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  • 2010
    • April
      • Windows 7, Sim 0
        04/09/10
        My last entry on this blog was written on my old notebook computer. It ran Windows XP, which I have no complaints about, but the machine itself is really on its last legs. Its battery had died and became extinct, its aftermarket replacement battery recently died and cracked open to reveal Ni-Cd cell

    • January
      • We got Ads
        01/12/10
        Okay, my Google Adsense account has been approved. This got me motivated to fix up the site a little (especially the RC cars section). If you're into RC cars, go check it out . There's new-ish reviews and build ups.

        I've earned 0 cents so far. My wife says I'm several

      • Things can only get easier
        01/06/10











        The day Max was born, my wife and I realised that being parents is mostly about worrying. When you have a newborn in the house, you never really let yourself forget how fragile they are. I was told to make sure he slept with his head

  • 2009
    • December
      • New vise jaws
        12/26/09

        I've had this vise for several years now. It's cheap and it works but the jaws aren't very well made.


        Each jaw is held on by countersunk screws. Some of the screw holes aren't aligned properly, so the screws don't sit flush in the countersinks. Wheneve

      • The selfish weekend
        12/21/09


        Ahhhhh…
        One weekend left to the year and there are no more weddings, birthdays, house warmings, full moons, farewells, welcome home parties, annual dinners, store openings, soft launches, grand launches, religious celebrations, new years of one type or another or anything of that s

    • November
      • Family Feud
        11/13/09
        I know I haven’t written in awhile. Sometimes, I feel like I should just stop blogging altogether. But at other times, like tonight, it feels like I could keep this blog going for awhile.

        It’s easy to see that the topics of this blog are mostly rants about my wife. This is not because I d

    • September
      • The Dishwasher
        09/15/09
        If you have been considering buying a small dishwasher, I have a little story for you today.

        Two years ago, we were renovating our current house and one of the things my wife insisted she couldn’t live without was a dishwasher. I didn’t like the idea at first. My mom had a dishwasher that

    • July
      • The power of metaphors
        07/23/09
        My wife's been upset at something lately which kept her awake all of last night, which in turn, kept me awake.

        In the end, I gave up trying to sleep and we started to diagnose why this thing was bothering her so much. It bugged me a little that she was spending so much time on this,

    • May
      • Sim vs the rocking chair
        05/02/09
        Every now and then I forget how gullible I am and allow myself to get talked into running fools’ errands.

        We were at a garage sale this morning. A nice American man by the name of Kurt was moving and selling off most of his things dirt cheap. We met the Soul Doctor there, and we were su

    • February
      • Climbing again
        02/26/09
        Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote about trying to decide whether or not to let my son climb. On one hand, I can really see us having lots of fun together. But on the other hand, I don’t think I will ever get comfortable with the idea of hanging my son on a rope sixty meters off the ground. Being

      • Rules for toddlers
        02/18/09


        The world must seem like such a warped place for a toddler. My boy has been trying to follow, with varying degrees of success, some 'rules' we first thought were pretty simple. If I put myself in his shoes, this is probably what he makes of the whole situation.

        The R

      • I finally finished something!
        02/11/09


        I did it. I finished up the Japan pages almost 3 years after the trip.

        Check them out.

  • 2008
    • October
      • The fish ball noodle mission
        10/31/08
        My wife’s been wanting to eat this fish ball noodle in KL for some time now so this morning, we were on a mission to have that for breakfast. I got up at 7am to clear out the morning chores while the wife was still in bed. The noodle stall is about half an hour away from our house when there’s no tr

    • August
      • The Chubby Chase
        08/07/08


        We’ve very happy to have this chunky little boy. We think his chubby cheeks and his little round arms are just adorable. He’ll naturally lose some of this fat as he gets older, but we honestly don’t want him to. My wife and I haven’t talked about it much, but I suspect we’re on a missio

