My hectic Tuesday

Tuesday was a rather hectic and tiring day for me. In the morning I have to run to the LHDN alone and also to meet up with my very good friend, DD. I am very thankful for the time that DD took to help me out on many things. The other person that I am grateful with is my sister who took leave that day to help me to assist Elaine so that I can go out in the morning. While Grandma has gone back to Penang the night before for her medical checkup that day itself. By noon I took Keith, Elaine and my sister out for lunch at Tony Roma's.

The food was ok and we ordered 3 sets. Keith was the one having the most fun because he seems to be enjoying himself with all the food we shared with him.

He is taking some bread. Does he looked shocked?


He even wanted to try it with the dressing the waitress gave him. The carrot and celery was a compliment for him :D but he don't seems to like it though.


The yummy look....


Recently he has also began giving different expressions when we put him in front of a mirror


All I can say is I was totally tired by the end of the day.

Another thing that I would like to add is Keith's Portable DVD player from Citibank has finally arrived. I am very happy about it because now I do not have to share my laptop with my boy anymore to watch his children songs.

Keith is sick again!!!

I hope I am not ranting too much in my blog….. Guess life has been rather exhausting for for my family lately….. Probably the reason for our dilemma is because Elaine has calculated things to the extreme without leaving much room for a breather, I am not blaming her, just my own opinion only. It is sure tough to manage our personal lives without the maid because we are now short of hand to care for Keith, not that we really have to her carrying or caring for Keith all the time since he is not that attached to her. Now we just have to juggle between Elaine, Grandma, I and occasionally some help from my sister too. Life is surely gonna be much easier if everybody put in a little more effort to make it work.

I would like to thank those whom had passed to me their contact of maid agency. I still do not know which one would Elaine be choosing but I am really thankful and truly appreciate the help.

What really makes it tough is when people starting to snap at each other over small things. Sigh! It is sure hard on everybody. Life is never a bed of roses….. anyway I don’t think there is anybody wanting to sleep in that if the thorns are still attached to the stalk!

Funny thing is when the maids were still working for us, I would be the one to suffer all the complain against them and now that they are gone I was just hoping that everyone chip in a little extra to make the family function, since the new maids would take about 2 months to arrive. Even then we would have to be patient with them to teach them to do house chores correctly.

To add salt to our wound, Keith has fallen sick with cold, cough and phlegm again. I do realize that he tends to fall sick whenever he is close to his month old. It surely nade it harder for us trying to adjust and having a whiny Keith, especially when we get really busy in our restaurant. In this picture you can see that Keith is rather worn and tired by his sickness this time and we are rather lucky because he happen to sleep a lot because of that too...... Just that he would want to sleep with us at night and start his acrobatic sleep act in the middle of our bed...... I woke up this morning with a leg on my nose and I can see that he was also trying to reach out to grab his mom's ear.


It gets rougher when we try to give him his dose of medicine administered with syringe….. He would either cough till he puke or he would force himself to throw up…… This is his reaction as soon as he sees the syringes


Actually he vomited so many times I really feel heartbroken, he had either coughed himself till he vomited or right after we gave him half of syringe of medicine. I never minded having to change the bedsheets, comforter, cleaning him up or the mess he left. I just hated it, being ordered around. I even ordered to do three things at the same time!!!! Sigh! Guess I have became the replacement maid :P We are planning to take him to see his paed if he is still not responding to his medication so that the would administer another shot of nebulizer to hasten his recovery.....

I would sure like to thank my lil’ angel for being there and being my pillar of support during this hard period, without that I doubt I could go far!

Runaway Maids

Today is a horrible day to do this post..... Most who have my MSN would know that I am a late night bird. Last night, as usual I went to sleep at 5am But I only get to sleep until 8am. The reason for the short sleep was because my mom came rushing into our room telling us that the maids has gone missing (my sister's and mine)

Grandma has made the discovery when she was going to the bathroom. After looking thru our personal stuffs we found that we are missing quite a sum of money from Elaine's pouch (our own money and "loose change" money we keep for the cash register) We also found a half bottle of milk on the table in the hall along with our keys and their passports, which was taken from our pouch as well.

