A Day In KL

After running an errand for my brother-in-law, I went to KLCC. I wanted to check out the Book Fest at the KL Convention Centre. It was already 2pm. I had so much time to kill before meeting up with RW at 7pm. When I reach KLCC, I forgot about going to the Convention Centre. I was so bored. The sales weren't that great either. I even sms RW to skip her meeting and meet me for tea at KLCC. She was in Shah Alam at that time.

I went out to the park, took some pictures of the twin towers then came in again, wanted to eat ABC to pass time , but the prices had gone sky high. Then it started raining very heavily.

It rained so hard and yet many people were still loitering outside. Many of them were smoking. I went in again, walked aimlessly and suddenly remembered about the book fest in the Convention Centre. I headed towards the underground tunnel, got myself an entrance tag and went in expecting to come out at least RM200 poorer.

Ai yah... it was only the Popular Bookstore sales. I managed to spend about 2 hours there, bought 2 books - The Rockingdown Mystery by Enid Blyton and Dead Simple by Peter James. One had a 20% discount and the other only 15%. By 5.45 I was out of the halls . The sky had cleared and it drizzled slightly. I didn't want to go through the endless tunnel, so I walked out of the building towards the shopping area.

This was what it looks like after a heavy downpour. Like it never rained at all. Best was, the weather was cool.

At 6.26 pm I took the LRT to Kelana Jaya station and met RW at 7.28pm. She was late. I had to wait for 28 minutes, but it was alright. I had a book with me to pass time.
We went to SS2, lost our way for 5 minutes before reaching the square. I went to Salvation and Evengel to chck out a bible. I bought "The Message". It was on offer I think. RM50.00 only. Never seen it so cheap before. I grabbed the last copy.

We met my brother, and he was working. We went to the famous "Wai Sek Kai", had seafood rice for RM 7.00 and lala mee hoon for RM5.00, stall number 69. It was tasty, but we were very thirsty after that. Too much MSG.

Later we got the wine bags from my brother and hit off to Seremban at 9.45pm.

Dataran Seremban

We had been waiting for a longtime for a shopping mall in the middle of Seremban. Ever since they tore the beautiful building, once known as Convent School, I thought they had ready plans for the next building to come up. It never did... after more than 10 years, it has turned into a big pond. Yeah, they put up signs and posters saying that Metrojaya is coming up, but later they took the advertisements down.

Sometime last year/or early this year (I wasn't paying attention) they started doing something to Convent's old field. They transformed it to Dataran Seremban. It's a welcoming sight to the people of Seremban and tourists alike. Now I wish they hurry up with shopping mall!!!

Teeth problem again!

I'm having teeth problems again. Well, to tell you the truth, I was having this problem since mid April. I had a temporary filling on this particular tooth-(upper right, just before the molars) on the 9th April and it came out 2 weeks later. I told to myself.. no, I'm not going to the dentist so soon. I was careful not to bite on my right side. So this has been going on for more than a month. Finally, on the 29th May, decided..... okay, I've some time in the morning before I go to KL, I will see the dentist.

Esther Cheng, the nurse, asked if my IC number is XXX2 or XXX3. I told her and asked how could she remember the last 4 digits. She said it's almost similar to Dr Lionel's car number. I sat down on the sofa and waited. After a while she called me and said my card was missing. Then she mumbled to herself.. cannot be,, you sisters always frequent here. My thought were like.... "do we? This is not a good place to frequent!!!" After a while she found it... thank God, otherwise who knows they might pull out the wrong tooth or something like that.

The first thing Dr Lionel asked was when did it come out? I told him, some time back. He said I should have come immediately. Anyway, to cut the long story short, he replaced one temporary filling with a permanent one and filled the missing filling with a temporary one.... and told me to come back in 3 weeks! So I guess I have to admit I'm a frequent customer. :)

Fun in the Pool

The school holidays are here and the kids just wanna have fun. No getting up early,no schoolwork, no homework, just 2 weeks of fun. Jaden and his younger brother, Jared came for a visit. Their grandmothers tag along. Jaden and Brian are best of friends and will always try to meet up during the school holidays. While the grandmothers play mah jong indoors with other grandmothers, the kids amuse themselves with this 7 feet pool outside.

Phone Call from Ruth

I received a phone call from Ruth yesterday. It's been a while since I last chatted with her on the phone. She reads my blogs to find out what's happening to me and, well, I'm waiting for her to start her own blog. She can really write well. I enjoyed her short stories. Most of the time she send me (and others too) an email to let me/us know what was going on in her life... and most of the time I don't write back.. Sorry Ruth, I'm bad at writing.

