Tomorrow will be the start of a brand new year in the Chinese Lunar calendar, and it’s time for another round of family reunions. It’s a time to observe traditions, to remember the past and to hope for a better future.

First of all, let us wish all our family, friends, and dear readers a very happy Chinese New Year.

I wish you all the best in health, family, love, career and wealth.

I don’t know what came over me. This year I’ve suddenly had the urge to decorate my home for CNY.

First we put up some wall decorations. A “fook” (good fortune) poster.

I think some people put the “fook” upside down, but this wasn’t pasted at our door so I don’t know what the rules are.

A fish, because the word for fish “yu” sounds like another word for having abundance.

Paper fans made from ang pows.

Poey Chin decorated our shoe cabinet outside our condo with a cute little arrangement.

We started putting up red stuff all over our house. Even Elmo got drafted into service.

Last night we packed gifts for our relatives, then we packed ang pow.

And here’s something I’m really proud of.

Poey Chin told me she wanted flowers, and at first she wanted to buy those artificial flowers. I didn’t want that because we didn’t have space to store the flowers after CNY.

So she said she wanted fresh flowers. I told her I could arrange the flowers because I watched my mother do floral arrangements when I was a boy.

So we got some fresh flowers, and here’s the result after half an hour. My first ever floral arrangement!

Here’s our dining table, transformed and decorated.

Everything is red, orange and golden.

The kids and ourselves are really excited to wait for Chinese New Year.

We’re starting to teach Rachel some of the traditions and customs.

Hope all of you have a good celebration and holiday!

The point of the article was:

1. There are too many public holidays in Malaysia
2. Public holiday misuse happens when you take leave to stretch the public holiday into the weekend
3. Public holiday misuse makes employers cry because employees are not productive

Take the example of the next couple of weeks. If you take 7 days of leave, you could have an 18-day stretch without work.

Anyway, I’m not the kind of person who marks out all the dates to maximise my leave.

Don’t get me wrong. I love public holidays as much as anyone else.

It’s just that I’m a little strange. I don’t like to have holidays when everyone else is on holiday.

If I had a day off when everyone else was also having the day off, it would just feel like a normal weekend wouldn’t it?

Restaurants and shopping malls would be packed. You can’t travel anywhere because highways and tourist destinations would be jammed with traffic.

But imagine if you opted to go to work when everyone else took the day off!

1. Smooth traffic to and from work
2. No work disruptions (from customers or colleagues)
3. High probability bosses not around

If you ask me, I wouldn’t know what to do if I had a stretch of 18 days at home. I think all the days would be wasted away.

3 or 4 days are nice. Anything more and I start to go mad.

I prefer to save my annual leave for those special treats:

1. To watch a movie on a weekday and there is no one else in the cinema
2. To travel during off-peak season and feel like I’m the hotel’s exclusive guest
3. No traffic jams when driving out of town
4. No crowds at tourist attractions

I guess, for me it’s a matter of quality versus quantity.

Some of the books do not have proper covers because the images were not available on GoodReads.

A total of 66 books, which is an increase of 8 books compared to last year. I just joined the library in 2009, which explains the low number for that year.

Goodreads.com even has a pages statistic: 19,120 pages read.

The books are in chronological order, so it’s interesting to see how I started the year with poker and baking.

Then I moved to vegetarian and environmental interests. I picked up a few biographies (which are my favourite) including Janet Jackson’s new book.

Finally I ended the year reading more about relationships and communication.

There were only a couple of books on fiction, compared to >10 in the previous year.

My favourite books were:

1. You Don’t Need Meat by Peter Cox – opened my eyes to what I was eating and dispelled vegetarian myths.
2. Becoming Holyfield – this biography is a great inspiration for having a positive attitude, forgiveness and good work ethic.
3. No One would Listen – how the SEC and media ignored warnings about the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.
4. A Colossal Failure of Common Sense – an insider’s story about the Lehman Brothers collapse and how the 2008 global credit crunch happened.