What really made us totally unprepared for this is because my sister's maid is due for home in October and mine is in December this year. my sister's maid even told my sister that she wanted to continue her employment and she requested that we send her back. We have promised her that we will allow her to go back for a month in January. We were really shock that they have decided to runaway and was even daring to steal money right under our nose. Elaine, Keith and I is sleeping in the room where the theft took place.

From my guess, she has used the opportunity to steal it when she came into our room at about 6 - 7am to feed Keith his morning milk. She only fed hin halfway thru because she did not want to force the whole bottle to Keith because he would normally starts to whine if he is given more than half a bottle. Since Elaine is a light sleeper, she is normally woken up by Keith's whining so I guess she took the caution ot that.

Despite a check with the guard house, they were unable to provide much information because ours is practically manned by foreigners too, my guess is probably Nepalese.

In my opinion, the reason for their daring act is probably due to the fact that they knew where I put their passports. Recently the government has required us, employers, to bring along their passport whenever we bring them out. It has really been an inconvenience, it would be better if we can have the immigration dept issued ID cards and have their passports kept in a safe place or even with the agency. According to the maid agency, the immigration dept has discontinued sending it out these recent years.

I have never liked the idea of having strangers, like maid, in my house because I have always felt uncomfortable with them and also thinks that there is a loss of privacy. FYI, I never spoke to my maids, they get their instructions from Elaine all the time. I am considered lucky because Keith is never attached to our maid and he never really quite liked her. Anyway the reason for us to get the maids is because we needed them to help Grandma to care for Keith (and Nicole, formerly) as well as Grandma herself too because she has been having problem with her legs and movement is rather limited lately and she had fainted once on us because of low blood pressure. Grandma herself is on High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol and Controlled Diabetes medication.

Sadly we don't have a big family so we have to resort to employing maids to help us out on out daily chores as well as taking care of our family so that we can spare more time on our business. The most depressing part of the day is losing the maid has sparked a few arguments in the family and I am being victimized all the time.

My thank for all the friends whom have given their advises, for all the concerns we have been given, for sharing with us their experiences and contacts for maid agencies, since most are closed on Sundays.

My turn to rant on Petrol Hike!!!

Today is the second day of the petrol hike aftermath!!! I didn't want to do any post on the petrol hike because there has been many news and many rants on numerous blogs on this matter. I didn't want to post anything earlier because I felt that no matter what, the whole scenario is unavoidable. Today I wanted to do this post because I have not read this before in any blogs so I might as well do it (but probably someone I didn't visit might have said it)

There has been many conflicting billion of subsidy paid but as a normal citizen, like everybody else we don't really care about it, since we won't have the authority to question on them neither does the opposition

I really don't quite understand why the government fail to see it from our point of view. Did anyone of you ever known that we have been indirectly covering our own petrol subsidy? You see, whenever we buy our cars we are indirectly already paying for our own subsidy because of the high taxes (now they con us with the term excise duty la) Imagine how much petrol we can buy with that money saved!!!! I wonder when will the government realise that we are not all that stupid and even if they take away the subsidy we can still afford to maintain our livelihood provided they remove the extra we are paying on buying cars. I think it is still a win-win situation because the government can still use the money they made from Petronas while we can afford those better fuel efficiency cars at a lower price.

Did I mention money saved plus interest? Yeah, I think I forgot to mention that the money saved will have to add on interest too because it adds up to make our loan higher too.... Just imagine 10K @ 2.8% for 9 years will add an additional RM2.5K to your loan. Personally I think our excise duty is way more than 10K!!!

I have never wanted to fall into the government "watch out blog" radar but this hike is taking its toll on us parents. Any layman could do the maths.... we pay the car tax/excise duty so we should be getting our subsidy.... from the tax we had paid, what has it got to do with Petronas earnings???? Take the subsidy off, then refund us our money la!!!! And take the excise off the cars!!!!! I think it make good sense to all of us because we need to save money somewhere.... There is absolutely no point that the government keep taxing us on our cars as well as earning off Petronas and keep complaining how much they are subsidizing all of us!!!!