She called while I was at my nephew's birthday party. I had a pretty long day yesterday. The kidz safari was from 9am-2pm, and I didn't reach home till about 3.30pm. Then at about 8pm I went for this birthday party held in my cousin - Sharon's house.

Ruth called at 8.23pm. We exchanged pleasantries and checked on each other's life. She read about Sze-En being horrified at her dad's students atrocious English. She was amused by Sze-En's way of talking and told me that she had something to share on Ellie's (her daughter) choice of words too. My memory's not good but from what I remembered, Ruth said that Ellie had some kind of class celebration. It was the last day of school and all the kids in her class went out for lunch. At one point, Ellie raised her glass and said "yammmm senggggg". All the kids (and mothers too I'm sure) stared at her. Ruth had to explain that it was the Chinese way of saying "cheers". So they all raised their glasses in unison and said "yaaaaammmm seeenggggg". Haha...

Now that's uniquely Ellie. :)

Kidz Safari

The day has finally arrived. I'm sure the kids must have looked forward to this day. We had some order in this safari carnival. Every child must register and have a tag before entering the compound. Some kids came early. They wandered into the compound and had some trial runs with the games. At 9AM we shooed them to the registration counter where they received not only a tag but a minimum of 20 playcards. Some had more because they brought their friends to children's church or they were new comers and some earned them by participating in class. The 6 and 7 years old were given green tags and had to be accompanied by their parent/s or guardian. The 8 - 12 years had their tags in blue.

Aunt Chris made the lion's face cake. Every child who registered were allowed to guess the weight of the cake.

There were about 16 games for the children to play. Crocodile Alert was one of the chilren's favourite. The game consists of a man made fishing stick with hook attached at the end of the string and a few crocodiles with hooks punctured into their bodies. Rajen manned the game and he made the childen line up. I think he changed the rules a little. He made the children compete with one another. Each round consists of 2 chilren who would try to hook 4 crocs under a minute.

Hmmm... I think the children didn't know what game this was. Not many played this game. The game goes like this - the first person is given a sentence to draw out. The second person has to guess what it is.. in under a minute I think.

This game looks easy but it's hard. The children had to hook the bottles under a minute.

Splash! Well, there should be a pool under the ladder. The idea is to hit the stuff toys till it falls off the ladder. Notice I didn't use the word stuff "animals"? :)

Yes, we had food for the kids and volunters too. Thanks to Aunty Pang who was in charged of food.
The original name was "spot what". We got this from Sze-En's spot what books and enlarged it many times over. There were items that were right infront of your face and you couldn't spot it.

Safari Dropping??!! Who came up with this name? LOL. I painted some colours in the egg tray. The kids were given 3 tries. If the ping pong ball land on the coloured one, you get a point.

The volunteers manning this game must be real tired picking up the cans and balls after a throw. Imagining picking up 9 cans and a rolling tennis ball after each throw.

Feeing the monkey with real banana. Some shorter children are allowed to stand on the chair to play this game. There's a tactic for this... you ask Yoke Chan and she will tell you. :)

This game is so easy. The black "dots'" are the softer velcro and the harder part of velcro is stuck to the ping pong balls. The children are given 3 tries. It's easy because if the ball will roll down and eventually get stuck to the next spot. Of course there will be some children who don't know how to throw properly.

This is a simple game too, but the lion is so short and many children don't know how to aim. Ai yah. adults also find it hard to aim.

I thought this won't be a popular game but I see many children had the patience to try this game.

Originaly, this game was called Kim's game. I learn this game during my Brownie years. We had safari animals on the table and the kids were given some time to remember who came to the party. I thought this would be easy, but apparently Juliet (person in charge) had to modify the game. She ask them to name a few animals only.. even that some of them didn't get it right.

This game was interesting. Someone would have to sacrifice their face and get a face wash in return. The children were supposed to "invite" their teachers for a facewash. The teachers were so busy with their stalls, good ol Qing & Jian volunteered to sit behind Mr Tiger. Then later we had teachers Rajen and Aunt Chris to get their face washed too.

Rachel Wong and Danny manned this stall. They had to promote their stall because no one knows how to play this game. Finally Michael Lim and another boy were their first "customers". The game goes like this - One of their foot is bound to one another making two of them 3-legged . Then they have to step on every spot without touching the grass.

Michael Lim and his friend came for more tries because they don't have to queue and they were certain to win the tokens. They wanted to exchange the tokens for an MP3.

