Calendars and organizers

I noticed that this year, I have received only one or two calendars. No organizers or planners. Usually in the previous years, these items will come by middle of December. Suppliers and friends would give you one. However, I noticed that this year, unless you ask for it, then you don’t get any!

Usually a table calendar would really come handy on the desk. Although with Microsoft Outlook and any other applications, you can get calendars, but a normal printed calendar is still the best. I would have at least one on my working desk and one at home. I used to receive this big table planner where you can use it as a table cover and you can write your appointments or any important dates on it. Nowadays its non existent! When I asked some of the suppliers, they said its too costly to print them. I tried to look for one in the stationary shop, but even with money you can’t buy them cos’ there are no where to be found.

Eh, anyone of you got jalan to this table planner ah?

Looking back at 2006

The year 2006 was quite an eventful year for most of the family here. Many things (happy and sad) have happened for the past 12 months. We are just few days away from a brand new year 2007, which would mean a brand new start for most of the people. Let me just briefly sum up month by month for year 2006.

January 2006

• Chinese New Year was quite gloomy due to the fact that we found out the baby (Raelynne) my wife was carrying was suspected to have spina bifida occulta. The world seems to fall apart from the heart breaking news.

February 2006

• Flew to Kuala Lumpur to attend my wife cousin’s wedding and at the same time, seek third opinion from a gynae specialized in 3rd level ultrasound scan in Gleneagles Ampang.
• Was relieved and happy to find out that the 3rd level scan results positive and the specialist said that it is very unlikely that the baby has spina bifida occulta. We were back to our cheerfulness.

March 2006

• My wife entered the 5th month pregnancy stage.
• Regular reviews and checkups.

April 2006

• My wife entered 6th month pregnancy stage.
• Regular reviews and checkups.

May 2006

• My wife entered 7th month pregnancy stage.
• Regular reviews and checkups.

June 2006

• Final preparations for Raelynne’s birth in July.
• My wife entered 8th month pregnancy stage.
• At 36 weeks, a day after the regular review, my wife said no movement detected from the baby. In the end, had a c-section to deliver Raelynne on 22nd June 2006 at 5.07pm.
• Raelynne went back home 2 days after delivery.

July 2006

• Raelynne celebrated her full moon!
• Sleepless nights for parents.
• Daddy’s 1st working anniversary with his company.

August 2006

• No major events. Raelynne developing normally.
• Raelynne turned 2 months old.

September 2006

• My one and only Grandmother left, passed away peacefully on 2nd September.
• My wife’s first birthday celebration with Raelynne.
• My first’s birthday celebration with Raelynne.
• Raelynne turned 3 months old.
• My nephew, Ryan, turned one years old and had the same birthday as me.

October 2006

• My niece, Roxy, was born! Raelynne has a mei mei and becomes a che-che (sister).
• Raelynne turned 4 months old.
• Raelynne started to take solid food.

November 2006

• Roxy celebrated her full moon.
• Raelynne turned 5 months old.
• Raelynne started to turn.

December 2006

• Raelynne can turn successfully.
• Raelynne had her first highest fever ever at 39.4C
• Daddy and Mummy celebrated 2nd Anniversary with sicky Raelynne.
• Raelynne is teething.
• Raelynne’s first Christmas celebration and Christmas presents.

Wow, seems like 90% is about Raelynne for the whole year. Yeah, with the one and only daughter around, of course everything revolves around Raelynne. It has been quite a good year except some ups and downs here and there.

What to expect in 2007?

• Plans to move into our own apartment (or maybe build a house on an empty piece of land?)
• Thinking of changing car… hmmm… but that would mean more liabilities incurred.
• Raelynne’s first aeroplane ride in March 2007.
• Raelynne sitting down, then walking? Wow! Can’t wait!
• Raelynne’s 1st birthday!
• Save up more money and probably take up more investment plan for Raelynne’s future ie. education
• Settling off more debts/loans/liabilities and aim for financial freedom.
• etc etc etc etc etc.

We hope the rest of you would have a fruitful year 2007 as well. Hope to meet some of the blogging Mummies (and Daddies) next year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2007!