      • Music dinosaur
        08/06/08
        I’m completely out-of-touch with today’s music. The Souldoctor just showed me a video of her singing backup for Leona Lewis. I’d heard of the name before, but I had no idea who she was or what she did. This is not a reflection on her abilities or popularity. It’s just that I’m a bit of a musical d

    • July
      • Party tricks
        07/09/08


        About two years ago, before Max was born, we were at a friend’s baby’s first birthday. It was a wonderful poolside party with lots of kids. My wife remarked that almost every kid we met that day had a party trick. One little girl could dance like Mr. Bean. She was absolutely adorable.
      • Motherhood lingo
        07/04/08
        While on the topic of words, I looked over my wife's shoulder while she was on a motherhood forum the other day. I couldn't make head or tail of what's being said. It seemed like every third word was an acronym.

        My wife came up with this list to help me figure it out. It�

      • Baby's first words
        07/03/08


        Don’t ask me if the baby has said his first word yet. The truth is - I don’t know. He might have. As you can imagine, we’ve been looking forward to the event with great excitement but it’s really not turning out as clear-cut as we had imagined. In our naivette, we always pictured he’d b

    • June
      • The fungal foot project
        06/25/08
        It’s 2:25 am. I’m barely hanging on to my sanity.

        My wife woke me up to scratch her foot. After about ten minutes of scratching, I decided to cure the cause of the symptom, so I thought I’d wipe her foot with a towel. I wet one corner of a bath towel. While I was rubbing her foot with it

      • Nothing to write
        06/11/08
        June 11, 2008

        Sorry for the lack of updates again. I’ve kind of lost track of where this blog was going. Like many blogs, this started out as a place to organise and file away complaints and maybe rationalise and justify the crummier feelings I have. Well, I’ve not run out of complaints j

    • May
      • Analogies
        05/21/08
        I think I’m going to cut down on the use of analogies from now on. I do realise that they are very hip at the moment and can instantaneously make a person sound knowledgeable, witty and charming. However, it annoys me whenever someone stretches one really far to “prove” a point.

        I’ve thou

    • March
      • Thanks Malaysia Kini
        03/10/08
        As mentioned earlier, we were getting our election updates on Saturday from MalaysiaKini.com and its mirror sites. The traditional media (all the TV stations and many of the newspaper web sites) were several hours behind in their reporting. Utusan was also giving very up-to-date reports that day.<

      • Are you still in shock?
        03/10/08
        Before the elections on Saturday, many people were telling me that they thought Barisan Nasional wouldn't get a 2/3 majority of parliamentary seats like it had always done in the past. I was contrarian and thought that they surely would - partly because I didn't dare to hope otherwise, and

    • February
      • Lobotomising the Laser Fan
        02/17/08
        Our baby goes everywhere with his portable clip-on fan. I threw the box away long ago but I think it's called a Laser Fan. It runs on two AA-sized batteries and when it's on, some mesmerising LED lights come on and keeps your baby in a trance. Or at least, that's what it does to our b

      • Gearing up your baby
        02/17/08
        There's no end to the amount of products out there that claim to help your baby eat, sleep, learn, breathe, walk, jump, crawl, exercise and defecate better. Lately, I've been taking pictures.


        This thing is called an Exer-saucer. Talked my wife out of buying it. It's a

    • January
      • Our movie date
        01/02/08
        One day late, but Happy New Year everyone!

        Yesterday, we finally caught up with our laundry, finished up some chores and even made a few appointments to have people come over to fix up the things that needed fixing around the house.

