NO MORE A BOY'S TOY

As much as I hate to admit it (especially to Hubby!), I actually love my car. Yes, I enjoy driving my own car. You must be wondering what car am I driving now... hehehhe... It's just an old car, nothing fancy I swear... it's just a 1996 Honda Civic SO3. Most people recognise it as 2-door (hatchback) EK.

But what makes it so lovable? The fact that it's one of the chase-after cars makes me love it even more... hehehe.. but apart from that, I just love the performance. The 1.8 big Vtec engine adds to the thrill especially after I pay my toll. The exhilaration and anticipation of the "praaaaannnggg" sound every time I leave the toll booth are just indescribable. The highway or empty roads are other avenues for me to floor the gas pedal (I'm not like Hubby who can cilok anywhere anytime!).

Yes... people ask... what do a girl know about cars. You'll be surprised how much this girl knows about her car. I know what Mugen and Spoon are, where Kakimotor and N1 Racing are, what HOC and Zerotohundred are (even PMC!), what AFC and e-manage are. I might be a bit daft when it comes to the history of Honda or Vtec, but I sure do know the generations of Civic quite well.

But of course, I have to bow to Hubby. He's been educating me and filling me up with all the information (sometimes overload!). The education has benefited not only me, but (mostly) him as well coz now he has someone to listen to whenever he talks about his passion and understands it. But the greatest plus point is that he gets most of his gadgets for his beloved blackie in terms of his birthday presents, anniversary presents, father's day presents and if possible for him, all of the public holidays presents.

The minus point for me is very obvious as well. I get car gadgets as well for most of the special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. For a girl like me, sadly, jewelery is a rare thing (not that I fancy them much!).

There are still a lot of work to be done on the car before both Hubby and I are fully satisfied with it. The engine performance is not my concern as I'm happy with it already. Athough Hubby has been feeding me with a lot of ideas on how to make it perform better - like swapping the block, installing ARC radiator (my god... it's so expensive!) and a lot more. But I'm not buying them... Our primary concern now is the body work. We're waiting for the right time when we can swap the EK9 parts with the original ones, the suspension has to be Tien, the spoiler has to be Spoon and the body paint has to be black. We just swapped the exhaust from Vision R to Spoon... so we're almost there... hehehhee...

ieja

A MEETING WITH A CERTAIN KSU

Since I am in-charged of a certain Ministry in the project that I'm involved in right now, a meeting with the KSU is a must in order for us to kick off the project formally in that Ministry. The stories that was fed to us by our project sponsor were somewhat scary... we thought that they were exaggerating. Little that we know that this certain KSU would be our worst nightmare in terms of dealing with high powered people in the government. I have to say that although I've been involved with the Government projects a lot and met with quite a number of KSUs and Ketua Pengarahs, this certain KSU must be the worst among the lot.

Yesterday, we were scheduled for a meeting with him and his team to formally introduce the project to them, at the same time trying to pinch for a kick off. We've been patiently waiting for 2 months for this meeting to happen. Unfortunately, our meeting was conjoined with another project which was already running at that particular Ministry. We were already forewarned by the other project team members of the treatment that they got from that KSU. Even when we met up with some people in one of the departments in the Ministry, we were forewarned of the possible catastrophe that might befall us during the meeting.

So, highly motivated and mentally prepared, and with a couple of rounds of dry-runed presentation with the other team members as well as with the personnel of one of the departments in the Ministry, we thought we were armed and fully prepared.

Round one - the first project team presented their piece. Bang! Bang! Bang! One by one of their slides was shot down by the KSU. Some made sense, while the other comments were just some waste-of-my-time babbling. By the way, the meeting was scheduled at 2.30 pm but started only when the clock almost struck 3. The beating and shooting in round one finished at a little past 6 pm.

Round two - I presented our case. Based on the comments he made in the first round, I had to make a few adjustments to what I wanted to present earlier to minimise the shooting and to ensure that we met his expectations. But after a few slides, the shooting began... started with... "You private sector don't understand our ministry. We are not jakun (out-dated) you know..." and so the lecture began as how his Ministry was ranked among the best, had the best portal, had the best policies, acts and so on...

