continue to deteriorate at a pace greater than those who are of his age.

This is sort of like a catch 22 situation but guess there is no good option about. Thus a senior who is serious about health should do the necessary to keep both physical and mental health in order to maintain good lifestyle and also help avoid causing people around to him to be exaperated.

Android 2.1 for Sony Ericcson Xperia X10

Finally saw the new working version of Android 2.1 for Sony Ericcson Xperia X10 on my brother-in-law's phone. He bought it for his wife to replace her old phone. The size is nice for her but she need to get use to the touch screen though.

Anyway, I wanted what were the major difference with the current Android 1.6 version of my Xperia X10 mini pro. From what I could, is mostly cosmetic wise as the usage is still the same basically with all the same function. However I'm still considering it,as some software that I have runs only in Android version 1.6. So I'll just have to think about it.



[update]
Finally updated my Sony Ericcson Android version to 2.1. It works much better now though the version is still behind 2.3 versions flying around in the market. However for the SMS text message, I'm not able to forward them. The message software will crash. The workaround way would be to copy and paste to a new message. Probably a bug in the software. Otherwise, overall the new updated version functions pretty well.

Meeting with a friend from Sabah

It's been years since we met last in Sabah. Back then my church organized a mission trip to Sabah. Since he and a several pastor came over to KL for some kind Bible study. And today is Thaipusam, so it is a good opportunity to meet up and catch up with time.

Now with baby tagging along I found that my timing is totally off whenever we want to out to meet up with friends and any family gathering for that matter.

In Malaysia we have what we call rubber time where people didn't arrive on time. Now I have to add another called baby time because time now evolve around baby preparation and other need to do things for baby. Haha!

And we have a friend who went through the process understood it entirely! I suppose if give priority for baby on the need to do things like bath, diaper change, feeding, sleeping, etc our timing just goes whack!

Fortunately ouir meeting was delayed, I suppose being a public holiday Malaysian no. 1 past time is cramming themselves for some kuala lumpur shopping! It is going to be difficult to find a parking space! Hope the security guard would be kind enough to let us park at the disabled space like last time. Will see!

I'm tired! Time to retire for the night

I'm dead tired and need to get some sleep! Especially since the night before and uneven sleep. Coupled with long journey, a good night's rest is a must! With the pitter-patter raindrops I should be getting some good shut eye tonight I hope!

New start for a new year

Well the super long weekend was a nice touch with current presiding PM giving us a free day off on 31st Dec. I was on leave on the 30th and was planning to go back to work on the 31st. So I had a nice long super weekend.

I didn't plan for any holiday trip around Malaysia though. Not with baby around. Besides he seemed to have caught a mild flu and what sounded like a nasty, chesty, wheezy cough. Must really take care of that to avoid developing to asthma. At this young age, illnesses are amplified against them. So by the grace of God he shall be stronger! Amen.

I, myself have an ailment, my elbow pain, otherwise known as tendinitis or the common name, tennis elbow seemed to have gotten poorer. I thought it was recovering by taking voltaren, apparently it was not.

So for a New Year start, I called up my regular indonesian massage lady for a good rub down on my entire body as well a little more for my elbow pain. It was long overdue. She had been very busy lately with many clients calling for her services so she didn't chase me for any business. Still she was glad to come over for a massage job.

And where there is good massage other family members tend to join in, and so my elder brother-in-law and his wife 'tumpang' along!

;-) haha

Although my body was a trifle sore, but it was good. Really relaxed my entire body. Though my elbow tendinitis will require more work to get it 'repaired' as my wife puts it!

Also spend some time rerouting my social websites to make a more understandable flow of pinging out. It looks simple if you look at my flowchart but it takes some though and the better part of 2 days to get it to work mostly. Still got more cleanup to do so will just leave that till another time. Hope that will help out to gain some website prominance for my various website.

For now it is nice to see baby sleeping and so I shall retire for the night too.

Here's to counting sheep...
Yume mitai ne