You need to think twice before eating some of the food out there

Chinese New Year has been over more than 2 months now. I had placed 8 Mandarin oranges on top of the partition of my cubicle just to enhance the mood of the festivities and I noticed that even after 2 months, the Mandarin oranges looks almost as the same as it was 2 months ago!!. Mind you, the office is not having 24 hours of air conditioning. The air-cond in the office is only operating from 8am to 6pm every day and on weekends, it is OFF. I had killed a set of Xmas lites because I had left it ON over the weekend and the heat in the office and the heat generated caused the lights to die an unnatural death.

Back to the oranges. Because of the scare about worms found in the Mandarin oranges this year, I did not eat any. In fact, when I received a packet of such oranges from a relative who is known to pass off near to expiry goods, I had opened one of those oranges and just left it there to see if any worms crawled out. Thank fully none did, but I still refuse to eat any of those oranges.

When I looked at the oranges that were sitting there for more than 2 months, only 2 showed signs of dehydration and one showed some decomposition of the skin. Six of them still looks good and I notice that they have some white powder in some of the pores.

No wonder mankind is suffering from so many ailments today. If these fruits contains such powerful chemicals that can stop it from aging/ deteriorating / going bad - we are taking way too much of such chemicals in our food chain.

Yucks!

Re-deployments and Resignations

After blacking out any hint of this action for more than a month, I can finally blog about it. I spent this whole week in India to tell my team the bad news. The operations had to be dissolved and some of them, if lucky, would be re-deployed. Those who cannot find such opportunities were asked to resign. Terminating them would have put a stigma into their employment history.

I started the Monday by a briefing by India HR on the steps I should follow in the whole process. They highlighted the expected issues that might arise in such situations and finally, I was ready to face the team. I have 6 people in Gurgaon and 3 more in Bangalore. The 3 in Bangalore called in to teleconference for the meeting.

After providing the team with the background on the decision made, they were informed that 7 of the 9 would have to be re-deployed or resign by the end of the month. There just wasn't any work for them! I had laid the groundwork for possible re-deployment by contacting several other teams in India who may have employment opportunities a few weeks before my planned visit to India.

I had never seen my team displayed such a serious look in the year that I had hired and managed them. The 2 seniors who remained were taken aback as no one had any inkling this was coming. I arranged to have lunch with the team in Gurgaon and I could see that they were slowly coming to accept the reality of the situation. I was glad that the worst case scenario that HR had presented me did not materialize.

By Friday, 2 of the team members submitted their resignation letters which would be effective 31st march 2009. I expect that I will need to ask for the resignation letters of 2 more by 31st March.

The light at the end of the tunnel shone on at least 2 team members who managed to get re-deployed into Gurgaon and Bangalore based teams respectively.

This has been the hardest task that I ever had to do in my career in the company (and this had spanned almost 28 years)!.

I had time to reflect on the team members and for some of them, I have an image burned into my memory of the idiosyncracies of that individual. Just like when I did my MBA, I will always remember one buddy as the one who actually thought that CUT and PASTE meant just that - literally. We did a marketing paper together with 2 other coursemates and as I did the final review, I told the group, that the flow of the report would be better if we cut certain sections and pasted in in a different order. My friend thought we had to print the report as is, cut the sections indicated and repaste it in the order suggest.

I have another currrent colleague who is from a different state. Early on, after she had just joined the department, she asked to be dropped off at Ikano Power Center. I took her there and found out that she just wanted to get to the post office there. I told her that there was a post office that was just a couple of street from her residence. Till today, I can still egg her on this.

And in the team in Gurgaon, one of the employees actually offered to pay me to hire him one year ago. I should have taken his offer, saved the company some money and make some for myself then. Darn!! Wasted opportunity.

Last but not least, I want to share with you an image of how most of these employees would have looked like if I had managed to capture their response on camera.

New addition to the family - my nephew Justin

Justin Timothy Hiew decided that 12th march 2009 was a good day to say hi to the world. He burst his mum's water early in the morning at around 2.15am. His happy Dad SMS quite a few people, including yours truly. I heard my SMS come in (one those who knows me knows how loud I set my messages alert), woke up, decided, it would take a while more before he arrived.

Morning, I called V - for a status update. No sign of Justin yet. 7.30am, doctor ordered a C-section as the vital signs were showing baby in distress. By 8.20am or so, Justin finally popped out. Doctor made the right decision as the umbilical cord was caught around Justin's neck.

Visited V and M in the evening after work. Justin was busily trying to suckle, but M was not ready, so Justin was wheeled off to the nursery for formula. By the next day, things started going downhill. Justin had not passed motion!. Extensive tests were done and it was found that section (s) of his small intestines were either not properly developed or were blocked.

Doctor says surgery was necessary.V and M were sad. M was getting depressed. Mad, it's not your fault. It is fated. Justin was transferred to HUKM as it is nearer to all of us (and cheaper too).

More tests are done to confirm the situation and surgery is scheduled for today 15th Mar.

Lord, I don't ask much of you but on this holy day, I pray that you will see Justin through this ordeal. Lord, you may have your reasons to make this little boy and his parents suffer and I don't claim to understand your reasons for this. All I ask is that you spare Justin and let V and M enjoy the experience of parenthood with their first born. In Jesus name. Amen

Another long weekend with longer days

This weekend was for 3 days as the Prophet Muhammad's birthday was on Monday - which is a public holiday in Malaysia.

Saturday - spent some time plucking chikus from my tree. Tail end of this crop now. Would have just left them on the tree, except that squirrels were dropping by and my dogs were barking incessantly at them. While plucking the chikus, one squirrel panicked when the fruit plucker went close to it. It dropped 15 feet to the ground and within 5 seconds, my dogs pounced on it and it was a goner. Sorry squirrel. I did not see you.