I wonder what would the price of a car and petrol would be when our little ones grow up....

TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE???

I have a shock again today to see so many "TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE"s on my blog.


The first time all my pictures were missing because PicsPay.com went offline for some unknown reasons, now it is AllYouCanUpload.com??? Well, at least I know that they went offline for maintenance. I might consider of moving all my pictures to picasa eventually.

My site got hijacked!!!!

I guess the above had looked familiar to a few now. I hope I got the term "hijack" correct because they were diverting people away from my site. My sincerest apologies for not looking into this problem earlier. I have not been coming to my own blog bacause I normally track your comments via e-mail. I found it a little peculiar when I went blog hopping to a few blogs but didn't really see into the problem because I thought the problem lies in my browser until I saw it being highlighted in LYN (Lowyat.NET).

The culprit has Advertlets.com because they forgot to renew the domain name and seems like their domain got renewed by adbaaz.com instead so all our traffic got transferred to their site whenever the Adverlets badge tried to load on our blog

What we have to do is remove the HTML provided by Adverlets.com from our page element (under Template Tab) to solve the problem because if we don't it would definitely affect our traffic.

Grandma's back

I guessed I have rant a little too much so I might just wanna skip ranting on the other S-O ( @$$h013 ) so I'll just continue posting with what I created this blog for and forget about the KNNCCB person. Sorry for the foul words, least I want to vent it out and it does feel good. Furthermore since you all know that I am not a cursing person, you would have figured out how badly I have been offended by the S-O

Grandma came back to KL on Thursday evening and Keith was indeed very delighted to see her. He started jumping, while I was carrying him, as soon as he saw grandma who just got off from my uncle's car. (She got a free ride back from her brother)

When I told her that she looked rather tired, her repy was because of the travel, but I am thinking otherwise, she was very disappointed because she was not given the opportunity to see Nicole and she really missed her. From what I heard, Nicole is adapting very well at her father's place because all her cousins are having their school holidays now.

Look at Keith so busy fiddling with grandma's handphone and she goes around telling everyone that I am the one spoiling the boy.

My apologies because this picture is taken with my handphone and the image is a little blurred.

Keith was having some trouble adapting to the quietness back at home since he is so used to having so much attention from many people and carrying him around.

Bad management

I guess I have really been went "Missing In Action" for the past week. Since grandma has went to Penang, Elaine's and my hands have been very busy with taking care of Keith while we work. To make things even worse there are some people whom have added to our hardship. I have been on the edge of losing my cool now.

First of all I will talk about is my condo management. The other day I was just chatting with Chanel on MSN (it was the first time I chatted with her on MSN) and I even mentioned how bad the management was, especially with the lift breaking down often. A few days later the lifts really broke down and this time for an extended period. I am really wondering why this have to keep happening. Why the situation is always 2 lifts breaking down together? Why they don't repair it as soon as possible, especially when only one broke down?

This was what happened, on Saturday night after I got back from work, I was greeted by 2 of the yellow signs below.


Imagine walking up 16 floors, carrying Keith, baby bags, food and the laptop. The next day, Sunday, it was still not fixed, we had to take the stairs down as well as up again at night. I wonder what have they done for the whole 24 hours. We took the stairs down again on Monday because the lifts were only useable by 5pm on Monday. This is the second time I am ranting about this but between my first complaint post and this post, we have taken the stairs umpteen times already.

I would consider that we were very lucky that Grandma is not around during this period because with her health condition I don't think she can take the steep stairs even only to the second floor. Then we might have to stay at a hotel instead and burn a hole in my pocket for such poor management.

