Day +1061 : Chocolate moist cake

I am fine today.

My wife made a chocolate moist cake yesterday. This was the first time ever she tried to make such type of cake. It was a steamed cake.

The main benefit of making a cake ourselves is that we could control the ingredients used especially the amount of sugar; halved the amount in this case - not too sweet, nor too plain. Apart from this, it is definitely more economical to make our own cake, and of course, in the process, experiencing the pleasure of cake making and sense of satisfaction :-)

The main purpose of making the cake was to share it with the children. For your information, the children in our church are having a mini-party every Sunday where they share with one another all sorts of foods. As parents, we must make sure that they bring along foods so that they can learn to share.

I am glad that the cake making project was a great success this time :-)

The cake, in a dented form, but with a great taste. Should get a new baking tin.
A zoom in view
A piece 
Adriel and Joseph with the cake
See you next post :-)

Day +1060 : Gifts for teachers

I am fine today.

The school where my wife teaches, and Daniel and Jospeh studies, was celebrating Teacher’s Day yesterday. My wife and I went to Daiso store in IOI mall to purchase some gifts for the teacher on Thursday night. That was when we were prohibited from taking photo. We also included Adriel’s teachers while calculating the total number of gifts we needed to purchase.

After browsing through many items in the store, we chose the pink bowls finally. Adriel likes people calling her “princess” and since pink colour is associated to the “princess”, she likes the colour very much. This leads us believing that girls like pink colour, and since most of the teachers are ladies, we believe that we had made a good decision :-)

Anyway, whether you are a girl or boy, as long as you are a teacher, we would like to wish you a very happy Teacher’s Day :-)

15 pink bowls
A bowl
See you next post :-)

Day +1059 : A farewell dinner

I am fine today.

Our company held a farewell dinner for two of our staff, Ir. Dennis and Mr. Yu Yik Chong, this evening at Cheong Wah Seafood Restaurant(中华酒楼). Dennis will be on his own, doing Public Mutual Fund and other businesses, while Yik Chong is going to further his study in structural engineering.

We wish both them all the best, and may God bless them in all their future undertakings.

Dennis & me
Yik Chong & me
A group photo in the office - 4 staff are not in the group
Yam basket with squid filling
Spare ribs
Chicken
Seafood bean curd
Steam Tilapia - Tomyan flavour
Vegetarian dish - 斋菜
Cheers! 干杯!
Our director, John, presenting a gift to Dennis
Yik Chong received his gift too
A group photo outside the restaurant - 3 staff are absent
See you next post :-)

Day +1058 : Daiso - Everything is RM5

I am fine today.

My wife and I visited Daiso Japan Store located on the 2nd floor of the new wing of IOI mall this evening. All items there are priced at RM5 and the store offered a wide variety of goods for sales. The advertisement printed on the wall of the IOI mall claims that the store has 90,000 types of products.

Taking photo of the store, even from outside, is strictly prohibited. When I aimed the focus of my camera on the store from outside, and just about to press the shutter button this evening, a cashier rushed out from the store preventing me from taking photo. She was so nervous that it looked like I was going to shoot her head with a pistol :-)

I told her that it is understandable if she prevents me from taking photo inside the store, but it is quite ridiculous to prevent someone to take photo outside the store; from a public position which doesn’t belong to the store. As such, their act is no different than objecting the surveillance satellite from taking photo of their house from a public location - the sky.

The cashier called her supervisor to talk to me and finally she agreed that there is no ground of prohibiting someone from taking photo outside the store :-)

Daiso has 2500 stores in Japan, and the one in IOI mall is the fourth in Malaysia.

Despite the unpleasant experience, I would still recommend this store to you. There are many interesting and useful items available in the store.

The advertisement
The store
Opposite of it is the Popular bookstore
See you next post :-)

Day +1057 : Google Pinyin

I am fine today.

I would like to introduce to you a very good Chinese input method offered for free by Google. Google Pinyin, now in version 2, provides many features that speed up the input of Chinese characters.