New Dell Widescreen Monitor

I mentioned last two weeks that I have ordered a new Dell Ultrasharp 20″ Widescreen LCD monitor for my home use and it finally arrived last Friday, just in time for Christmas.

I have been looking for a LCD monitor for quite sometime already but never got around to buy it until recently. The purchase is just the right time as my 8 years old CRT monitor is going to be faulty soon from the symptoms its giving. Anyway, the new monitor arrived in three boxes. One contained the LCD monitor, one for the additional soundbar that I ordered and funny thing is, they provide the power cable in a separate box instead of inside the LCD monitor.

I hooked up the monitor to my computer and started the configurations to get the proper display resolutions. Dell mentioned that it should be in 1650 x 1050 pixels resolution. Luckily my video card was able to support this mode and it was up and running after I installed the Dell monitor drivers to get that resolution. I also connected the monitor to a Digital Video Input (DVI) port instead of the normal VGA connectors. DVI will give you better resolution because it does not need to convert to analog signals compared to the VGA connectors. DVI port is quite common now in new video cards. Before it used to be a luxury to have a video card with DVI port.

Anyway, you all know how the monitor looks like in my previous post, so for this post, I took the picture what the monitor can display and how good it looks. Other reasons why I took this photo without any lighting is because my daughter was sleeping As you can see, its really sharp and bright. When Dell call it ultrasharp, its really what they claim to be. I have totally no complaints about this monitor and worth my investment. I even tried plugging in the monitor to the dvd player and it works! It can support picture in picture as well, meaning I can watch DVD and see my desktop at the same time.

With a widescreen, you can see more things horizontally. I can open two browser windows side by side as well. It is sometimes useful for web development because I can view the codes and preview the web page on the browser side by side.

If you are looking for a new LCD monitor, you can consider Dell, but keep a watchful eye on the pricing because it goes up and down and you need to buy it at the right time right price. I just found out that the price for this monitor has shot up to RM1,999!

Christmas Weekend

I have delayed this post because most of the photos taken during Christmas was in my Dad’s camera. Only managed to download it today. We didn’t do much during Christmas weekend. On Saturday afternoon, we brought Raelynne out to a shopping mall together with my Mum, then had a family dinner at night, as a replacement of the Winter festival on Friday because my SIL was not around.

On Sunday, as usual, we sent Raelynne to my in-laws place and my wife and I go “pak toh”. My goodness, the traffic was so bad in the city. We were stucked in the city for like 1 hour in the same area due to jam and inconsiderate drivers. The traffic was already so bad on the other end of the traffic light, yet these drivers still drive up to the middle of the junction. So when the light turned green, the other cars can’t drive past because they have already blocked in the middle of the road. Then late afternoon, it started to rain heavily.

As for Christmas day, since there’s also nothing much to do, we also decided to go out to a shopping mall. This time we went out with my mother in law, my parents, my wife and Raelynne all together. Had lunch before going to the mall. As usual, there’s so many people and so crowded. Actually, my father wanted to look for a new LCD TV. So we went to SenQ to look around. After looking around, Samsung LCD TV still has the best colour contrast among all other brands. Buying a new TV is not as easy as we all think it is. For us, this TV has to fit into the fixed cabinet in the house in terms of length and height. As the display cabinet cannot be modified, so the TV has to fit in there. My father asked if there’s any 26″ LCD available, but the shop attendant said 32″ is the smallest for Samsung. Panasonic has 26″ but after looking at it, the colour looks dull compared to Samsung. So my father, being a civil engineer started thinking and measuring and calculating. In the end, he managed to figure out how to put the LCD TV into the cabinet. The shop attendant was telling us that the offer is only good for Christmas day. If you buy it the next day, the price will be higher. Then there’s only one brand new unit left! WaH! The TV so popular one. So many people buy. Actually, my father wanted to buy the LCD TV to replace the TV in the living room for the benefit of their grandchildren. Why? LCD TV don’t spoil eyes marrr… Its true. Normal TV has radiation, but LCD TV doesn’t have. So its good for the kids. Afterall, its my nieces who watches most of the time.