I’m happy to report that my reading habit has influenced Rachel. She wants us to read to her all the time, and I’m teaching her to read her first words.

You would think that I would be the first to get an e-book reader, but unfortunately that would not be practical unless there is some electronic library system (or I join the dark side and read pirated books). I can’t possibly afford to buy over 60 books a year.

Who knows what books I will read next year? What books will I discover at the library in the coming days? It’s so exciting and I look forward to report my 2012 reading list.

What a year it has been. Where did all the time go?

At the end of last year, I announced the exciting news that we would be having our third baby.

Now Caleb is here, and it feels like it was years ago when I read my old blog post.

I guess now is the right time to review what I’ve done this year.

First of all, my new year resolutions for 2011 were hit-and-miss.

At the start of this year I was going through a minimalism phase, which prompted me to stop giving (and accepting) Christmas presents. That didn’t work, and it’s not something I want to try again.

Another resolution was establishing some form of routine and order. We managed to do that quite well after baby Caleb was born.

Our life has settled into a predictable routine. Stress levels are lower. We’re actually finding we can enjoy ‘family time’.

We made the decision that Caleb would be our last baby, and that decision really helped me to settle down.

No more keeping things around the house “just in case” another baby arrives. No more uncertainty. I can finally firm up on some financial plans.

Talking about finances, this year hasn’t been a good year. The expenses have just gone beyond what I am comfortable with.

We spent a lot of money on baby Caleb, and we started the two older kids at daycare. Things around the condo are starting to break down.

Honestly I am really stressed about this. It makes me go into moods of depression, self doubt and even desperation.

I don’t really want to cover the things that went on in our country, or the disasters that happened around the world. I’m sure you’ll get full coverage in the newspapers.

I would sum up this year with one word: “Caleb”. He is such a joy. As parents you always worry how a new baby would change your family dynamics, but it seems like he’s a perfect fit.

I end the year with a feeling of contentment and thanksgiving for all the blessings we enjoy.

Have a happy new year everyone.

Photo by: markovje

In these times of celebration and year-end festivities, I hope you all are blessed with happiness and health.

On the night before Christmas, Poey Chin and the kids spent some time making some party hats.

Here’s a close up on Daryl. He didn’t really know what was going on.

The kids got a lot of presents. Here are some of them.

We want to take this time to thank all my family and friends for thinking about our children. They really had a magical time opening all the presents.

The kids really loved all the toys you bought for them. Daryl holding an Angry Bird plush toy.

We parents really loved all the cute clothes you bought for them. It is very timely since Chinese New Year is just around the corner. Thank you!

Some of Rachel’s clothes:

For Daryl:

Clothes for Caleb (and some toys for the boys):

We got Daryl this Barney bag, and he was so happy and excited that he almost burst into tears.

There are a lot of other cool presents, and I didn’t have the energy to take so many photos (since the kids were running around).

Thanks again everyone for your gifts.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!

We were not planning to go, but at the last minute Rachel was blessed with two free tickets.

We decided that Rachel would go with Poey Chin, and I would be the driver.

We decided against bringing Daryl because he could get scared of the dimmed lights and the loud music.

So I took the day off and we made our way to KL city centre.

We arrived after a an hour’s drive and took some photos before the show started.

They had some Barney merchandise for sale.

Rachel was really excited though she didn’t show it in this photo.

Poey Chin went over to the box office to collect the complimentary tickets, and we were so surprised to find out they were the RM300 seats!

Here’s a photo of the show.

You can see some parents recording the entire show on their phones and iPads.

Rachel was quiet through the show, and she didn’t really participate in the dancing. After the show it was a different story.

Since we only had two tickets, I went off to KLCC during the show.

I wanted to find a place to sit down and read my book, but the place was so packed, even on a weekday!

The entire mall has changed so much, I was amazed as I hadn’t been there for over 5 years!