Though the input is based on Pinyin, the input speed can be incredibly fast with the introduction of simplified Pinyin input (简拼输入), where we only need to input the first character of the Pinyin of a word. For example, we just need to type “wmggxxqdy” to input我们高高兴兴去钓鱼 :-) Incredible, isn’t it? It is hard to believe that we can now type Chinese words faster than English’s :-)

Another feature that is very attractive is we can configure the tool to synchronize our input pattern through Google account. With this, whatever input pattern that the tool picks up based on our input habit or any shortcuts (词组) that we configured manually will be preserved across computers. Let says we configure a shortcut, “xdhpzt” to represents 宣道会蒲种堂 on our home computer. By right, only this computer will understand this shortcut. However, if we synchronize the input tool through Google account, any computers with Google Pinyin that log in to Google account will be able to use the shortcut as well. So we do not need to train our computer one by one :-)

There are plenty of other useful features that make it a valuable tool.

However, this applies for simplified Chinese characters (简体字) input only. If you need to input traditional Chinese characters (繁体字), then forget about this tool. It simply doesn’t work.

Turning to traditional Chinese mode, we get the traditional Chinese phrase我們家里有一只小狗 instead of 我們家裏一只小狗.

You can download the tool at http://www.google.com/ime/pinyin/ and its features are detailed at http://www.google.com/ime/pinyin/feature.html.

Happy typing :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +1056 : Dinner at Oriental Station Café (回味站)

I am fine today.

My wife and I had a dinner at Oriental Station Café (回味站) at Bandar Puteri Puchong last night. A church member brought me to the same restaurant to have dinner last Tuesday. I didn’t bring along my camera at that time, therefore, I didn’t write anything about this.

This is a medium class restaurant that offers a wide variety of eastern and western delicacies. The environment here is quite good. Like most of the medium class restaurants, it provides free internet access through Wi-Fi.

We ordered the promotional chicken rice (锅仔霸王鸡饭) which cost RM7.90 each, with additional RM1 only for a drink. The portion is big.

I like the dish very much, but my wife said that though it tasted good, the chicken smelled a little bit fishy :-( Anyway, I still recommend this restaurant to you.

The address of the restaurant ( near the Public Bank):
No. 19G & 19-3, Jalan Puteri 2/3, Bandar Puteri, 47100 Puchong, Selangor.
H/P: 012-2847917 Tel: 03-80635170

The restaurant
The chicken rice that we ordered
The RM1 drink
Some of the menus - click the photo to get a larger view







See you next post :-)

Day +1055 : Follow-up at Haematology Clinic

Day +1055 : Follow-up at Haematology Clinic

My Blood Count Today: - Readings in square bracket [] are result from previous test.

Red Blood Count (HB) = 149[144] (Normal 130-180)
Platelet = 194[210] (Normal 150-450)
White Blood Count (WBC) = 7.3[4.4] (Normal 4 - 11)
Absolute Neutrophil Count (ANC) = 2.847[2.024] (Normal 1.5 - 8.0)

ALT = 64[66] (Normal 30 – 65)
AST = 28[42] (Normal 15-37)
GGT = 58[36] (Normal 15-85)

I am fine today.

All blood count and kidney function test results are within the normal range :-)

My abdomen is still very stiff and in fact, my whole body is stiff. This is an indication of GVHD. Doctor said that I might need to take Prednisolon (steroid) again. However, she will only make a decision after she studies the result of my thorax high resolution CT scan during next follow-up which is scheduled four weeks later. The CT scan, which will be done on 18, June, will allow doctor to determine if I have BOOP/BO. I was introduced the term by Dr. Gan during my last follow-up, and I wrote about it on Day +1027 : Follow-up at haematology clinic.

