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!!!