Anyway, enough about TVs. I’ll do another post later with a photo how my father thought engineered the installation. He installed it all by himself, well of course I was there carrying the TV when he mounted it on. Luckily not heavy! 14.8kgs only.

As for Christmas Day night, we had dinner at my sister in law’s sister’s house. She always have it every year for very close friends and families. There was gift exchange among the kids as well as games. Raelynne was already cranky when it was about 9pm as she was sleepy. She was quite happy to receive her first Christmas present, a big one some more!

As you can see from the photo above, she got her first present from Santa Claus. You all must be thinking, why this Santa Claus wears sunglasses. Well, that’s because the Santa Claus is my SIL’s sister’s daughter. Each year, she would dress up as Santa to make the kids (cousins) happy. The sunglasses is just to disguise her and prevent the kids from identifying who the real Santa is.

So what did Raelynne get? She got a Fisher-Price Kick and Play Piano. It was given by my brother and sister in law. Another battery operated toy! *Slap head*. As you can see above, she was happy kicking away the next morning. It produces music and sound as well as reading the alphabet. In return, we gave Ryan a Fisher-Price Doodle Pad as we noticed he likes to draw and always borrow my niece’s doodle pad. As for Roxy, she got a Bfree feeding bottle from us. We thought it may help her because her parents always say that she gets colic quite frequently and she was using Avent. I asked the maid yesterday whether there’s any better and she said the bottle is better than Avent! I’m glad I told my wife that we should get the bottle for her, which would be useful.

Well, there goes the first year of Christmas with Raelynne. Next Christmas, she’s probably running around on her own feet already!

Asia Pacific Cable Network 2, Zone S7

Please be informed that due to the earthquake and tsunami that has occurred in Northern Taiwan has caused a major cable problem at APCN2 S7 (Asia Pacific Cable Network 2, Zone S7) between Shantou-Tanshui at 12.07am today resulting in a very congested international links to Malaysia, Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. A total of six submarine cables were affected by this earthquake resulting in a total capacity lost of 7 Gbps.

What this would mean for users like us that we will experience high latency and packet lost and extremely slow Internet connection to international sites like Blogspot, WordPress, etc. This problem affects ALL users in Malaysia whether its leased line, Streamyx broadband, etc.

PayPerPost Blog

This post is sponsored by PayPerPost

Did you know that PayPerPost has their own blog? Yes! Instead of going through the whole PayPerPost website to read about the latest news and updates, head on to PayPerPost blog where it is updated frequently. It also features some crazy videos that is really funny and interesting to watch. The blog is really a one-stop information center about PayPerPost.

I was just reading their latest blog post about the first HP digital camera winner. They have announced the first winner of the HP digital camera PPP post. Not forgetting, they also feature the latest episodes of RockStartup, the reality show about PayPerPost.

So don’t wait anymore. Head on to PayPerPost blog and get the latest news, updates and crazy videos featured over there. You won’t regret it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

To all our blog visitors, especially those Mummies (and Daddies) who celebrate Christmas, Morin, Raelynne and myself would like to wish you all a very Happy Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

For some of you whom I managed to grab hold of your mailing address, I have mailed out Christmas card as above to you. For those whom I didn’t manage to get the mailing address, I will try and get it from you and will send you Chinese New Year cards next year!

Hope all of you will enjoy your holidays with your families and friends. There’s no blog break from me as I can still blog from home.

Psssttt… my 20″ Dell ultrasharp widescreen monitor arrived today and I’m so happy!

Half year old

Raelynne, today you turned six months old. Just another six more months you will be one year old. How fast! On your six months old day, you are still a bit moody and don’t really like Daddy’s camera. Before Daddy can take photo, you already close your eyes. Daddy and Mummy are glad that today you feel much better than yesterday, when you were moody the whole day. At least today, when you woke up, you had your sweet smile and looked happy. Just that the photo that Daddy take, you did not smile, maybe because you don’t like Daddy’s camera. I guess Daddy have to downsize the camera to a point and shoot one.