Some of you from outstation have probably been to Suria KLCC more times than me.

I couldn’t find a place to sit, even the restaurants were packed at 3pm. Well, the Japanese restaurant looked kind of vacant but I couldn’t afford to eat there. So I made my way back to the convention centre to have a snack at the food court.

Later Poey Chin told me that some parents were allowed to enter with only two tickets, with the idea that their child had to share seats with them. But in the end the hall was not filled and there were plenty of free seats to go around.

Some of them even moved up to the “expensive” seats.

The show was over in less than 2 hours, so we quickly rushed back to the car to make our exit from the city.

Unfortunately we were caught in the evening rush hour (and it rained!), so it took us another hour to make our way home.

I was tired from all the driving and walking, but Rachel really enjoyed herself and I think she will remember the special day.

It’s from the La Gourmet brand. It has 7 litre capacity and comes with a 3-year warranty.

The retail price was RM315 I think, but we didn’t pay for it because I used my Maybank card points to redeem this item for 70,000 points.

I feel pretty good getting something so useful from my credit card points. Last year I got a small toaster oven.

You may get the impression that I spent RM70,000 to get those points but I haven’t! My card offers 2X and 5X points for certain retailers.

Plus I used the card for major expenses such as the hospital bills for my two sons and all my insurance premiums.

Anyway, back on topic. Poey Chin has always wanted to get one of these cookers because she saw her friends using it.

We were thinking of getting them from Cosway at first, but kept putting it off until I saw this on the credit card rewards catalogue.

Here’s how the pot looks like.

There’s a small pan you can put on top of the main pot, so you can cook two things at once!

Everything looks so stainless-steely and makes you feel like cooking.

I assume most of you know how thermal cookers work. You heat up the contents of your pot over the stove for a while, then move the pot to an insulated cover which contains the heat so your food can continue cooking.

Poey Chin has been using it to cook soups, porridge and even red bean dessert.

In the past, we had to boil soups for over an hour, but with the thermal cooker she just has to heat up for 15 minutes so we’re saving about 75% of our energy.

We get to save on our gas bill, and it’s safer!

It’s really convenient and safe because we don’t have to leave an open flame. Definitely a good thing when we have kids at home distracting her all the time.

Don’t wait any longer. Call 1-800-1-800 now and place your order. Wait, there’s more! If you order today I’ll throw in a copy of:

• The DBP (Durian, Banana, Petai) Diet with Adino for only $9.95, and
• A free eBook Teach Your Baby Piano with Rachel

Okay jokes aside, Poey Chin mentioned that the food cooked with the thermal cooker tastes better. I’m not so sure because I don’t have the super-power taste for food that Ipoh people have. I mean, most of the time I can’t tell the difference between good and bad, and I’m not particularly picky.

My only complain about the pot is the metal handle can get quite hot, so it could be hard to pour out the contents of the pot. The 7 litre pot seems to be a little too big but that’s not a big deal.

Now Poey Chin is looking around for thermal cooker recipes. Do you have any suggestions?

Today I did something I have not  done in a long, long time. I didn’t have change to pay for my parking ticket, and I saw a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf store and decided to get a coffee.

Okay I know that sounded like a flimsy excuse to get a cup of gourmet coffee, but hear me out.

The store was empty (because it was dinner time) and I placed my order. I watched the barista and basically he mixed a shot espresso into a glass of heated milk.

Less than a minute later I had my cup of cafe latte.

Last week I finished reading Starbucked, one of the many books that tell the story of how Starbucks became the mega coffee chain.

I picked up the book expecting to learn their business model, but I learned a lot about coffee instead.

I was very, very curious to try a cup of coffee now that I knew a bit more.

It’s like when you want to try wines after you learn about wine.

I have to pause here to remind you that I’m not a regular coffee drinker. I have tried Coffee Bean and Starbucks before, and I always thought it was too strong. Now I know why.

Okay, back to my story of Coffee Bean.

