Day +2278 : A family gathering at Soon Hui's new house

I am fine today.

Soon Hui just moved in to his new house at Bandar Puteri, and it just happened that his parents and siblings are also here for his brother's Ming Hui's convocation which will be held in University Malaya on Wednesday. Soon Hui's mother (my eldest sister) invited my fourth sister, Richard, and my family for a dinner at his house today.

The house is nice, and so do the gathering and food :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +2277 : Year end family travel is approved

I am fine today.

We are going back to Sarawak from 27 November to 12 December this year. The flight ticket for the whole family is sponsored by the government, and we got to enjoy this great privilege due to the fact that my precious wife is a government teacher :-) Any civil servant from Sarawak who serves in West Malaysia enjoy this travel benefit once every year. The total cost of air ticket is RM9298 this time. We have received the travel warrant, and I will get the ticket from the MAS ticketing office in Subang airport on the way back from the seminary this Friday.

We will visit my eldest sister in Kuching first, staying there for one week. This will be my first visit to Kuching since 2005, the year I was diagnosed with Leukaemia while I was having holiday there, and also had my first round of chemotherapy there.

This will also be Aaron first visit to Kuching :-) We will be visiting a few places in Kuching, and what had in our mind now include one of the resorts in Damai :-)

Since we will have our first stop in Kuching, we have to bear the cost of travel from Kuching to Sibu. After comparing the AirAsia flight ticket with bus and ferry, we decided to fly to Sibu. The total cost is RM414, something which is not too much expensive compared to bus or ferry.

My mother-in-law will go back directly to Sibu on 16 November. She will return to KL on 12 December with us.

The MAS booking:

TUE 27NOV 12

    MALAYSIA AIRLINE SYSTEM BERHAD  2564 Y AIRCRAFT-B737 / NONSTOP / MEAL
       DEPART: KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA                1005   TERMINAL:   M
       ARRIVE: KUCHING, SARAWAK, MALAYSIA            1150
       *** CONFIRMED   ***
       SPECIAL SERVICE: 1  CHILD                        /11AUG04
                        1  CHILD                        /20APR06

WED 12DEC 12
    MALAYSIA AIRLINE SYSTEM BERHAD  2715 Y AIRCRAFT-B737 / NONSTOP / MEAL
       DEPART: SIBU, SARAWAK, MALAYSIA               1130
       ARRIVE: KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA                1320   TERMINAL:   M
       *** CONFIRMED   ***
       SPECIAL SERVICE: 1  CHILD                        /11AUG04
                        1  CHILD                        /20APR06

See you next post :-)

Day +2276 : Tesco Voucher

I am fine today.

I am collecting Tesco Clubcard Points through purchases made using RHB Tesco Visa Card. The points are converted to Tesco cash voucher every three months.

I received RM221 cash voucher this time :-) If you would like to find out more about the features of this credit card, please refer to this link.

See you next post :-)

Day +2275 : Wow! So Cheap!

I am fine today.

My room mate purchased a 7" tablet that cost only RM248 today. The tablet was running Android 4.0.4 and it came with 4GB of storage with the option of expansion through an external SD card. It also came with a keyboard.

My room mate purchased the tablet from The Store, Sungai Buloh. The tablet was made in China and the actual selling price was more than RM300. However, he managed to bargain the price to RM248. He did this by introducing another 4 students to purchase the tablet.

I saw someone selling the tablet at Giant, Puchong a few weeks ago, with a price of more than RM300 that time. Given that Samsung is selling its 7" tablet without 3G at RM800 , I was tempted to purchase this cheap tablet. However, when I checked online, someone who purchased a cheap tablet found it unable to charge after six months, and this refrained me from purchasing it.

Considering the fact that the tablet comes with one year warranty, it might still worth to purchase it and use for one year, and then changed to a new one if it becomes faulty after the warranty expired. Now I am tempted to purchase again :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +2274 : Consequence of breaking the law

I am fine today.

I fetched Aaron to kindergarten on Monday morning. We experienced heavy traffic jam when we were approaching the small link that connects Bandar Puchong Jaya to Wawasan Puchong. It didn't took me very long to find out that a big lorry went off the road and blocked half of the road :-(

Lorry is strictly prohibited to use the link as it brings danger to other drivers. Hopefully, the lorry driver will learn a lesson from this incident.

See you next post :-)

Day +2273 : They are all gone!

I am fine today.

I came back to the seminary yesterday morning after servicing my Innova. I always came back on Tuesday because there is no class on Monday. Now the deadlines of tons of assignments are approaching, I have no choice but to came back early to work on them :-(

It was a surprise for me to find out that the whole group of Myanmar workers who worked here were all gone. I was told later that there was a dispute between the administration and the workers, and the workers just walked away :-(

Without the workers, all students have to clean their own dishes after every meal. Other than that, we as students didn't see much impart at the moment. I believe the students might be called to do more work if the workers refused to come back, and hopefully this will not happen.

See you next post :-)

Day +2272 : What a nice place to do homework!

I am fine today.

The left windows of my Innova was having problem two weeks ago. I sent the vehicle to the service centre in Puchong and found out that the glass was detached from its frame, and the whole frame had to be replaced. It is fortunate that the vehicle is still with valid warranty. But the service could not be carried out immediately as the service centre had to order parts. So I made an appointment to do the repair this morning.

