Xmas will soon be upon us (1)

First of all, the oft aborted dinner at the New Beggar chicken in Ijok managed to go ahead with 11 people. Some new friends, some very old friends, some relatives. It must have been the sight of so many cameras popping out when the dishes arrived that I forgot to take any photos. Have to wait for Vincent's photos to do justice for that night.

When I was in Singapore end of October, the Xmas decor was already being strung up all over the island and especially in the tourists spots. In Malaysia, Xmas decor has been slow to be put up. Wonder why. My Xmas tree at home is already up!!

Here is what it looks like in The Gardens and Mid Valley.

The Gardens had some awful looking bunch of leaves hanging at the Robinson's and Isetan ends of the mall. Luckily, the center court had something a little different, though I have no idea what bird cages have to do with Xmas.

The Mid Valley trees were still being assembled in the background. Preparations at 1 Utama is still a mess

Tsk Tsk Tsk!

An emotionally distressing weekend that lasted into Monday

First of all, I would like to proffer to Keshav Sharma condolences on the untimely demise of his 14 year old daughter. This had happened on Sunday in New Delhi, but I only got to know of it from my emails late evening of Monday. Keshav used to report to me as part of the AP CE Assist team and I know he will be badly hit by this tragedy. Keshav, you need to be strong for the living. May your daughter rest in peace!

On Sunday, just as I had reached the office (was trying to catch up on a project presentation prep work), my wife called up to say that my Mum's brother had passed away. I had just sent my Mum to church earlier in the morning and I was not sure how she would take the news as Uncle was showing up at my house every fortnight when he was on leave for the past few years. So I called up Elaine and asked her to go to the Chinese Church services and send my Mum home. She was not to tell her anything other than I had asked her to be home due to an emergency. On reflection, that was a big mistake as she was thinking of the worst possible scenarios. Was it my sister in London? Was it someone else in the house? When she reached home, my wife told her the news and she calmed down. I had to quickly finish off my prep work and went home within an hour.

Uncle was on leave since Saturday and had turned up at his daughter's apartment as was his usual practice. He was already 71 years old and working odd jobs at the temple halfway up Genting Highlands just to pass the time. My cousin, Suit Fong, went to his room to wake him and realized that he was dead. He died in his sleep with a hint of a smile on his face.

Mum and I then left the funeral arrangements to my cousins as we took my niece to my house so that she would be out of the way as the morticians got about their chores. By the evening, all of us showed up at the funeral parlor by 6.30pm. My other cousin brother, Wai Fong, had embraced Christianity a few years ago and wanted his Dad's funeral arrangement to be a Christian affair. His Church Pastor and almost 50 of his Church members turned up for the wake. Luckily Mum had the foresight to buy 80 pieces of pastry to feed the army that came. We had bought those pastries only a couple of hours before showing up at the funeral parlor.

When the Church service and eulogies were completed, everyone went home, except Wai Fong, who spent the night accompanying his Dad's coffin.

Next morning, after breakfast, all of us showed up at the funeral parlor again. This time, almost all of my Mum's step brothers (only a couple turned up the previous night) showed up. Only one did not make it as he was shepherding a tour group in Japan.

The Pastor and the Church turned up again for a final service. When that was finished, the coffin was loaded onto the hearse and the whole entourage made it's way to the crematorium.

With one more eulogy and sermon, all the people present said their final goodbyes and the coffin was lowered to a lower level where the coffin was then wheeled into the crematorium oven for cremation.

Goodbye Uncle Lee Hon Wing (26th Sep 1937 to 23rd Nov 2008). Rest in Peace

Grooming class by Shiseido

Having friends in different industries helps to broaden one's outlook in life. Having known Rebecca (Senior Shiseido training exec.) from when Madeline got married opened an opportunity to have an activity that benefited both Agilent and Shiseido.

One morning over breakfast in section 14, I asked Rebecca if she could arrange to share some grooming tips with them. Sure!! Write in and see how that develops. And a few months later, we had 3 pretty ladies from Shiseido visiting us to deliver a grooming class. Jo and Aitee were on hand to help Rebecca deal with us. 16 people in the office confirmed their participation in the class and they were not disappointed.

