* * Gunung Ledang, 2 May 2009

The effect of ageing is apparent. When I was younger, I shouted with joy when reaching the mountain summit. Now, I shouted with joy and tears when I reached the foot hill!

This is the second time I climbed Gunung Ledang. (The first was in 1988 with three college friends.) We had a great company from members of Malaysian Nature Society, Johor branch. Everyone was courteous, friendly, selfless and humorous.

The team leader, Encik Hamid, is a seasoned trekker and well equipped with various interesting cooking utensils. He supplied ample beverages and drinks. Our three meals were provided from the park cafeteria, and we pitched tents at the camping site. Clean and well lit bathrooms were nearby, but some preferred the mountain stream to take a chilling dip.

The ascend to the summit was tiring, but it was the descent that hurt my knees, and I had to walk sideway to alleviate my aches. Looked like my two months of training and preparation was grossly insufficient. I experienced the same problem while descending Mount Kinabalu in 1996, and I was apprehensive it will recur. Hamid suggested to use knee guard in future and I will definitely look out for that.

* * Carcassonne: My first Euro Boardgame.

This is the first Euro designer boardgame I bought. It was sent by courier from KL by boardgamecafe.

I was itching to get one modern boardgame after reading articles written by Chee Yih Yang in The Star, but he could not give me a clear answer on where to buy one after replying me in email. The store he mentioned of is in KL, whose location sounds like a mystery to me, an ulu dweller. That was two years back.

Then recently I read an article, again in The Star's Wednesday Youth section where I chanced across, on boardgame getting more popular in Malaysia. One of the picture showed two college students sitting face to face deep in plotting strategy in the game. I looked closer and found the game is Memoir 44.

I googled for online+boardgame+malaysia and some other keywords and finally came to the site www.boardgamecafe.net but the server is super slow (now it has improved much). I registered as a member and placed order, received an email of confirmation, mode of payment not clear, asked for their local bank account number, transferred fund by online banking, received the beautiful parcel on Saturday two weeks ago, and off I started journey on this new found hobby with my family.

Within two weeks I got hold of four games (3 boardgames and 1 card game) as I was mesmerized by the beauty of the box and its contents, not to mention the fun and quality time spent with my kids. At least now they come to play game with me instead of with the computer. And to make the game more fun I will buy something special like ice cream, chocolate bar etc as prizes for the winner, even a pack of maggie mee for the loser to cook for the rest!

* * Anatomy page

I always lose this html page which contains anatomy diagrams, so the best way to overcome this problem is to put it in the net!

* * What a trip in Penang on Mar 8, 2008

I skipped the polling day on 8/3/08 and brought the family to Penang on the first day of school holiday, thinking that Barisan Nasional would surely win in the general election. But lo and behold, the Penang fell into opposition hands on the day we arrived there!

On the following day, seeing no unrest on the street (in fact it was quiet for a city downtown) we went to Penang Hill to try the funicular car and it was a good experience trying to rush for the limited seat inside the cable car which was packed like a sardine can.

* * A trip to Lanjut beach, Rompin, Pahang.

Lanjut beach, being washed by the strong wave of South China Sea, offers white and clean sand for beach-goers. I stayed in this modest Rantau D'Rhu Resort, in a RM150 per night chalet (the A framed green roofed one) on 7/10/2007 with my family, as part of the church adult fellowship annual get together.


My two daughters loved the beach as well as the company of other church members' young children. We did not buy food from the resort restaurant as the food brought by church members were enough and far more delicious.


There were no fixed program even though this was a church organized outing. Groups formed according to personality preference and the main activity therefore was chit chatting, besides the never ending sipping and nibbling around the big dinning table under an atap pavilion.


The earthen road along the coast passed through no human settlement for miles and served as an ideal jogging track for me; together with Ker Ping we walked and jogged for 8km with no other moving objects save for a motorcyclist and two Oriental Pied Hornbills.

* * Reflections on Life

Someone had emailed me a link to a speech by Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen (pictured, 1953- ). I found it great and redirected it to my ex-classmates with the hope it will add a few more ounces of wisdom for them.