Incidentally I learned that Coffee Bean was in business before Starbucks (hence their Established 1963 tag line), but I believe Starbucks came to Malaysia first.

I sipped my cup of Coffee Bean with trembling lips (partly because it was still hot).

The coffee swirled around my mouth for a while. I tasted the roasted coffee aroma. I tasted the milk. And nothing else really.

Then I waited to see what happened.

My stomach had a reaction immediately. A slight fluttering and discomfort.

I suppose there were two reasons for my stomach discomfort. First of all, my body was probably warning me that I had ingested some toxin. Second reason was probably the milk (I don’t like milk).

A few minutes later I felt a jolt of alertness.

I felt this rush, like I could do a hundred things at once. I think I found the cure for writer’s block. I couldn’t wait to get home to start writing. I just hope those ideas aren’t too bad.

When I got home, my mood seemed to be happier. Nothing could get me upset, not even when the kids started screaming.

It’s like I was drugged.

Anyway.

I won’t be consuming a lot of coffee any time soon.

RM12 (about 4 USD) for a cup of coffee is an expensive addiction to have.

But the next time I go for Starbucks (and Coffee Bean) coffee, I’ll understand why I’m paying so much money (it’s the experience and lifestyle). I’ll know why the coffee tastes the way it does.

Honestly, I’m still quite traditional.

I still prefer the flavour of my Aik Cheong Kopi-O.

P/S: I took that photo with manual setting and manual focus, one-handed, and nailed it on the first shot (according to my low standards la). I wonder if coffee had anything to do with it…

I seem to have lost my ability to generate blog post topics.

Every time I intend to write something, I get sidetracked with one of the following:

• Is anyone going to be interested in this topic?
• Will I offend anyone?
• Will anyone misunderstand what I’m going to write about?
• Will I breach my privacy?
• Has anyone else written about this same topic?
• Have they done it better?

Not to mention the ‘pressures’ and expectations that:

• I have to be entertaining and/or interesting
• There needs to be some search engine value

All of this means I’m contantly on post-new.php, writing, re-writing and deleting blog posts. Sometimes I can’t even start writing because my mind is going around in circles.

I’m sure many bloggers face the same problem. At least, I hope you do. Because it can’t be easy churning out blog post after blog post for years… and by the way Adino Online is almost 5 years old!

Maybe if I could just find the time to sit down and write without distractions. I wonder if I could have a day just sitting down in a cafe, just writing.

Then I start to doubt myself. What if that doesn’t solve the problem?

I hope I can get over this stage quickly.

Time to go search my brain and my heart for things to share with all of you.

Photo By: Fred Fokkelman

We spent a few minutes watching some ants, and I taught him to stay away, saying “ants bite bite”. He was so cute and repeated “ant ants”.

Then we came across this little thing lying on the ground. It must have fell off during the thunderstorm.

Can you guess what it is?

I’m not exactly sure, but I suspect it’s a baby coconut or some sort of palm fruit. See the kind of city boy I am? I can’t even tell for sure what a coconut tree looks like.

There was a whole bunch of these things up in the tree.

Anyway. I picked it up, showed it to him and said “coconut”. He shouted excitedly, “nut nut! nut nut!”

I pointed upward at the tree, showing him where fruit came from.

I put the fruit in my pocket so Daryl could show it to everyone later (I also wanted to take photos), then we went looking for fish.

This is the size of the baby coconut in my hands.

Wait, do coconuts even have babies? Is this even a coconut?

Here’s a photo of the tree.

I’m confused and I need to get out of the city more.

The two elder kids were down with hand foot mouth disease, and they were quarantined away at my parents home because we didn’t want baby Caleb to be exposed to infection.

That meant we had to shuttle back and forth, and a lot of worrying.

Turns out they only had mild symptoms and it was relatively painless.

On the day before my birthday, I fell sick. I was getting wet from all the rain and my body couldn’t take it.