Jo started off with an introduction on our largest organ, the skin and proceeded to how we can and should take care of it. I never knew taking care of the skin can be so elaborate. I have always used soap and water and thought that was fine. Only in the past couple of years did I started looking into using cleansers on my face - and only because it was starting to get really oily. If the price of crude oil had continued rising, people like me may be able to make some money from the oil we produce!

Shiseido has a simple 3 step approach to taking care of the face - Cleanse, Soften and Hydrate (or moisturize).

Then it was onto how to apply make up to enhance the shape of the face, the eyes and just about everything on the face. We "volunteered" Hanita for this. And there was definitely some discernible difference in this BEFORE and AFTER shot.

Before the session concluded, the beautiful trainers left us with a gift bag each, which included vouchers for skin analysis, a makeover session, samples of Shiseido products that were demonstrated.

I like the perfume they gave us - ZEN - a unisex perfume that was a little musky. We were told that the fragrance helps to relieve stress.

The next time I see my boss and I feel he is stressing me out, I shall squirt the perfume in his direction to lessen the stress!!

Tiring weekend

I am a sucker for punishment!! I must be. Because I am now dead tired on a Monday evening.

Last Thursday, went back to the routine of 2 1/2 hours of badminton with the office mates. That was after stopping for 2 weeks due to the Singapore training I conducted. Okay - normally, I would be able to recover by Saturday. So 2 1/2 hours is no big deal (yet)

Friday, I take the family to the immigration department to get Alex and my wife a new passport. Their old ones had expired and I had lined up Singapore and Hong Kong for this school holidays. No passports means no trips. Still not so tiring considering that after 1 1/2 hours of getting the forms filled, handed in, thumb printed and finally paid, the passport was ready the same day within 2 hours.

I got a call from the real estate agent on a potential tenant for my Denai Alam house. So instead of waiting for 2 hours in immigration, we drove to the house and waited for a while. Called the agent again and the potential tenant decided not to come. So we ended up at 1 Utama to see the Honda humanoid robot - Asimo and that was followed by lunch at Cravings.

Oh oh - legs now beginning to feel the strain of 2 1/2 hours of badminton the previous day and the couple of hours of walking all over the shopping complex. So we go back to immigration, collect the passports and head home.

Mum had a bit of bad news - the brother of one of her close bosom pals had passed away - at 78 years. Internal engines had broken down. So I had to fetch mum to his wake. Half an hour after arriving, rain started pouring down. Mum's friend stayed in an apartment and wakes like this were normally held in the car park, with a makeshift tent, the coffin put out in public view and all the paraphernalia of a Chinese death practice. This included a papier mache car (which included the driver), the "priest" and his team making a din enough to wake the dead (and they repeated this every hour on the hour for 2 days and nights!!) Mum tells me that her friend had been one of the most helpful in the early days (like when I was a toddler) and Mum was in financial difficulties. Despite the din, I was starting to yawn.

The real punishment was reserved for Saturday and Sunday. I asked a friend of a friend to quote me for repainting my living room and they quoted me RM3000+ . Cowabunga!! I could pay for 2 of us to go to HK Disneyland for that. A can of 5 liters paint only cost RM75 top RM100 (depending on the brand) And all I really need is 2 cans and the job is done. So me and my wife did all the furniture re-arrangement and repainting all by ourselves. Vincent and Madeline dropped in to help remove a cupboard which had outlived it's usefulness on Sunday. And we also managed to throw away quite a bit of nostalgic rubbish. More to be sifted out this weekend

By Sunday night we were both so dead tired, we (or at least I) slept like a log.

Monday - had to show up at KL Hilton for a customer seminar. Official photographer and all that. About 260 customers registered for the seminar and about 85% turned up. Great to see that there were still quite a few customers who remembers me despite more than 10 years that I have not been actively working directly in Malaysia. It has been a looooong day!.