So when the childen had finished their allocated playcards, they can earn more from the memorising corner. There are 2 categories. First, put the books of the bible in order. They kids were given the list to memorise. Then the list would be taken away and they had to put the books in order. Second, memory verses. The older they are, the more words they have to memorised. Eddie helped in this stall. When he saw Sze-En, he gave her the 12 year old one to memorise. Poor Sze-En. She gave up and Eddie laughed. Then he gave her the 8year old one and she did it.

This game... well.. not many takers. I cut out so many tails and not many were used. The kids find it hard to reach up to the elephant's butt.!!! They rather fed the monkey up on the tree.

I saw many chilren playing this game. It's quite easy. Just throw the loop to the general direction of the giraffes. It will sure get hooked to mama giraffe or baby giraffe. :)

This is the best part. The children get to exchange their tokens with gifts. The tokens were given to the chilren when they won in the games. Each token - 1 sen coin was painted green on one side. The most expensive gifts were marked at 100 tokens and that includes bibles and MP3s.

At 11AM, I was tired. I was taking pictures, tryiny to capture the whole safari. At 11AM, the kids were suppose to go and watch a movie. We bought it from the States, and it was a documentary on animals. I don't think the kids enjoyed it. Because less than 10 minutes, most of them walked off.

At 12.40pm, the rain came and dampen the children's mood. The teachers of course were happy because they can rest. It rained till the closing, so most stalls were closed but the games played under the tent still had to go on.

At 2PM, Aunt Chris announced the winners for the guess the weight of the cake competition. I think 8 children guess correctly - 3KG. Two of them went back early. So their share was kept for them in the fridge.

Overall, the kids enjoyed themselves. They played hard, earned their tokens and exchanged gifts with them. It's more than thr RM2.00 they paid for when they register.

Should we do this again next year? I don't know. So much work for 5 hours... but then, it's so nice to see the children having fun. :)

Kidz Safari-Setting up

Rachel Wong and I arrived at 10.15AM to help out with the Kidz safari setup. Qing, Jian and Matthew were already there. They all played truant saying that there would be nothing to do in school, it was better for them to help out in the setting up. Later more and more youths came and they were very helpful.

Frankie laboured the most. He hammered pieces of sticks into the ground and nailed the plywood animals onto the sticks.He set up a temporary backing for a 3 piece painted plywood, each plywood measured 4 feet X 8 feet.

We tried the games see if they worked or not. The "hook the bottle" games was difficult. We were deciding if 30seconds was enough for a round. It wasn't enough, even after 1 minute we were still struggling to hook the bottle.

Then we tried the crocodile alert game. A make-do fishing pole with a hook at the string's end was supposed to capture the crocodiles. Another hook was injected on top of the crocodile to make it easier for the kids. We found out that the crocodiles had the habit of overturning. Most of the crocodiles were more "dead" than alive.

We use raffia strings to create the jungle-like effect. It didn't look like a jungle at all, but it's better than nothing. The raffia strings were tied to a volleyball net. I bought it at carrefour for only RM3.00.

We decided to put up another net of strings because the compound was quite big. It was raining quite heavily, when we started on the 2nd net. It was done in less than 2 hours because there were many helpers.

Joel, who never did like his pictures taken surprised me by wanting to take with all the animals.

By the end of the day, all the animals are up and the games stall were all more or less ready. It was a tiring day. We had cell at night and I my eyes could hardly open. I slept at about 11pm.

Kidz Safari Painting Part 3

Today's Wesak Day, a holiday observed in Malaysia. Celebrated by the Buddhists, this festival is sometimes informally called "Buddha's birthday," it actually encompasses the birth, enlightenment Nirvana, and passing of Gautama Buddha. (according to Wikipedia).

Today, the church has something on - A 2 1/2 hour seminar called the cat and dog theology. I didn't sign up. Rachel did and so she asked me to start painting first. There's gonna be a game called "pin the tail" on the elephant. I have to cut out many elephant tails and colour them. That's my first task. The second job is to paint the egg trays and whitewash the signboards. By this time, Rachel came back from church and she started outlining the animals with an artline 70 marker.

I suppose she wanted some company because she asked me to paint the back of the SAFARI words.... like who's gonna see the back??

Obediently, I did what I was told. Esther and Sze-En came at about 6pm. 8-year-old Sze-en came up to me and said "just now I help my father mark (did she say mark or read?) his students English paper. I can't believe their atrocious english. See their atrocious English also I want to pengsan" I laughed and asked her what's the meaning of atrocious. She said "bad English lah"

I really admire her for using words she recently learnt. And she can entertain hersef too. She caught sight of an angpow wrapper in the dustbin. She picked it up and asked Aunt Rachel for some colour pencils. Then she proceeded to colour on a want-to-throw paper, cut it up and stick it on the angpow wrapper to make a puppet.

