Before I go on, probably it be good for all of you who are dog lovers to check out this site.  Really pity these dogs. Malaysian Dogs Deserve Better.

Yes, it’s that year again, when all of us decided to take a break from our usual routine and head back to our roots.  This year, was no exception as Deluxe, Esther and myself head back to Miri to celebrate Chinese New Year with the family.  Going back has always been a good thing because it’s the only time that I can pretty much catch up with my brothers and sister as well as my relatives.

This year, not only did we had lots of food but also Esther managed to meet up with her peers.  Hehehe.  Yes the picture on the right is one of Esther’s cousin, who is about 2 months younger than her.  When these two were around, Esther was calling her Mei Mei, while her Mei Mei decided to run around with her.  Lol.

It was kinda interesting how she could bond straight away without any hesitation.  Probably it’s because maybe she’s the same size and thought we’re in the same boat.  No, Deluxe and I are not planning to have another yet.  So don’t you go start lecturing me on trying to get another one.  Hehehe.  It was indeed interesting how Esther could mix well with other children, be it big or small.  And she was smiling away and talking in her native language with all her Uncles and aunty, who have yet to understand what she’s trying to tell them.  Never the less, it was all good.

But during this trip, she didn’t really allow anyone to carry her.  The only people who successfully carried her was both her grandparents and her Tai Pak & Pak Meh.  Who some how surprisingly able to just pick her up after a few minutes of coaxing her.  You should have seen the number of times her Tai Pak tried to coax her few months back, but during Chinese New Year, apparently he finally managed to carry her.

So everyday you can pretty much hear Esther running around the house talking and laughing with everyone.  Especially giving out high fives to every.  Lol, if only I could have brought my video camera along then probably it might be worth taking.  During this time I was also able to catch up with a few of my close friends.  To pretty much catch up with their lives and how they are going.  So far I received one good news, and probably waiting for him to pretty much announce it.  Never the less, there are some who are still pretty much staying alive if you know what I mean.  But it’s great to see all of them again.

This year we pretty much had a short trip compared to last year.  As we had to get back home because of other arrangements.  Yes, it was indeed a rush as many thought we seriously need to stay on a little bit longer.  Not to mention that we pretty much missed my brother’s engagement lunch.  So congratulations to them once again, and right now we’re waiting for his big day as well.

One of the morning, I’ve decided to bring Deluxe & Esther to the nearby park.  But the only regret was that, we went there too early too late.  Lol.  We were suppose to go during the evening, but then if it was not raining we would need to do something that day.  But anyway, we didn’t stay long as the sun was scorching hot and was going to give Esther a good tan so we hurried through the park .  But I guess she pretty much understand, as we were sort of trying to catch up with time.  One funny incident during our walk in the park was that Esther was so determine to walk on her own.  So as we allowed her to do it, it was time we tried to climb up the stairs.  Yes, while holding both mommy and daddy’s hand she began her journey ascending these steps with great anticipation.  It wasn’t long before she started to slow down and her steps beginning to get smaller and smaller.  All mommy had to do was asked her if she was tired, and she pretty much said she was.  So that was when mommy had to swoop down to her rescue and carried her up the stairs to car.  We could have swore that she was panting all the way.  Poor little girl, but she pretty much enjoyed the whole trip.  Lol.

That’s pretty much about it.  And I’ve also been getting emails asking why I have not written any letters already for the past few months.  Well, as much as I want to post these letters online.  I’ve decided to keep them offline instead.  The reason behind it was because of safety issues.  Wouldn’t want to go much into details, and sometimes being too personal online is not really that encouraged as well.  Lol.  I know it’s because people tend to visit your page hoping to get the latest gossips and news.  Which also explain why the less post on my site.  Well apart from time constraints as I’m working on something new for Deluxe, I can’t really find the time to sit down and blog about everything and anything like I used to.   But it’s all good.  Considering that I should spend more time in doing other things, and blogging doesn’t really seem to help me much now.  Especially with the drastic drop of income, which I believe someone here will also agree with me.  Lol.

I don’t know, somehow blogging used to be fun and exciting when I first started out. Maybe it’s because when I started to earn money from it, then probably that was the beginning of the end of my blogging days.  But never the less, I guess it’s a phase whereby I’m into twitter, which I think it’s more simple and you don’t really need to add a lot of things to speak out your mind.  But I’m thinking that it won’t be long soon that I’ll be doing something like this again for a while.  Hehehe.  So before I end my post, may I wish you all a blessed Chinese New Year, and that the year of the Tiger will continue to bring you love, peace and hope.