After going to see the doctor, we went for lunch at a vegetarian restaurant and I had a nice steaming bowl of vegetarian bak kut teh to make myself feel better.

On my birthday we had a nice lunch at home. My family came over and there was KFC (yay!), pizza, and my mom made pasta. A very filling lunch. We couldn’t even have dessert.

For dinner, my family offered to babysit. Poey Chin and I went for a date at Empire Gallery in Subang (yes, where the gas explosion happened a couple of days later).

We decided to have Japanese food because it seemed to be something I could eat while sick. We dined at RakuZen.

The food was not fantastic but delicious anyway. The sushi and sashimi were pretty standard. Maybe I could have ordered the better stuff, but I wasn’t willing to spend too much for a dinner.

We just enjoyed the peace and quiet. We took our time and it was such a luxury not having to manage kids.

We could talk, discuss the food and enjoy each bite. No interruptions asking to go to the bathroom, asking for water, feeding kids, cleaning up messes and etc.

After dinner we strolled around the shopping mall, and ended up looking at baby and kids stuff more than anything else. After picking up some (educational) toys for the children (out of guilt maybe), we visited a music store on the lower ground floor where we browsed CDs.

I just missed visiting music stores with Poey Chin. I’ll be (secretly) looking for Spice Girls or Cecilia Cheung CDs and she’ll be telling me about all these great composers and bands. I love listening to her stories. She’s such an expert.

We heard the new Anuar Zain CD and it sounded so good we’re thinking of buying it.

Before heading home we had some gelato at Gelato Fruity. I chose durian flavoured gelato and Poey Chin had pineapple orange.

The two flavours complemented each other because when you think you couldn’t have another bite of creamy durian, the pineapple clears your palate for another round.

I hope this store wasn’t too badly damaged by the explosion. Because we had such a good time there.

Turns out having cold gelato didn’t do my health any good, but it was okay because we just enjoyed the time.

I had a wonderful birthday. Thanks to my family for babysitting. That was the best birthday present!

At one year old, Daryl knows how to operate the DVD player.

He would press the “Open” button, put in his Barney disc and then push the tray to close it. Then he would stand up, put his hand on the TV cabinet for support and use his toes to press the “Play” button.

Where did he learn that from? From Rachel, who learned it from Poey Chin. Poey Chin had to use her feet cos she couldn’t bend down while pregnant.

Now he’s starting to use the computer mouse.

He would stand on tip-toe, reach up his hands to grab the mouse and wave it around while pressing buttons at random.

Where did he learn that from?

By watching Rachel, who uses the mouse to navigate through all her YouTube videos and iTunes Sesame Street podcasts.

It seems they all have a knack for using devices. Rachel knows how to use my SGS  phone without me teaching her. She knows which folders and menus to press to access her favourite apps (Kids Connect-the-Dot, Angry Birds, etc).

The first time she encountered an iPad, she knew how to scroll, pinch, etc.

I don’t remember being like this when I was young. Come to think of it, I didn’t even have any gadgets when I was young.

I occupied my time playing with toys. Legos, plastic army, some transformers, soft toys, board games. Sometimes I would even play board games by myself cos my sister was too young to understand, and I didn’t have any friends.

None of these electronic contraptions.

I only got a games console when I was 12. Anyone remember Micro Genius ? It sounds like such an educational name, but it was a Nintendo clone.

Anyway my kids are part of a whole new generation growing up with electronic gadgets and ubiquitous Internet access.

I was so hungry for knowledge when I was growing up. I would devour book after book (strangely this never applied to school books). Imagine what would have happened if we had access to the web back then!

So I think kids have an advantage nowadays. I just hope they don’t waste it all playing games or chatting.

What do you think? Are kids more intelligent, devices more intuitive, or is it their early exposure to gadgets?

According to Chinese custom, we celebrated the first month with some red hard boiled eggs.

This time we just kept the occasion small, and had a simple meal at home.

