Category: Et-cetera

We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” yet how many of us can truly say we don’t size someone up based on appearances? Whether it’s the clothes they wear, the car they drive, or even their grooming habits, first impressions often color our judgment. My youngest brother, at 47 years old, serves as a living example of why appearances can be deceiving—and why they shouldn’t define our perception of someone.

My brother drives a Nissan Sentra that’s over a decade old. On trips back to our hometown of Ipoh, he switches it up—not for a luxury car, but for our dad’s vintage Nissan 120Y, a vehicle pushing 40 years of service. His jogging attire? Often worn-out clothes with holes, paired with an unshaven face that gives him an unkempt look. By societal standards, you’d think he’s scraping by or simply doesn’t care about his appearance.

But behind the wheel of that aging car and beneath those tattered clothes lies a man with a UK degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering. He’s not just educated—he’s successful. My brother owns two luxury condos, one of which he paid for in cash. Despite all of this, he remains humble, grounded, and incredibly kind-hearted. He even shops online for cheap stuff and buys clothes that are on sale. He’s not incredibly wealthy but he works very, very hard. He’s a workaholic, just like me when I was younger.

Appearances can only tell part of the story, often the wrong part. In my brother’s case, the old cars and modest attire mask a person of great character, intelligence, and financial independence. He could flaunt his success with a shiny sports car or designer wardrobe but chooses not to. Why? Because his priorities lie elsewhere—on substance over style, and values over vanity.

It’s tempting to judge people based on external markers like the clothes they wear or the car they drive, but doing so often leads us astray. What if we looked beyond the surface? What if we judged people by their actions, kindness, and integrity instead of their material possessions?

The next time you see someone in an old car or wearing less-than-polished clothes, consider that they might just be choosing simplicity—or investing their resources where it truly matters. And perhaps, they might surprise you with a richness that goes far beyond appearances, just like Chow Yun Fatt, one of the richest actors in the world, yet he lives a live of humility.

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Today is the first day of 0 GST and I have already saved almost RM100 from all my purchases from in-store to online.  I was smiling and rejoicing away at 99 Speedmart as I was counting the amount saved for each item that I purchased this morning.  For 6 items, I have saved almost RM6.  My online purchase from Young Living this month is cheaper by almost RM40!  Multiply all the daily savings from GST with 365 days and man, I am going to save hundreds and thousands of Ringgit!

A BIG thank you to our new PM and government for abolishing the GST. You have indeed brought a BIG relief to the Rakyat. I can’t thank you enough Tun Dr Mahathir!  As for the kleptocrats, may karma come after you all and bite you back like how you had bitten so ferociously and heartlessly.  None of the Rakyat can fathom how a human can have avarice like a bottomless pit like yours 😡

I never knew a trillion has how many digits until now!  Bet you never knew too, eh?

Besides 0-GST, there’re more savings from reduced toll rates and possibly abolishment of toll. And fuel prices too.

Happy days are here to come, yo 😊

Happy weekend and happy tax holiday! Quickly buy  and eat all that you want these 3 months while we are tax-free but don’t burn a hole in your wallet 🤑

For those who are still in the dark on the taxes, besides going Zero GST on 1 June 2018, the Government has also granted a 3-month tax holiday to Malaysians before the re-implementation of the Sales and Services Tax (SST) on 1 September 2018.

So yeah, go forth and indulge in a little retail therapy. I am SO excited thinking about it 😊

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Does anyone wanna make a wild guess on what plant this is?

No prize for guessing right though. Just for the fun of it to break the weekday humdrum and stress 😉

 

 

 

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I’m forgetful and I know it. So I have to rely on several means of making my daily reminders. I use an e-Calendar on my desktop and key in all the things I have to do every hour and minute of the day. The e-Calendar will prompt me at the hour I am supposed to do the task. But this is not 100% reliable coz when the task is not done for the day and I had not set the reminder as a repeat task, I will overlook the task.