        When the baby went to bed, we decided we’d ta

  • 2007
    • December
      • The Price of Milk
        12/12/07


        If you are the parent of a 21st century baby, chances are you are a slave to milk. Every parent from your generation that you meet will extol the wonders of breast milk and you will find yourself spending several hours of every day expressing it, moving it, storing it, organizing it – a

    • November
      • Nanowrimo 2007
        11/02/07
        I'm participating in the National Novel Writing Month again this year(Read all about the event here). I'm supposed to write 1667 every day for the month of November so that I will have a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month. I've not succeeded for the past four years, but that�

    • October
      • Bottle feeding
        10/11/07


        We are nearing the last ten days of my wife’s maternity leave, which means the baby is almost three months old now. So far, being a parent has been great fun but also a lot of hard work. We are almost constantly feeding the baby, burping him, changing his diaper, changing his clothes, b

      • The thing
        10/08/07
        Sorry I haven’t been updating this. I’ve been busy with the baby and more recently, been a little bit out of the blogging mood.

        Have you ever had a problem you couldn’t tell anyone about? I have one now. I tried talking to someone about it and it didn’t help. It didn’t do anything other

    • August
      • The good and the bad
        08/28/07
        Sorry there’s been no updates. I guess you could say a lot has happened and yet you could say there’s been nothing that you could put together into a coherent story.

        Anyway, today, I just want to talk about the material on this blog. If I’ve been giving the impression that our lives are

    • July
      • Baby Talk
        07/24/07

        Another new age idea went out the window yesterday. Before the baby was born, we were thinking of maybe speaking to him like an adult, so that he could learn to speak properly at an early age. We tried. We just couldn't do it.

        To balance things out, we are also on the verge of

      • Our baby
        07/18/07

        Our boy.
        His blog.

      • The answer
        07/10/07
        Looks like nobody else wants to play the guessing game. Here's the answer...

        I have been trying to get rid of some carpenter ants around the house. We took a bottle of Antrid from our old place and put a few drops near the entrance of the house where the ants have been seen moving bi

      • Our pre-natal classes
        07/07/07
        We just finished our last pre-natal class yesterday. We felt like the class dropouts because the most of what is taught in the classes revolves around natural births and our baby is scheduled for a Caesarian birth in less than 2 weeks. He is in a frank breech position, which means he hasn’t turned (

      • Guess what this is
        07/04/07

        See if you can guess what this is.

        Edit:

        July 6 - Clue # 1 added - Sorry, the photo is about actual size now.

        July 6 - Clue # 2 added - It's got something to do with pests.

    • June
      • Happy Happy Day
        06/28/07

        Another photo by Anna Rina.


        Okay, we’ve decided that I have written enough about the renovations already, so I’m just going to skip that list I mentioned earlier. My wife says I should write something positive. She usually lets me just write whatever I feel like but I do va

      • Our big move
        06/25/07

        Photo taken by the beautiful and talented Anna Rina. Thanks!

        We’ve moved in for 2 weeks already. It seems like a minor miracle that we managed to get everything into the house. On the first day, my mother-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law and a few cousins came to give us a li

    • May
      • Our House Renovations
        05/31/07


        Sorry if this blog seems dead lately. I’ve just been really busy with the house renovations. I’ve been meaning to write about it but even if I had found the time, I wouldn’t have had the mood. I can’t believe it has only been six weeks since we started. It really feels a lot longer. Mayb

      • Changes around the house
        05/06/07
        We finally went down to Singapore last weekend to pick up some baby stuff our cousins were giving us. On our first day there, we attended another full moon party. Almost everyone there were single and the baby’s dad was proudly dispensing advice on topics such as baby shopping, breastfeeding, breast

    • April
      • Superbabies
        04/24/07
        I don’t know what it is, but it seems like we’re surrounded by Superbabies. Everywhere we go, we see or hear about some extraordinary babies. One of our friends has the Superbig Baby who was being carried about in an upright body harness at about six weeks and is now outgrowing his 6-12 month baby

      • Pantang
        04/18/07


        A pregnancy is not an easy thing to go through, especially so if you’re Chinese and even more so if you are moving house. There are just so many pantangs and customs, we couldn’t possibly follow them all.