I will now relax and hang loose for the rest of the week as on Friday, I have a project review with US and Europe that starts at 11pm my time and hopefully and mercifully end by 1am.

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz!!!

Singapore 27th Oct to 7th Nov 2008

Finally had time to get my photos cropped and compressed and now to blog about the latest 2 weeks in Singapore.

The group of engineers that I had to train varied from absolute ZERO knowledge and experience to one who had already been working in the same field for quite some time. This made the class slow going as I had to ensure that everyone at the very least learn and understand the basics. So instead of me torturing them, I got a headache re-arranging the class schedule to ensure continuity in the training.

I also took the time to visit Carolyn at her apartment. She had given birth 2 months ago (in fact during my last visit in August) and at that time, I did not have the time to visit her. She gave me absolutely perfect instructions on how to get to her apartment by bus. The bus terminal can even be seen from her unit!

On thing struck me during the bus journey from City Hall to Bukit Panjang. I was riding upstairs in a double decker and you can see that the town planners had the foresight to ensure that overhead bridges and traffic lights were suitably high so as to allow the double deckers to pass through comfortably. Why can't KL town planners do the same and then introduce these double decker people movers?

And one can also see that many old building facades are preserved. This one has the L'Oreal office near Niu Cher Sui (Kreta Air Lembu??). The facade still looks good and nice.

On another day, I also visited my brother's Mum and step Dad in Red Hill Close. Everytime I write on my family, I realize how complicated I must seem. Kit's my half brother (different Mum) and he has half brothers and sisters (different Dad and last name). So that also makes them my brothers and sisters! Add 3 Grandma and 3 Grandpa on my Mother's side to the mix and we are truly complicated!

As I had wrote in the previous blog - Swiss Hotel Stamford put me in the 63rd floor. It gives a nice view of the Singapore skyline. There was a clear sunny day on the weekend and I took a number of shots of the skyline. Concrete jungle with a dash of green everywhere!

2 weeks zipped by and I am back in town. Happiness!!

Another unexpected death

There was this news item on the Saturday papers - Toddler dies after falling seven floors
KUALA LUMPUR: A two-year-old boy fell to his death from the seventh floor of his apartment block in Taman Desa here.
Mathew Athan Lariche had just finished playing with his mother and five-year-old sister when the mishap occurred at 7.10pm.
The victim and his sister were running up to their apartment unit on the 12th floor when his mother noticed he had gone missing on the seventh floor.
She found her son’s body sprawled on the pavement.
At the time of reading this, it was just another news item to me. All it evoked in me was - Poor kid! What happened?
Then my colleague KK SMSed me and told me that was her nephew! That release a flood of emotions and memories for me!
- of the death of another colleague's son more than 20 years ago. JT's son died due to overmedication from a malarial infection. There was not a dry eye in the room during his wake.
- Of another colleague LKH whose son similarly plunged to his death from the upper floors of their apartment. All of us who had attended that wake felt for the family
- Not forgetting my nephew Andrew who died from cot death at 6 months. The hurt is still there when I think about it. I was worried for my mum then as she had spent 6 months in London looking after Andrew and this happened a few weeks after she got back to KL.
- But it is not just the young ones. I am sure as LS reads this, she would remember the day her mum died under similarly circumstances. And she was only in her secondary school then! I took time off from work to help LS and her siblings cope with the funeral and arrange for their lives thereafter
- Although I don't know Dave, his battle with cancer was a long drawn out affair and I am not sure if it was because I was there for ECEL that we were close at that time. Dave's family were prepared for his demise but even then ECEL was hit hard for a long time over the death of her father.

So what is it about the death of people who are related to people you know? In me, they evoke strong emotional feelings. But I don't have such feelings during the death of my grandparents and my biological father. Is it because of the stronger bonds that I have with them, i.e. the weaker or non existent bond with my grandparents and father?

I'll need to ask my e-friend Steph on this. She is studying psychology. Maybe she can tell me.

Matthew - rest in peace young man.