For your six months old development update, there are so many things that you can do now:

• Starting to hold your own bottle but still need Mummy to help (maybe too heavy)
• Reach out for any objects that is in front of you.
• Can grab your “chut chut” and put in your mouth (sometimes terbalik)
• Still cannot wait for Mummy and Daddy to make milk when you are hungry. So cry very loud.
• Have started solid food since four months old.
• Likes Daddy, Mummy or anyone else to make monkey show for you to see which you will laugh out loud.
• Can roll over easily now but still don’t know how to roll back to sleeping position yet.
• Have longer sleeps at night between feeds. Increased to 6 hours now compared to 4 hours before. Perhaps soon you will sleep through the night already.
• Many symptoms you have currently is pointing to teething. So maybe we shall see some teeth growing next couple of weeks?

Moody Raelynne

Today, Raelynne is moody and we don’t know why. Since this morning, she looked moody and sad face. But when you do monkey business with her, she would smile and laugh. When she woke up this morning as well, she was smiling, but then the way she woke up like she don’t have enough sleep yet. We didn’t wake her up or anything, she just woke up by herself.

We also noticed that her sleeping time has extended but at the wrong time range. For the past two days, she had her milk at 1am and lasted until 8am. Then last night, she had her last milk at 10.30pm and lasted till about 4am. My wife thought she had some fever late this morning and tested her temperature. It was 37 C plus, but then dropped back to 36.8C. Feeding is no problem and she finishes her milk. But I noticed she has been pulling her ears and then biting. I think she may be teething! Afterall, tomorrow she will be six months old already.

I asked my wife to monitor her closely and see how later. Maybe she is just moody.

Munchkin for Raelynne

Few weeks back, I was reading Sasha’s munchkinzzzzzzzz post about a “gadget” that allows babies to have solid food especially fruits without worrying about them putting the whole thing in their mouth. I made a comment in the blog where I said I can’t find such thing in KK. Ya lah, you would think KK is a big city, but still, some items cannot be bought here one. Still have to get in KL. Sasha said she will buy for me when she sees one, but I guess she was busy and didn’t get around to it.

Then Shannon asked me whether I was still looking for it cos’ she said she’s going to get for Rachel on the weekend. I said if you can find, ok lor, get one for me and I’ll pay her back. On Monday, Shannon told me she wanted to surprise me and send the munchkin over to me but didn’t have my address! So “terpaksa” ask me for my home address which I gladly gave her. I asked her what’s the price, but she refused to tell me.

So nice of Shannon, send munchkin got Christmas card some more.

Shannon, the package arrived this morning safely leh. See the photo above. THANK YOU AUNTY SHANNON! Its exactly the same unopened package that some of you see in Shannon’s munchkin post.

Raelynne was already biting away the netting although there’s nothing inside! Since I didn’t tell my wife to expect any package, she was surprised how come got package for Raelynne one…. hehehehe Anyway, the only thing now is to find something for her to munch lor… maybe a banana. I’m sure Raelynne will automatically munch away.

Dell Ultrasharp 2007WFP LCD Monitor

No lah, this is NOT a sponsored post by Dell. Its my own personal post

After reviewing and thinking and reviewing (and calculating the price also), I finally made an order last week for a Dell Ultrasharp 20″ widescreen LCD monitor for my own use. Today I received a confirmation that my Dell should be shipped out from the factory (I supposed Penang?) and should receive it within two days.

Weekend Updates

I was supposed to make this post yesterday for the weekend, but I haven’t got around to take photo of Raelynne’s new toy that we bought for her. Only today I managed to take the photo. Raelynne don’t really like to see Daddy’s big fat black heavy DSLR camera. She knows a lot of things now. If she see my camera, she will automatically close eyes already. Funny thing is, last night we took her out for dinner with friends and they took photo with small consumer camera, with flash some more, but she never close her eyes! Either my camera flash is super strong compared to those consumer point and shoot camera, or she just don’t like it.

Something to ponder…

Received via forwarded e-mail. Normally, I would just delete them, but this statement caught my eye.