3G detected on my HTC TYTN II

Yes, finally 3G has finally arrived here in Kuching. Apparently it was here for quite a few weeks already if I’m not mistaken. Anyway, you can read the real press release here. Miri is expected to receive 3G by mid of this year. So I guess it won’t be long now before Digi will start to dominate in Sarawak really soon.  Apparently Digi seems to have the lowest fare compared to the other telcos.

Before I forget, in order for you to activate 3G for Digi, you need to call in their customer service at 016-2211800 and get them to help you activate that services for you.  You don’t need to change your sim card, so I think that’s great whereby you can straight away use.  If you still can’t get any 3G signal, just make sure your phone is set to GSM & 3G.  If nothing happened after 10 mins try restarting your phone.  Then voila you managed to get 3G connection already.

Anyway, so what happened was that I sort of managed to max out my RM5 cap yesterday and did a trial run with Digi’s 3G feature.  I was told that currently they are only able to make video calls within the same network.  I tried to do a video call to my mom but unfortunately I was not able to get connected.  But I did a test call to Deluxe’s phone and apparently it worked. Quality wise was ok, but due to the fact that both the phones were near to each other ended up giving up feedback instead.  Hehehe.  So I think it’s not really a problem.

Next up, I was testing their internet connection.  Somehow rather I ended up instead of getting 3G, but rather a HSPDA connection when browsing the Internet as well as downloading some stuff through my phone.   Soon another friend of mine from Brunei so by happened to be online last night so I got him to try and have a Skype conversation.  Connection wise started to go a bit funny as it drops down from HSPDA to 3G then to Edge and vice versa.  So my friend asked me to pretty much force my phone to lock it at 3G, which pretty much solve the problem.  And the conversation was clear, despite the 1 second lag and he was using speaker phone.  As far as I know that Celcom and Maxis had already blocked VOIP whereby I was able to hear what my friend was telling me, but he was not able to listen what I said.

I’ve forgotten to try Youtube so I guess I’ll try it out some other time.  I noticed something today, when I was downstairs in my shop my connection dropped to Edge, and when I went up stairs to get something it goes back up to 3G again.  No wonder the customer service person asked me to switch on to dual mode which was GSM & 3G.  But when I tried out forcing it to stay connected to 3G, my phone connection was cut off.  Hehe, so I guess I might need a booster antenna or something in order for me to receive the signal.

I was still able to receive incoming calls as well as SMS during my connection via 3G to the internet.  But I think it got temporarily cut off whereby priority ended up to the phone calls as well as SMS when it came in.  Never the less, I’m pretty much happy with the fact that Digi has finally stepped up its game in providing this service for their loyal customers.  Lol.  And another thing was that I did sort of post Digi a question via Twitter if they were going to provide prepaid users blackberry services.  Well, apparently I got a reply from them “We would if u want us too Y r u looking at prepaid? Have u seen this hot hot plan? http://cot.ag/c8WWD6“.  And I immediately replied them Yes Please!.  So let’s see how are they going to do this, and see how they are going to beat the other telcos in terms of pricing.

Oh the reason why I asked for blackberry was that, if you notice on the bottom right of my phone there’s a blue thingy.  Well, I just installed the blackberry software which enables my phone to act like a blackberry now.  Which I think would be cool especially when I go out and leave my messenger on.  Lol.  And of course will still be able to receive incoming mails especially from important clients.  But apart from that, it’s all good.  So thumbs up for Digi, and I hope you can continue to make us happy.  By the way, they’re giving out one free BlackBerry Curve 8250 for some lucky person with the most creative post of them with a Blackberry.  You can check it out on their facebook page.

Another funny thing happened, in the midst of trial and error.  Apparently my dual sim card sort of went hair wire because my other Sim which was using Celcom was not able to detect at all.  Whereby, Digi was still able to detect 3G signal despite that I was using that sim card adapter.  Why I say this was that, whenever I would want to use a 3G connection for my Celcom sim card, I need to take out the adapter and installed the ghost sim so that I am able to use 3G services.  But to my surprise I didn’t had to when I switch back to my Digi sim card.  Will try to figure out how to fix it, if I’m able to use both services then I won’t need to switch my sim card all the time.  Hehehe.  Have a nice day everyone!

Surprisingly when I opened up my account to check, it stated IBG Credit.  So I guess it’s considered a local transfer rather than international transfer.  Who knows, but I do get complaints from people stating that the exchange rate is very low.  Yes, I do agree with that the exchange rates are not reasonable but I guess they pretty much included the transfer fees or bank charges that could incurred during the transfer.  Never the less, I always tell people to set your own exchange rates.  So normally when I sell stuff online especially in USD, I would charge my clients about 1 USD = RM3.1 or RM3.2.  So at least when I do a conversion through Paypal it wouldn’t be so bad, but ended up earning a little bit from the exchange rates.  So why are you complaining about?  Banks exchange rates are not that good either, so you’ve just got to learn how to give and take.

