Entries from June 2007 ↓

Do we get celebrations now that we are getting a replacement First Lady? I’m sure this topic has been blogged to death but do tolerate one more eh? Must keep up with the current news else you lose out on SEO tactics for “Pak Lah Kahwin” and “Jeanne Abdullah pictures” or “Jean Danker photos” (which apparently turn up photos of a nubile young girl who looks nothing of 53 unless she’s found the fountain of youth)

When I heard the news about Pak Lah’s impending nuptials to Jeanne Abdullah I was in Ipoh on that fateful day. Then, I saw Jeanne Abdullah’s picture online and in the official press release photo and I thought she looked a lot like Datuk Ng Yen Yen (Deputy Finance Minister for the uninitiated)! Don’t believe me? See this:

Separated at birth?

And I wrote this sms to a soon-to-be-married friend:

Your getting married is so catching even the PM wants to get in on the act. 

Or something similar. And I mentioned that Jeanne was Pak Lah’s late wife’s sister in law only to get a shocked reply saying:

Can he do that?

Actually, that was not what the SMS said, but I’m not going to risk going to ISA prison without a trial and with only curry rice everyday, just to please you readers with the risque details. Anyway, Jeanne was previously married to the late Endon’s brother but has been divorced for 15 years. I am going to stop right here before I start smelling the curry rice.

Congratulations, Pak Lah. May Jeanne make you happy for as you said “A happy PM is good for the country” and heaven knows, we need a happy PM right about now.

It was meant to be a halfday trip to Ipoh that lasted nearly a whole day. I was done early in the morning, leading me to explore the delights of food around Ipoh, guided by a blind bat of a passenger seat driver, and some friends on the phone.

I was told that there was “very nice Ipoh sar hor fun” somewhere in Ipoh town “near a Kurnia building with a big sign with big mirrors inside”. Um… can you say confused? Following the vague directions, I ended up off Jalan Panglima. You’ll understand in a bit why the name of this road is engraved in my brain.

We drove around the streets, seeing a couple of coffee shops but no “shop selling Ipoh sar hor fun with a lot of people eating it”. We stopped by the side of the road and passenger strolled down to take a look. Nothing. So, we hopped back in the car and took another round.

After 3 times going around the same few streets, I put my foot down and said “Call Mr. X who so cleverly took you here last time!” Mr. X obliged with the directions, talking us through as I took to the road one last time. But wait. That building looks familiar. So does that shop. OMG! We were at the same place for the 4th time! AND IT WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG!

Aiyoh aitelyu! Can die ok. So I got out of the car after parking and said “This had better be excellant sar hor fun!” Too bad it wasn’t. But here’s where things get exciting.

After lunch, I got back to my car and got in, turned the key, heard the engine crank, put the gear in reverse. Nothing.

Puzzled, I tried again. This time, I noticed that the reverse sensor did not beep and that the engine had died. Somehow, I could crank it, but the engine would not run. Ok, let’s not panic…. I whipped out my phone and called the trusty Toyota Assist for the second time in as many weeks. This time, they told me that as my car was still under warranty there was nothing they could do except arrange for a tow truck to tow my car to the nearest Toyota Service Centre. OMG! Tow! My poor baby strung up like a pak cham kai as PE said!

You know what was the first thing that ran through my mind? The manual. You see, as I said before when I was reading the car manual for want of better reading material on hand, I read that the car must be properly towed using those things that support the wheels, and not the cable and hook contraption so often associated with tow trucks for it might damage the car. The trivia you retain in the 5% of the brain that you use eh?

But as you can see, the tow truck driver evidently was well versed with the Toyota car manual too, for he used the wheel support things! Hehe… Lucky for me, my car was stuck in a parking lot. The most worthwhile RM0.30 I’ve ever spent on parking for instead of getting half an hour’s worth, I got over 1 1/2 hour’s worth of parking!

I got to ride in a tow truck all the way to the Toyota Service Centre not too far away. Jalan Panglima was where it happened, opposite Restoran Sin Lean Lee and Sifu Kopitiam. That was the directions I gave the telephone operator. How to ask me, a stranger to Ipoh to tell them where I was?!

As we approached the Service Centre, I had another heart stopping moment, for there was a slope downwards and at one point, my car was balancing on only 1 wheel! Again the most incongrous thought flashed through my mind. Wasn’t it horses who only had 1 foot on the ground at any one time when they run? It was purely to keep my heart from stopping, I assure you.

I dropped off the keys, described my problem to the service people and sat down to wait. about half and hour later, one of the service people came up to me and told me the strangest thing:

Service person: “Your car is ready. It was an emo problem.”
Me (in my head): Emo problem? My car was having an emotional breakdown?! Excuse me? I’M the one having an emotional breakdown!!
Me (out loud): Um… Emo problem?
Service person: Immobilizer - Immo problem.
Me (out loud): Oh Immo!
Me (in my head): Bugger how can you expect me to know your techie terms?!

Anyway, ya so they got the car running, identified the problem as being an “immo” problem and told me I could run along back to KL to my regular Toyota Service Centre to get the immobilizer replaced.