Sunday, Elaine C's bro, Allan was planning his house warming. Shirley invited me for 4pm. What I did not know was that this was a house warming party for the families. Well, I have always treated Elaine C like a God daughter, so does that make me family?? Maybe not. But I now consider her as part of my extended family, just like Elaine W.And Shirley was a bit too early in her timing. Me and my family turned up past 4.30pm and were the first guests. Food wasn't ready. Luckily Alex had his PSP to amuse himself. I took some time to have a quick look at what Allan's neighbor (my tenant) did to the house next door. They had put in cameras both front and back of the house. I like what I saw outside of the house. The tenant was out of town, so we never did get to see the inside.

By the time the army came in (I could almost swear they came in a bus as there was suddenly a deluge of people and kids everywhere), the food was hastily laid out and feasting could commence. Another day where my diet just went to pieces. Too much really good tasting food.

After the meal, the kids started their games - hide and seek, AEIOU and so on. Alex had a good time, but we had to call it a day earlier as I planned a trip to Sungkai to indulge in a popular hot spring.

Monday. We had invited Alex's tuition teacher and her daughter along for the trip. As the papers had notified the public of road closures for the day and one of the roads I used was closed, I decided to depart from the Damansara toll that is near the office. Before starting, we stopped at Toast and Coffee for breakfast. Wen Xian (the teacher's daughter) almost cause the trip to crash even before we started. During breakfast, she complained of migraine (11 years old this year!!). She turned pale and her lips were distinctly whitish. We stopped at 7 Eleven to get a carton of eggs and a strip of paracetamol. Wen Xian took a couple of tabs and asked us to continue while she slept. By the time we got to Slim River, she was almost recovered.

The Hot Springs at Sungkai are about a 75 minutes drive from KL. Take the NS Expressway and exit at Sungkai. Take a left after paying toll, and follow the signage for the hot springs. It is located almost 8km inside an Oil Palm estate. Entrance is RM10 per adult and RM8 for the kids up to 11 years old.

It was raining the whole day since we left KL. That put a damper on our tour of the Hot Springs. We managed to try the pool which had a temperature of 43 deg C to 50 deg C. It was so hot that everyone was putting only their feet in the water.

The kids wanted to try total body immersion. So we found another pool that had temp up to 35 deg C. Wunderbar!! The pool was shaded by an attap roof. So when the rain came puring down, it was cramped full of people.

After a while, the kids wanted to try the mountain spring pool - this is a cold water pool. So off they went while I took the eggs to be boiled. takes about 7 minutes to get the eggs hard boiled. You could do more than boil eggs. There was a sign that says you could also try prawns, cockles and other food. Yikes! My mistake - other foods prohibited!Must try that next time.Once done, I took it over to the cold pool. Half an hour later, everybody came out of the pool to try the eggs. They were still a little too hot to touch!!

When we finished with the Hot Springs (rain still drizzling down), we drove up to Bidor to try the famous Duck Thigh soup. We bought some fresh guavas and headed home.

Long day!!

Friday - destress day (with a touch of Saturday)

I noticed for 3 consecutive weeks now, I have been using Fridays as a de-stressing day. Right after work, I will invite some office colleagues for an outing.

Last Friday, I managed to get TOC, Looi and Nick. We went to Mid valley for dinner at Purple Cane - a first for all of them. I am surprise!!! Purple Cane serves food laced or marinated with Chinese tea. TOC was complaining to no one in particular that her Big Zero (Dah Ling in Cantonese) had not brought her to Mid Valley for ages. TOC - you need to complain to him, not to me.

At Purple Cane, I ordered a Tofu dish, Chicken with mushrooms marinated in a fragrant rice wine, a soup - served from a Chinese teapot (quaint!!) and a dish of 4 vegetables fried together with a hint of some Chinese tea. There was also a dish of sliced fish with gratinated ginger (yummy) and even the rice is cooked with tea. All agreed the food was good. And we took our time sipping tea after the main meal and dessert - as should be the case to enjoy Chinese tea.After that I volunteered to take them for fish spa. That's the place where we spend money to feed somebody's fishes with our feet. As it was 8.30 pm, the crowd has virtually disappeared and we had the place almost all to ourselves. Looi just came back from Shanghai where the weather was cold and probably dry. His feet has scabs of dried scaly skin and he was wondering if the fishes would eat that off. They did!!

All of them were initially hesitant to put their feet in the pool, resulting in all the fishes coming to my feet. And my first 5 minutes are always the most ticklish. After about 10 minutes, both TOC and Looi could tolerate the fishes, but Nick still could not. That's the first time i have seen someone who was so stressed out by the fishes that his head was breaking out in sweat!!. James Ng - you should have joined us. Besides the fishes, there were pretty girls there that you could have befriended - like Venky Tan here.
Eat your heart out!

Updated on Sunday
Technically, the next event was not a Friday event, but since it will only take a paragraph, I am adding it here

Saturdays, we resumed our badminton sessions at Khoo's place. I expect most of the people are going to have sore arms, legs and butts by the next day. It's been ages since we played. The nets at the badminto hall were strung up in a strange way. the space between the courts are normally used to get back and forth for the players. Someone tied the ends of the net to the next court. As a result, you have an almost invisible string strung across the passage way. Ian was the first to get hit for not noticing the string and ran right into it almost garroting himself.

Ken followed close behind and in his enthusiasm to get the game going, literally jumped onto string, bringing down the net on the last court. But he was not as badly hurt as Ian.

After the game, we adjourned to Annie 1 and had a good laugh.