Anyway, I wouldn’t want to go into more details on that.  But here’s the proof of my withdrawal, and of course this time I need to clear a bit, because it’s a little bit sensitive showing how much I withdraw this time round.  Hehehe.  Anyway, I did another withdrawal as well on the 2nd of February to Maybank account, as I heard it was faster.  Well, I’ll just wait and see.

Oh before I forget, the swift code for CIMB Bank is CIBBMYKL.  Apparently previously Paypal made a mistake in placing the swift code information.  Anyway, they have fixed it already and I was able to withdraw no problems.  So don’t just sit there, start selling and get some extra cash for this coming Chinese New Year

And of course as usual I never leave anyone behind, Deluxe and Esther came along as well.  And was glad that they did came along.  Esther have always enjoyed going out and now going to a Toy Store was something that she wouldn’t want to miss out on.   Anyway, we gotten there pretty early, as the thing started about 9.45am.  So I had some time going around and taking some shots of Esther exploring the perimeter.  Just to make sure that everything was safe and secured.

While we were waiting, we could see from outside that the staff of Toys R Us were pretty much busy preparing for this huge event and boy were they excited.  You could literally see how enthusiastic they were getting ready for battle to make sure that all the customers gets a 100% satisfaction guaranteed mentality.

So once the dust pretty much settles, it was time to get the show on the road.  It wasn’t long before we witness the arrival of Datin Hii Chang Pee (owner of Hills Shopping Mall), and things started to get on their way.  There was a short speech given by Carol Chua (country manager of Toys Li Fung (M) Sdn. Bhd.), introducing Toys R Us to the crowd that was there this morning.  Throughout Malaysia there’s about 20 branches of Toys R Us, and this was the first branch in Kuching.  As stated on their website “In 2002 Li & Fung Retailing* became a licensee of Toys”R”Us and acquired 100% ownership of Toys LiFung (Asia) Ltd, for the business in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines and Macau with provisions for entry into new geographic markets including other South East Asian countries.” After her speech, there was a drum presentation followed by the cutting of ribbons.  I’ll just let the pictures do the talking on this one.  (Click on the images for full view.)

Once it’s been officially opened, everyone couldn’t wait to get in and start to explore this new place.  Basically there are 7 sections for you to explore which are Hot & In, Learning Toys, Auto World (Boys favourites also can be found here), Sports & Outdoor, Babies R Us, Girls’ favourites, family fun & Games (click on map for full details).

You can actually find all sorts of toys in there, and you could say it’s kinda complete especially with all the different sections which makes life easier for me to shop for Esther next time.  And I was amazed that they have NERF! as well.  Still trying to think of a good reason to tell Deluxe on why I should get that instead of the musical toy for Esther.  Well I can’t use the same reason why I accepted the PS2 from my brother when we found out Deluxe was pregnant.  Because we weren’t too sure if we’re expecting a boy or a girl.  Lol.  Anyway, back to our main agenda.

You can actually sign up for their Star Card for free, not only it gives you savings but it can be used nation wide including other countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong & Taiwan!  For a limited time only from the 30th Jan – 7th Feb, you will be given a RM10 cash voucher for every RM150 purchase, 3x Star Card Points (usually RM1 spent = 1 Star Point). For the first 50 members who spend RM100 and above will be given a free Toys R Us T-Shirt, and those who spent only RM50 and above will be given a colouring book for the 1st 200 members.  So don’t miss out on this opportunity to more while paying less.

Their operating hours are from 10am to 10pm.  They can be found at the Hills Shopping Mall, No.31, Upper Ground Floor, and Tel : 082-242846.  You can also meet & greet Groffrey every Friday to Sunday 1pm, 3pm and 6pm.  So don’t wait, head on over to Toys R Us today!  For more pictures you can head over to my photo album, and also check out Irene’s post who you could say was responsible for letting me to attend this grand opening.

Anyway, apart from that.  I’m currently lightrooming some photos which I took last year.  And haven’t really got the time to upload them yet.  Before Chinese New Year come.  If not, then probably it will take ages for me to process these photos.  So many things happened, but didn’t really bother posting about it as I was having problems of my own.   Will try to post something decent within the next few days.  Till then you guys have a good day.

Was busy trying to find a way to move from Joomla to Wordpress.  I guess, as much as I love Joomla.  But it’s not showing me any love with SEO as well as TLA.  So hopefully things will start to pick up once again when I move back to wordpress.  Yes, it’s a long and hectic job.  But at least I got most of my post converted.  The only last thing I need to do is basically sorting out the categories for each post.  Never the less, I won;’t be adding any tags to it as I’m a bit too lazy for that now.  So what I plan to do is sort them into categories maybe phase by phase.  And hopefully everything will be sorted out before this end month.