To my surprise my ex-classmates replies with their own version of philosophy on Life which were as profound as Quindlen's.

Here is one from IL Cheah:

I would summarize the speech as "Get a life!". How apt. This is how I arrange life. One has soul, body, family, relatives and friends. Materials wealth are what we gather to facilitate our life on earth. How it contributes to one or all of the above is entirely up to us. Of course one must gather enough material wealth to be comfortable. The question is always, "how much is enough?". Different people will have different beliefs and perceptions on this. Very often there are trade-offs we have to make. Again, different people do different trade-offs according to what they believe. Most important is what we trade-off in life makes us happy.

And another by HY Lee:

yes very interesting speech indeed from a philosopher. To be able to do all that is perfect. To not able to follow them is only human Knowing what to do is one thing. actaully doing it can be quite another. Circumstances affect much of us..., we can try various methods to be 'detached' of the materialistic world, but can we? As long as we are happy, so be it . Afterall, we are the sole custody of our own life.

Reading my friends' emails my mind was stirred and some rudimentary reflections on life surfaced. I responded with:

For me life is a difficult subject especially when I add 'work' in front of it. Yes, work life is something I try to shun during Mon to Fri and always looking forward to Sat and Sun for the 'real life'. But to my dismay the 'real life' is really elusive as it disappears like morning dew on Monday morning and I was left depressed. What is left on Monday is a dreamlike recollection what I did at weekends, the 'real things' that I try to do such much and enthusiastic as possible- gardening, playing with kids, bird watching, fishing, off road ventures etc. But they are all dreams! So, to alleviate my depression I have to trick my mind that the real life is actually what I do everyday- works! plus all the things done in between- reading newspaper, checking internet, staring at the wall, do a few squatting exercise, eat, shit, sleep, read two pages of novel etc. In short, small things in life.

SL Tan read these and she gave a short and sweet reply:

I love it when the guys in here manifest their profound side. The way I see it....Happiness is like a moving target. Aiming at it requires practice. So keep practising as getting a bull's eye maybe possible.

I attach here the speech by Anna Quindlen:

"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't Ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre at my job if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived".

* * Yummy food near Kuala Terengganu

On the road from Kuala Terengganu towards Kuantan, after passing Marang, I saw this road side stall on my left doing barbecue of fish dumpling. The ingredient of fish, flour and coconut was mixed into dough and barbecued to such a taste that made you exclaim "hmmm" on the first mouthful. I forgot to ask for its name. (Someone informed me later that it was called 'satar')

There was no other stall selling the same further down the road until Cukai.

Read more on my trips to Kota Baru and Kenyir Lake.

* * Now everyone can patekphilippe

Not many people can afford a USD 20,000 Patek Philippe watch, but you can have it FOC- not on your wrist but on your PC screen. Highly adorable.

Download here

Pulau Tinggi durian trip 21Jul07

After missing a salivating trip last year to Pulau Tinggi, I would not let go another trip organized by Malaysian Nature Society, Johor branch this year. Not many people can resist the temptation of eating fresh durian on a tropical island while doing bird watching. Click here for more in
http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/
Malaysia/Johor/blog-184960.html

"May 13" bought online

For a small town resident like me to try and buy a book like this will be a very troublesome task- need to travel to big town to get it. Even an online bookstore like MPH (www.mph.com.my) does not carry this item, even though it is not banned.

Finally my brother who is busybody with everything under the sun gave me the tips to get the book from http://www.kinibooks.com/
product_info.php?products_id=692 . It costs RM20, plus courier fee RM5.

Comment on the content of the book? Nothing much being revealed on the subject. After all, it is only based on "declassified documents". There are many more documents yet to be declassified. And of course, secrets were not meant to be documented.

Reduce Speed NOW

You still can see traffic signage in English along highway in Sarawak- a rare scene in Peninsular. This sign is placed before a sharp bend between Sri Aman and Engkilili town.

Table Mountain in Sarawak

Well, if you think only South Africa has Table Mountain, take a look at the Bukit Lesong in Sri Aman district, Sarawak. From afar it looks like having a rather flat plateau.