For very important things that I cannot afford to forget like registering my kid into a school, I stick Post It pads on my work desk and dressing table. I also write the reminder on my table calendar.

When I go shopping without the man, I snap photos of where I park my car… not only one photo of the parking lot number but also photos of the entrance, the pole and the shops upon entering the mall LOL!  I know I will surely get lost in big malls with many Courts. For eg. Mid Valley Megamall – it has a few Courts like  Centre Court (North),  Centre Court (Escalator),  North Court (Lift), North Court (Escalator), etc. etc.  I don’t have a photographic memory now with so many other important things occupying the space in my brain. My memory is full and I don’t get enough sleep everyday (5 to 5.5 hours max, pathetic huh?), which only exhauts my brain power further.

My memory has failed me ever since Cass was born and she had sucked me dry of all my brain DHA for 3 frigging years.  Now I have to pop Super Lutein, Izumio and fish oil to replenish my brain power 😀

Do these photos look familiar to you? I find that this is an excellent way of bringing me back to where I park my car in a huge shopping mall.

Do you do this too?

 

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The other day when I was driving Cass back from kindy, I saw a man driving a Kelisa. My eyes almost popped out when I saw that he was carrying a baby girl (about 8-9 months old) with his left hand and maneuvering the steering wheel with his other hand!! No one else was in the car. He was making a left turn on a busy main road… very slowly. What if his baby wails, whines or struggles? Or throws up and kicks up a big fuss? That area is a busy business centre with heavy traffic. He cannot possibly stop short in the middle of the road to attend to his restless or crying baby.

The next day, I saw a lady driving her car… with a dog sharing her seat!  The pooch was seated in front of her, facing the steering wheel.  It was about 6:45 in the morning when the skies were still partially dark.

And then there is this elderly man in his mid sixties who would park his car about 5 meters away from the traffic lights and hogging almost three quarter of the left lane every single morning at my neighborhood. I can see that his mobility ain’t very efficient but hello, why do you want to park your car right smack in the middle of the road to the inconvenience of other road users?  I can only surmise that he is doing it just so he does not have to find a space to park his car. Also,  he can get into his car and drive away easily without having to pay for car park.  He does this every single morning and I think he eats his breakfast at the nearby coffee shops. His car poses a danger to all the motorists as it is obstructing the traffic and some motorists driving hastily to work could possibly ram into this old man’s car, thinking that it is a moving car.

In today’s Sin Chew Jit Poh newspaper, my MIL showed me the picture of an incident in Taiwan. Someone snapped a picture of that car with a kid sitting on top of the car roof!  Mind you the kid was not sitting inside a car with part of his body protruding through the sunroof.  The kid sat on top of the roof of the car!  What kind of parents would allow the child to sit precariously on a car roof?   W. T. Fool!!

Lack of foresight and brainless are all I can think of to label these people.

Short cuts in life do not guarantee time saved. In fact, it may be disastrous and you end up wasting more time.

Why wait for an accident or something tragic to happen before some people realize their mistakes and foolishness? Haiz…

 

 

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My bitchy mode is turned on *evil grin*!

I am going to bitch about how some parents manage their kiddos. I know I know, I am far from perfect but then, some things that I see daily just get on my nerves and I just do not understand why some people do certain things like allowing their kids to swim for at least  3 hours at the time of the day when it is the hottest (between 12 noon to 4pm).

The Japanese kids at our condo are having their school holidays now. For the past one month, the Jap mummies would gather at the pool side and have their desperate housewives meeting cum mini party while their kids attend swimming lessons.  After lesson, the kids will play in the pool for another 2-3 hours!  In scorching hot afternoon sun! I look up at the sky also I get blinded momentarily by the sun rays. How can these kids swim for 3 hours and the siew siew lais have a party next to the pool for 3 hours?! Not in this crazy weather with temperature of up to 40 degrees C these days! This I totally don’t get it!

Aiyooooh, don’t these Japs know that ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun is the number once cause of skin cancer? Exposure to sun also causes most of the wrinkles and age spots on our faces. No wonder those Jap women look so matured for their age leh!

