The Walk of Life

One definite advantage of being an elder is the acquired skill of differentiating between He and She! Do you agree with me? Well perhaps not 100% but generally holds water. Back in the 50's or 60's it was easy from the clothes they wear. Nowadays it is not so easy and it seems that male and female sort of swapped roles especially in physical presentations. Men wear earrings, and women wear more jackets and pants! Men at one time keep long hair and many women shaved their heads bald or keep short cropped hair styles.

In regards to languages, it seems French uses different words to denote gender even in things! I guess the French know this very well before the other people in the world that even physical objects do have gender differences! This reminds me of an article sent to me recently by my son-in-law regarding how to tell the gender in things! Check this out and have a good laugh!

The Remote Control is definitely Female! Consider this, it easily gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it and while he doesn't know which button to push, he just keeps trying.

Egg Timers are Female for over time, all the weight shifts to the bottom!

Hammers are definitely Male for in the past couple of centuries they hardly changed at all and occasionally handy to have around.

Again,Trains are Male for they used the same old lines to pick-up women.

Web Pages are Female. They are constantly being looked at and frequently getting hit on.

Sponges are Female. They are soft, squeezable and retain water!

You guessed it, Hot-air Balloons are Male. In order to get them go anywhere you got to light a fire under their butt! Agree?

Tyres are Male. This one is easy because they go bald easily and often over inflated! haha!

Copiers are Female for once turned-off it takes sometime to warm them up again. They are effective reproductive devices if the right buttons are pushed but can wreck havoc if you pushed the wrong ones!

Lastly, Freezer Bags are Male. They hold everything in but you could easily see through them!

Alas, after 10 days since we moved to our new place, managed to set-up home. Did not realized the enormous task of setting-up home. Before shifting it was a hectic few weeks of packing things into carton boxes and once moved in, another 10 days to unpack and put things where they should be. Our apologies to you all for missing-in-action for 10 days! Hardly had the time to check emails!

Being the handyman type did not help and one thing I learned from this is that a man seldom want to admit that he is getting old and tire easily. I did not know what I got myself into once started to fix things around the house rather than call the plumber or the electrician etc. Well, I am glad the worst is over for me and poor rock had to get accustomed to new surroundings all over again.

I guess it was a bit unlucky that after we moved in, so many services were not available! There was no Astro ( our local satellite tv service provider) and both of us were so flabbergasted and I missed the live broadcast Election Results! Found out that the Dish was misaligned, caused by the painters! In addition, there was no internet service for no obvious reasons and it came back automatically after 4 days! What got rock mad was that the brand new gas cooker was not functioning and we eat out for 3 days!

The final straw was when I got my computer set-up with internet service back on, then it rained cats and dogs on Monday and the roof leaked and water flooded my scanner! Good thing it was only the scanner and printer that was affected and not my precious computer! I had to swapped two ceiling fans because the blades of the ceiling fan in the dinning hall was bent out of shape and wobbly when it spins! I suspect the painters were the culprit and had the fan on while painting and accidentally hit the blades with their painting poles causing irreparable damaged to the fan blades! throughout the last 10 days, it was working non-stop from morning till after dinner!

That's my take on the house shifting experience and at my age, handling all that made me dead tired after dinner! Like any wife, the kitchen is her domain and I had to help rock placed all her utensils, crockeries etc in the right places convenient for her and all the washing, mopping and cleaning-up required for a new home! Whew! glad that its all behind us and we can start enjoying our new place from now and back to my normal routine and blogging once again! Enough of my moaning and groaning! Our apologies for not replying to all your comments and emails!

Should not have moved on Election Day! At our new place I was so frustrated to find that the astro service was not available, internet connection was out and what more even our new gas cooker was not functioning! I tuned on the radio to catch the results of the day's voting!

Rather glad, in fact ecstatic to learn of the results of the polls that our present Government do not have the two-third majority! The Opposition had a fantastic victory and everyone is talking about the arrival of "The Winds of Change" in Malaysian Politics.

I am happy that we are now moving towards a two party system namely the Barisan Coalition and the Opposition Coalition. We are also begin to move away from the usual racial lines politics and becoming more of a multi-racial type. The results also indicated a tinge of maturity among the people. Most importantly, it reflected on the wishes and desires of the people in general.

So now what next? I foresee quite a bit of teething problems in the setting up of the various State Governments where the Opposition captured. This is to be expected since for eons we only had Barisan Government with very little Opposition presence. Business people are concerned about the new Authorities especially in regards to whether they would carry out approved projects by the previous officials. Even our Stock Market took a 10% dipped on Monday after the results. Personally I think this is normal for business people are concern about what changes would occur and how these affect the investment environment.

