Kelantan Pics

Some old and new pics taken in Kelantan:

The famous Siti Khadijah wet market.

Rahil at the brand new Kota Bharu airport.

The best halal Chinese restaurant in Kota Bharu.

The railway station at Wakaf Baru.

The sitting Buddha.

Alone With Rahil

As some of my old visitors and friends know, I have been travelling back and forth between KL and Kedah for quite sometime now, more than 2 years and 8 months to be more precise. The government's move to implement a 5 day work week for goverment employees is a real boon for us guys. Now I can get to be with my family more often.

Anyway, yesterday I got a lift from my friend who commutes to work everyday from Sungai Patani. I then caught a bus from the Sungai Patani station. The tickets for the delux buses (24 seater) costs only RM28 and I reach KL almost an hour early. Besides, I get to chat with the guys (3 of them car pool).

My wife has to go to some kind of camp organised by Biro Tatanegara (BTN) somewhere in Negari Sembilan. She left yesterday morning and will be away till the 5th of July.

So it was me and Rahil yesterday. I really had a hard time trying to make her sleep. I guess she was waiting for her mum to come back from work. Tomorrow I have to go back to Kedah and she will have to sleep with her grandmother.

One Out

Kota Bharu has changed quite a bit. A lot of construction work was going on. I also noticed a lot of big new bungalow houses on previously paddy fields.

My mother-in-law wanted to buy some stuff and I took them to the place I knew had the best choice, the Central Market (also known as the Siti Kadhijah market). Most of the traders are still women, most of them wearing a lot of gold. It is no surprise as the Ketantanese women are known to be very enterprising. In fact the region was once ruled by a Queen (one and only in Malaysia) called Cik Siti Wan Kembang (17th century roughly at the end of the 14th century). However, I don’t know much about her other than that she was famous for her legendary beauty and wisdom.

Anyway, we were able to get some great bargains on batik stuff - shirts, kaftans, baju kurung (much, much cheaper than in KL).

Will post up pics later.

I also paid a long overdue visit to the dentist at the Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM), Kubang Kerian, where my dad works. He had already fixed an appointment for me and my wife. It's always nice to have links at the right places.

A visit to the dentist is always scary and this was no exception, more so as I needed minor surgery to remove 2 misaligned Wisdom teeth. My condition was a bit serious, as the teeth were partially horizontal and entrapped within the gums – a condition termed "impacted."

The doctor decided that it would be better if I removed one tooth at a time. We decided on the one on the right side, which looked more serious on the X-ray as it was pushing into the neighbouring teeth. To remove it required an incision into the gums and then removal of the portion of jaw bone that lies over the tooth.

The entire process started with injections to the gums to desensitize the entire right jaw. The tooth was extracted in small sections but I couldn’t see anything as my eyes were covered all the time but I could still hear the drill and what ever stuff he was using to cut the teeth (going wirrrrrr) and pulling. The doctor was quite skilled as I didn’t feel much pain. I was quite relived when it was finally over. It took around 15 minutes but seemed like an hour. The doctor stitched up the wound and then gave me some cotton to bite on. I was given paracetamol, a medicine for swelling and a mouthwash.

The left side was numb for quite some time but not for long as the pain came back in waves. The paracetamol helped. The first day, I didn’t take the swelling medicine. Big mistake. I woke up the next day looking as if I had stuffed an entire Big Mac on the right side of my face. I still have some swelling now but its much beter and I can feel the hollow portion where my tooth used to be with my toungue.

My wife also had her teeth checked and 2 fillings done. She was unhappy that the fillings were not white but grey (amalgam) coloured.

Anyway, the great part is that we saved several hundred ringitt. A procedure like mine that would cost about RM1000 at a private clinic in KL.

I will be going back again for the next one on the 6th of next month. Ouch.

100% Accurate Quiz

I am finally back from Kelantan and have lot to blog about but till then .....

I just took Kenny Sia's "Which Malaysian Blogger Are You?". It turns out that I am "minishorts". ;-)

There are several quizes out there on the net. Sometimes when you don't know what to blog about, just take one of them and post the results on your blog.

One guy sent me this quiz.

This one is SOOOOOO accurate!!!!! You must try this

Imagine you walked into a small hut by the river in the jungle.
You pushed open the door.
In front of you were 7 small beds to the right of the hut, and another 7 small chairs surrounding a small round table.
In the middle of the table was a round food tray with 5 kinds of fruit in it.

They are:
a. an apple
b. a banana
c. a strawberry
d. a peach &
e. an orange

Which fruit will you choose? Your choice reveals something about you!