Non winner of the Got 5 (Sept)

I have posted earlier that we have got another chance of winning 2 LCD TVs in MBf Got 5 Again??!!!!!, winning it would be my second unit and Elaine BIL's first.
Sadly it is rather disappointing to all of us, despite getting their third 5 on the 8th which have a very high chance of winning, we didn't manage to be the first 100 to win the 37" LCD TV. (I got my LCD TV when I got my third 5 on the 9th June) I managed to find a backdoor to the result by doing a search at 12am (10 Oct) and the results were only linked up at about 8am (10 Oct)

When I told Elaine of the result, she was rather shocked and kept telling me to stop pulling her legs. I have to show her the actual webpage of the result to convince her. Even her brother (Uncle Jason), her sister (Aunty May) and her husband found it hard to accept the result.

With such big blow, Elaine's BIL would probably even cut(terminate) his card for such a bitter pill! Please understand that I wasn't trying to be greedy to get a second LCD TV. The reason behind all this hoo-hah is because Elaine kept saying that Keith is very "Wong" us so I told her that if he is really that "wong" then probably I would get a second one la :P (I don't want my boy to "wong" me, I just want my boy to "wong" himself)


Related:

• My possibly of winning a 37" LCD TV The excitement in June
• The result of the MBFCards "Got 5 LCD TV" promo June winners The announcement
• The 37" LCD TV from MBf The arrival
• MBf Got 5 Again??!!!!! The second excitement

MBf Got 5 Again???!!!!

I've got some great news to share with you all here :)

I am in the running for the 37" LCD TV again this month, this month is the last 100 to be won. This time I am not in it alone, Elaine's BIL (Keith's Yee Cheong) is also in the running too. We both got our 3rd "5" on the night of 8th Sept. Will be keeping our fingers crossed and the announcement will only be out on the 10th Oct.

He have applied his card especially for this TV and he got his card on late August. So far I think he have spent more RM5,000 to get his three "5"s, while I got it totally on luck.

Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka!!!!!!

Happy 50th Birthday to Malaysia

Today is the day that the whole Malaysia will be celebrating its 50 years of Independence, which I doubt any of you would not have known :)

I meant to do this post yesterday but my sis told me that she needed to use my PC (which is in my room) so I have to move it to the living room for her.

Hmm..... let's move away from the 1957 story first, since I think RTM1 would be covering that today :P and will skip the present for the moment. While thinking back to what I was doing 10 & 20 years ago brought back floods of memories...... :D

In 1987, I attended my very first parade, we were the invited marching school band for the opening ceremony of the Piala Bapa Malaysia. Although this just a normal band outing but it meant a lot to me because for this first outing of mine, I actually faced resistance at home, not allowing me to attend it, until my "kai ma" (godmother, who also my eldest maternal aunty) gave me her consent. That year I also attended my first Merdeka parade.
This marks the beginning of me gaining my independence/freedom.

In 1997, this year was rather meaningful to me because it was the year I got to know a very cute, pretty, petite-size, bubbly and understanding girl, in fact there was never a dull moment with her........ (wondering who she was? make a guess la)

If you are asking me if she is still available then I am really sorry lor but I think most of you would have guessed it right. Yes, it was the year I got to know Elaine!
This marks the beginning of me losing part of my independence/freedom.
This is the year I got my first credit card from MBf. This would mark the start of my credit card problems too.

Ten years later, this year, our baby is born, making this year just as memorable too.
This marks the end of my independence/freedom.
This is also the year I won the LCD TV from the contest by MBf. And this marks my credit card problem owings is now even more than ever. Elaine and her family was rather shocked when I told them that I have known them 10 years already.

Now I wonder how will my independence status be in my next 10 & 20 years

The 37" LCD TV from MBf

The LCD TV have arrived on the 26th July morning, just before I leave home for work. As the delivery man was carrying the box in, my god-mother (also my eldest maternal aunt) called my mum. I was rather surprised to be informed that they didn't know that I have won the MBf promo for June. Sigh! Despite me posting it on my blog :(

Here is the picture I took of the box before I leave home


The someone wanted to take picture with the TV box as well


That night itself, upon reaching home after work, I took down my old 34" TV (which was so bulky that it requires 2 people just to lift it up (my sis took this one back in her new Myvi) But the LCD was much more manageable that I set it all up and even carried it all by myself. I took the Belkin Surge Protector off my home PC and used it on the LCD TV instead because it came with insurance and lifetime warranty too.