I have been working four years in Kuching many years ago and never heard of people climbing it, so it seemed not to be a favorite for casual mountain climbers. But as a whole Kuchingites seldom ventures out of their beautiful and charming city, and many of them had never been to nearby towns like Serian, Bau etc, what more to say this Bukit Lesong which is at least three hours away (ok, you can dispute this figure as we don't even know how to get there he he).

Recently, during an open house last Chinese New Year, I had a chance talking to a guest at my home whose husband is a headman of a longhouse, Mungu Sawah, next to this Bukit Lesong. He had led a team making a climb. I was excited as this is the first time I heard human had set foot on it after the moon.

I looked at my Sarawak map ('borrowed permanently' from State Health Department) and found it is 2780 feet high, and can be approached from Lingga town upstream on Lingga river and arrive at Banting town. Munggu Sawah is at the head of one small Keranji river.

If you have successfully climb it, please send me some photo. TIA.

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Password revealed in Firefox

I was taken aback when I found out that my passwords are kept in Firefox browser and shown up when a button is clicked. So anybody who get his hands on your computer can just by a few clicks dig out the passwords for internet banking service etc. We can choose to remove them.

Send blog directly from Firefox

Today I installed ScribeFire, an add-on for Firefox web browser, that let me write blog and publish it directly without the need to log in at Blogger.

Make life easily for lazy people like me who find logging in and writing blog a 61kg burden (i.e. to drag myself to the computer table) :-)

Fishing trip to dams around Machap Baru

Last Sunday I went to Machap Baru, Melaka, for fishing. I used the new Abu Garcia Cardinal spinning reel and rod bought two weeks previously. The proverbial first-timer-luck proved to be true to its core and I was endowed with a 300 gram ikan keli at Jus Dam. Seen in the picture were my youngest daughter and my second brother’s eldest son.

We went to look for the famed red mee and roti kok in Machap Baru new village. The red mee was so so in taste. The roti kok was slightly softer than a rock and didn’t manage to break my teeth. We sipped coffee in one of the busy old fashioned coffee shop. The just concluded by-election did not leave any marks except a few posters, certainly none of the big shot campaigners like Najib and Ong Ka Ting had etched their name on the coffee table that I sat by.

We tried a few more fishing spots and did not catch any fish. The locals said the fish, especially the toman, had learned to be very smart over the years and will not bite any bait anyhow.

Even Abu Garcia can misfire

The first time I bought Abu Garcia Cardinal 801 spinning reel (on 7 Apr 2007) at RM200 I felt so proud. It was by far the most expensive reel I ever purchased. So, like taking care of the new born baby I pored through every aspect to admire the craftsmanship. Before long I came to notice a bad screwing of the anti-reverse button; as you can see in the picture the screw ran out of place and spoilt the groove.

I brought back to the shop and luckily the owner promptly changed for me a new one with no qualm. So next time when you by a Abu Garcia spinning reel which was Made in China, do have a detail look of it before leaving the shop. Don’t be blinded by the glares of the golden Abu Garcia tag.

Quotes on men-women relationship

Someone sent these quotes to me. I am not the originator. If you quote from my blog, perhaps I might be considered one. But I am not. They appear witty. Just take it as jokes, not truth.

• One GOOD way to REDUCE Alcohol consumption : Before Marriage - Drink whenever you are SAD. After Marriage - Drink whenever you are HAPPY

• Love your friends not their sisters. Love your sisters not their friends.

• A man got 2 wishes from GOD. He asked for the Best wine and Best Woman.Next moment, he had the Best Wine and Mother Teresa next to him. Moral : BE SPECIFIC

• What is a BEST and WORST news you can hear at the SAME time ? It is when your Girl Friend says YOU are the BEST KISSER among all your Friends.

• If you do NOT have a Girl Friend - You are missing SOME thing in your life. If you HAVE a Girl Friend - You are missing EVERY thing in your life.

• Question : When do you CONGRATULATE someone for their MISTAKE. Answer : On their MARRIAGE.
  

• Why Government do NOT allow a Man to MARRY 2 Women. Because per Constitution, you can NOT PUNISH TWICE for the same Mistake.