Fast forward to the next day

I went to my regular service centre. They told me my car was not having an “immo problem” but it was a strange disease they cannot identify despite doing a full diagnostic. The thing was, my car is already running and not displaying any signs of trouble so they can’t trouble shoot something if there is no trouble.

*confused*

Maybe it was just an “emo problem” after all eh?

Finally, here’s a tip, courtesy of the Ipoh Toyota Service Centre:

If a similar problem happens, where you can start your car engine but it won’t run, and its an immobilizer problem stopping your car from starting, remove the negative terminal of your car battery, wait 30 seconds then replace. It should start like a charm then. But only if its having “immo problems”

I went up North to Ipoh yesterday for work. Left early in the morning at 6am and got there by 8.30am. Not too bad considering its my first time driving up there. I’m usually driven.

As usual, when I go places I must eat the local offerings so I had:

• some Famous Hakka Mee stall I stumbled on
• Ipoh White Coffee
• Ipoh Chee Cheong Fun (rice rolls)
• Ipoh Sar Hor Fun (rice noodles with shredded chicken and prawn stock)
• Custard from a coffee shop that I saw everyone eating at.

Note that having the name Ipoh (insert name of food) immediately makes it a local speciality) hee… Comprehensive reviews will be posted up in time over on my Kitchen Experiments to keep the clutter here to a minimum (and also to generate traffic there lar….hehe) .

Anyway, no offence to Ipoh-mali people but my family and I have no luck with Ipoh. Everytime we go there, something’s bound to happen. Dad lost his mobile phone (in the days when the basic-est of the basic mobile costs over RM1000), Mom had her handbag snatched with her engagement ring in it ( she’s stopped carrying handbags because of a phobia of getting snatched again).

In my case, this happened:

My story will follow soon.

p/s  Photos were taken using my Samsung SGH-E830. Not too bad for a 2.0MP no auto-focus camera phone eh?

This is a bit of an introspective post in light of the dull rainy evening. The air-conditioning is down low and my skin is starting to crawl with goosebumps because of the cool air and suddenly I was transported to when I was a student in gloomy London having similar weather.

I’d been bloghopping and I noticed that there are many blogs by students whether at school or at university, many of whom are studying overseas. Reading their blogs, I can identify with their frustrations and stress as exams approach and the feeling of being all alone in a foreign land. I went through all that.

The difference is that I did not have a blog. In fact, email was in its infancy then.

My only contact with my family was the irregular letters my mom would write on behalf of everyone in the family. I’d hear nothing from her for months and then suddenly, I’d receive a thick letter written over weeks as and when she found time or inclination to write. There were the phone calls of course, but unlike now with VoIP and Skype, phone calls were expensive. I was subject to popping GBP1 coins like candy just to call home and say “Gong Xi Fa Cai!”.

In my final year there, my sis went off to university in the Southern Hemisphere. Wahlaueh! Can you imagine trying to coordinate time zones just to say hello?! There was no MSN, no messenger, no Skype, just the normal landline phone. We did not even have mobile phones much less text/sms capabilities. And she did not even write me letters!

At the time, VoIP was an embryo so I remember signing up for a service called Swiftcall where I could buy say GBP20 worth of talktime and call Australia for 20p per minute and Malaysia for 60p per minute. That beat spending pounds per call. However, because we did not have mobile phones then, it also meant a lot of frustration when there’s no one at home and you want someone to talk to because people were just not so easily accessible then. I’d always make sure I topped up my credit just before exams for that was when I’d be most stressed and my parents will pick up the phone to me wailing “I’M GOING TO FAAAAIIILLLLLLL!!!!”  

To top it all off, I have friends who don’t even write letters - you know who you are and we’ve have 9 months of silence until I got home in summer when we’d try to catch up and make up for the past 9 months. Hotmail was also just up then, and so I had email contact with one friend, but it cost me so much just to get online. I had to get to a cyber cafe and drink multiple cups of coffee just to use the computers. And it wasn’t cheap. Wi-fi? What’s that. I did not even have a computer!

So, when I read these students’ blogs chronicling their student lives, and their comments from their friends or family, I think of how lucky they are. How lucky that they are able to interact with their family and friends even though everyone might be scattered all over the world. How lucky they can write about their stresses and frustrations and let their family and friends share in their lives with their writings and photos.

Nothing beats picking up the phone or having someone there beside you, but having an online presence sure helps with the blues if you have your family and friends clued in of course.

I’ m not being a grinch or a batty not-so-old woman reminiscing about the old days. I’m just saying that progress can be a good thing. It brings people closer and makes the world smaller and maybe just a bit happier

This was the question posed on the radio this morning. Actually it was in relation to women, but I’m opening it up to both genders because I don’t practice gender bias hehe… 

“Would you rather be thin/slim forever or rich forever?”

Me:

I’d be rich forever. When I’m rich, no one will care if I’m thin and there is something called liposuction.

bwahahahhahahaha…

What would you rather be?

UPDATE: Wow looks like we have a unanimous vote!