I met a friend, Mr. Lim, in the clinic, whose interesting stories can be found in the following blog entries:

• Day +844 : A MAKNA contributor I am now :-)
• Day +721 : Update on my two friends
• Day +661 : Visiting friends
• Day +656 :Follow-up
• Day +644 : Visiting Samuel
• Day +601 : Finally, he found suitable bone marrow for transplant (2)
• Day +600 : Finally, he found suitable bone marrow for transplant (1)
• Day +209

After going through many obstacles, he managed to do the bone marrow transplant one year ago. No sign of GVHD was observed and doctor cut off the Ciclosporin – a drug that is used to control GVHD - a month ago.

He called me not long ago, saying that he noticed rashes on his body. I suspected he was having GVHD and asked him to call the heamatology ward immediately. He was given Prednisolon(steroid) – 11(55mg) tablets per day - since then.

When I saw him this afternoon, his face was full of dark red patches, something like sunburn. He also showed me rashes that spread all over his body. Apart from this, he is experiencing sticky eyes, sensitive mouth and also high level of liver enzymes. These symptoms are indication of GVHD, which I also experienced about two years ago; that is six months after transplant.

Apart from Prednisolon, he was prescribed another anti-GVHD drug called Cellcept today. He told me Cellcept is very expensive and he will be seeking subsidy from Welfare Department (Kebajikan).

He plan to start working as an excavator driver next week, but this GVHD might prevent him from resuming work so soon.

Hopefully, his body will response to the new drug and the GVHD will be brought under control very soon.

See you next post :-)

Day +1054 : Your blood is needed

I am fine today.

(Click on the banner below to get a larger view)

Our church is organizing a blood donation campaign with UH at our church on the Saturday, 6 June, from 10am to 4pm. As a blood disease patient, I received numerous blood transfusions and really appreciate those who kindly donate their blood. Without them, I am dead.

I encourage you to come forward bravely to donate your blood.

Your blood, our life!

Thank you.

See you next post :-)

Day +1053 : A lie unmasked

I am fine today.

Our prime minister was very quick to say that UMNO would contest in Kelantan’s Manek Urai state seat vacated due to the decease of its assemblyperson Ismail Yaccob. And this happens when the reason of not fielding a candidate in the Penanti by-selection is still so fresh in our mind:

"BN's focus is on serving the people and reviving the nation's economy. Thus, we decided not to field a candidate."

Therefore, we can conclude even now, not the next general election, that BN is not serving people and care about the nation’s economy. So it is not worthy of our support.

If this is not the case, then our prime minister is swallowing his words since no consistency is observed within a short period of time, and the reason of not fielding a candidate in Penanti by-election is a blatant lie.

What should we call the one who spreads lie? It is very unfortunate and shameful to have this kind of people running our country.

See you next post :-)

Day +1052 : A lethal judgment

I am fine today.

The three-judge appellate court today reversed the Kuala Lumpur High Court decision that declared Pakatan Rakyat leader Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin as the rightful menteri besar of Perak.

The judgment was delivered through a mere 5 minutes oral judgment, and no reasoned grounds of judgment had been given. As such, we see no seriousness of the court in handling such as an important matter of public interest.

With this, we have very ground to question the independency of judiciary in this country. Are the learned judges partisan judges or are they intimidated to make decision that goes against their conscience? We don’t know, but one thing for sure, the judgment serves as another dose of lethal arsenic to BN, of which the catastrophic effect will be displayed in the next general election.

The People’s Court will be in action and trashes whoever that corrupted the justice of this land.

See you next post :-)

Day +1051 : Pan Mee at The Unique Taste Restaurant

I am fine today.

A church member brought us to The Unique Taste Restaurant (古早味滑滑板面茶餐室) for Pan Mee after the church service last Sunday. The restaurant offers two choices of Pan Mee; machine flattened or hand-pulled.

Most of us ordered hand-pulled Pan Mee as we were advised that it gives better texture. Indeed it is smooth, elastic and tasty.