Picture wise it is good enough for me and I like the VGA input because I can use that with my laptop.

Sorry that I have to take this picture with the flash on.
(Please ignore the exposed wirings...... I am yet to find time to conceal them :P )


Those of you whom wanted to find out more of the LCD TV, especially those whom were waiting for the arrival of their winning TV, it is the S8 Series and here is the link to the catalog

My apologies for not updating this blog as often....... As you all know that I multitask between working (making drinks) and surfing during my working hours. But recently we were rather short-staffed and we were not able to cope with the sudden big crowds that kept coming and going all at the same time. I guess this situation would persist until Elaine is able to employ a new wait staff.

How we spent our off day

Yesterday morning I had to get up rather early because Elaine have hard a hard time taking care of Keith, he just wouldn't wanna sleep and he just wanna play. But as soon as my mum got up, I passed Keith to her for a while so that I can prepare myself to go to the bank to get the car registration card and going to the Puspakom for the second check. Although I got the about 10.30am but I only manage to leave the place at about 2pm because the private car line have a longer wait during their lunch hour (this check up to facilitate the transfer of ownership at JPJ, I have done the first check for financing two weeks ago) I will be handing the car over to the new owner tomorrow.

Before sending the report to the finance, I drove our Iswara to have our old CD player and speakers fixed up as well as getting a new auto-brake lock and reverse sensor. But as I got to the car I saw a flat tyre :( so I have to sweat it out.

That was the boring part, then comes the interesting but tiring part

After that I return home to take everyone out. First we went to a restaurant at Sunway Mas Commercial Centre named My Kitchen to try out their food. The place was featured in The Star and Elaine wanted to try them out because she is a Hainanese herself.

The food was so-so but what caught my attention is how Keith expresses himself that day :)


What made grandma mad was Nicole wanting to drink the Hainanese Kopi and spilling it on herself :(

The result of the MBFCards "Got 5 LCD TV" promo June winners

As I am still in the process of reinstalling Windows XP on my laptop because of me getting BSOD frequently, probably some driver problem. I am unable to post much of Keith as I am yet to install my frequent used programs.

Well as I have posted before in my previous post for my chance of winning a 37" LCD TV and Elaine managed to collect another chance for herself by the 19th.

The result was announced today on their website and sadly Elaine's name was not there but mine is :D Some might say the same name thingy again like in another previous post. As in the result, my credit card ends with 8985.

Elaine was the one whom told me to snap it down and post it up, in case they take that page down wor


Elaine was very disappointed that her name didn't appear on the list. She is so greedy la, but anyway she still got the opportunity to win it as the promo runs until the end of Sept (there is another 300 more LCD TVs to win)

My apology

I'm so sorry that I have not been updating my blog on a regular basis recently. I have been very busy trying to settle a few personal stuffs, especially the car and have fallen sick..... and have yet to fully recover from it.

So I am just gonna post this up for the time being and will update with more stuffs as soon as I can settle my personal stuffs.

And I have added a new function to my blog too. It is called ClickComments by PostReach. Now those whom doen't like to leave comments can opt to click on those icons (no need to register or anything)

Something horrible to share with all parents

I just wanna share with all parents out there so that the next time you take your kids out, you better hold on to them tightly because you'll never know what's gonna happen next. Nowadays children can really react so fast that they can do things at a glimpse of an eye, especially those that they were not supposed to do. Looking at the one below really pains me. (Give it sometime to load)

It really hurts me to see the toddler got kicked into the air and land on his/her head. We would definitely all blame ourselves if this ever happens to any of our precious ones...... Better be safe because prevention is better than cure

By the way, where is his/her mummy and daddy??!!!!!!

Please don't flame me. I just took this off my e-mail that Melinda sent me to share it with you all.