        For one thing, you’re not supposed to do any house renovations. The bel

      • Baby Idiots
        04/11/07


        My wife and I are only just realising we’re baby idiots. Our friends who are also expecting babies know all about cots, strollers, cradles, bouncing nets, car seats, high chairs, playpens, nappy liners, baby carriers, slings, changing tables, mattress protectors, milk bottles, bottle car

      • Babies everywhere!
        04/08/07
        Some babies and kids we have met recently.

      • Data Wipeout
        04/06/07
        Two days ago, I got this dll error on my computer everytime I started it up. It said something to the effect that one of my ActiveX files was doing something Windows didn’t normally allow. It didn’t seem to affect anything we use the computer for but it had us worried. I had not install anything on

    • March
      • Maybe I'll climb a bit more.
        03/26/07
        I think I’m going to try climbing again.

        Two weeks ago, on a very long flight home from South Africa, I was up all night watching some in-flight movies and out of those movies, the two that stuck in my mind were Rocky Balboa and The Fastest Indian in the World. One was about a boxer (in

    • February
      • The End Of The Line
        02/27/07
        I used to climb rocks. I’m not quite sure when I stopped. I guess I kept cutting down on the frequency of climbs and now I’m at the point where I don’t know if I am still doing it at all or not. I’m not even sure if I want to continue doing it (or start again, depending on your point of view).

      • My Dad and Blogs or How I Betrayed My Nieces And Nephews
        02/07/07
        My 83-year old dad used a word that gave me a shock yesterday when he asked me (in Cantonese) what a “blog” was and whether I had one. I tried to describe what blogs are in general, but struggled to think of something he could relate to since he’s just coming to grasp what the internet is.

      • Children's books
        02/06/07
        A week ago, I bought some children’s books for a friend’s one-year-old baby and couldn’t resist getting one for our baby too. It’s titled Big Little, written by Leslie Patricelli and published by Walker Books. It’s a marvellous book with great illustrations.



        Here’s an excerpt

    • January
      • Pregnancy Test
        01/28/07
        This blog is in danger of becoming a baby blog.



        Wanted to tell you guys earlier but my wife said to wait first. Anyway, now you guys are in on the secret, along with Helena, Hazura, Siti, Reduan, Tim, Pannaporn, Noi, Janet, Beng Cheang, Chui Yan, Yeuw Leung, TV, Billie, Pixie

      • My Doomsday Machine
        01/27/07
        “Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy... the fear to attack. And so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision making process which rules out human meddling, the doomsday machine is terrifying. It's simple to understand. And completely credible, and convincing.&qu

      • Yoga class
        01/07/07
        We had our first taste of yoga yesterday.

        Our alarm clock woke us up at 6:30am and we had to make a decision between staying in bed on a Saturday morning and driving all the way to Subang to join some friends in their class. We had heard our share of horror stories involving back injuries

      • Mahjong kids
        01/03/07
        Gosh! 3 weeks since my last blog entry. It’s not like nothing’s been happening. It’s just that we’ve been a little busy and there are things I’m not supposed to blog about and things I can blog about but not yet and the thought of separating what is allowed and what is not is making the whole writin

  • 2006
    • December
      • House Cleaning
        12/16/06
        We’re back from London. It was a great trip and I’d like to tell you all about it but it looks like we’ll be spending every spare minute of the next few weekends unpacking and cleaning the apartment. The dirt has grown to the point where it takes all our effort to keep it in check. It’s like we took

      • London
        12/04/06
        No blogging for the next ten days or so because we'll be in London. Should be fun.

      • Gene pool contributions (part 2) - the original version
        12/01/06
        (originally written on November 15)

        (…continued from part 1)

        I don’t know – maybe I’m just envious because my wife and I are trying pretty hard to have kids.

        About ten days ago, I took my wife in to her gynaecologist. She insisted I go in with her in case the doctor

    • November
      • Ebaying through my nose
        11/28/06
        Sorry I’ve been moody and slack, but here’s an update on the ebay situation.