Don’t throw darts at me for secretly photographing this OK? If you see these kids swimming at least 5 days in a week in the hot afternoon for 3 hours per session, you will also think that their maders are crazy!! Maybe they are all sun deprived back in Japan.

 

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Yesterday I sent a Facebook message to Puspel, the water management company to seek confirmation on whether our area is affected by the water rationing. This is because our ‘Taman’ is not specifically listed out in the Water Rationing Notice. All our close neighbors are affected and listed out in the Notice. Our condo Management also called up the water management company to get a confirmation. And the replies from Puspel to us were…. our ‘Taman’ is S P A R E D!! Woohoo!! **doing the happy dance** But we ain’t going to be too happy just yet as there may be a Phase 3 (which is likely to be announced soon) and Phase 4 of the water rationing exercise, which may include our ‘Taman’.

In our home, we are all on stand-by mode, with pails and containers of water, just in case the water management head decides to pull the water switch off. Though the cloud-seeding exercise has been bearing fruit with rain for the past two days, we however cannot be happy as the rain may not have fallen at the water catchment areas and even if it did, the short rain respite is definitely not enough to fill up the dams.

So for now, we are just thankful to God for sparing us from the hardship. And I pray that the water rationing exercise will be called off very soon. I had gone through the hardship 16 years ago and I know how difficult and stressful it is, especially for household with young kids and sick ones (especially those stricken with diarrhea!). So dear God, do continue to answer our prayers by sending torrential rains to the water catchment areas everyday. Amen!

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In commenting to my earlier post on ‘Quirky Freaky Bloke’, one of my readers commented that I should bring a can of air freshener to the gym to deodorize the air if the quirky  bloke farts again.  Hmmm, perhaps I should do just that, instead of stepping down from the machine to leave the gym.  Why should I leave, right? I should walk around the gym to spray air freshener in front of the young fart the next time he  farts LOL!

Speaking of sprays, this reminded me that there is another freak in the gym who brings along a can of spray with him every time he uses the gym.  The first  time I saw him whipping out a bottle of disinfectant spray from his bag, both my eye brows raised so high I think they almost touched my hair line!   I was on the air walker and this 50-something year old Eurasian uncle (married to a Chinese woman) used the other air walker next to mine.  After he put his bag on the floor, he whipped out a huge bottle of disinfectant and started to spray on the handles of the air walker!  GAWD, I almost fell off the air walker trying to stifle my shock.  After spraying all over the handles of the air walker, he whipped out a piece of cloth to wipe the handles meticulously.  I thought I am a clean freak with OCD, which no one can live with but this uncle, he beat me to it!   Wait a minute, my eye brows raised even higher when I saw that the piece of cloth was wrapped up nicely in a plastic bag! HA HA HA!!   My hubs is always complaining that I am a plastic bag freak as I use plastic bags quite a bit. I think this uncle beat me to it once again LOL!  I may have OCD and am only very clean at home, but I will never bring a bottle of disinfectant to spray gym equipment and outside furniture.  I think I am going to invite this uncle to my unit one day. We should have some interesting topics to talk about haha!

 

 

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For once, I am going to be bitchy, bitching about this bloke at my condo who is an obvious fitness and tan freak. He gets on my nerves as he is always rushing to get into the gym at the stroke of 7am sharp and showing that he wants to be ahead of me. In our condo, I am the earliest to use the gym. On most mornings, I will be waiting outside the gym for the clock to strike 7am, while I read the newspapers. Residents are only allowed to use the gym at 7am. Whenever this young fart sees me, he will speed walk to the gym, to beat me so that he is ahead of me. He will then stand right outside the glass door, with his hand holding on to his access card pointing to the card reader and eyes fixed on the card reader, waiting for the numbers to turn to 7:00AM. He will be in this pose for about 5 freaking long minutes… like a kid wanting to be the number one to get into the class and to ‘tell’ me that he wants to ‘chop’ (book) place LOL! Inside the gym, Mandarin songs will be blasting away from his mobile phone. For those who want some peace in the gym, she/he would have to bear with his blasting music. I told the hubs that this guy is a bit ‘sot sot tei’ (nuts). Even his facial expression looks a bit psychotic.