The mistake was... our slides on the current scenario of what most ministries are facing in terms of their obsolete / unstructured databases to ad-hoc processes within the ministries... of all the 10 situations that we presented, he said we were wrong... how can we possible be wrong (with not even 1 right!) when what we presented was from studies that were done by professionals. Whatever he commented contradicted to what he said in round one. Finding out what the Ministry is doing was an important thing to him for the private sector like us to work hand in hand with them (as what he commented in round one), but when we said that one of the approaches that we would take was to do a study in the Ministry in order to understand their business strategy and processes, we were told off and said to be wasting the staff's precious time. I only got to present our case for 10 minutes and the rest was his time to bla.. bla.. bla.. bla till 7 pm!

Well... what I wanted to say here is that when you are "up" there, a little modesty would take you a long way instead of being arrogance and not admitting it. Listen to people first before you form your own judgment. And if you have any negative thoughts, please keep it to yourself, and be open-minded of what people are offering to you. Being realistic and thinking out of the box help as well. Put whatever negative feelings behind when you have a meeting with outsiders because whatever comment you make will reflect you as an individual, as well as your Ministry as a whole.

If I had the chance to say my piece to him, I would tell him to grow up and take a walk out of his cocoon.

ieja

PUTTING MY BELOVED CAT TO SLEEP

Yesterday was an emotional day for Hubby and I. We had to put our dear Scooby to sleep... Yes... our 9 year-old local breed four-legged first son.

Nine years ago, Hubby (my boyfriend back then) and I collected a about-week-old kitten under the stairs of his apartment. We nursed and fed him. Involuntarily and with no unconscious effort, the bond took root. Since he was afraid of every little thing and sound he heard in the house, we decided to call him Scooby. The name suited him well. Although it took him a while to adjust to the love and tender loving care that we gave him, he became very attached to us and replied to our calls only . When Iqie arrived, Scooby was intimidated at first, but after a while he was OK... getting out of Iqie's way most of the time. But Iqie liked to chase after him a lot.

A few weeks ago, he went out and missing. We thought that he was kidnapped by someone. We went looking for him around our condo, calling his name in the hope that we would hear his voice calling back to us. To our relieve, he came back home after two days of futile search. He was bruised and the cuts that he had were pretty bad. So Hubby and I nursed him again with antiseptic and gamat. He became aloof since then, licking the medicine off his cuts.

When the cuts didn't heal at all after a few weeks, we sort of knew something was not right. So, yesterday Hubby and I took a half day leave and took him to the vet. The bad news came from the vet, Scooby was infected with a disease (I forgot the name of it as the news was too shocking for me to even digest!). Ergo, the vet advised us to put him to sleep, for the sake of the baby that is coming and the whole family. He said the disease could infect us human and the consequences would be bad. We could be hospitalised. He even wanted us to disinfect the whole house. And we did all those.

We were given time to discuss. At first, it didn't hit us. When we simply had to face our pet's mortality, it's like somebody had turned on the waterworks. I'm ashamed to admit here that I actually cried shamelessly in front of the vet, his assistant and two other customers who came in with their dog. I told the vet that I wanted to sit in when "it" happened. But again, he told me not to (what a wise advice.. or else I wouldn't be able to sleep for a week!). He said it would be too painful (not to Scooby) to me.

It took only a few seconds, and Scooby was gone! Lying motionless on the examination table...

I just can't describe how Hubby and I felt. But what I can say is that Hubby was all red eyes, a significant sign to show that he shared my sadness...

ieja

I'M WORRIED

It's getting worse every day. With the arrest, roadblocks and other things, I don't feel safe anymore. It would be different if I was still single with or without a boyfriend. But now that I have my own family, a son and another one coming, what is happening in Malaysia is worrisome.

I hate politics.. I guess I've said that enough times. I've tried my best not to talk about it. But the situations nowadays require everyone to be in the loop of the topic. That is what I want to avoid. Thus, most of my thoughts in this blog focus more on safe topics... I need to focus my thoughts on safe topics so that I won't be inspired to talk, debate or even pick fights with those who are too extreme.

I better start thinking of more safe topics from now on...

ieja

MY (WEIRD) COLLECTION

I like to collect. Well... in a way, most people do. But, the things that I collect are sometimes things that even I can't explain why someone would want to collect them. When I was studying, I used to keep things that are dear to me, or things that make me happy. I have a full box of postcards that I collected throughout my stay in the UK. They are everything from free ads postcards, postcards of places that I've been to, postcards with interesting and funny pictures or wordings or saying... you name it, I might have it.