We didn’t want to take up a restaurant like last time because: a) It’s hard to leave the house with 3 kids, and b) We don’t really want to have another ‘big’ event so soon and impose on others to come out during their hard-earned holidays.

I don’t know why but the term “full moon” makes me think of werewolves.

We ordered a home-made chocolate icing butter cake from Carrot Cut.

My mother in-law made ang ku kuey from scratch. Here’s a couple of them lying on a banana leaf.

We had some left over, so later we fried them till they were crispy for an evening snack.

The confinement auntie Mui cooked most of the food here. Some fried fu chuk (beancurd sheets), which are one of my favourite foods. Crunchy on the outside with a little bit of fish filling on the inside.

Stir-fried vegetables dish.

“Daddy I’m so hungry. See I’m all ready with my bib. Can I eat now?”

But wait, there’s more. Fried mee hoon prepared by sister in-law Wai Cheng.

Entering non halal section… there was braised pork.

We had the vinegar porks feet. We didn’t actually use pig feet for this dish, I think it was mostly the thigh or something.

Finally there was stewed chicken with rice wine.

A wonderful feast, and I forgot about not eating meat.

Throughout our meal, baby Caleb spent most of the time sleeping in his crib, while the older kids and their cousins were happily playing outside.

Thanks to all our family and friends for your gifts!

Today I just want to share about my special relationship with prawn mee, or prawn noodles.

I remember when I was younger, I was always amazed this dish had two different names. In KL we call it prawn mee (har mee) but in Penang they call it Hokkien mee. But in KL Hokkien mee is the black oily fried noodles. And sometimes it’s also known as Mee Yoke. It’s all very confusing.

But my earliest memories of Prawn mee was eating it every Sunday before church with my father in the Sin Kong coffee shop in SS15 Subang Jaya. I would always have a kopi-o ice with it.

Even until today, I will order kopi-o ice if I’m having prawn mee.

When I became a teenager, I would cycle with my friends to a coffee shop in USJ2 to have prawn mee there. It wasn’t as tasty, but it was my first time eating outside and ordering food on my own.

Sometimes we would cycle to Subang to have Lam Mee Yoke.

I would always have the same eating ritual. First I would pour all the belacan over the noodles. Then I would put some soup in the small plate used to serve the belacan and make sure I got all the belacan.

Next step is to mix it all around. Then I would eat all the noodles first, with a ratio of 1 spoon noodles with 3 spoons of soup. Only at the end I will eat all the meat and egg toppings, while finishing off the broth.

After I got married, we found a coffee shop nearby that sells prawn mee, so we’ve been getting it for breakfast every fortnight or so.

The taste is pretty good, and the prawn mee in these photos comes from that shop.

Last week my office colleagues were placing orders for RT Pastry House Hokkaido Cakes, so I decided to put in my name and I got this on my desk a few days later.

Even the description on the box promised a delicious treat. A well packaged product, though I wish the caution sign would be translated into English.

A peek inside the box shows half a dozen cakes. In this photo I focused on the RT Pastry House logo on the box.

You can see the tempting icing sugar generously sprinkled on top.

They looked like flat cupcakes or maybe muffins with icing sugar sprinkled on top. Also reminds me of square scones.

I took them out of the box and lined them up in a row.

I cut one open to show you how it looks like inside. A light sponge cake cream filling. I only have one word to describe the taste. Sweet.

Each box of six cakes cost RM13.80.

RT Pastry House has outlets in Taman Desa, Subang, Puchong and Klang.

They are not paying me to publish this post. Just trying to show you some photos I took, plus Poey Chin is a fan of their pastries and cakes.

They were selling chee cheong fun at RM1.50 for ten pieces, which is 20% of the price they charge you at food stalls.

Best of all, it’s the rolled up chee cheong fun that I love.

To prepare the chee cheong fun, we just steamed them for about ten minutes in a wok.

When heated up, just cut to bite sized pieces and sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.