It took the centre almost three hours to complete the repair, but I was very happy waiting there. It is all because the environment in the waiting lounge was very nice and furthermore, drinks and biscuits were provided for free :-)

If you need some place to finish your work, I suggest you go to the service centre :-)

I started using this table

Unlimited supply of drinks and biscuits

Forgot to charge my notebook last night and the battery was running low. I found some empty office tables with plenty of power sockets, and moved to the table to continue my work :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +2271 : Burger or toy?

I am fine today.

Aaron requested to have meal at McDonald since Friday. I brought him and other family members, except my wife who was attending a school dinner, to McDonald in IOI mall for dinner today.

Aaron likes Filet-O-Fish but he likes toys even more. I know his main motivation to pressure me so hard to have meal at McDonald is to buy toys rather than to eat the burger.

He got both burger and toy today, and I think he is very happy now :-)

He purchased the left one today

See you next post :-)

Day +2270 : More signal, please!

I am fine today.

Though the seminary provides internet access with a minimal charge of RM50 per semester, I subscribed to a broadband service because the service provided by the seminary is slow and very unstable. Imagine all students compete for a 2 or 3 Mbps line.

However, subscribing to wireless broadband myself doesn't rule out all internet access problems. It is because seminary is located in a rural area where the 3G signal is very weak. Some rooms simply have no signal at all. Fortunately, my room have some signal but it is weak and unstable.

After some experiment, I found a way to boost the signal, that is, by hanging the modem in the air as shown below. I am very happy that this approach increases the strength of the signal received and I am now satisfied most of the time :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +2269 : How many assignments do yo still have?

I am fine today.

As the semester is going to conclude in less than one and half month time, the pressure to complete the assignments are mounting.

"How many assignments do you still have?" is a very common questions among the students now. And I always have problem answering this question as I never count them. I only know what I have to submit next week. Anything beyond this is out of  my comprehension :-(

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." (Matthew 6:34) At last, I found something to support my last-minute attitude :-)

Anyway, I do hope that I can be liberated from this last-minute attitude, and whatever it is, I pray that I could finish tons of assignments before the end of  the semester.

See you next post :-)

Day +2268 : "Why Daniel is at your place?"

I am fine today.

Aaron called me when I was in the seminary. He handed up the phone before I picked up the line.

I called back and Daniel picked up the line upstairs. After that, Aaron also picked up the line downstairs. The two handsets that they picked up were parallel line.

"Why Daniel is at your place?" Aaron asked.

He thought that Daniel was at my end, and insisted that he must be with me. It took be a great effort to explain to him that Daniel was at home, talking to me through the same line upstairs.

See you next post :-)

Day +2267 : General epistles test

I am fine today.

I sat for a general epistles test this morning. Genera epistles consists of Letter of James, First Epistle of Peter, Second Epistle of Peter, First Epistle of John, Second Epistle of John, Third Epistle of John, Epistle of Jude.

The test this morning cover the First Epistle of Peter. It was a 10 minutes test consists of 10 true or false questions, and 10 objective questions. Though the questions were all objective, they can be tricky to answer.

I spent more than seven hours yesterday to memorize almost all the five chapters. I am now almost a test machine. Memorizing and un-memorizing is my business. Hopefully, this exercise will stimulate my brain to work better :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +2266 : Synoptic Gospels Test

I am fine today.

I sat for a test for the subject Synoptic Gospels this morning. Synoptic Gospels are made up of three gospels namely Matthew, Mark and Luke and they are so called because of they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and similar wording.

The scope of the test was clear. The lecturer gave us a few questions without any answer. We have then to search for answers to this questions and then memorize them for the test. Though we knew the questions, we didn't know if the answers were correct. We might spend a lot of effort memorizing wrong answers :-)

I spent a few hours yesterday to memorize the answers. I hope the answers that I memorized were acceptable to the lecturer.

See you next post :-)

Day +2265 : The fourth jackfruit

I am fine today.

Daniel and Joseph harvested the fourth jackfruit last week. The harvesting job was done by the maid last time but since we don't have a maid now, Daniel and Joseph have to do it.

The job scope were very clear - Joseph climbed up the tree to pluck the jackfruit with a knife while Daniel stood on the ladder below to catch the fruit with a basin. The fruit was so heavy that it overturned basin, made Daniel fell off from the ladder, and the fruit landed in a dustbin under the tree. It was lucky that Daniel didn't get hurt. Daniel told me later that we need to come up with a better strategy to harvest the heavy fruit.

The fruit looked very nice but not sweet. We have to eat it with honey. I think I should fertilize the jackfruit tree so that the tree will bear a sweet fruit for us :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +2264 : Adriel and her trophies

I am fine today.

Adriel likes to join competition in the school and so far, she won quite a lot of trophies. She is proud of her trophies and asked me to take a photo :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +2263 : Dinner with Daniel

I am fine today.

Daniel is preparing for his PMR exam. He is a lot more serious in his study nowadays, but still only after being pushed by my niece Hui Na or me :-( In order to talk to him in an effort to encourage him to be persistent in his study, I brought him for a dinner in one of the Mamak store opposite the IOI Mall in Bundar Puchong Jaya last Monday.

He ordered a Murtabak. He was not satisfied with it, and ordered a roti canai. If he has the sort of enthusiasm in study as in eating, he will score very high mark :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +2262 : MBS Cell Group Lunch

I am fine today.

The cell group in the seminary meet every Tuesday. Instead of the regular meeting, we went for a lunch at Restoran Ng Kim Yap (金业海鲜饭店) at Kundang last Tuesday. It was a very relaxing meeting with many nice food :-)

Sitting front row in the middle is our adviser, Ps. Tan Ee Sin 

See you next post :-)