Friend From Dubai

Friday afternoon, I received a call. The caller said his name was Joy ....

I had forgotten all about it - Joy, a friend presently residing in Dubai had e-mailed me a week before that he was coming down with his wife to KL for 3 days and 2 nights and I had agreed to meet him for dinner on friday. However, it had totally sliped my mind that I had a relative’s birthday party to attend at the same time (That's another story however and maybe another post). I promised to meet up with them the next day.

Anyway, on saturday morning, I picked them up at their hotel in Bukit Bintang. Had bit of trouble finding their hotel. I just drove round and round and my insticts led me to the rear entrance of their hotel.

As it was their first trip to KL, I took them to the most famous tourist spot in the city – Kuala Lumpur City Centre and the Petronas Twin Towers. They were really fortunately because there was a nice breeze and the sun was hidden behind clouds. We sat down at the Dome restaurant and got to know each other. Before this we had only communicated through e-mails. As both husband and wife were architects, they guess they really found the Twin towers fascinating.


We talked about life in the gulf, about our occupations and about our home town (Yeah! We come from the same place). I learnt that Dubai is a metropolitan city state with a large foreign population. According them, there is a construction boom in Dubai (which is good news I guess). I also learnt one design limitation that they faced – almost all buildings they design must have an arch feature - representing Islamic architecture.

After years in the desert kingdom, I guess they love visiting places with a lot of vegetation – They exclaimed: “Its so green in here!”

Next on the itinerary was Petaling Street – KL’s so called China town. It was crowded like it usually is and we went around a bit looking at all the stuff available there. They were not interested in buying the imitation products but Sujata, the wife was amazed to find that the imitation Dune perfume on sale at one of the stalls smelled exactly like the original (her favourite). I assured her that it was indeed fake. I though that it would be a great chance to play tourist myself and took some pictures. They bought some souvenirs and we left soon after.

By then, my stomach was growling and I took them to Bangsar and to my favourite eating place there – Devi’s corner at Jalan Telawi. I love the variety of food available there. Joy loves to taste exotic food and I wanted him to try Patai. Unfortunately, it was not available. However, he loved the sambal they had. His wife is not as adventurous but she loved the Indian food.

We also talked about our experiences and I was quite amazed at what an amazing life Joy had lead and how he finally ended up in Dubai. I guess that would be another post.

I guess they were pretty much tired with the whirlwind tour of KL and I was leaving for Kedah later that evening, I finally dropped them off at their hotel. I wish I had more time to show them around.

In case you are reading this post, Joy, I hope that you had a nice time here in Malaysia and hope you come back again.

Rain Rain

My version of the old nursery rhyme - Rain, Rain, Go Away

Rain, rain, don't go away!
Come again, today.

Rain, rain, don't go away!
Little Rahil wants to play.

Rain, rain, go to Sumatra too,
Never let the haze come again.




Yeah! I know it's kind of lame but I am praying that it rains today.

Convert Normal Pix to Cartoons

For quite sometime I have been working on a way to convert normal pictures to cartoon-like images – you know, similar to those in comic strips. You can also use them as avatars. After Googling a bit, I found a Photoshop tutorial, which unfortunately was quite complex and turned me off.

I tried Macromedia Fireworks, Adobe Photoshop, Irfan view and even Paint but they didn’t give me satisfactory results. I remembered that I have a great yet free image manipulation program on my computer which I don’t use much – Gimp for Windows (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) and started it up.

After playing around a bit I found a filter, which was already installed.

Just click on Filters > Artistic > Cartoon.

Just tweak the Mask Radius and Percent Black to manipulate the picture (here I used a picture of my daughter).


It’s not perfect but good enough for most purposes.

I don’t use Gimp that often because it crashes a lot (FYI, I have the buggy version 2.2.7. The new version 2.2.8 has already come out). For a free program, it sure has a lot of goodies and is ideal those who can’t afford to buy the more commercial programs and don’t want to buy pirated software.

Some of the best things in the World are available for free.

EPF for Househusbands

EPF’s (Employees Provident Fund) recent announcement to allow husbands to make contributions for housewives was welcomed by a lot of people, especially the Women’s rights groups. I too think this a good idea and shows that some people have finally recognised the great role that housewives play. My mum is a housewife and she did a great job.

Of course not everybody thinks that it is a great idea. For example, Chanlilian asks, “Do you think that those puny amount of EPF is enough to pay us?”

She also adds, “Don’t burn your poor husband money away doing frivoulous stuffs like buying tupperwares, re-bonding hair, enlarge breasts, tighten down there, slimming centre, buy diamonds so that your girlfriends from primary school can be jealous.”

A vist to any shopping mall in the Klang Valley however, reveals ladies doing exactly that. Finding parking space in One Utama or even Maga Mall is almost impossible, even on weekdays. Most of the shoppers are women (if you don’t count the lepaking kids). One friend once told me that most of these women are girlfriends and mistresses of rich guys, who have nothing to do in the daytime. So they go shopping. I am not really sure as I see a lot of middle class housewives with their kids too.

Anyway, coming back to my topic, there is another group whose voice remains muted and unheard. They ask, “Why only women?”

As we all know, male to female student ratio in most Malaysian universities is highly skewed with ladies even making up more than 70% of the total students in some Universities. The effects are being felt now. The traditional role of the father as a breadwinner has been reversed in many cases with the wife now taking up that role. In fact, many guys now-a-days don’t mind being the homemaker/ home manager (or in other words the househusband).