“While I was having my dinner with my friend, Joan, she told me that she will usually buy a present for her mom on her own birthday. I was quite puzzled with her answer because as most of us nowadays would think that, a birthday person would receive presents from our parents and friends. Thus I asked her the reason for it. Her answer is just so simple that most of us don’t realize it. According to her “Our birthday is the day where our mother suffers the most as they endure hours of labor pain during giving birth to us on the day we were born. Therefore I would present her with a gift to show my gratitude for giving birth to me and cared for me since I was born’. With Joan’s simple answer, it just let me realized that how many of us are doing this for our parents on our birthday.”

So we should start buying presents for our Mothers on our birthday.

Nice sweet smile

For the past two days, Raelynne have been quite happy (not sure she happy about what) cos’ we can easily make her smile. This Daddy will make monkey faces (as Mummy say) at her, so she will laugh ki ki ka ka. My Dad also make monkey faces to her, she also laugh. What she like the most is sneezing. When she sneeze, she will laugh. When we pretend to sneeze, she will also laugh. So we always “aaaahhhh chooooooo”. Can you imagine so many people sneezing (fake) at home? Like everyone is sick… heheheh.

Look at her smiling sweetly. That was when my Dad made funny noises.

This morning she woke up at 5am! Last night I thought I can have some extra sleep today because yesterday I had to wake up early (5.50am) for a breakfast appointment at 7am. However, today I have to wake up even earlier than yesterday. Raelynne was already squeaking there and whining but her eyes still closed. Then started to turn and roll. Then she woke up. This is a normal routine for her. Mummy was sleepy there so I woke up and entertained her. She refused to sleep back but was clearly still sleepy. So Daddy and daughter watched tv at 5.30am in the morning! Hahahaha. Siao or what? But that only lasted for half an hour cos’ she start to whine again and want to go walk walk. Fulamak! 6am worr… sun just came out some more. So no choice took her out and have a walk around the house.

Then I noticed she was yawning there and I decided to put her into her sleeping swing and let her sleep for a while. By 7am, Mummy already woke up. Then Raelynne woke up around 7.15am, so Mummy changed her and so on.

I realized also like I have not taken much of her photos lately (since she was sick) so decided to snap a few shots of her lying on her chest. Nowadays she doesn’t like to take photos anymore. She will close her eyes before I take her photo, just like my nephew before. Although the camera flash doesn’t shine at her face directly, she still don’t like the flash light and will close her eyes. After a couple of shots, even when I didn’t take any photos, but she sees the camera, she will automatically close her eyes. That means she knows its a camera or a device that can shoot out flash light! Smart girl!

Daddy, don’t take my photo, I scared of flash light. I will close my eyes first.

Next week, Raelynne will turn half year old! Yipppeeeee! And another three more months, she will have her first plane ride to KL! Mummy and Daddy start worrying already from now cos don’t know whether she will be fussy in the plane, or if she will look for her room when we are in KL, so many things! I can foresee bringing her is just like moving house! Since she quite like to see fishes, we want to bring her to Aquaria KLCC!

Self Made Christmas Greetings

Nowadays, with the availability of Internet access, we tend to send e-cards instead of the good ol’ greeting cards to our relatives and friends. However, I am still one of those people who like to send real greeting cards, whether its Christmas or Chinese New Year. As Christmas is getting closer and closer (though we don’t really celebrate it), I’d always like to take some time to write greeting cards and send to some of my relatives and friends across Malaysia and internationally. Usually, I’d buy the cards and send them. This year, with the availability of a good printer and scrapping materials, I’m going to do my own cards and send them out. My Mum usually sends greeting cards to her close friends, so I asked her if she would like me to do something up for her, like perhaps put in all her grandchildren photos in a nicely designed Christmas card and have it printed out. She said that’s a good idea.

So I came up with the design shown above for my Mum that shows all the grandchildren, including Raelynne of course. Afterall, her friends always send her greeting cards and asked her how many grandchildren does she have and so forth. So this would be a good idea to send to all her friends to show them this Granny got this many grandchildren.

I’m going to design my own greeting cards later on and send them out both via “snail” mail and e-mail.