There were a lot of post I would love to post about.  But due to fact that I couldn’t move from Joomla to Wordpress which pretty much took a lot of my time.  And as for the template, I’ve decided to go back to the regular blog format as I was getting a lot complaints because it was difficult to access my site.  And not to mention it took a while for a page to load.  Never the less, it’s all good.  And I’ve found quite a lot of nice plugin for this site.  So hopefully I won’t need to move back to joomla again.  Lol.  It’s all good.

Anyway, closing time now.  Catch up with you all soon

Anyway, I’m still in the midst of trying to port over from Joomla to Wordpress.  There are wizards that enables me to do so.  But somehow it just don’t work.  The only thing that work now is that I can actually port sections into wordpress.  But the problem is that it just doesn’t fit into the category.  So I have to manually change the categories now.  And it would be a pain because I have like 500+ posts.  Lol.  Oh well.  Slow and steady wins the race.  Never the less, I think I’ll go back to my posting now.  Will update once I finish porting over.

Happy New Year

Yes, apparently it has already been a few days after the New Year and I hope everyone is doing well.  Never the less, I would like to wish everyone a Blessed New Year.  I’ve always look forward for the New Year as it always gives me hope to start off something fresh and of course leave everything negative behind.  So let us all start a fresh and shake off what ever discouragement we have from last year, and try again this year.

So what will I have been doing for the past few weeks was that, I’m actually going to have an open seminar whereby I’ll be introducing eBay to people.  I’ve already have the venue, but I’m still waiting for the green light by them.  As I believe they are also trying to gather as many people to attend this brief promo.  So I’m looking forward to that event which I think will happen hopefully within the next few weeks.

I’m also experimenting another method on how to sell on eBay, and we shall see how it will turn out.  Basically it’s a new account, so I’m sort of like starting from scratch again.  Anyway, I’m opened to questions so feel free to drop me a message or leave a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.  Wishing all of you a Blessed New Year once more.

SEREMBAN: A number of SPM top scorers have discovered yet again that a string of A’s are no guarantee to a scholarship from the Public Service Department.

When Mo Ye Voon scored 10 1A’s and a 2A, she thought she was on the way to becoming a doctor.

However, Mo, a student of SM KGV who recently completed her national service training in Malacca, was disappointed that she was not selected by the PSD as a scholarship recipient.

“I was not even considered for a medical course at any of the local universities,” said Mo, whose father’s income as a factory supervisor would not be enough for her to realise her dream.

She hoped the PSD would reconsider her application as she had no one else to turn to.

At the Rasah MP Loke Siew Fook’s service centre near here, Mo’s mother, Teo Ai Woo said her daughter was also active in co-curricular activities and had represented the district in badminton.

“She has been crying every night since learning that she did not get the scholarship,” said the housewife.

Loke said he would meet Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz to appeal Mo’s case.

He said other students in a similar predicament should contact him at 016-668 6165.

In SUNGAI PETANI, SMK Ibrahim student Chok Chun Ynh is also heartbroken that his application for a scholarship to study abroad has been rejected.

Instead, Chok who is among the six students who obtained 14 1A’s in the country, was offered a place at a local public university,

Chok’s mother Tan Lee Mei said her son who aspired to study medicine, had received several overseas and local awards after taking part in various competitions and quizzes.

Chok’s school mate Lee San Xiu, 17, who obtained 13 1A’s had also been given a scholarship to study locally although he applied for one to study overseas.

Lee said both he and Chok had represented the school in co-curricular activities at state and national levels.

The PSD, he said, had informed them that there were too many excellent candidates but places were limited.

Two of their school mates Paul Khaw Chu Sern, 17, and Chuah Chian Yeong, 17, who both obtained 12 1A’s, failed to get any PSD scholarships.

Lee’s father Wai Heng, a civil servant, said an analysis showed that the students were among the top 250 SPM scorers in the country and who had fulfilled the criteria for selection to study overseas.

“Why then are their applications rejected?” he asked.

According to a nationwide analysis of last year’s SPM results, three students scored 16 1A’s, two scored 15 1A’s, six 14 1A’s, 41 of them scored 13 1A’s while 229 scored 12 1A’s.

According to a report, the department had interviewed 8,363 out of the 15,084 candidates who had applied for scholarships under the foreign degree programme between March 31 and April 3.

In view of the limited places abroad, especially in critical subjects, the PSD also offered 2,000 scholarships to outstanding students to pursue studies in local universities.

Unsuccessful candidates have until May 18 to appeal online.