I’m working on a guidebook listing fun stuff and interesting places for kids to visit.  The age group is from 3 to 18.  The focus is on activities around the Klang Valley but I will also be listing popular places from the rest of Malaysia.  If there is a place or activity that you think should be included in the book, please let me know via the comment box or send me an email at tehlydia@yahoo.com.  Tell me what you like about the place or activity which could be anything ranging from cooking classes to art to horse riding to museum visits to hiking etc.  Anything goes as long as it’s suitable for kids.

Call me fickle. But I can’t do without this blog. So I’m going to switch it on again. There are stuff that I can’t put into the other blog without ruining its focus as my ‘media gallery’. However I won’t be blogging everyday, more like once or twice a week at most. This blog will also serve as my bulletin board so to speak.

Hell rider

Last week I saw a hell rider on the road. The young man had one hand on his  handle bar. The other hand was curled around a BABY seated in front of him. Though the little tot could sit upright, he didn’t look like he was older than one year. The biker slowed down when the light turned red, then when the coast was clear, he zoomed off again. A policeman on a motorbike happened to be waiting at the red lights too. Off he went after him. Yes!

It was my turn to go and I couldnt’ see if the policeman managed to nab the culprit. I hope he did and summoned him for endangering the lives of other people. If that young man wants to kill himself, that’s his business. But that baby there deserves a chance to live to a ripe old age. Yeah, the little tyke might enjoy the feel of the wind rushing against his face but the joy ride is for nought if the life is snuffed out of him prematurely or if he ends up crippled and maimed in an accident.

Some people are so irresponsible. Have you encountered reckless motorcyclists such as these?

This blog has turned into an announcement portal. There are so many things on my plate now there’s hardly time to update the blog with personal anecdotes. I’ve also outgrown the addiction of blogging and don’t feel the pressing need to ‘commune’ with it as often as I did at the beginning or blog-hop all over the blogging fraternity.

It is time to pull the plug on this blog. I want to thank all the loyal readers who pop in here regularly. I feel that I’ve let you down by my sporadic posting and it’s better if I don’t string you along any more.

But I am keeping my Media Gallery blog at Blogspot for announcements and press clippings. Please check it out periodically if you want to find out about my future book releases. As mentioned earlier, I plan to run a contest for my next book, Stretching Your Dollar$ and $ense – More than 300 money-saving tips for anyone and everyone. This will still take place, but at the other blog.

While we’re at announcements, I might as well publicize my next event here. I will be having a book talk at Read Malaysia 2009.

Date : 31 May 2009, Sunday

Time : 4.00 to 5.00 pm

Place : MIECC, Mines Resort City (Stage 1)

Topic : 50 ways with words – how to improve your English and have fun, too.

Hope to see some of you there. Bye for now.

Catch me on Astro channel 501 tomorrow. I have been invited as a guest on U-Wartawan. Delivered in Bahasa Malaysia, U-Wartawan is an interactive current affairs show that gives viewers the chance to participate in news reporting using information and communications technology (ICT).

The programme, hosted by Nazri Kahar, embraces the news from, and views of, the man-on-the-street and bloggers in relation to daily topics of significance to the community and the country.

Aspiring Citizen Journalists may send in their stories on selected topics in a number of ways : via blog, email, facebook, SMS, MMS and video. You can view past segments here.

Program : U-WARTAWAN , Astro AWANI

Topic : “Rakyat Malaysia Tidak Sopan”.

Date : 26^th May 2009, Tuesday

Time : 1000 pm – 1030 pm (live time)

Do you have anything you want to get off your chest about rude Malaysians?

MOE Eponym contest

Congratulations to the 10 winners of the contest held in conjunction with MOE’s 8th anniversary (in alphabetical order):

1) Abg. Redzuan bin Zainuren of Kuching, Sarawak

2) Chen Li Ling of Subang, Selangor

3) Chuah Soon Koun of Puchong, Selangor

4) Fazillah binti Sulaiman of Malacca

5) Bridget Khaw of Klang

6) Lim Yiew Tan of Kuala Lumpur

7) Kenny Ng Yat Sing of Kuala Lumpur

Selvaraju Chidambaram of Klang

9) Sheela a/p M. Unnikrishnan of Klang

10) Tan Ching Ching of Port Klang

Glad to see so many Klangites on the list. Klang Boleh! But Jambatan tak boleh! Hope Eh Poh Nim will give them some cheer as they battle the daily traffic crawl.