I really admire her for using words she recently learnt. And she can entertain hersef too. She caught sight of an angpow wrapper in the dustbin. She picked it up and asked Aunt Rachel for some colour pencils. Then she proceeded to colour on a want-to-throw paper, cut it up and stick it on the angpow wrapper to make a puppet.... all in like 20 minutes. :)

3rd visit to Gunung Datuk

I'm debating whether to write a long winded blog or?! I blogged my first visit to Gunung Datuk last year and it wasn't that detailed. We'll see how this one goes.

We met at our usual meeting place - Agape at 7.15AM. Not all of us were on time. Let's see, there were about 24 of us altogether -

KG & son, Peter Lim & 2sons - , Terrence Ong & daughter - Trixie, Peter Koh & wife - Cecilia, Hendry & Ms Lee, RW & 2 other DIGI friends, Pastor Peter and 6 from his church, Shuba, Johnny and me.

We left Agape at about 7.45AM, met up with RW & friends at the Petronas, Senawang. I hopped into their car (BMW mah...) for a half hour journey to Gunung Datuk -Rembau. We passed a rubber estate and I couldn't help taking pictures.

At the entrance of Gunung Datuk, Peter and KG briefed us, broke us into smaller groups and Pastor Peter prayed for a good hiking day. We started our journey at 9.02AM according to Sherine's watch.

This is the beginning of the hike. We had so much energy, talking and laughing. I had my camera out too. Well, all this extra energy lasted only a few minutes. Sherine was checking her watch every 10 or 15 minutes letting us know that we had so much more to cover.

We stopped and rested a few times. Karim had fever but he was adamant to conquer this mountain. He looked so pale but his determination overruled his senses. The mountain got steeper and steeper. Well, it felt like it was getting more and more steep but the truth is it was steep right from the start. :)

See how we were struggling, holding on to trees, roots and whatever nature had to offer, just to haul ourselves up.

It was about this time when we saw Hendry ... coming from behind. He didn't meet us at Agape because he was late. When we reached the foothill, he was just passing by Kajang. He managed to catch up with us and overtook us too. My... to be young again. :)

Dead trees blocked our path and we had to find ways to get over (or under) the tree trunk. Compared to last year, this hike was easier because they had installed rattan railings and ropes at some places.

At long last, we reached this boulder. KG told us it's another 5 minutes to the top. I told RW that I had better take a picture of this so that I can remember how it looked like. I may never come here again.

And 5 minutes later... YES!!! we arrived. I asked Sherine for the time - 10.50AM she said. 1 hour 50 minutes. Not bad, but I expected better. We didn't linger each time we stop for a break. We didn't stop so many times too. Hmmm... must be getting older.

After munching some cut cucumbers and drinking cold 100plus a(I put cold 100plus in my flask), I was refreshed. Karim and Sherine wanted to climb up the ladder they heard so much about. So we climbed higher and went round some boulders.

This is the first set of ladders. It's a bit scarry, but I managed to pull myself together and start climbing.

Okay this is the 2nd set of ladders and no way I was going climb these ladders. RW, Karim and Sherine went up without any help at all. (What brave people). KG came much later, and but the fear of heights was so great that I didn't even want to go up. Johnny had more confidence in KG. He went up and got a good view of NS (part of NS). It was at this time that both my camera batteries ran out. I was disappointed but at least I got some shots at the ladders. RW's camera batteries ran out too, but she managed to take some pictures at the peak.

We desended from the ladders and met up with those who were afraid of heights. Food was abundant this time9as compared to last year's Angsi hike), and some had second round of nasi lemak. We left the peak at 12pm and was going at a quick pace for the first 15minutes. Karim looked much better. He was even faster than us. Not long after we started desending, Sherine twisted her ankle. KG had a walking stick (just bought it from Johnny) and he lent it to her. It helped so much and I really was amazed at her for keeping up with us. But of course occasionally we had to stop so that she won't be so far behind. RW was with her all the time. Towards the end, the walking stick broke. Sigh... good for 1 time use only.

We reached the foothill at 1.50pm. Some showered, some changed. We left gunung datuk at about 2.45pm, and had our lunch in Pedas.

It was a good hike. I enjoyed it very much, maybe because it's dry - no leeches, and the company was great. :)