Besides this quirk, he only wears flip flops into the gym to lift weights. One time, a guard went into the gym to ask him to change into his sneakers but he bluntly ignored the guard. Like what can you Mr Guard do to me if I don’t change?! Report me? Or send me out? Another time, it was only me and him in the gym and this young fart farted out really loudly and gawd did it stink like shit! I was suffocating and getting giddy as the air-cond was turned on and windows were all closed!! He farted not only once but about 4 times. After the fourth fart, I stepped down from the air walker and left the gym.

That is his morning routine. Come 12 noon everyday, he will be swimming laps in the pool. Then, he will sun bask on a deck chair for at least an hour, after which he will swim laps again. He has been doing this for almost a year already. He must have been a tofu fair cissy looking fatso trying hard to shed off his fei jai image. I am NOT trying to spy on him OK. My kitchen overlooks the pool and each time I step into the kitchen, this bloke in his underwear sun-basking on the deck chair will catch my sight. In fact, he catches everyone’s attention whenever he pulls his underwear right up to his groin, so that he gets an even tan on his body, LOL! Who on earth would want to get a tan at 12 noon with the scorching hot sun piercing the skin? It’s more likely you get some kind of skin disease exposing your skin to the noon sun!

Just for fun and trying out my new Samsung Note 3 mobile phone, I stole a picture of this bloke while he was sun-bathing at 12 noon. Lense was zoomed in from the 5th floor of my room. Clarity of picture is really not bad at all eh? LOL!

Now, don’t you shoot me for shooting this picture ok? The bloke’s identity is anonymous and no name is mentioned and face is not shown. This desperate housewife just wants to get out of the rut from doing mundane chores muahahaha!

Happy Birthday everyone, today is Yan Yat!

 

 

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Further to my earlier post on my scary encounter with my neighbor’s mentally challenged 10-year old son, I bumped into my neighbor and her son again this morning.  The moment I stepped out of the house, I heard his voice.  I was hoping that the lift door would open quickly and I could go inside first with Cass but the lift arrived late.  We crossed path again, with my heart pounding.  She looked very uneasy bumping into me and she kept looking  at her son and then at me, fearing that her son will  behave rudely and indecently again.   Inside the lift, I stood at the very end with Cass.  B, the boy did not want to stand next to his mum and stood next to me, very closely!  His mother looked very worried and tried hard to strike a conversation with me.  I was very uneasy and worried that B would try to attempt to touch me again, like he tried to the other day.  B’s mother said “Boy, come here” and motioned him to her side. But B would not budge a wee bit.  Suddenly he said “HELLO aunty” to me and gave me a perversive stare.   His mother looked even more worried and her eyes switched from her son to me endless times. Thank God the lift door opened and I quickly bade good bye to B and my neighbor.  Thank God that B did not try to act funny again.   Once we were out from the lift, Cass looked at me and gave me a relief look and smile.  I praised her for not screaming and for acting so calmly.  My girls know that B is mentally challenged and initially Sherilyn and Cass would run away from him as he is very fond of barging into our house whenever he sees the girls.   May God bless that boy and hopefully he will grow up normally without harming anyone.

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The couple who live opposite our unit has a 10-year old son who is mentally challenged.  Physically and facial wise, he looks pretty normal, albeit he is really  huge for his age.  He is fat and tall and looks like a teenage boy.  Mentally, I think he is slow or challenged.  He used to attend a private school but his mother has now switched him to  home-schooling, conducted privately.  Each time we bump into this boy (who is always with an Indon maid), the boy will strike a child-like conversation with me or with my girls.  Many times, he ran straight into our unit and said that he wanted to play with mei mei (little sisters) repeatedly and refused to come out of our house.  Honestly, my girls and I are quite terrified of him because of his size and knowing that he is mentally challenged, he may even hurt us if he is provoked verbally or physically (IF). His parents are very well to do and they have a driver to chauffeur them around but they would leave the boy at home alone with the Indon maid.  Many times, the door of their unit will be left opened and the boy is free to go in and out of the unit, sometimes without the maid accompanying him.  Each time I see their door opened, my heart would skip a beat, fearing that the boy would ‘pounce’ on us again.