If you have been popping by here and going away disappointed that there has been no updates in the past two weeks, thousand apologies. I had been super-busy. My Indonesian cleaning lady who had been coming in once a week for the past ten years or so had been deported by Immigration. So I had to assume some of the heavy-duty cleaning that she had been doing. Though I delegated some of the tasks to the kids, there is still work to be done that I had not been actively doing when Wati was around.

The schedule these days is such that there are more family members eating lunch at home. This means that I have to cook  two meals (lunch and dinner) a day. Previously I packed lunch when there were only two or three of us eating home but this is no longer economical when there are six mouths to feed.

On top of that I have started giving English tuition to my nieces and teaching at a friend’s language institute. Got to supplement the household income. The diving economy has affected my family more than superficially. (Even Mawi is affected – less singing gigs for him now).  I lost some writing jobs but on the bright side, I have at least two books released this year. Do You Wear Suspenders was released this March and my next book, Stretching your Dollar$ and $ense – More than 300 money saving tips for anyone and everyone, has just gone to print. It should hit bookstores in June. I’m also working on a non-fiction guidebook for kids which I’m trying to complete ASAP, hence the protracted silence in this blog.

Life has been pretty hectic of late. Take last Thursday. I took my mother for her regular check up at UMMC. After the appointment I dropped by Damansara hospital to visit a friend’s mum who had broken her thigh bone. By the time I got home, it was after five. I was about to start baking a cheesecake for no. 3’s birthday when I discovered that my sister has not returned my cake mixer. Okay, I’ll mix by hand, I thought. Then I discovered that the lemon in my fridge had gone bad. Okay, I might as well whizz into my sister’s to pick up the mixer and see if she has a spare lemon in the fridge. Fortunately she did. I picked up the stuff (she stays seven minutes away by car but popping in and out takes time) and got home at 6.30. After baking the cake, I prepared dinner. We ate later than usual that day and the cheesecake, which had to be chilled, was only eaten at 10 pm. I didn’t eat the cake as I don’t like cheese. No. 4 has already asked for an Oreo cheesecake for her birthday next month, so I won’t get to eat her cake either.

Friday was another mad rush but came Saturday, no. 2 and I left for Ipoh with some friends. We stayed at a friend’s brand new Lakeside home which was beautifully furnished. It looked like one of those houses you find in glossy magazine pages. On Sunday we drove up to Cameron Highlands to attend another friend’s wedding dinner. We only returned on Tuesday after a relaxing stay at a cosy bungalow. Our meals were cooked by the caretaker : scones with home-cooked strawberry jam, muffins, apple pie and pancakes for breakfast and barbecue at night. It was a much needed break. I feel more relaxed now compared with last week when my nerves were strung tight and I had to keep reminding myself to breathe in and breathe out deeply.

Don’t give up on this blog yet. Stay tuned for another contest which I will run when Stretching your Dollar$ and $ense is released.

No. 3 is heavier than me. He is stout for his age. I’m waiting for his height to shoot up so that the weight will be distributed more evenly and he won’t look so fat. According to him, being fat has its advantages. He told me this story recently.

Today the teachers were all in a meeting and we had to take care of the classes. (He’s a prefect.) There was this boy who was so naughty. He run here and run there and refused to go back to class. So we all chased him. Some go this way, some run that way and we surrounded him. Then he tried to do his kung fu on me. He grabbed me and tried to throw me over his shoulders but he can’t. Haha, that’s the good thing about being fat.

By the way, Amir Muhammad wrote a nice review of Do You Wear Suspenders? in his Pulp Friction column in yesterday’s Malay Mail. Go check it out here.

I hope you have a copy of 23 April’s Star. There’s a contest where you could win a copy of Do You Wear Suspenders? The wordy tales of Eh Poh Nim. Send in your entry quickly. Closing date is 8 May 2009.

Note : The graphics of the book cover has been doctored : the book is not as thick as is depicted here.

The dishrag was lying on the floor. I picked it up and a centipede dropped out from it. I screamed and flung the rag away from me. It landed on the floor rug. I retrieved the dishrag gingerly, and using a broom, I flicked the floor rug away. The centipede was wriggling underneath it. I whacked it twice. My broom broke. Though the blows landed smack on the centipede, there was still some life in it. It continued to writhe around. I swept it up with the broken broom. Then I flushed it down the toilet.