Happy Father's Day

Just wanna leave a very short post

Although I am in the restaurant business but I got so busy recently that I totally forgotten that it was Father's Day today!!!! Well, this is also my first father's day, being a first time father :P

It was so nice that I received a SMS from Chanel very early this morning at 9.45am. (As a matter of fact that this SMS of hers is my first father's day greeting) I would have totally forgotten of this special day because to me it is just any other day as Sunday is a working day for me anyway.

I'd like to wish all fathers

"Happy Father's Day"

And I wish that we fathers would continue on supporting our family, especially our beloved wives. Let us all fight less la...... They used to say that "Men is from Mars, Women is from Venus" but to me we are all on Earth and we humans are very adaptable :P

My possibly of winning a 37" LCD TV

I am rather excited because MBf is running a new promotion for their cardmembers, a chance to win a 37" LCD TV, if you manage to collect 3 approval codes in the same month that ends with 5 (which I have got, that is why so excited ma) and are the first 100 to call in (during the same month)

I got my first 5 when I paid my downpayment for the Iswara with my credit card and I got the 2nd and 3rd 5's today :D Meaning I have collected 3 (and of course I have called in already). At noon today after getting the second 5, I kept bugging Elaine to let me make another purchase because I got a feeling that kept urging me to try my luck again today. I only manage to find the time to go out late in the evening. The best part is upon signing the receipt I saw the approval code and immediately I was already calling the service center :P I won't know if I am the first 100 yet until they send me the letter. I couldn't believe it myself, even Elaine and family thought that I was playing a prank on them until they saw the slips.


Just wanna share with you all my excitement.


I'm rather skeptical of my chances to be the first 100 caller but I did have the feeling that my chances of winning is rather good (just like the feeling I have to get the third 5) My logic in this is because it is only the 9th of the month today but how big are my chances, I really dunno. The best part of all is from today onwards I'll be using Elaine's card (who is having my supplementary card) to do our purchases because we are entitle to win only one gift per month and supplementary are entitle for one too :D (provided the 100 callers quota is not full yet la)

Also if I do win the TV it would be the gift I'd remember because this is the 10th year I have been holding the card, which was my first credit card..... which was then a silver card with only a RM5K limit.

Car Shopping (part II)

Well at the end of the day we are down to 2 candidates.....

• A new Myvi
• A used Iswara

I prefer going for the older car as the specs is rather attractive to me....
1.5(A)'02 -1 owner
car condition is quite acceptable and interior is rather clean too. In fact the shape of this car is way better than a lot of Wira. But will have to see if Elaine approves of it or not. Anyway here is the picture of the car :)



Well, we have put our money down for this car :D
We concluded that Myvi is not our type of a family car and the biggest advantage of the Iswara is its size and its age. Old means won't sakit hati if it is scratched or kena accident. Even her brother and mum approves of the car and its condition :)

Furthermore its price is truly attractive too!!!

Car shopping

Well of late we were being very busy. So busy that 24 hours a day is really not enough!!! (Hahahaha..... who would say that time is on their side and 24 hours is enough for them?)

We went car-shopping on Tuesday and found many secondhand cars in very depressing state other than those in bigger/well-known ones, like TopMark and Peringgit. In those smaller used car dealers, I got the feeling that those cars are from bank lelongs

Test-drove the new Perodua Viva and was rather disappointed. The salesman, Elaine and I boarded the car, which is the EZi 1.0(A) Premium version. We were in Puchong and we went up a slope and I had to floor the pedal to get it moving. I was a bit shock to see a Kancil breezing past us, overtaking us easily leh...... (Maybe I am really overweigh la, so the car cannot go too fast lo)
Personally I didn't quite like the feel that I get while driving it, unlike the feel I get in Kelisa. Honestly in the showroom Viva is indeed attractive but on the road it is totally another story :(

In the end we have decided to cancel the plan to sell our car. To our surprise we were told that someone already booked the car and have already paid RM3K for deposit. Therefore we will have to accept the fact that we will move in the same direction as before, that is to look for another car.