Two nights ago,  while I brought the trash to the refuse room outside our unit, I bumped into my neighbor and we started to chit chat.  Suddenly, her son ran out of the house like a mad boy and put his hand round my shoulder!  Then, with another hand, he wanted to grope my boops but I moved back to avoid his hand!  I wanted to run away but tried hard not to blow the situation out of proportion and make my neighbor uneasy. I did not want to hurt my neighbor’s feelings or the boy’s by over-reacting.  I am quite a drama queen alright. The boy’s mother reprimanded B (the boy).  Seconds later, he moved his hand towards my down under as if to grope it  and I retreated more.  Alycia who was with me quickly walked away and hid behind me.  O_o, the situation was kind of tensed and both B’s mother and I felt really uneasy and we had to end the conversation. Gawd, that was scary!  Though he did not manage to touch my private parts, he did put his hand round my shoulder.   I told the hubs about it the next morning and he was shocked to hear the story and to add salt to injury he scared me by saying that the boy is now ‘preying’ on me, waiting to attack / r*pe me!  ** rolls eyes**  He told me not to bring the trash out to the refuse room anymore and just leave the rubbish outside our unit for him to throw…. when he comes home.  Sometimes, I do not lock our front door during the day as the security at our condo is very tight with 24-hour guard patrolling and CCTV but now, I better keep the door locked at all times just in case I wake up to find a naked boy next to me!! Knock on wood!!

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Alycia and Sherilyn had read and heard about 21 December 2012 months ago.  They have also read the book  “Heaven Is So Real”. It is about a true story of a Korean woman who kept having encounters with God in Heaven and she could see the world coming to an end, albeit she could not tell when.  In her many surreal encounters with God, she saw her daughter, grand daughter and loved ones in hell and in pain.

Unless you are living out of civilization, you will know the long forecast by the Mayans on what is  looming on this day – well tomorrow.   Since a week ago, they have been very worried. They have been telling me that they do not want to die. They do want the world to come to an end. They have been asking me a lot of questions which I am lost for words.  No one but God knows what’s in the agenda for tomorrow.   Some people are already organizing “Will The World Come To An End?” parties and some have been preparing for this day. It’s interesting to read from my Facebook wall on the sorts of things people do to ‘welcome’ this day.  For us, it’s just going to be another regular day. It’s the Winter Solstice festival tomorrow and we will be going out to have dinner… that is if we’re still around.  If you ask me how I feel about the percentage of this happening tomorrow, it’s a 90% NO and 10% YES feeling for me.  According to the Bible, the world will indeed come to an end and the signs of the doomsday as mentioned in the Bible  have  already been showing.  In fact, over the past few years, I’ve had nightmares on running for my life with my loved ones. The feelings I experienced in these dreams were really very scary.

How do you feel about 21 December 2012? Would love to read what you think 🙂

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I saw this cute and colorful boy’s urinals in one of the online stores in Facebook today.  This reminded me of an incident where I saw a lady at a coffee shop with 3 boys. The youngest is a boy who is about 2 years old.  Everyone in the family were well dressed and seemed well to do. While waiting for the food to come, I just could not help staring at this interesting family and comparing it to my own family. While I have 3 girls, this family has 3 boys, interesting!   Half way through feeding her son, this lady fished out a mineral water bottle from her handbag.  Then she stood her toddler son on the chair, pulled his pants down and place his baby carrot (that’s what Cass refers the birdie to LOL!) into the mineral water bottle.  After peeing, she screwed the cap back onto the bottle, put the mineral water bottle into a plastic bag and kept the bottle in her bag ROTFL!!  My jaw almost dropped and I gasped as this lady did this so nonchalantly.   She must have done this with her 2 older sons too.  But to do this in public, oblivious to who is surrounding you and where you are? She should have brought the son to the loo or at least near the loo and not just let the son pee on the dining table chair in front of all other family members who were having their meals… and other patrons next to you who were eating too. Yup this is so convenient and cost you nothing — no need to buy diapers and no need to walk to the smelly loo. But please do not do it in the middle of a fully packed restaurant la.