If you like to eat Pan Mee, I highly recommend the Pan Mee in this restaurant to you :-)

The restaurant
Pan Mee
See you next post :-)

Day +1050 : A fiver fish feast again!

I am fine today.

Our church members, William and his friends, went fishing again. They invited my wife and me to enjoy their catches of the day at Kee Tek (记得) Restaurant located somewhere at 14 miles, Jalan Puchong.

This was the fourth time I was invited for river fish dinner :-) The first three were documented in the following blog entries:

• Day +769 : A river fish feast :-) (Cheong Wah Restaurant 中华酒楼)
• Day +921 : Another river fish feast (Kee Tek Restaurant 记得海鲜饭店)
• Day +977 : Third sermon after bone marrow transplant :-) (Kee Tek Restaurant 记得海鲜饭店)

It is a blessing to have friends who like fishing and willing to share their catches with us :-)

The dishes - Steam Tilapias
Fried Ikan Haruan
Another flavour of Ikan Haruan
Tinggalang? I was told this type of fish could cost over RM100/kg in Sarawak
Ikan Haruan soup
Vegetable


See you next post :-)

Day +1049 : A BN self-inflicted checkmate

I am fine today.

BN decided not to contest in the Penanti by-election on May 31. The reason given for this great decision was so touching that it almost bring me to tears – artificial tears applied externally :-)

"BN's focus is on serving the people and reviving the nation's economy. Thus, we decided not to field a candidate," our dear Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak said.

From the above statement, we deduce that

• Not contesting = serving people and reviving the nation’s economy
• Contesting = not serving people and damaging the nation’s economy

If BN contest in the next general election, then we can conclude that they are not serving people and damaging the nation’s economy, we should not vote for them, and this means doomsday for BN.

If BN decided not to contest in the next general election in order to serve people and revive the nation’s economy, they will lose by default, and this means doomsday for BN too.

Therefore, either contest or not contest, the outcome is still doomsday.

I wonder how BN managed to figure out such a destructive reason - a self-inflicted checkmate - which only an idiot will believe.

See you next post :-)

Day +1048 : Hope

I am fine today.

My wife’s brother-in-law, James, sent a photo to me a few days ago and asked me to comment about it. The photo was taken in front of his house in Miri.

If I were to give a title to the photo, I would entitle it “Hope”. Through it, we are presented the contrast of heaven and earth, light and darkness.

If the earth is all what we have, then sadly speaking, the darkness would be our fateful destiny. However, we are promised heaven as our eternal home through our faith in Jesus Christ, a belief that transforms the darkness into light, hopeless into hope, even on the earth where darkness seems to reign.

This hope gave me tremendous strength in handling challenges, especially throughout the aggressive treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.

Hope bounds in the face of adversity!

See you next post :-)

Day +1047 : Assuming the role of God? (3)

I am fine. Continue from yesterday…

I read an article that explained why many who died of A1 (H1N1) were strong youth and adult, not from weaker group like children and senior citizen. The argument is that strong youth and adult are having an immune system that is too strong which causes damages to the lung cells that are infected by the virus. This is literally equal to overdose. I scan the article for your reference.

The article. Click to have a larger view

This article brings a strong message that strong is not necessary the better! "Just nice" is the best. We are the creation of God, and under normal circumstances, our immune system should work well - in balance condition. In other words, our immune system is neither too strong, nor too weak.

Tempering this balance condition through health products may bring undesirable result, one that causes casualties in A1 (H1N1) for example. In short, too strong an immune system can be fatal.

I came across some products that claim to contain certain hormone that brings longevity or products that have anti-aging effect. After doing some research, I found out that the hormone is only one of the factors that affect aging. Tempering a single factor might causes the body goes out of balance and brings undesirable result. Growing tumor is one of the possible outcomes.

I see aging as part of the design so that every part of the body ages in sync to avoid health problem. There is no point of remaining young with tumor, isn't it?