We dressed with some sweet sauce (which was sold in concentrated form in a jar) which we dilluted with some hot water.

It’s funny but in our house we have two different chee cheong fun sauces. I grew up and love the dark sweet variety but Poey Chin prefers the sweet sourish sauce you can find in Ipoh.

Sometimes we would also buy some pieces fish ball or fu chuk to go with the chee cheong fun.

This has become one of my favourite breakfast meals.

Recently I got a DBKL traffic compound for not displaying a parking ticket when I parked my car during office hours in Kuala Lumpur.

At first I tried not to feel too bad about it, but I took a closer look at the DBKL parking saman and it said I had to pay RM100. My heart sank.

I searched online regarding where to pay DBKL Summon, Rayuan Kompaun DBKL and DBKL Saman Discount but I couldn’t find any information.

Here’s what I learned, and I hope to share with the rest of you who may be looking for the same information.

To Pay Or Not to Pay

The first question to ask yourself is, do you want to pay or just ignore the DBKL Kompaun?

Some people say that they’ve never paid a single saman because no action can be taken against them.

On the other hand, some people cannot sleep if they have something like that pending.

From what I understand, failure to settle the compound will mean DBKL can take legal action against you.

So the answer to this question is yes you should pay.

But I guess if you don’t pay, there isn’t much that could happen to you or your car. Unless you have some future dealings with DBKL (like if your car got towed or something).

You might ask, “if I don’t want to pay DBKL saman, can I renew my road tax?” Yes, for now the two systems are not linked so you are not barred from renewing your road tax.

How Much to Pay

If you settle the saman quickly (I think within 14 days) you will only have to pay half the price, which is RM50.

You don’t need to go to any counter rayuan or go the DBKL head office in Jalan Raja Laut. At first I was confused by this web page.

For parking offenses, any branch will do. The DBKL head office is maybe for more serious offense or non-parking related offense.

Where to Settle DBKL Compound

You can pay the DBKL saman at any DBKL branch.

Check out www.dbkl.gov.my for the DBKL branch office address and contact numbers.

They are open Mon – Fri (8am to 5pm) and every 2nd, 4th and 5th Saturday (8am to 1pm).

There used to be an option to pay online at MyEG, but when I wrote this the service was down for maintenance.

My Experience

The next day, I had to take time off work due to tyre puncture (talk about bad fortune happening to my car) so after fixing the tyre I went over to TTDI branch.

After making a few rounds I found a car park. I saw the DBKL officer prowling so I paid for a parking ticket this time and walked to the DBKL branch.

There wasn’t anybody else there so I just walked to the counter and gave the makcik my DBKL kompaun.

She took a look at it, typed something in the computer and I saw on the display that I needed to pay RM50.

I forked out the cash, she printed a receipt and that’s it. I didn’t even say a word and all done in less than a minute.

I’m sure most of you are aware that there’s going to be water supply disruption in various areas around Kuala Lumpur in the next few days.

Last night I was rushing to fill all our pails with water, and Poey Chin made sure all our bottles were filled with drinking water.

Everyone was so stressed with the thought of not having water coming out of our taps.

And it has got me thinking: what if water supply disruption was permanent?

You know, this situation is not as far-fetched as you might think. We are just a dry season away from water rationing.

All over the world, clean usable water is becoming scarce due to population increase and increased pollution.

If you think you can help save water by taking short showers and not washing your car, think again.

The vast majority of water on earth is used for irrigating crops. Some of this water is from non-renewable sources, taken from deep wells dug in the ground. Once they are gone, the water cannot be replenished by rainfall.

And the majority of these crops are not even meant for human consumption. Crops such as corn and wheat are grown to feed livestock animals or used for bio-fuel.

I think we should not take for granted that there will always be water coming out of our taps. One day, that supply is going to run out (or become very expensive).

In this article, Lester Brown talks tense situations between nations over water.

When I read about such things, I feel worried for the world my children will grow up in. Will they have to keep pails around the house to wait for a water supply that comes once a week?

I save water whenever I can, but I always feel it’s not enough.

Photo By: Roger Kirby

I’ve finally done it.

I called up to cancel my Astro satellite TV subscription today.

The procedure is simple: just give them a call, give some information for verification and request to terminate your account.

They asked me, “what is the reason you are terminating your account sir?”

With a tinge of sadness in my heart, I replied, “financial reasons”.

We both kept quiet for a while. In my heart the words that left my lips seemed surreal, those were words I never had to say before in my life.

She stopped typing on her keyboard and waited for me to elaborate, but I didn’t.

See? I added a little bit of drama there in the past few sentences. A little story writing haha.

They require a 1 month notice in advance, which means I still have to pay another month subscription before my account is terminated.

Why I Did It

I’ve shared with you last year why I considered doing this. It’s not only for financial reasons. I guess you could take a look at that blog post if you haven’t read it before. (Funny how I chose similar images to illustrate both my posts!)

One thing I wanted to add was, we were only watching less than 20% of the shows on Astro. That means 80% of the time we’re flipping channels hoping to find something worth watching.

Without realizing, we could waste an entire day just sitting there and flipping channels. And many times we end up watching repeats of episodes we’ve seen before.

I realized the most effective use of our time was video on demand. Won’t it be nice to watch the shows we want, when we want?

Moving On

I bought one of these media players recently, which we will use to watch videos we download from YouTube or other Internet sources, effectively giving us video on demand!

It’s a nice device that turns my TV into a media center. It plays a few video formats, music files, image files, text files and even has a SD card slot for viewing photos.

It comes with two USB ports for an external hard disk or thumb drive, and even has a LAN connection for streaming media from a network. I might get a WiFi adapter later so I can stream videos and music directly from my iMac.

It supports Full-HD but I don’t need that since my TV is still the old CRT type (remember when flat-screen TV was so state-of-the-art?).

It cost about RM220, I figure I will recover the cost of investment after 4 months.

I Think We’ll Survive

If it means spending less time watching TV, then it’s even better for our electric bill, and we lower our contribution to global warming.

Hopefully it means more time to do productive activities.

My parents, aunty and mother in law do come over during the day, and I’ve got some Chinese shows on my media center for them to watch too. As a last resort, they could bring over their Astro smart card and watch from my home (I hope that will work!)

If Rachel gets bored, I may get some cartoon DVDs for her. It should be too costly, since she can watch one DVD over and over again. For the past year I’ve got to know Barney, Baby Bop, and BJ very well.

I don’t even have access to the free channels because I can’t get any clear reception in my condo. Probably have to find a solution for that problem.

I hope things will work out.

Photo by: Néstor Carrasco

Today is going to be a special day.

We’re going to the hospital for a 4D real time ultrasound scan. Until today, I’m not convinced it is necessary but it gives us a bit of peace of mind, plus we will finally confirm if our third child will be a boy or girl.

We have chosen two names for the baby, one girl name and one boy name.

In the past we’ve gone over some names like Aries, Yuna, and even baby Anakin.

For Poey Chin and myself, there are very few requirements for a name:

1. Must be tease-proof
2. Must not clash with any relatives
3. Must not be in the top ten popular names
4. Preferable if short
5. Preferable if elders can pronounce it

So we went through hundreds of boy names.

We shortlisted Damon and Derek because it would be a nice match to our baby Daryl. But in the end, it would cause endless confusion.

So Caleb is our choice if Baby 3.0 is a boy.

Poey Chin had final say on boy names, and I chose the girl name.

There was only one name ever in my mind all the time, Cecilia.

No other name brings to mind images of sweetness and innocence. Okay innocence is stretching it but just forget her recent scandals.

See this video to see what I mean.

So we will finally find out today.

I am also quite nervous because I hope the baby is fine and healthy, but you never know. There is that small chance that things can go wrong.

Photo by Elix Atsoram