During the last Asian crisis (1997 – 1998), several of my friends lost their jobs and had to depend on their wives earnings before they could find new jobs. I guess it was not something that they really liked but had no choice. Maybe it was good in a way. It brought families closer, many went back from Kuala Lumpur to their hometowns and several others opened up their own business.

However, I know of several cases where the husband willingly took up the role. A good example is that of guys who gave up their great jobs to accompany their wives who were doing their PhD overseas.

Don’t they deserve their EPF boost too?

Budi Bahasa, Budaya kita

Came back from KL this weekend with an itchy throat. I think it was caused by too much walking in malls + sitting in open air mamak restaurants + KL's polluted air + Smoke from Sumatra. In case, you didn’t know, large parts of Malaysia are still covered with haze due to open burning in Sumatra. Yeah! Even though we are seperated by man made boundaries, we share the same atmosphere and nothing is stopping the winds from blowing their smoke our way. It is not that bad in Kedah and I am thankful for that.

Anyway, while traveling in the LRT, I realized one thing. The Government’s ‘Budi Bahasa, Budaya kita’ (good manners, our culture ) campaign is apparently working (at least on the LRTs). I noticed several people giving up their seats to pregnant ladies, elderly citizens, disabled and even guys with children.

I guess we have to thank Yasmin Ahmed for her TV ad (which was also debated in the Parliament). I guess it made a lot of people NOT want to be that like the guy in the ad.

Yesterday, I was on my way to Pudu Raya on the Putra LRT and some people got up at the KL Sentral station. I noticed this lady whom I thought was pregnant. I looked at two other ladies sitting next to me and it was kind of funny, all of us got up at the same time and give her our seat. The lady sat down while her companion took another. Te guys around asked to take the remaining seat. Looking at the lady next to me, she didn’t look pregnant after all. However, she was wearing a shirt that pregnant women wear, so I am not really sure.

Reminds me of another incident (again on the LRT). Once, I was dozing and woke up suddenly to find a lady’s big belly jutting into my face. ‘Pregnant lady, Pregnant lady’ warning signal went up. I jumped up and tried to give the seat to her but she refused. Actually she was not pregnant. Just another case of big bones.

Harry Potter Mania

I remember the first time I heard about Harry Potter was when I read a review on a website of the latest book (then), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

This was before Harry Potter mania hit Malaysia. I was wondering what the fuss was all about. I mean, it was just another Children's fantasy book, a story about kids. I was surprised at the number of grown ups who were crazy about the whole Harry Potter phenomena.

Once I was chatting on the net with my soon-to-be sister-in-law Ezu, who was then studying in LSE. She told me that she had just bought the latest Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and could not put it down. Her final exams were a few days away. I was like, "you mean you are engrossed in a kiddy story book when your exams are knocking at your door".

Soon afterwards I got my hands on the electronic version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and as they say, the rest is history. I was hooked. Yes, an adult earning a living in a subsidiary of a huge company. My wife-to-be soon caught the bug and now, she among the early birds, buying the hard cover version every time a new book comes out- on the first day.

I am sure by now that all Harry Potter fans are aware that Rowling killed off one major character in the latest book.

Well! My wife was quite upset after reading the book and told me that she was moody the whole day. She was like, "How can Rowling do this?"

After I read the book, I refused to believe that the character dies. I told her that Rowling is going to reveal that the person didn't die after all - like Gandalf in Lord of the rings.

According to my wife, I was in denial.

Yesterday, while going through the PPS, I read a blog, which in turn lead me to a site. The author of the site gives very convincing reasons why the character in question did not actually die. Well I quickly notified my wife who was quite happy. I will not put the link here, as I want to avoid spoiling the reading pleasure of people who have not read it yet. However, this is mere speculation, as only Rowling knows what she has in her mind.

I guess we will all know when the next (and reportedly the last) book in the series comes out.

Monsters in Your Bed

Last weekend my wife reminded me that I hadn't cleaned the air conditioning unit for quite sometime. I usually clean the filters at least twice a month but had neglected to do so.

I lifted up the cover and was shocked at the state of the filter. It was so filthy. No wonder the aircon was noisy and didn't seem as cold as before. On closer inspection there was something like black fungus growth inside the unit. Uugh!

My wife washed the filters with water and soap and the basin was all covered with a black layer of grime. That's how dirty it was. I took some tissue, cotton and brush and did my best to clean the inside of the unit. The amount of stuff that had accumulated inside was amazing.

When I was done, the whole floor was littered with black stuff and I was gatal, gatal (itchy, not naughty)all over. My wife was sneezing a lot too. We had the maid come up, vacuum and mop the entire room.

Not good! With Rahil growing up fast, I can't afford to be complacent. What with organisms crawling all around.



I had read about house dust mites (Dermatophagoides sp.). These are microscopic organisms that feed on dead human skin. Their prime habitats are indoor beds. According to this site, 'a typical used mattress may have anywhere from 100,000 to 10 million mites inside'.

They are strongly allergenic and are considered to be one of the causes of asthma in infants.

And you thought the picture was scary.

---------------------

USEFUL LINKS

Click here for more information about babies and allergies

Click here for more information about babies and risk of asthma.