In conclusion, never assume the role of God by tempering what He has put in place unless it is necessary:-)

See you next post :-)

Day +1046 : Assuming the role of God? (2)

I am fine. Continue from yesterday…

The result of the transplant is a change of blood to my sister's in my body and since our immune system is provided by the blood as one of its functions, effectively, I got a brand new immune system. But the new immune system is not exactly the same as my sister's, so it may fails to recognize some of my organs and starts to attack them. This is what we called graft-versus-host disease (GVHD).

The main challenge after the bone marrow transplant is the management of GVHD. Whenever there is sign of GVHD, the patients' immune system have to be suppressed through certain medication to avoid organ damages. On the other hand, suppressing the immune system too much defeat the purposes of transplant as the immune system might become too weak to clear the remaining cancer cells in the body. Therefore, this is a game of balance. A good haematologist must be a good game player in this field.

I am "fortunate" enough to have both acute and chronic GVHD, therefore, my immune system needs to be suppressed by taking immunosuppressive drugs such as Prednisolon (steroid) and Ciclosporin. With this, I found a very good and friendly reason to turn down any products that offer a boost to immune system :-)

However, it is most likely that only I and a few others who went through organ transplant could make use of the above reason.

To be continued and see you next post :-)

Day +1045 : Assuming the role of God? (1)

I am fine today.

It is very often that we are approached by multi-level marketing agents who market health products to us. They always try all means to convince us to buy and consume the products. And it is sometime quite hard for us to turn down their offer, not because we are convinced that the products are good, but worried that rejecting them would bring undesirable repercussions to our relationship.

Many of them would say that their products work on a wide spectrum of health issues, and some of them even attempt to impart the impression of magic cure of their products. This claim is normally "substantiated" through many testimonies.

We ask them the reason that makes the product so effective, the argument given is almost the same - it boosts our immune system. But do we really need to boost our immune system?

I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, which is a blood disorder. In order to increase the chance of a cure, a stem cells transplant (bone marrow transplant) is needed. Our bone marrow manufactures our blood based on Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), and the transplant process destroyed all HSCs through strong chemotherapy first, and then infused others' HSCs (in my case my sister's) into the body. And these new HSCs are smart enough to found their home in the bone marrow and start to manufacture blood, but this time, based on the new HSCs.

To be continued and see you next post :-)

Day +1044 : Lamb King and Lamb Chop at Grill King

I am fine today.

My wife and I had a dinner at Grill King again last evening. We visited this restaurant a couple of times earlier, of which two of the visits found entries into this blogs:

Day +843 : Dinner at Grill King Hainan Western Restaurant
Day +846 : Back to Grill King again :-)

We ordered the Lamb Chop Set which cost RM9.90 per set. This is a downgraded version of the RM15.90 lamb shop set that was offered last year with mushroom soup and drink. The set that we had last night didn’t come with any soup or drink.

On the menu is also the Lamb King set which cost RM19.90. It is no different than Lamb Chop Set, except with a slightly larger portion. If one Lamp Chop Set fails to satisfy your appetite, then ordering two Lamb Chop Sets is definitely more cost-effective than ordering a single Lamb King :-)

While most of us manage to finish a Lamb King set, not many people can finish two Lamb Chop Sets. The best thing is to have three Lamb Shop Sets for two persons :-) But if you only have two going for meal, I would be most willing to be the number three :-)

Lamb King - photo taken about two weeks ago while having dinner with our Hong Kong visitors
Lam Chop
Do you see any different in size? Almost the same, isn't it?

So remind you again, go for two Lam Chops instead of a Lamb King :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +1043 : Calculation of judicial impartiality

I am fine today.

On Monday, Justice Abdul Aziz Abd Rahim proclaimed ousted Pakatan Rakyat Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin as the rightful Perak menteri besar. The BN Zambry's application for a stay of proceedings pending an appeal was also rejected by the court.