Test results : Please SCROLL DOWN

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a. if you chose apple: that means you are a person who loves to eat apples.
b. if you chose banana: that means you are a person who loves to eat bananas.
c. if you chose strawberry: that means you are a person who loves to eat strawberries.
d. if you chose peach: that means you are a person who loves to eat peaches.
e. if you chose orange: that means you are a person who loves to eat oranges.


GET BACK TO WORK LAH!!!


I bet you are hunting for me to squeeze my neck...well

I am still hunting for the person who sent me this...!

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Another meme.

I was tagged by Babypink.

What are the things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play? What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level?

Make a list, post it in your journal, and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it in theirs.

Here is the list:

-Spending quality time with my wife and Rahil
-Blogging
-Editing photographs digitally
-Surfing the Net
-Reading
-Swimming
-Listening to slow music
-Watching movies

I got to tag 5 guys so ... Ita, Jack, Rajoo, Pezal and Hardy.

From Batu Pahat to Kota Bharu

Actually I should rename the title to "From Alor Star to Kuala Lumpur to Batu Pahat and back then to Kota Bharu and back" but I guess it would have been too long. I have taken a long leave to spend some quality time with my family.

Last friday I drove down to Batu Pahat, Johor with my wife to attend one of our good friends' wedding. I got to know Gogot and Bear (nick names) through my wife (she has known Gogot since her school days). Gogot and Bear have been together for a long, long time and we were really happy to see them finally tie the knot and settle down together. I wish them a very happy married life.


I am flying to Kota Bharu, Kelantan today to visit my parents. Besides my wife and Rahil, my mother-in-law, brother-in-law and our maid, are coming along too. Unfortunately my father-in-law is in the States right now or it would have been the perfect family reunion.

More updates later when I get back, till then it's a brief "hiatus".

FYI, Alor Star is the capital city of the state of Kedah in Malaysia, which lies on the north bordering Thailand. Johor is the southern most state of Malaysia bordering Singapore and Kelantan is another northern Malaysian state, again bordering Thailand but on the eastern coast.

New Bloggers

Now more and more people are joining the blogosphere. I noticed that a few of my friends have even started their own blogs without even telling me. I discovered their blogs purely by chance. You know who you are…

I am proud to say that I have inspired, motivated and helped a few people get on board.

I will just mention 2 here:

Mr. Rajoo (my colleague) who has just started his blog called Shopping Tips. On his blog, he provides (some really strange) tips on how to shop, save money and get free stuff.
Believe me, this guy knows all the tricks and has a “huge” bank balance to prove it (so I have heard). Nothing illegal involved.

Mr. Faizal from Melacca, who has a blog called Jutawan :: Millionaire. Records his journey to becoming a millionaire. I wish him all the luck and hope that one day it comes true. However, someone just told me that a million is nothing. A Billion. Ah! Thats something.

Oh Yeah! I am now using Blogrolling to list my links. Now linking is just a few clicks away. However, during the process, I lost a few links. Unlike other bloggers, I do believe in reciprocal linking – you link to me and I link back. However, some conditions apply (HINT: A lot of government employees and kids read this blog).

Talking about kids, Jealine, a 10 year old blogger from the Phillipines left comments on another blog of mine - Auto Lah. Her writing is better and more mature than many bloggers here in Malaysia. Of course, there is a possibility that it is someone older faking it or maybe her parents are helping out. You can check out her blog and decide for yourself.

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Added this later...

Spell your name/ url, etc., etc. using pics on Flickr by clicking here.

I got this from Samson's blog.

Malaysian-Indian identity

Do Punjabis (an ethnic group of people who originate from the Punjab region of the Indian sub-continent) come under the “Indian” category or the “others” category?

I once asked this question and provoked a small heated discussion among my friends.

According to some of them, Tamils, Malyalees and Telegu (based on the Indian languages they speak) fall under the Indian category while other groups like the Punjabis (majority Sikhs), Gujaratis, Ceylonese (Sri Lankans), come under the "lain-lain" (others) category. Others disagreed and were of the opinion that everyone from the Indian sub-continent is an Indian. To this day I am not sure what’s correct.

It is quite funny that Sikhs are often incorrectly referred to as ‘Bengali’ in Malaysia. Bengalis actually refer to people from the Bangladesh and West Bengal state of India. I won’t mention another term used to refer to them, which is considered derogatory here in Malaysia but is actually derived from a Hindi/ Punjabi word meaning “brother”. Yeah! Its strange.

There are also the Indian muslims who have assimilated with the Malay community and the Chittys but that’s another story.

It was interesting to learn that a founder member of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), a component party of the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) alliance was a Sikh. Datuk Mahima Singh Thaliwal who was also the country’s oldest former MP, passed away at the age of 99. Read the Star report here.

BTW, The Indian community in Malaysia is the smallest of the three main ethnic groups and accounts for about 10% of the country’s population.