The 2006 Great Flood of Johor

This flood gave me a rare one-week vacation. I learn one lesson: prepare for any eventuality, including a drop-from-the-sky-jetfighter (so wear your helmet all the time outdoor he he).

Ambu-bike in Bangkok Kao San Road

on Christmas eve of 2005, a brawl happened outside a pub at the famous KSR in Bangkok. Ee oo ee oo... came a cute little 'ambulance' to my amazement. Salute the creative Bangkokian !! They had changed the gender of the motorbike even he he..

Click pix to enlarge *














Click pix to enlarge *

Hands free in Bangkok

(Republished from my post in www.travelblog.org)

I was told that some people travel to another country withoutcarrying a bag. Everything they need will be purchased when they reach the destination.

That's cool. So I tried it out when I went to Bangkok on 24 Dec. 2005. I only carried a waist pouch with these things inside: spare specs, medicine, a small 6”x6” towel, disposable underwear, notebook, map, and passport.

24/12/2005 Morning
I departed home at 5:30am, drove alone to Kuala Lumpur Internation Airport, parked in Airport car park (cost me RM160.00 by the time I came back 3 days later), checked in 2 hours beforehand. There was a huge crowd of passengers queued up mainly at AirAsia counters, but luckily there was a counter for those without baggage.

24/12/2005 Afternoon
Touched down at Don Muang Int. Airport after 2 hours flight. No fuss in immigration and custom clearance. Took a few Bangkok map at the lobby. Asked for direction of airport bus counter, and was told by a forex employee the wrong direction. The ticket counter was at the LEFT (not right) after going out through the main entrance.

The fair was 100B for route A2 to Khao San Rd. A few backpackers were already sitting at the waiting area. In half an hours time we were on the highway heading to downtown. Once exit the highway, we were in the traffic jam. It was a slow crawl, but no standstill like what I heard back home ('Bangkok drivers park their cars on highway!'). Lots of time to watch the Bangkok street life through window glass - fascinating for a curious newcomer like me.

Soi Rambutri
I stayed in a simple Gecko Guest House


The A2 bus made a last stop at Chakra Pong Rd. Since I already saw the road sign of Soi Rambutri from the bus, I headed straight there after alighting. No sense of getting lost.

I explored Soi Rambutri, stopped in front of a guest house and enquired the room rate. "150 baht per night." The land lady allowed me to have a look at the room before confirmation. The room has two iron beds and one bedside table, and was clean. No need to see other guest house (click here) for comparison.

I lost no time to ask for the bus number to Chatuchak Market. Bus no. 3 went from Phra Athit Rd to Chatuchak on one single trip. I did not understand what the conductor said about the bus fare, and the inn keeper had told me it was something like 7B, so I gave 10B but the conductor 'kindly' declined. Later I found out on the return trip that it was 16B.

Despite my fear that I might miss the market, the huge crowd near the area made it unmistakably. It was 4pm- ample time to get loss in the labyrinth of stalls in this biggest weekend market in southeast asia. Instead of rubbing shoulder with tourist in Khao San and Rambutri, here I had close encounter with local Thais. Dalmatians, Siamese cats, samurai swords, koi fish pond, M16 rifle's bayonet, etc stood out among Hello Kitty t-shirts and pottery products.

Chatuchak weekend market Puppies are sold in cage.

I took the same no.3 bus back to Cakra Pong Rd. It was 7pm. I bought one pair of shorts for night sleep in a department store; ate beef noodles; checked email next door in an internet café; ate fried prawn mee again. Khao San Rd was now jam packed with people in the Christmas eve. No Santa Claus here, but his hat was found on the heads of many a waiter or waitress in the roadside bars and cafes. Sexy girls with tight fitting suit were dancing to loud music on makeshift stage to promote some health drinks. The disco tune had attracted some members of the crowd to street-dance. Westerner tourists were looking curiously at the heaps of deep-fried grasshoppers and beetles worms; someone ventured to eat and jokingly exclaimed: “Ahhh, I will died tomorrow!”. Smiles were on many faces of colour black, white and yellow- United Nation indeed.

I retired early, but couldn’t sleep well amidst loud street music played until dawn on this Christmas night.