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This is a back-dated post.  For those of you with primary school kids, please read on!! 😀

Can you guess what this is? Not the green lunch box but the black stuff inside. It does look like some highly suspicious and deadly substance from X-Files eh? Or a century egg, no?

It is a lunch box filled with mold!! Mold that grew from about 1/4 piece of leftover bread with kaya (coconut jam with eggs). Does this picture give you the “EEEEEWWWWWEEEEEEEE, I want to puke!!” moment? It did give me the creeps and freaks when I opened up the lunch box. I immediately threw it into a plastic bag and ran to the refuse room outside our unit and flung it into the bin!

Story — I had packed kaya sandwich for Alycia but this rascal could not finish it. When she came back from school, she had forgotten to remove the lunch box from her bag. I of course was too busy and had forgotten to check her bag. After 4 or maybe 5 days (it was a long weekend due to some public holidays),  the piece of bread metamorphosised into some volcanic powdery mold. Highly poisonous and deadly if ingested!! I remember watching one of the Oprah series years ago where Oprah and her team wore protective clothes covered from head to toe when they visited the wrecked homes of those tornado victims and their houses were infested with molds.

Since that fateful night that sent shivers down my spine, I have now taken an effort to remind Alycia and Sherilyn to remove their lunch boxes from their bags. I should have also disinfected Alycia’s bag with some Dettol spray too that night!

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Would you pay RM2 to use a premium toilet? When we were at KLCC last Saturday, we were looking for a toilet and stumbled upon this premium toilet located at the same level as Chinoz. As we can still ‘hold’ our bladder, I told my girls that we should hunt for another toilet. Paying RM2 to use the loo is a bit ludicrous I think, unless I really cannot ‘tahan’ anymore, then I would have no other choice but to bite the bullet, dig that RM2 of mine and dart straight inside and remain there for half enjoy to enjoy all the ‘benefits’ haha!

Would you pay RM2 to use a premium loo, which supposedly smells nicer?

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A few days ago, my mum told the girls and I about the family of rats that have been breaking into the house by nibbling on the piece of wooden plank that my mum places on the floor at night to cover up the gap between the door and the floor to prevent rodents and roaches from crawling in. After making tiny holes on the piece of wooden plank by biting on it, the mummy rat made her way in and gave birth to a bunch of baby mice inside the rattan basket that my dad places dried garlic and ginger on the floor. The rats also ate the bananas that my dad hung on the window and the ginger in the basket. My mum joked that the mother rat ‘in confinement’ must have eaten the ginger so that she could produce more milk LOL!!

So much about rat stories, I was scared out of my wits when I almost stepped onto a big rat while we were having a lunch of dim sum at a dim sum restaurant in Ipoh Garden yesterday. When I got up from my seat to get tissue papers from the bag, Sherilyn screamed, I looked down and screamed blue murder too and zoomed off from the place when I saw the fat rat just inches away from my feet. Eeeuuuuuu, so geli to be almost touching the fat fury ball of  squeaking rodent. My tummy churned and I lost my appetite instantly.  I’ll bet my Geronimo Stilton craze Alycia would be glad to pick the rat up to give it a cuddle LOL!! Apart from the rat scare, my dad was burning mad when the waitress over-charged him with 2 plates of dim sum that we did not order. The sei fei por even had the cheek to say that the bill was correct when we all agreed after a long argument that we were over-charged. That’s it. That will be our last visit to this dim sum restaurant!

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