On Tuesday, Zambry applied a stay of order and it was granted through an extraordinary singe-judge Court of Appeal. It is extraordinary in the sense that the application would normally be heard by a panel of three judges. (I am learning :-))

On Wednesday, Nizar applied to set aside the stay of order, and MalaysiaKini reported the following:

Unlike Zambry's application yesterday which was given the special treatment with the Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail's presence and counsel Cecil Abraham along with Umno lawyers Mohd Hafarizam Harun and Firoz Hussein Ahmad Jamaluddin, managing to have the application heard immediately, the rival menteri besar's application to get an early hearing date was only known close to 5pm

The hearing date to set aside the stay of order was fixed on next Monday, which is 5 days from the date of application.

We can perform a very simple calculation to measure the judicial impartially in term of “favourism factor, F” which simply means that how many times one is favoured against the other.

The calculation is based on the duration at which the case is heard upon application.

Let the time taken by the court to hear Zambry application = Zt

Le the time taken by the court to hear Nizar application = Nt

Based on the report, Zt = 0 second and Nt = 432000 seconds (5 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds)

We have, F = Nt/Zt = 432000/0.

If you calculate this using computer, you will encounter an exception – divide by zero! This implied that F is too huge that even a computer is unable to handle. Your calculator would probably give you the same error message.

However, human is smarter than the computer and knows that anything which is divided by zero will have an answer of ∞ (infinity).

With this we can conclude that F is equal to infinity and in simple English term, we say that “Zambry is favoured infinite number of times over Nizar.”

With such a huge factor of favourism creeping into a judiciary organ, how can we be convinced that judiciary impartiality exists? This reinforces my claim that this is a land of corruption and rulelessness.

While handling down his judgment on Monday, Justice Abdul Aziz Abd Rahim said one of the Zambry witnesses was partisan witness, but how many judges are partisan judges?

I read from newspaper that Justice Abdul Aziz Abd Rahim is a just judge who wouldn’t consider the political background of plaintiffs and defendants. With him, at least we see a dim ray of light shining in our judiciary system.

See you next post :-)

Day +1042 : Donkey and Tiger

I am fine today.

BN is power-crazy to an extent that it mistakenly taken a tiger as a donkey. So, without much hesitation, it jumped onto it (Pakatan), thinking that it would be tamed easily. The animal struggled vigorously with all its strength in an attempt to throw its rider off, and only then the BN realized that it is in fact riding a tiger :-)

Jumping onto the animal seems to be quite easy, but getting off from it is ridiculously tough – 骑虎难下. So the riding game has to go on at all cost, exposing the ugliness of the rider. As such, the longer the show, the more ugliness is getting exposed, and the less popular the BN will be.

While enjoying the show, I earned a lot – the power of the speaker, the separation of power, the power of ruler and etc. Even though the show is still going on at the moment, I am already convinced that this is a land of corruption and rulelessness.

And the only cure is perhaps, a transplant :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +1041 : Happy birthday, Carmen and Carlina!

I am fine today.

I attended a birthday party of two sisters in my church with my family yesterday evening. Carmen was celebrating her 21-year-old birthday while Carlina was celebrating her 18-year-old birthday. Their actual birthday falls on 16 May and 15 May respectively, and they decided to have earlier celebration for convenience sack.

Their mother, Jessie, who was separated from her husband came to live in KL, and joined our church about 10 years ago. At that time, the two sisters were still very young.

The church, especially Pastor Andrew and his wife, assisted them a lot; treating the two sisters as good as their own children. And we all witness the two grow up with God’s abundant grace. Carmen has completed her study and now is working, and Carlina is studying in a college.

May God’s abundant grace always be upon this family!

The cakes

Singing birthday song
From left : Carlina, Carmen & Carmen's boy friend
Blowing candles
See what we have for the birthday girls.
Presenting present to Carmen

Anything alive in the box? I am a little bit scared.
Something she likes very much :-)
We have something for Carlina too :-)

A family photo
Now the foods












Waiting for event to start - a little bit hungry
Let's eat now
See you next post :-)