The Package from UK II

Hooray! The second package has arrived! When I came home about 2030, I found the (usual) card left by the postman since he could not wait for my Wife to find the keys to open the door, no thanks to Kristine. Anyway, since the card says the Post Office closes at 2100 (yes, really) I rushed over to collect my package. And my Wife had to put my rice back to the cooker until I came back. Woo hoo!

Ah Lun would be so happy (coded message to you know who you are)

Everything is here!


But I was too tired to start anything by the time both kids
were asleep

Trip to Kota Bahru I

OK, today was a very long day. We had to go to a few sites, mainly in the East Coast Area. So, we had to start our journey very early in the morning (OK, 0945, la) for our first 1130 appointment in Kuantan to make sure the contractors are, well, contracted correctly and no mistkaes since our task would begin at the end of this month. After that, we drove on to our next destination, which is Terengganu.

This is the land of the Turtles and well, Oil. Going there was more of an eye opener because we assumed most of the towns there were quite, well, developed but then again, this is Politics. So, we reached our Terengganu customer by 1730 and luckily, even though they were closed, we were able to enter and check on their PBX systems. And by the time we reached our last destination in Kota Bahru, it was well past 9PM.

I have not seen any turtles before but I did experience a very different one years ago. In my ex-company, we were at the Cherating Beach during our Annual Trip, this guy got drunk. I am not sure if it was a act or because everyone there wanted to see a turtle, but whne he really got drunk with all the sponsored drinks, he dug a small hole and vomited into it. So, its like watching a turtle laying eggs at night. Euuuuuu.

And in our serach for a decent Hotel, we ran in to various packages being offered. From cheap rates to no hot water or common toilets. And then, the prices were either obscene or just laughable. In the end, we settled for "Crystal Lodge" since "Dynasty Inn" was full. I would have loved Dynasty Inn because it offered TmNET Hotspot (i.e. Wireless Broadband) But Crystal Lodge does have free Wifi but it was only available at the lobby. And I had to fight for my share at the common table and plug point which was just not worth it. So, we ended up watching (decent) Thai channels since Kota Bahru is so close to Thailand.

The cables in Kuantan (there were more hidden up the ceiling)


Onwards to Terengganu!


Yeah, onwards..............


This is Terengganu


Or shall I call it Petronas land?


Since I cannot show you the system, I can show you
what you should not do with the cables


Onwards to Kota Bahru. This is not haze but we passed by
some factory which was steaming/smoking timber.
I got my camera out just in time to miss the car
accidents on both sides of the road


There are a lot of these mini-huts/stalls where you can buy
stuff like weird liquids in a bottle, fruits and more fruits


This one was abandoned, lime many others


Yes, it was quite boring sitting in the car
So I decided not to read the manual and set the
camera to SLOW for a 3 second exposure

The package from UK

I had a nice suprise today. The module I ordered more than a week
ago had arrived. And the malay word "dilepaskan" was such a nice
word. Luckily, those guys wrote "Hardware board" on the Customs
Declaration form which I go not have to pay tax for.


And here it is! The BLUETOOTH module
Now, all I have to do is to wait for the main
module (from another supplier) before I can
start my projects again

Carrefour's Own brand

Finally, I got the chance to have a glimpse of Kepong's Carrefour (Ok, I had to take a walk as I kept falling asleep in the office). There were not much tenants at the moment as most of them are still renovating. And somehow, I felt that this Carrefour is a bit small and cramped.

It looked delicious from the shelf


Its not easy to know what flavour it is until you search all over
the pack

System Installation @ Ipoh

After my trip to Penang on Friday, I arrived in Ipoh in the evening. One of my ex-colleague promised to guide me to a Hotel (but he did not, stating his phone battery ran out) so, feeling a bit adventurous, I drove around until I hit town centre. And then, I saw the sign "Hotel Lucky". For RM90 a night, it was a bargain but what convinced me was that one of their upgraded facilities were free Wi-Fi. It does not matter even if they did not have free breakfast

The next day, I had to go to the Distributor's Office to help the Engineer deliver our stock to the customer (OK, he was driving a Kancil). The installation took us two days. The first day was to dismantle the older system and then mount the newer system, tidy up the cabling and replace the old phones. And on the second day (Sunday), we did the programming since there were virtually no staff nor much customers to bother us about. I like this type of quiet installation because there is no one else but ourselves.