Sorry, centipede. I wouldn’t have killed you if you had stayed outside in your territory. And I broke my very good broom – I’ve had it for such a long time, yet the synthetic bristles are still intact. It cost me RM9! (The price tag was still stuck on the broom). Don’t you know times are bad for us humans. Please communicate via telepathy to your living brethren. Ask them to stay outside in my garden and don’t encroach into my kitchen. Then I don’t have to buy replacement brooms and they get to live.

Conversation at the dinner table :

No. 1 : Did you eat two pieces of kuih?

No. 3 : No, I only eat one piece. How dare you curse me!

Me thinking : Huh? What curse? We don’t curse around here.

No. 2 : Haha, that’s not curse. That’s accused, dong-dong!

I received this in the email from Kathy. The word play is pretty clever and witty.  If anyone knows who wrote this, please let me know so I can credit the author accordingly.

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
He acquired his size from too much pi..

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but
it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

3. She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class
because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a
little behind in his work.

6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.

7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result
in Linoleum Blownapart.

9. Two silk worms had a race.
They ended up in a tie.

10. Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.

11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The
police are looking into it.

12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One
hat said to the other, ‘You stay here, I’ll go on a head.’

14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then
it hit me.

15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said:
‘Keep off the Grass.’

16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a
hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was,
a nurse said, ‘No change yet.’

17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

18. It’s not that the man did not know how to juggle,
he just didn’t have the balls to do it.

19. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a
small medium at large.

20. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is
now a seasoned veteran.

21. A backward poet writes inverse.

22. In democracy it’s your vote that counts.
In feudalism it’s your count that votes.

23. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

24. Don’t join dangerous cults:
Practice safe sects!

Bad timing that American Idol Season 8 and One in a Million Season 3 are being aired at the same time.  The differences between the two productions are oceans wide in terms of talent, scale and professionalism.  Though you are aware of the disparity, if you watch the two shows, say six months apart, you don’t get so rankled.  Last Friday’s (27 March) OIAM episode was particularly bad.  Usually when the camera zooms in on the host, you don’t see the other background activities.  Last week we saw contestants creeping on stage and slinking back stage again.  One guy brought the mic stand with him to the back, then someone else brought it back out.  At one juncture, the contestant (I think it was Rizu) walked right past Marion as she was introducing him!  What a distraction. Totally amateurish.  OIAM needs to buck up.

One in a Million

It seems like the top three contenders are Esther, Tomo and Amylea.  I’m hoping that Esther will win – she’s really talented and dynamic, but if history is anything to go by, I’d rather she take second spot.  Look at the past two seasons’ winners : Suki won over Faizal but the way I see it, Faizal is the one who’s going places.  He’s everywhere : on tv, in the newspapers, concerts etc.  Last year Shila lost to Ayu but where is Ayu?  I hardly hear news of her but I’ve seen Shila on tv and in commercials.  ‘Packaging’ in entertainment is as important as the ‘product’ itself and I think Shila has an edge over Ayu in terms of packaging.

American Idol

I didn’t watch some of the earlier rounds as the scheduling was erratic and some shows were screened at 11.45 pm!  Maybe it’s a deliberate move by 8tv so that viewers will see less of American Idol.  OIAM on the other hand gets primetime slot at 9.30 pm on Fridays.  (In case you’re wondering, I don’t have Astro.  Gasp!)

Some of the more memorable contestants are Adam Lambert, Danny Goke and Lil Rounds.  I like Alexis Grace but she didn’t make it to top 10, boo-hoo.  Adam comes across as a white Michael Jackson.  Danny received a lot of airtime in previous rounds as the AI producers highlighted the loss of his wife. Lil Rounds is a powerhouse but she’s not very different from other black singers with big voices.  One contestant to watch is Matt Giraud.  I only saw him in action in Top 13.  Simon Cowell is right (as he usually is) : the judges haven’t been giving him enough credit for his talent.  They’d been singing the praises of Danny too much and neglecting Matt.  If Matt keeps on performing the way he did for the past few rounds, I think he can make it to the top 2.  His singing is impeccable.  I admit I wasn’t bowled over by him initially but he kind of grows on me.  I think he and Danny might well be this season’s finalists.  Oh, one more person : Anoop Desai.  The fact that he was pulled in as the first ever 13th contestant has to mean something.  he could turn out to be the dark horse or the slumdog that wins..

A word about Kara DioGuardi.  In one word, she is DISPENSABLE.  My kids and I are unanimous on this.  She doesn’t bring anything to AI at all.  The only good thing about her inclusion is that Paula Abdul seems to be making more sensible remarks nowadays.