        We didn’t make it to Singapore over the weekend. The Soul Doctor was busy, so it was just going to be the two of us. My wife still wanted the furniture and I still wanted my to maintain my 100% positive ebay feed

      • Sanyo Eneloop technology
        11/23/06
        Good news for people who use lots of AA batteries.

        I first saw these GAIA and Eneloop advertisements on billboards and posters in Japan in June but did not realise what they were. I thought it was just the Sanyo marketing department highlighting the environmental advantages of rechargeabl

      • Who is this?
        11/21/06
        Some days, I feel like I don't know who this person is that I married.

        Before we were hitched she would say, "I don't need any money. I can live on very little."

        Today, she would say the same thing, followed by "I just want the best for us."

      • I love my wife
        11/18/06
        I love my wife.

        Here's the proof...

      • Things to do in Kuala Lumpur
        11/17/06
        (The honeymooners)

        I used to think of myself as a “man of the world”, partly because of all those James Bond movies and partly because I would occasionally get bored of my environment and go abroad to stay in a clean motel room, and to have toast and tea for breakfast (at home, we would

      • Gene pool contributions (part 2)
        11/16/06
        (…continued)

        Whenever I think about people not getting married, I think about the Soul Doctor, who said in her blog, “Maybe my man and I are the new kind of `insecure' people who give little trust to a piece of marriage paper that is believed to be able bind two person together, gi

      • Gene pool contributions (part 1)
        11/14/06
        Sorry I’ve been quiet. I guess I’ve been writing this entry in my head and one of the thoughts was that maybe I shouldn’t be sharing this with people. Then I got to the point where my head ran out of space and I needed to put things on paper (a word processor really, but that doesn’t have the same r

      • Destiny
        11/09/06
        I worry about some very dumb things, one of which is whether or not I am playing the role I am supposed to play in the bigger scheme of things.

        When I was young, or at least younger, I had this sense of destiny – not a strong sense because I didn’t know what it was I was supposed to do –

      • Driving In The Rain
        11/08/06
        My wife told me to write something positive today so this will be a short one.

        We were driving to my dad’s house after work last night and it rained very heavily. It wasn’t the usual Malaysian downpour. It was the kind that has you worried about the integrity of your car doors and windows

      • I am old
        11/08/06
        I am getting old.

        I know some of you folks in your fifties and sixties are going to heckle me for saying that and being thirty five but I really have to say it. I really do feel old.

        A year ago, I didn’t have any problems with my back. I distinctly remember this because it was

      • Nanowrimo
        11/06/06
        Hi readers. It’s such a lovely Monday morning, I thought I’d put the self-fascination and self-proclaimed neurosis on hold and let the other sixty million bloggers out there cover for me in these areas for a day. What I want to I talk about instead is this event called NaNoWriMo or National Novel Wr

      • My Polysyllabic Adventure
        11/03/06
        At present, I am practising a new style of writing and I am determined that the current weblog entry be written in a manner that maximises the size of my words and the length of my sentences – so that my inadequacies (none of which are physical, before you enquire) may be compensated for. It aggriev

      • House Clutter
        11/01/06
        Guess what!

        It’s day 3 and I’ve run out of material. I know, I know. Blogging isn’t about constantly coming up with the good stuff in neat coherent daily entries. Part of the beauty I was told was that it’s supposed to be pretty free-flow writing and I’m trying hard to get the hang of it

    • October
      • How to Win Internet Arguments
        10/31/06
        1. If you are not already in a debate, join or start one. Join a forum and find a thread or a post to argue on. The person who put up that thread or post is hereinafter to be referred to as your opponent.

        2. Dismantle your opponent’s arguments into small chunks and look for faults in the

      • What's this blog about?
        10/30/06
        That’s a good question. I was always a little wary about starting a blog. I didn’t want to write about my mundane everyday life. I thought maybe we should just write about current events and things of interest to a wider group of readers– sort of put a little distance between ourselves and the blog