Luckily, there were no Police to stop us as we're not supposed
to carry stock like this


This is the old system before we dismantled it


The old system (right) and the new system (left)


The new system after installation


The new phones have absolutely no words on it. Just icons


And in case you are confused with the buttons, there
are instructions in English, French and Spanish


All done! Now its a quiet 3 hours drive back to KL
Nothing much but a Jerry Seinfeld CD, Twisties and Sprite ICE
to accompany me


48KM later, I think I am getting sick of MSG


And as usual, the needle is needling me


With my hands full of Twisties and MSG, I was looking
for a rest stop to wash my hands. Then, I was trapped
in the jam


And it was a very long jam


All because of a broken down Coach, a crashed lorry
and a car with a dented bonnet


This guy was speeding above 110KMH and I can see
his butt crack. There were three other motorcyclists
like him

Carrefour opens in Kepong

Carrefour had their opening ceremony today. And, the building took only a few months to complete, which is quite fast. Still, the whole road leading to the stupid place was all jammed up. Luckily, the traffic lights were working unlike last week.

But the damage is done. Cars parked everywhere, roads becoming narrower and more pedestrians for me to hit. Cheh

And so, it opens


All the balloons you just cannot miss Carrefour


See the stupid jam on the First Day?


It was so bad, I can't even get out


I mean, Carrefour is Carrefour. Nothing special la
Like that also want to sqeeze in

New chairs

My Dad got these chairs from Ikea for a nice bargain. One thing about Ikea stuff is that you have to assemble them yourself. Which is usually a no brainer. Twice I have encountered relatives scratching their heads assemblinng Ikea chairs. Believe me, they are quite easy to do. And they even give you the tools to do it.

Sometimes, if you're stuck, a quick glance at the pictures on the manual would help you out.

Ikea is spelled D-I-Y
Repeat after me, D-I-Y


This took me 6 minutes to set up
(And 20 minutes to make sure Kristine behaves herself without damaging anything)


Now we realised why we only have half a pair of shoes

Sunday Morning scare

It was quite frightening for me when we realised Kristine opened the bottle of pills and took one. She was squirming and also feeling uncomfortable. So, I quickly dragged up to the sink and tried to force her to vomit out the contents of her stomach. It was painful to do because she was crying and worst of all, she does not understand what was happening.

Because if she took THE pill, she could collapse there and then. Luckily, everyone else searched the whole floor and table and realised she only took the Vitamin-C pill which was quite sour. Phew

Oh-oh!

This is not a fancy wancy picture but an image of my
Notebook's keyboard taken with a Canon Powershot A85
Yeah, bad news indeed.

After 5 weeks...........

Its the first time we get to come out to see the real World after my Wife's confinement. So, what better than to take a walk in Mid-Valley. OK, so we need to replenish our stuff as well.

See? Kristine? There are two bowls of dessert


Yeah, you have to CHOOSE
You cannot have both!


Which one is more delicious? Headache, hor?
The Mango pudding on the left or the Sea coconut on the right?


Finally!


Feeling so proud getting to make her own decisions


Kristine is so happy that she does not even realise we
bought her a baby car seat. Heh

Zoids in a Box

While I was waiting for my technician to show up, I was loitering around Isetan. And I came across this new toy. It is Tomy's latest Zoids offering, following the Blox series, calling it the NeoBlox. Since I cannot read Japanese, there was one symbol which I liked best; No cutting required. Usually, when you buy a model kit, you would need some sort of cutter to free the plastic part from its frame (called the sprue)

As they're having a Sale, I got it for RM11.12 instead of the usual RM13.90. Opening the box, you'd get an instruction sheet covering all 6 models. And because of the Blox series, you can take all their parts and adapt to other Ziods models. The one I had was the CBZ-04 Harpers (Spider type)

I quickly took come photos which came out crap because I was dead tired from taking care of the two kids.

Open the Box, you get these parts


The Pilot is very different from the traditional Zoids pilot


It will take you less than 3 minutes to build this one


After playing with it, this looked more menacing
But I decided to modify it to be a 1/72 rescue vehicle
The legs/claws are important here while the two holes
at the leg will be for the two white LED spotlights


This is what the original Zoids pilots looked like


Yeah, I wanted to build this as a rescue craft too but
I just do not have the time until even now