When I look back at some of my collections, among them are small toys that often make me smile, I remember the old times. The fun times that I had with friends and other people... The times that I believe I would never have again...

But the problem now is that I'm too caught up with work and other things that I rarely have time to collect again, or even to enjoy them. They are being hauled away in boxes and I have even forgotten which box had I kept them. I supposed if these are the things that used to make me happy, I ought to revisit them once a while. But that "once a while" has never been in my daily agenda. Bad enough that I kept them away hidden in a box somewhere, but to stop collecting them?

I think I need to continue collecting these items. To restart my old hobby. They don't cost much anyway... and they make me happy. I wonder what my son would think of that... hehhehe. He may not be able to express his delights in words yet, but his actions would be enough for me to know if he approves my restarting of the old hobby.

ieja

YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE

You are my sunshine my only sunshine

You make me happy when skies are grey
You'll never know dear how much I love you
So please don't take my sunshine away

That's the song given and sung to me by Hubby. But when my son was born, that song (without we even realising it) was passed on to him. He is our sunshine. I realise that I haven't written about him in my blog and I guess it's high time I opened my private life to (just a little bit) to this cyberworld. Not for others to take a peek, but more for him (when he knows how to use the Internet that is) to read what his Mommy had written about him here...

During my pregnancy with Iqie (his full name is Rifqie Shaqirin), Hubby and I were eager. We recorded every development and kept all the scanned pictures. We read a lot of materials and subscribe to a few newsletters. As first timers, we had a lot of questions and worries, but alhamdulillah there was no complication or whatsoever during the pregnancy. The delivery though was a bit tough. I had to spend 2 nights before Iqie was born due to low amniotic fluid (oligohydramnios). Then, I was in the delivery room for 6 hours before he finally decided to come out. The doctor had to use forcep delivery to help him out. But he was OK, crying his lungs out demonstrating his vocal power. The rest was history.

As he grew up, Hubby and I were fascinated by what a child can do to you as parents. All of a sudden, you have this midget to look after (I had a few pets before, but that was different...), how we had to adjust our lifestyle, financial arrangements and a lot more to suit him. In some way, I even put my career on hold for a while... And all these were done out of love... We had pictures of him taken (Flickr) and videos recorded for almost every occasion (YouTube).

Now, he is almost two. And we are still fascinated with his development (well... as first timers I guess...) and with ourselves as well. So far... we haven't screwed up... hhehehe (not yet maybe). But with what's to come... there will be a lot of other things to learn and discover for us as parents and for him.

My concern now is how is he going to take on a job as a big brother when his little brother is born...

ieja

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MALAYSIA?

Whenever I read the front page of a newspaper, there will always be new news of corruption, allegations or other nonsense political related headlines. They make me sick - enough to make me stop reading newspapers altogether. What is happening to Malaysia?

I have told enough times that I hate politics. But nowadays, it's everywhere... what's with Anwar's new so-called "recycled" dirty political tactic of sodomy allegation, Najib's not-so-secret affair plus sodomy activity with the deceased Altantuya, with anti Pak bodoLa's move of getting enough signatures in a petition to ask him to step down, with anti Khairy's blog that claims that he's the one plotting every evil deed and the sole reason why Malaysia is in it's sickening state... and many more to add to the list.

As sickening as I find it everyday, I just can't go about doing my business without thinking what is going to happen to Malaysia. Who is going to be our saviour. Apparently, I don't see any public nor political figure that can lead us out of this mess. And I'm worried. Not only for me and my family, but for my son and his soon-to-come little brother, and other fellow Malaysians.

As a non-political extremist or supporter, I know shit about the implications of all this mess to our social and economic stands. But what I know is that it's not good at all for the nation to have this kind of turmoil. I sense (as an oblivious person most of the time) that there is no more peace, security and sense of belonging anymore. That scares me sometimes. And I also know that if there should be any foreign interference (by this, I mean the IMF) in our nation's financial activities, then there would be hell to pay in future.

So, who should I or rather we fall back to? I don't see any eligible candidate at all... And that's scary... so, what I'm going to do is to plan my finance cleverly so that when the bad time hits us hard, my family and I will be prepared for it. I also see that there is a need for everyone, not only me to have a contingency plan, well... just in case if the political situation gets worse and the extremists get more extreme in their actions. Migrating would be an option... hehheh but a damn expensive one... or... a sponsor to continue my study overseas is not a bad idea, and take the whole family along... yupp... why not...

ieja