Nevermind that he didn’t get any of the main awards. To be even listed amongst participants from other Commonwealth countries was indeed an achievement worth shouting :

Congratulation again, Mae!

Only this week I am stationed in the office most of the time. I took this opportunity to get Raya outfits for Nafis, Nukman & Aina.

I once blogged about the Raya mood at Kompleks PKNS. For this Raya, I want to show the Plaza Alam Sentral this Ramadhan (Maybe I’ll capture the Raya mood at SACC Mall next year’s Ramadhan? I hope I get to see next year’s Ramadhan).

The view of the lobby as I go up the escalator:

And the view as I went down the escalator:

And hence I end my blog here by wishing all my Muslim readers SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDIL FITRI, MINTA MAAF ZAHIR DAN BATIN!!

Today is my last working day. I’ll be off tomorrow until Monday, yeah!!!!!!!

On Wednesday (8th September 2010) night, there’ll be “New Moon Sighting” activities by the various religious bodies. There are rumours that this years Eid (Raya) could be on Thursday and not Friday as initially understood. These rumours will be answered only on Wednesday night, when it ‘s cofirmed whether we will be celebrating on Thursday or Friday.

I told a few colleagues that to reduce our enxiety, let’s check the times of moon set and sunset for Wednesday evening.

After googling for “moon set sunset Malaysia”, we came across this  site: http://www.timeanddate.com/

I checked for the sunset time for Wednesday (8 September 2010) and got this:

And for the moon set, I got this:

As we can see, on Wednesday, the sun will set at 7.15pm, while the moon will set at 7.05pm. To get a new moon, the sun has to set BEFORE the moon. So, analytically (Malay: kiraan falaq), there will be NO NEW MOON on Wednesday night.

On the other hand, on Thursday night, the sun will still set at about 7.15pm, but the moon will set at 7.56pm. That’s a good 41 minutes away. Hence we should be able to see a clear crescent that night.

So, my dear friends, after studying these tables, when do you think our Raya (Eid) will be? *wink*

If we really celebrate Raya on Thursday what is your conclusion?

Day 2 was “walking around Downtown Haikou” Day. Too lazy to blog here. If you think that you want to know more about Haikou, please feel free to read DH’s blog here.

Remember Hainanese chicken rice? Or Hailam mee? I guess those food originate from this island… Oh, BTW, Hainan = Hailam .

Now, back to me, DH and I caught the 6.50am flight leaving LCCT (KLIA) this morning, and we landed at Meilan International Airport about 3hours 15 mins later. Apart from 1 Mat Salleh, and 1 Malaysian Indian, we were the only other non-Chinese passengers!  When I say Chinese, I mean both the Chinese from China as well as Malaysian Chinese.  Just after we disembarked, 1 Malaysian Chinese greeted as, “Holiday?”, and DH said “yes” in return. I jokingly asked him “Balik Kampung?” (Going back to your roots) and he smilingly  nodded, signally his eyes to an old lady ( I think she’s his mum) .

Sometimes I wonder, IF I am a billionaire, I think I can come here and announce that I am looking for my biological relatives. I bet there would be crowds of Hainanese who’d queue for the DNA tests, to see if we are related, hahahaha! But alas, I am just an ordinary person who doesn’t have assets worth shouting/sharing!

Now, back to this trip… It’s a short trip – we are staying here for only 2 nights. We only plan to walk round the busy (oh, did I say busy? The streets do not look busy!) streets today and tomorrow before heading back to Malaysia on Saturday.

The following are some shots taken from the cab on our way to the hotel (from the airport).

A lot of palm trees:

Street lights that are both wind-powered and solar-powered? :

Wide and clean roads:

On a bridge:

And finally the view of one of the main streets, from our hotel room:

KTMB hotline is 1-300-88-5862

Getting through the line is very fast, but getting someone to actually answer your call is a real joke!

Try it yourself, and you know what I mean…

I visited KTMB’s website:

Aftergoing through a few pages, I was not happy with the information. I needed more, so I called their Hotline. Their hotline is definitely very very cold!

A few attempts failed. The calls just ended up being terminated.  I got similar outcomes when I tried the number a few weeks ago to enquire the latest ETS service.

This year, Shanny is my Birthday X-change partner. For the exchange, we need to send to our partner some gift, preferably hand-made.

Remember the tatted bookmarks I produced some time ago:

I could not disclose then, but the blue one was meant for Shanny.

I also made this gold-filled 9Malay: suasa) chain for her, using the stones that I bought at a shop in Kelana Jaya Mall:

As for the stash (we needed to add at least 3 stash), I opted for a cross-stitch kit that I bought some time ago (Oh, no! I forgot to snap a pic of it). I hope the kit qualifies for the 3 stash types, because it has thread and fabric. I also added a piece of cotton to the package, hence the final package looks like this:

Shanny, I meant to add in a Japanese paper fan, when wrapping them I totally forgot about it! .

