Burgled

While KS and I were in KK, we got a missed call from home on Saturday night. Sensing something amiss, I called back and was told by Grace that my parents place was just burgled. Needless to say, that ended our holiday and we were anxiously trying to help in any way we could from so far away.

Thank God my whole family had gone out for dinner when the burglars struck. My family could have been watched to know our patterns but the burglary was timed. My younger nephew had insisted on staying home as he wasn't feeling well but my sister made him come along. I shudder to think of what might have happened if he had been home alone.

They ransacked the place and made away with cash, my dad's tennis shoes and my nephews DS, amongst other things. These things can be replaced in time but what cannot be replaced is the feeling of security in one's own home.

I made it a point to come back every night for that entire week and stayed as long as I could, if only to provide some form of additional presence. Grace's friends helped out by trying to get the door fixed, contact person for an alarm system etc providing comfort to our family for which I am thankful for.

Most of all, after Grace posted this incident up on Facebook, my parents friends from Alor Setar called one by one. They are truly one of a kind and my mum is especially touched by this gesture.

Kinabalu Park & Poring Hot Springs

We visited yet another part of Malaysia which we went 5 years ago, Kota Kinabalu. As mentioned in my previous post, we regretted not going to see Kinabalu Park and Poring Hot Springs the last time we went.

So when I won the 3 days 2 nights stay at Hyatt Regency, KK and a full day tour at Kinabalu Park and Poring, KS and I decided, why not.

The room at the Hyatt Regency Kota Kinabalu

The open concept of the bathroom area

The gorgeous sea view from our window. Love the shades of blue .

We arrived in the afternoon and just walked around the town a little. Nothing much has changed so we just chilled. Found this abandoned place with quite eye-catching graffiti though.

The next day, we met up with our tour guide, who turned out to be a most entertaining guy. The stories that he told! I must say I don't know whether to take his stories with a pinch of salt. For example, he told us an incident that happened to his teenage cousin sister. Her stomach started swelling and her parents thought she was pregnant and gave her a good scolding, as you can imagine. So they brought her to see a gynae to check up. However, the doctor was puzzled and confirmed that she wasn't pregnant.

After careful cross-examination, they found out she had bathed in the river several weeks before. Suspecting something, the family then got her a big tub, half filled it with fresh cow's blood and made her sit in it naked. Sure enough, a whole bunch of leeches came out of her, enough to fill a bucket. Apparently the leech went into her and made a home (and nest) inside her and were then attracted to the fresh cow's blood and came out. Our guide said when he saw the mass of squirming leeches, he also felt like vomiting. He then warned us never to simply go into the rivers.

Anyway, I digress but it's such a fascinating story I had to retell it. Along our two hour over journey, we passed by the following places:

The floating mosque in Kota Kinabalu

We passed many churches along the way with signages such as this.

Along the way, we were also stopped by a village to see the Rafflesia flower. Finally! I get to see the largest flower in the world! However, it didn't stink at all as it is famously known. So much so that I was wondering if I was seeing a real flower because it looks like it's made of plastic. The bud (seen on the right in the picture below, the dark red round thing) takes 12-15 months to bloom and when it flowers, it only lasts for about 7 days. Flower below is about 80cm in diameter.

Upon reaching Poring, we took a short hike up to the suspension bridge. This is quite an amazing suspension bridge because there are 5 bridges in total and the drop is very very significant (eek! I can't remember what height! 40 meters?). Our guide assured us that if we fell, it would be almost impossible for them to come pick up our pieces. Thanks.

At the start, before KS turned green.

Long way to fall

After the trek, we then headed down to the hot springs.

Open pools

Separate individual tubs. Taps with the hot water fills the tubs and you're supposed to drain the tub after use. I didn't want to soak my whole body so just soaked my aching feet. 

For lunch, we went to Kinabalu Pine Resort. The place is full of, well, pine trees. Very, very nice. Felt like we were in a different country.

Lunch surrounded by pine trees

Then we went to the foot of the mountain where there was this museum which explained about Mount KK. Found out the highest peak is called Low (after Hugh Low who claimed to be the first to conquer the mount). Apparently the natives believed there were spirits on the mount and did not dare to climb it.

Saw this big moth resting on the outside of the glass panel at the museum

By the time we left, it was pouring hard. So this was the only shot of the majestic mountain through the mist and clouds, framed by the pine trees. Flat jagged peaks.

On the way down, I had to keep up a bizarre conversation because our guide was falling asleep at the wheels. Asked him about the beliefs in spirits and black magic in the villages there, what animals he has encountered on his trips into the jungles (wild boar, and he and the team he was looking after had to quickly climb trees)... so it was quite an interesting conversation coming back.

If we were to go back to KK, it would be to stay at the Kinabalu Pine Resort. Really felt like we were in another country with the cool weather, majestic views and foreign trees.

Flight cost = less than RM1,000. For everything else, thanks MasterCard. :)

Penang After So Long

The last time I went to Penang was 7 years ago for my best high school friend's wedding. Again, another wedding brought us to Penang so we seized the opportunity to extend our weekend stay to a little longer and invited the whole family along.

We rented a condo for 3 nights in Tanjung Tokong which turned out to be the most strategic location for our activities as the wedding was held in Straits Quay, we also ended up going to the National Park (yes, Penang has one of the tiniest National Parks in this region), Penang Hill, Kek Lok Si Temple, nearby malls where we met our old friends and a spot of shopping at good ol' Gama.

My dad has always taken us on tours whenever we travelled since we were young so going to all these touristy places for my nephews was nothing unusual. In fact, it was the first time for us to visit the National Park and for KS visiting Penang Hill.

So while I was hoping for a makan-non-stop trip, it turned out to be more of a touristy trip. Not that I minded but I missed out on my laksa in Lorong Selamat which I had 7 years ago. But oh, we still ate and ate! We found this corner coffee shop at Pulau Tikus (which isn't an island but an area along Jalan Burmah) which had fantastic char kuey tiow, java mee, wantan mee and appam. One of the mornings I actually had the ckt, java mee and appam all in one sitting. Yums...

Anyway, I forgot to bring my SD card so I couldn't take much photos. Had to borrow from KS so he couldn't take photos after that. So I don't have any photos of the National Park and anyway, we were supposed to go there to walk on the suspension bridge but it was closed due to some rat virus found along the river near it. We walked a short way along the beach and saw, well, the beach. 

We initially told KS there wasn't much to do up in Penang Hill and I went along merely to accompany my family. But we were pleasantly surprised when we did a short walk and discovered lovely Tudor houses along the way and felt like we were in another country altogether! We ended up rushing for time and not even seeing other parts of Penang Hill so at least there's a reason to go back there again next time. Here are some shots from our Penang Hill trip:

Beneath the train tracks

Huge millipede. Wanted to touch it to make it curl up but was told one can get pretty itchy after that.

I don't know if they're mating but thought this looked pretty painful.

Found this HUGE spider!

Another angle of the spider to show the colourful underside of it. Beautiful!

I never knew there were so many lovely Tudor styled houses on Penang Hill! Well, this wasn't very Tudor-ish but didn't manage to get a nice shot of the others.

We were supposed to cover Penang Hill and Kek Lok Si temple in the same afternoon but since Penang Hill took up a bit more time than we expected, we went to the temple the next day instead. The ascending pathway which has shops after shops usually crammed with people was eerily empty. Perhaps being a weekday, there was hardly anyone there. Some shops didn't even open but I guess since they ALL were selling the same things, it didn't really matter.

Empty streets going up Kek Lok Si temple. I remembered it to be a bustling place but now... But this was on a Tuesday so maybe the weekends are busier.

Actually, I really wonder why they all sell the same things. If it's some gaudy sarong material made into a dress, at least 5 shops would be selling the exact same item. And they've been selling the same things for decades. Well, I guess since they're obviously surviving, there must be a market there for such items.

All in all, we had a good time visiting Penang again. Next time, there will be laksa at Lorong Selamat.

Escaped Worm

I have unearthed a disgusting story from my friend, who's name I shall not mention as promised. :)

In primary school, all kids are given deworming medication. When I my turn came, I remember my friend telling me the day after, she saw a long worm in the toilet bowl after she did her business. I was so scared that when nature called, I held in until Mum came home from school a few hours after to make her sit near me in case it happened to me too. Fortunately (or not, otherwise I'd have a more interesting story), there was nothing unusual about the day's defecation exercise.

So now back to my friend. She was also given the deworming medication and after that, at night, when she was about to fall sleep, she felt something in her pants. She pulled out something and in the darkness wondered why there was a string in her pants. Only when she took it to her mum did she realize it was a worm.

She clearly remembers it was dead but has no idea why she didn't feel it coming out or when it happened.

Appreciating Bugs in Gopeng

Last weekend, I organized a retreat for the youth leaders of my church. We went to Adeline's Rest House in Gopeng (which we've been before and her food is just as excellent... yumsss) where the young ones enjoyed white water rafting, wet abseiling down a waterfall as well as a jungle walk which included feeding leeches along the way and a crossing of a river.

As I was still coughing and KS was starting to get ill, we didn't join in the activities but stayed back and enjoyed a quiet evening with a book and a nap. There was a little girl who joined us for the trip and she decided bugs and the mention of leeches were too disgusting and scary to go for the jungle trek. So she stayed back and I found myself trying to make her appreciate bugs more. Yes, me, the very person who would prefer examining a lizard than a bug any time.

So I went around with her for a while and used my camera to create life in each creature. You know those micro shots of insects that everyone seems to have? Well, they're really not easy to take with a point and shoot.

Here was a flying wasp-like insect which posed for me on this leaf for a good 15-20 mins while I took shot after shot. Only this one turned out okay. Of course in the original photo, the subject was but a small dot. My story to the little girl was something like this, "Hey look at this wasp! So cute! It's posing for me!" 

More bug photos. This green beauty has a little C design on the shell. It's body, beneath the green shell, is red. So pretty!

Another random wasp which we both spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what it was doing.

Then there were clovers. I never knew they were furry!

Dragonflies also elicited screams from the girl so I made her observe their beautiful colours. "Look at it's colour! Doesn't it look like a light saber?"

In the end, did I succeed in making her less afraid of insects? For that few hours, she did scream when insects flew near her but I'd like to believe she was less afraid. But it will take a lot more effort to chip away that fear, if it ever does.

The curl of a vine. Just a random shot but I like the bokeh.

There was a stray cat there but he was rather shy. Kept us at a distance.

The little stream that runs along the Villa. Cool waters.

Anyway, along the way home, I thought I'd take a picture of yet another mysterious advertisement along the highway and share this with you.

Okaaaaay...

Wows and Not So Wows

A few exciting things has been happening, some really good and some not so good.

Firstly, at work, my bosses are giving me the chance to move into an area I've expressed keen interest on. They've carved out a role for me where I am to move a new part of the business and I'm very excited about it! Excited, thankful and grateful for this opportunity.

Yes, it's going to be frightening to prove myself in an area where I don't have any experience and I know there are challenges ahead. Nevertheless, I feel like my ladder is now leaning against a wall that I've been desiring for some time now!

Unfortunately, I fell ill three weeks ago while I'm trying to prove myself and have been on two days MC and a day off due to my cough, cold and fever. I'm still recuperating and really hope I get better (like tomorrow!). Not a very good impression, I know, and it couldn't have come at the worst timing.

Anyway, in between, I won a couple of lucky draws:

The first was a mini DVD player which I won at an internal office party. At first I didn't know what to do with it since I already own two DVD units in the house and didn't need another one. Luckily, before I gave it away, I checked with Dad who exclaimed it was just what he was looking for for his line dancing class!

Speaking of my two DVD players, a week ago, there was an electricity surge in my housing area which destroyed , amongst my two DVD players, my auto gate, water pump, computer, speakers and Apple Airport. Thankfully, most could be repaired while a few replacements need to take place. And thankfully, none of my white electrical appliances were affected like my fridge.

Moving on to my next lucky draw win, I attended a screening of the latest Spiderman sponsored by MasterCard. And yeah, I won one of their 3D2N Kota Kinabalu trips (excluding flights). Despite fairly restrictive conditions, I am now booked to visit KK next month! Even though KS and I have been KK not too long ago, we didn't manage to visit Kinabalu Park and this warrant gives us that one day tour. Yay!

Speaking of trips, this month will be an exceptionally busy one for KS and I. I'm now in Melaka for the weekend, next weekend we'll be in Gopeng, Perak with the youth leaders for a retreat and the weekend after, we'll be in Penang for a wedding and a short family vacation.

Then in August, we'll be in KK, September KS will be in Singapore and we'll need to be back in Melaka for another wedding. Then in mid November, we're off to Perth to watch George Michael for his Symphonica concert! Then hopefully we'll have a winter trip in December and in January I'll be going on a gals trip to Bandung.

And lastly, the other thing we won was a concert ticket to the MTV Live Stage featuring Justin Bieber which happened last night. KS gave it away to a colleague who's teenage girl is nuts over JB.

How this happened was KS office was giving away five pairs of tickets and the top five with the most voted rock star name in their internal Facebook page. I suggested KS to name himself RM1.50. Why? Because a couple of months ago, The Star reported the rapper 50 Cent and converted his name to the local currency.

So he was one of the top five liked names to win the tickets.

High Life & Star Studded Week

Two weeks ago, I had a spate of experiencing the high life in the course of my work. Okay, not a spate but for an ordinary Jo like me, two in a week is quite a lot. :)

The first was experiencing a 4 course Finnish meal prepared by Asian Food Channel (AFC) celebrity chef, Sara La Fountain. Unfortunately, since I do not have cable TV, I did not know who she was. She is this gorgeous chef from Finland and er, the rest of what I know of her comes from Wiki.

I loved the starter, a spoonful of minced beef and lamb combined with marinated beet and the dessert, baked Alaska with blueberry ice cream. Oooh! A far cry from the baked Alaska I had at a restaurant in PJ recently which had more egg white than any other ingredient with two dried chocolate cakes.

Tablespoonful of minced beef and lamb.

The lovely dessert

Sara La Fountain, my colleague Reg and I.

The second was a launch of my company's product launch which we held at a restaurant in town followed by a bus ride (complete with outriders) to Port Klang to board a boat where we sailed out to a rendezvous point to watch the setting sun.

On board the Lili Marleen

The gorgeous sunset

As you can imagine, I took quite a lot of sunset photos...

One of the caricature artists hard at work

The atmosphere was further pumped up by Ning Baizura's energizing performance which brought quite a lot of people into a dancing mood. So we boogied the night away with colleagues and partners. And got home at almost 2am with aching feet but happy to have been part of the organizing team.
  

Good friends

With Ning Baizura

Mid Life Crisis

Someone recently described mid life crisis as a result of people climbing up the corporate ladder which is leaning against the wrong wall and therefore changing career paths when they are supposed to be at the peak of their careers.

I found that this description sort of made sense. Unfortunately, there aren't many hiring managers out there who would want to hire someone without any experience in the exact same field or role. Regardless of the soft and hard skills picked up along the years of climbing that particular ladder, corporations want to see you having the exact experience in your cv for a considerable period of time.

Of course I'm not talking about moving from a being procurement executive to become an eye surgeon.

For example, I know of a friend who is doing sales but she doesn't quite like what she's doing and was hoping to move back into a product marketing role.

However, the people whom she has met for interviews have boxed her into sales roles. It's very sad to see the reality of this happening because we are then pushed up a corporate ladder onto a wall we don't want to be leaning against.

I wonder if this is also prevalent in other countries. I've always wondered if things would be better if Malaysians know what their personal strengths would be most suited for so that they would select the relevant course and therefore avoid this mid life crisis. Or would we still get bored eventually and long to try something else?

Smash & Attempted Grab

A couple of nights ago, my friend dropped me off home after work and a quick dinner. Before I alighted from her car, I pressed my auto-gate to open while I finished my conversation with her.

As I got out, I realized I had not stopped the gate mid-way but had allowed it to gape wide open which would take longer for me to close the gate. Stepping in and quickly activating the shutting of my gate, I suddenly heard the dreaded motorbike sound coming around the corner. I turned to take note of the motorcyclists and noted there were two people on the motorbike. Not a good sign.

As her usual precaution, my friend waited for me to safely get into the house and was ensuring her car doors were securely locked. Even as I watched through my painfully slowly closing gate, I saw the bike make a sharp u-turn and the pillion rider jumped off and run towards the drivers’ window. For a split second, I had the hope he was merely going to ask her for directions. Yes, even if it was past 10pm.

Alas, that wasn’t the case when I saw him attacking her window. I yelled “Woi!!! WOI!! WOI!!!” (I really didn't know what else to shout) at the top of my voice and stepped out of the house to help my friend before realizing I was unarmed and was also carrying my own handbag with no one in the house to help. Instead, I stepped back and blocked my gate from closing, all the while still shouting for him to stop.

By that time, he had gained access into the car and was attacking my friend. I shouted even louder, angry with helplessness and terrified he might be attacking her with a knife.

Thankfully, my neighbours heard my yells and had started coming out. At the first sound of a door opening, the robbers fled.

And again, thankfully, my friend had surface scratches and didn’t lose her bag. The neighbours gave us the nearby police station’s phone number for us to make a report.

However, despite having seen the robbers, neither of us could even tell what colour shirts they were wearing. So making a police report was futile and our terrifying experience merely seeped into the system as a statistic of a smash and attempted grab.

I am now paranoid and think I’m being followed everywhere. The whole incident played in my mind several times to see what we could have done to avoid this but really, we took our precautions at every step unless we were paranoid that there was probably a motorbike following us all the way from the office. But if they had followed, they would have already attacked when we stopped the car instead of waiting for a full minute or so.

I shudder to think that if my friend had driven off, I would have been easy picking. I didn’t have any means of defending myself. Or if they had a parang or knives, as these thieves are well known for carrying, the injuries would have been severe.

The experience left me feeling vulnerable and angry that there’s nothing I can do to catch them or to stop such occurrences from repeating.

Shopping Online

When Grace announced she was coming back to Malaysia for a holiday this year, she asked me to start buying all the stuff I wanted online which can't be shipped to me. At that time, my shopping list on Amazon was empty and I thought I had nothing to get.


I began searching for a replacement of my AllBlacks Coca-Cola backpack which I got for free when I was studying in NZ more than 10 years ago. This backpack has travelled the world with me including my U2 concerts as I could stash my camera, water bottle and jumper. Heck, I could have put in a watermelon or coconut in there if I had a need to. But after 10 years of hard use, it's finally showing wear and tear much to my great sadness.


Nevertheless, I started searching for THE backpack and came across this one:

eBags Mother Lode Weekender Convertible

This video instantly converted me into a fan.

Good grief! I could pack coconuts and watermelons in this and more! But then I started considering my needs again and while this would be a fantastic bag to take along for a 5 day trip, I'd still be left without a handbag to carry my essentials when I leave my clothes in the hotel to sight-see.


Plus, it just wasn't very stylish walking around with a (most of the time) half-empty backpack.


Then, I came across this and fell in love:

eBags Piazza Day Bag

It's just a sling bag and a (typical me) practical one. All comments highly praised this bag and while it doesn't look er, fashionable, I'm just going with the practical side of me and loving it.





What I like about this bag:

• That I am able to keep my camera in a separate compartment rather than having it roll around with my other things that scratches it. 
• The water bottle compartment is outside the bag (last Christmas my water bottle leaked and soaked my camera to my horror). 
• The neat media pocket as I prefer to hide my iPhone in the bag while listening to my music.
• The magnetic flap compared to Velcro, makes a silent opening, doesn't catch on your clothes and doesn't wear out after repeated use.
• That it's not susceptible to light scratches like a leather bag

I doubt if I can fit a jumper into this thing plus some comments mentioned about the rough strap. And I won't be able to fit my shopping when I go souvenir hunting.

Never mind. For that price, and the willingness of Grace carrying it back for me, I'm just gonna get it.