All in all, I see this a very good thing. I have to give credit to the Barisan for taking this major change in such a sporty manner! Perhaps now they realized that the people really had enough of their poor governance. Threat tactics do not work anymore with the present generation. What I would like to see happen is the co-operation between these two political groups to listen to the people and look into their basic needs first rather than splash so much money on unnecessary projects which benefit nobody. Malaysia is into a new era from now on! Malaysia truly Boleh!

Had been very busy with hospital schedules for the past couple of days plus our eventual shifting out to our new place on Saturday, leaves us rather drained. My apologies to our friends who left comments but I was unable to respond.

Our moving into a new place this coming 8th March coincides with the destiny of our Nation and that is none other than our General Election where Malaysians cast their votes to select the next Government. Having lived in this land for the past 60 over years and witnessed our Nation gaining Independence, formation of Malaysia, Singapore leaving Malaysia, the ugly May 13th racial riots and the progress of our beloved Nation, my personal take of this coming General Election is somewhat very different from those in the past.

In the early days of our Nation, there were very weak Opposition. Most people supported the coalition Government known as "The Alliance" or today "The Barisan". Then came stronger Oppositions and in 1969, nearly toppled the Barisan Government by DAP plus a few other smaller parties which lead to the May 13th racial riots! Went through that and was lucky to escape with my life! After that, some sort of mutual agreement and understanding were forged among the various political parties and peace and harmony was re-established but the ruling party was Barisan all the way up till now!

To me, this time round, there are very strong Opposition Parties like PAS (an Islamic Part), DAP (a majority Chinese party) and PKR (a multi-racial party). My personal view is that, it will be extremely difficult for the Opposition coalition to win in this coming election but their goal of denying Barisan the two-third majority or reduce Barisan's lead looks very very good!

Throughout the short History of Malaysia, I have seen the deterioration in the quality of Governance of the Barisan Government. Generally the minority groups are very disillusioned by the empty promises of the Government. there is a latest talk that the younger generation has no intention to vote at all due to disillusionment. Injustice, unfair practices, cronysim, corruption, marginalization of the minority ethnic groups and interference of the Executive into the Judiciary etc have eroded the confidence of the people of different races. Action taken by Barisan to curb peaceful protests like the 'Bersih Rally' and 'Hindraf' did not augur well with the common people. This time round the Opposition are not only the Chinese or Indians but from the Malays themselves! Yes even the welfare of the Malays are being neglected and only a handful of Malays (the cronies) are truly benefiting from the progress and prosperity of the Nation.

It is not my intention to go into details as to how all these came about. There are many theories so to say. What I am looking for, hoping for, praying for from the depths of my heart and as a truly born and bred Malaysian Chinese who loves this Nation and refused to allow this God given Blessed land to be abused and taken down by irresponsible, self-serving politicians in this coming Election and that will be :-

1. Fair and Just Government.


2. A Government that will not run on racial lines like UMNO, MCA or MIC.


3. Government that truly have the poor, minority citizens of Malaysia at heart.


4. Upholding our Constitution laid down by the fore-fathers without fear or favour.


5. Clean and transparent and serious about viping out corruption in all sectors.

With such foundational principles of governing a country I strongly believe that peace, prosperity and unity will come about as a natural progression. Yes there is hope for Malaysia and so please help us all dear God!

I thought never in my life will I see a Tornado in Malaysia! I did not see it personally but some folks down in Klang, which is about 20 Km from where I lived saw the unfolding of a drama in the sky. Malaysia is very blessed in that we are out of the volcanic belt in South-East-Asia as well as the Typhoon or Tornado belt as well. Due to drastic climatic changes world wide, we are now not so sure that we will not experience such natural disasters like earth quake, tsunami, tornado etc.

We had experienced the effects of the Asian Tsunami in 2006. It hit Penang, Langkawi but the damaged was not severe like in Phuket, Acheh or Sri Lanka. We often felt the tremors of earth quakes in Sumatra. Now the tornado is very near to us! Here are the photos captured by someone on the spot.

Noticed that the people were standing around to watch! I guess they had never experienced a Tornado before so they did not know the devastating effects tornadoes have! When the Asian Tsunami hit Penang, the people on the beach were standing around curiously looking at the waves coming in! I guess since we in Malaysia never experienced such things so we just did not realized the danger.