A strange thing...memories

Memories. This is a strange thing that our brain possess.

For some reason or another, you can remember things 30 40 years ago and not something last week. Age?? Maybe. My mum had asked me quite a few times over the years if I could find an old school buddy of mine. I had gotten into an accident and got hospitalized with compression fracture of the lumbar and this schoolmate of mine had to go to the house I was staying in to inform my mum that I had been admitted to hospital. Over the years, I had heard that YNC had gone to Singapore and then later became a lawyer. I had made half hearted attempts to locate him but to no avail.

Then last week, my in laws in China (my wife's half brothers and their family) started sending many emails over. They had discovered the internet!!! As I setup an email for my wife as well as a facebook account for her, I thought I would try to google for some of my school mates or 35 years ago when I was in Secondary 5. First name that popped into mind was YNC. And the search returned success!!

Called him and found he actually had 2 practices - one in Singapore and one in KL. As he said, lawyers needs a lot of practice because they can't get it right! And from this, I now find a whole bunch of old school buddies on FB today. Many I remember their names and some their faces.

This is turning out to be an interesting interaction. One of them is even a grandfather and he's my age! The power of social networks!

Get away from it all on Tioman Island

For about half a century of my life, the only island in Malaysia that i have visited was Langkawi and Penang. I did have a yearning to go to Pangkor Island (which we did last year) and some of the other islands, but somehow, never made it.

This year, my cousin sister, Madeline, wanted to go to Redang Island during the school holidays but we could not secure any reservations. So we ended up making reservations at Minang Cove Resort on Tioman Island. That was one of the best decisions made.

The resort is located at the southern most part of Tioman and due to it's remote location, there was no TV reception, so no TV in the rooms. No mobile phone and no internet. There was a little corner on the jetty where some mobile phone signal can be received and we noticed the resort staff tend to spend some time there when they are free.

The sea around the resort is clear and abundant with marine life. You can see at least 10m into the sea and look at live coral and colorful fishes swimming amongst them. Too bad my camera cannot go underwater, or I would have taken a lot of photos of the fishes from inside the sea.

There are other resorts dotting the western part of the island. In many of them, TV, mobile phones or internet is not an issue. The most popular place to go for internet connections is Tekek or Salang. We also noticed that many scuba divers tends to congregate in Salang - making it sort of the scuba diving capital for Tioman.

The Marine Park is another nice site to go to to swim with the fishes and fee them. Unfortunately, there seems to be too many people such that the waters within 20m of the beach is dirty and even at the feeding platforms, the water is not as clear as what we saw at Minang Cove. I had not swam for long durations for quite a long time. The next 2 days, I woke up with sore muscles on my abdominal sides!

Tekek has a duty free outlet which sells liquor at prices similar to Singapore instead of KLIA, making it much cheaper.When they say the shops in KLIA are duty free, they conveniently don't mention that they are not profit free (probably very fat margins if I were to compare their prices with Singapore Changi).

If anyone is looking for a holiday and do not want to be contacted, go to Minang Cove Resort. You won't regret it.

My Denai Alam house has been let out

After being empty for a month, a new family has moved into my house as of 29th May. Fauziah Kamarosezaman and her family will be staying for at least one year.

I hope they will take good care of the house as did the previous tenant.

Mandarin Oranges

Last year, I did something similar - but only for about 3 months. This year, I am going to try this experiment till all 9 Mandarin oranges becomes rotten or dehydrated.

Since 3rd Feb, I had collected about 12 Mandarin oranges- straight from the carton, and left them on my cubicle divider. 3 has gone rotten within 2 monthsToday- 9 of the oranges are ALL looking as good as new. Some do feel lighter, but I have no way of confirming that as I did not weigh them before my 'experiment' started.

But if you consider that more than 3 months later, the Mandarins still looks as good as new, you have to question what do the farmers put on them. These oranges are not in leak tight packaging. They are in the office environment 24 x 7. And the office air-conditioning is only switched on from 8am to 6pm from Mondays to Fridays. It is a sauna during the weekends and on certain nights.

What in the world are in these oranges??

Bonsai - free advertisement for someone I don't know

I normally do not advertise for anyone here. But I will make an exception this time because the people who were selling bonsai in Mid Valley Megamall in KL has such nice creations. Mdm Kuah saw me snapping away at her creations (which were not for sale) and asked if I can blog about it.

Bonsai is the art of turning plants into miniaturized versions of huge trees. What these people did was to express their creativity by sculpting the miniatures into animal shapes which are instantly recognizable.

Without promptings, you can see a dog, a bird, an elephant and a monkey. Even the dragon is obvious once you get the angle right.

It seems to me that an online equivalent for the hobby of bonsai is online games like Farmville or Farmtown or any other similar games on facebook. Takes time and effort to get where you want to go.

Bonsai anyone??