So, Shanny, I hope you like what I’ve got you. And I also wish you a wonderful birthday – may all your wishes come true!

Hope to see you again when you come back to Malaysia, ya!

Laast Saturday (24th July 2010), after the visit to Mae’s school (to collect his mid-year results), we decided to stop by at Leman Dawi Cendol again.

We saw some RTM people shooting some kids’ program, with a young girl interviewing Mr Leman Dawi himself:

We just went on to enjoy our cendols.

Being a jovial person, Mr Leman Dawi continued to greet his patrons once the shooting was over. He even came to talk to us:

While filling up the brown sugar container, he kept on telling us about the country, the area of a particular state, etc, etc.. What caught my attention was how Johor got the name. In almost ONE breathe, he said that the word Johor came from the Arabic word Johar, which means jewel!

Mr Leman even came closer to Aina to show her his books and notes that he always keeps in the pockets of his apron. He even showed some facts from his little notbook:

while Nafis looked on:

Sometimes Mr Leman can be too loud, but his command of the Malay language is really good, especially when he recites the pantun and sajak,

After having at least additional helpings on top of the 5 bowls we ordered (1 bowl for each of us), we finally said goodbye to Mr Leman and continued our journey down south to Muar. There were other new arrivals who were more than happy to see us emptying the table .

Mae will still be  in that school until the end of this year, so I guess I’ll get to have one or 2 more cendol visits here in the future.

We started at 8.15am, feeling fresh:

We walked from Silverpark to the “loop road” and took a right turn to start a clock-wise walk.

We stopped at a few places, including the entrance to Bishop’s Trail and a bend we call “Eucalyptus Corner”:

There is a eucalyptus tree, whose leaves would give out the refreshing smell (similar to the minyak angin smell) from it’s eucalyptus oil in them.

We proceeded to Glenn House (where they shot the Petronas F1 commercial) which I think still belongs to KTMB :

We wanted to have nasi lemak for brekkie at the nearby stall, but unfortunately it was closed .

I always like the view of the golf course:

We continued our walk until we came to the clock tower, where a photo session is always recommended, especially for firt-timers:

while regulars like me just looked on:

The mat salleh lady behind me was waiting patiently for her turn to pose at the clock tower. No first visit to Fraser’s Hills is complete without a pose at this land mark!

Eventually we headed to the mosque. We were lucky that the newly refurbished cafe near the mosque was open for business!

Nice embience, really:

After the nice breakfast (no pic, photograper was busy indulging himself, hahaha!!), we decided to try the Hemmant Trail, after which we proceeded to Silverpark.

After a nice shower, DH and I took the 12 noon “down flow” to  come home while Aisyah and the gang continued to stay until they checked out later in the afternoon.

So, last Saturday (17th July 2010), despite me feeling knackered (and missing my Needlecrafts meet in Ipoh)  we went there for an overnight stay.Furthermore DH also had to meet up with someone there.

Nik carries a blog about the meet here.

My friend, A had told me much earlier that she was coming up too, because her niece had booked an apartment in Silverpark. When she told me about it, I didn’t promise her anything, because (as I told her), I was supposed to go to Ipoh, and will only detour to Fraser’s Hills on our way back, if we were up to it.

Leaving home just before 11am, we managed to catch the (1.00pm-1.40pm) uphill flow and by 2pm we were busy cleaning the apartment.

Here’s a shot of my Lady in Red near the Selangor Dam. No, I didn’t drive the car that weekend. Only posed for the photo shot .

We were relieved to find there was no more leaking in the lounge, but we found out that there was sipping water at the corner of our bedroom:

On close inspection, we found saw some broken roof tiles for the lower unit, and suspected the same thing for our roof.

DH immediately contacted En Yatim from the resort, who soon came to repair the roof below:

g

Managed to contact Aisyah in the late afternoon. She came over with her gang. Here’s a shot at our balcony:

We went outside, and DH managed a few more shots.

Of them, “trying” my car:

Us chatting:

We even spotted a bird on a branch of the Australian bottle-brush:

(I’ve trying unsuccessfully to upload this one pic!)

I didn’t offer dinner to them because I simply had nothing in the apartment. They told me they brought ingredietnts for steamboat,  and invited us instead ot their unit. DH wanted to check the new food court area, so we declined and ended having our dinner at the new place (with many familiar faces/operators).

Later that night, when I went to the resort lobby to get access ti their Wifi (hence Internet), I came across Aisyah and the gang again. This time we decided to rent the karaoke room for 1 hour (RM for 1 hour). We were told that (at 9pm)  it was already closed, but after persuatuon from us, the girls at the counter and the guys who were in charge of the karaoke room agreed  .

I sms-ed DH to tell him that I was in the karaoke room, but when he came, I had already finished the rendition of “Doa Buat Kekasih” with Aisyah, hahaha! So, he only managed this photo: