Of rewards and such

Last Saturday, Mama and I were again very fortunate to have AF1 & AF2 involved in their Hari Anugerah Cemerlang. The kids were both understandably excited on their participation and getting the reward and recognition for their efforts. For the record this is what they got:

AF1 - 5A's for 08 PKSR, Best student for English Subject, Anugerah Nilam & 5A's for UPSR 2008
AF2 - 5A's for 08 PKSR Year 3

AF2 knew there was a drop in her performance, since she used to get a placing in class and best student in subjects, and she promised to buck up... I am glad for that.


That's all for this update. Cheers

Drool...drool....drool....

I have to confess... I am a gadget freak. I love gadgets. Here are the top 3 phones that I would drool over for now. Also note that Apple's iPhone is not in my list...why? I simply dont fancy it... it's overrated I guess...

Here they are in no particular order...


First up the Palm Pre

Why? Because its a Palm .... unfortunately it hasnt been released yet.. not even in the USA


Next... The Nokia E71...

Why.. its a Nokia and it uses Symbian OS, is it time to migrate from Palm to Symbian... seriously thinking about it... unfortunately a new phone is not in my priority list at the moment.



Next.. the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1.... it looks gorgeous... sleek and tempting... unfortunately it uses Win Mobile... and I hate Win Mobile...

As a footnote..... look at this

The Google Android G1 phone..... how good is it... no idea... not much feedback yet as it is only available in the US... hahaha... another wishful thinking..

Sigh.....

A belated birthday greetings

My Dear AF 2 happy birthday and many happy returns.... You make me proud and all of us loves you very much.

What the new year brings...oh 2009

Cant believe that the new year has come and we are now into the full swing of things. This is my 1st posting for the year 2009. Haven't been active lately with work commitments, irregular internet access and the usual reason, writers block.

The past two weeks have been pretty packed. I had to go for offsite retreat formulating business plans. Long days starting from 9 am all the way to 12am for 2 nights in a row for two weeks. Finally it was done last Friday and waiting for the green light for execution.

Renovation at the office has just been completed. I have been nomadic for the past three weeks sitting all over the place with no regular spot and no phone extension. Thank god I still have my Internet connection, so it is torrent as usual :)

On another note

Everybody is now settling into a routine. AF1 is now in form 1 in her new school. She got into the Kelas Rancangan Khas. However, her circle of close friends ended up in different school. So she is forced to make new friends. I am glad coz at least she is forced to do so. She has this problem that she thinks that she doesnt know how to make friends..... Mama and I were initially thinking of sending her to evening tuition classes, but looking at her hectic schedule we decided to adopt a wait and see attitude and see how she settles into her new routine. She is now in the afternoon session instead of morning session. She leaves for school at 12pm, and only finishes at 6.50pm. By the time she arrives home it would probably be 7.30 pm. Knowing her, she will take a long time in the bathroom, a long time eating (she is a slow eater) there is no way she will make it for the tuition classes which starts at 8 pm, comfortably. Then there is her arrangement for compulsary morning sports training sessions... another logistic rearrangment on our part...sigh. But evrything is worth it for her education. Her new school has more emphasis on acedamic and leadership. They encourages active participation in any type of activities and points given especially for holding posts in any activities. AF1 has had a good start with her being appointed as one of the AJK for her Taekwando activity and she is hoping to apply to be a librarian. Good luck to her.

AF2.. ah AF2. She turned 10 a couple of days ago. Happy birthday Dear. She is settling well into her Year 4 class. A big surprise for us the other day as she volunteered for the trials/selection for pertandingan bercerita. She used to be very timid and shy and wont say much in the previous years and now this... it is a huge improvement. The trials is today and can't wait to find out the outcome.

AF3.... happily in his K2 class at kindergarden with some minor hiccups along the the way. He is, as I just discovered, is a very ...... cant seem to find the word..... he becomes nervous if things are not according to his routine, he gets worried and nervous easily. He was very nervous before getting to his new class unitl he discovered his cousin is in the same class.... then he started to relax and everything is back to normal. So far so good for the past few weeks.

So thats about it for now.

Champions Again!

The UEM Media Boogie Hunt was held on the 20th Dec 2008. CoC was Fuad Dahlan (formerly of TAB, now with Cipta Asia Worldwide)

It was a a hunt with 30 route questions, 2 treasures AND......2 Bonus questions and 2 Missions...so typical of Fuad's style.

It was a 6 hours hunt, Started in PJ, off to Taipan USJ with 10 qusetions for the 1st leg (without tulips). Proceeded to KESAS highway where the tulip started and ended up in Cyberjaya for the end of the 1st leg. Submitted the 1st leg answer sheets and did the 1st Bonus questions which was matching actor/actresses to the musical related films they appeared in. There was no mention of not being able to use any 'aid' during that session, so the 4 of us started surfing the web on our phones for the answers.

Started the 2nd leg from there and off to Bandar Baru Bangi Industrial area for another 10 questions and then to the 2nd pitstop at the library in BB Bangi for the next part and collected the final 10 questions and the 2nd Bonus qustions where we had to match the type of dance to the description given.

Final leg was at Wangsa Maju (in Wangsa Link) via Taman permata where the final 10 questions were located. Breezed through (and we managed to solve and bought the treasures within the 1st leg itself) and submitted our answer at about 12.30 one hour ahead of time. (we managed to save half an hour by taking a short cut rather than following the tulip, since we knew the MRR2 would be jammed from Bangi to Tmn Permata)

We had to do 2 missions there. The first was actually doing the PS2/3? dance mat. Well, Zul our driver breezed through for full marks there. High 5s all around :). 2nd mission was to identify from the list dances that were shown on the video clips. Full marks there again.

However I couldnt attend the answer and prize giving presentation as I had a prior engagement elsewhere. They dropped me off and they went for the presentation.

I only got the call saying we won at 5 pm and the guys were elated. Got a bunch of thank you SMS from them :)

All in all we scored 231 out of 250 points. Which meant we got 3 route questions wrong (15 points) which one I knew the answer but couldnt find the sign, second I was totally stumped and the third coz we didnt know what snakehead fish was in Malay (turns out to be Toman and we were searching for Haruan). The other four points was from the bonus questions where we confused the description for Hip-hop and Breakdance.

There you go Ladies and gentlemen.. my adventure for the weekend. And to Zul, Man & Rosli....you guys ROCK!

Preparing for the new school term..with a hint of nostalgia

Well... preparation for the school items have started. Have been going shopping with Mama, AF1 & AF2 for their school uniforms, shoes, stationary etc.

When we were looking for the school shoes, we came across this..


Bata Badminton Master! Mama was so excited that she insisted AF1 get one of those. Ahhh it relived all the memories... I used to own a few pairs in those days...and it was definitely cheaper in those days.

However, this is what I used to wear once I got to secondary school...
Warrior shoes....! It was considered cool to own a warrior shoes back then. Multi purpose shoes it was... for jalan-jalan, football, takraw, basketball and of course for school wear.

AF1 has a new set of uniforms right now... she was a librarian in her year 6, so no hand me downs for AF2....since librarian wears a different uniform (the brown uniforms). It was quite hard to get uniforms for both of them since AF1 is very tall and thin.... If it fits her waist, the kain would be too short. If it fits her height.... it will be too loose... sigh. but we ended up with a good fit any way.

When I was paying for all the items, it brought me back to the days when my arwah father was paying for all my things. Never thought of it that much when I was younger, but now I realise how much he cared for me when he bought all the school items for me without any complaints. And it took me thinking to families more unfortunate than we are, how the kids are without new clothes for school, make do with hand me downs but still with smiles on their faces.

Apologies for not being able to articulate my thoughts well into words, but hopefully you get what I mean.

All in all the kids are ready with their new school term, and even AF3 is eager to go to his kindergarder with a pair of new shoes. What is left now is just the school text books for AF1 which she will only get once school opens.

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On another note, I havent been updating the postings since things at work have been affecting me a lot lately. I will not go into details or dwell in it but suffice to say that things are not really well and morale in the company is quite low at the moment. I try to be as positive as possible... hey, its the paycheque that I bring home at the end of the day that matters. Cari makan maa...

Another day...another presentation

Tomorrow morning I will be at one of the private universities, giving a presentation at a knowledge sharing session. The audience will be from the university community, lecturers and students, researchers and govt agencies related to technology and research.

I have an one hour slot to fill and so far my slide count is at 33 slides. That comes about to 2 minutes of talking per slide. Hopefully there will be questions for me to answer to fill up the time.

Wish me luck.