Xmas at Pavilion

Believe it or not, Malaysia has 4 of the top 15 biggest shopping mall in the World. And they were all around KL. Pavilion is not one of them, but it is the one I frequent most. Not sure it is a fact Malaysian should be proud about though ….

Anyhow, I plan to blog about Xmas decorations here, so bear with me.

The decorations for Pavilion is up. But again it was a bit of a let down compared to the number they pulled a few years back - the one with the fake snow by the main entrance. That was just enthralling. Maybe the economic downturn had hit them and they decided to scale down.

The obligatory Santa was there, sat under a huge Xmas tree. The main attractions was however was his helper - the elves mainly. Cute animatronic, a ferris wheel, and that was about it.

Can we trust this?

They have to start getting more original, not necessarily grand. So, I would be keen to see if Sunway Pyramid and 1Utama can top this one out …..

A Night In

We decided to forgo the traditional Friday Night outing this weekend. For the last few nights after staying at the apartment, we hardly stayed in. I had been shuttling the family back and forth from Gombak, while loaning our maid to Anita’s Mum. Tonight, we got our maid in, and Anita cooked at the apartment. I would be on call tomorrow, so might as well enjoy a cosy night with the family at the apartment.

Don’t ask me how long it would stay cosy though as my boys had already started creating a mess. The school holidays had started but for Sri Utama, it would be another week before they start their holiday. And straight away, we would be doing a bit of traveling to Singapore.

So, night in. The TV is on. Dinner was waiting. A nice cup of coffee after that …. Happy Friday evening all …..

The Orange Snapper

I have been eyeing the Windows phone for a while now. It started with the HTC One Windows version, which unfortunately was hard to come by in Malaysia.

Then came Windows 8 and the 1520. Great but the software still felt sluggish although the camera feature looked interesting.

The last Nokia I owned was the 9300i Communicator back in 2006. Before that, it was the excellent N73. Great 3.2 MP camera with a feature called Nokia LifeBlog which when the phone were connected to a PC, would upload the photos and the SMSs onto a program akin to a diary. A great feature. There was no Mac equivalent unfortunately.

Even back then, the camera on Nokia had been half-decent.

Then with the announcement of Lumia 930 and Windows 8.1, my mind was made up. And the camera was just simply amazing, with a good built-in photo editor which made post-editing and posting onto Flickr a doddle. Dare I suggest that the snaps were better than my main phone, the iPhone 6 Plus.

There were three options as far as the photographs were concerned, the small 5MP jpeg, larger 20MP jpeg and 20MP DNG file - a RAW version essentially. Even the 5 MP looked great. I only tried manipulating then lather's files using Aperturebut found the whole process - transferring and processing - rather time-consuming. I prefer just to snap, edit and upload.

How about the other features? The app store wee's still pretty basic but there were the usual Facebook, twitter and Instagram. As long as there was push email and Google Calendar integration, I was fine. Not quite as much of a productivity tool as my iPhone, but it had potential. I wouldn't mind it as a second phone. So, the Android had to stay on the tablet for the time being.

All the photos, apart from the top were taken with the Lumia 930.

Epic Fogging

It was intense. Even though we get the notices and got the children in their room, well ventilated, the boys still ended up puking up their tea. I had some proper sore throat. It was not a good idea to be indoors when the fogging took place in the end.

Apparently, in the past few weeks a few of our fellow residents had been down with dengue. The regular scheduled fogging clearly was not doing the trick. The management decided to do it at close quarters this time with the diggers going to every floor. Those interested could let them into their unit for fogging.

The notices were outWe allowed them to come into our kitchen, dining area, living room and the main corridor. It was left oily at the end, needing to be mopped once the dust settled. That also meant no cooking for tonight as they fume did not exactly stimulate appetite.

Straight to the showers with Irfan especially feeling sick. Idlan felt a bit breathless, but it was more panicking than wheezing.

So, never stay indoors next time the fogging came around ......

Last Day and a Half

The weekend passed me by super fast. On call on Friday, hence I was floating on the clouds all Saturday. But not at home resting though. I was at Saujana Hotel in Ara Damansara attending a workshop by Ramsay Healthcare about steering the organisation in the coming years.

At the workshop went on all Sunday, while I was still doing rounds and covering the ward all day.

The first activity on Saturday afternoon was to build something from Lego bricks. I had Google to tell me what to do ...Coffee fuelled Luckily the workshop venue was only 10 minutes away from SJMC.

The workshop was a heated affair at times and we got plenty of thoughts across over the couple of days. Skepticism still ruled as we left the event yesterday afternoon with the Doctors crossing their fingers hoping that their plights would not fall into deaf ear, appreciating that the management may have their hands tied in terms of ceding on the points agreed during the workshop.

I was in the pick group. Real men wear pink after all.Group discussion, with even the CEO joined in.Dato' Rozalli was our group's designated speakerOur action plan. Hopefully not our "action only" plan.But a couple of days taken away from my weekend was a drag though. And I would be on call again next weekend. Luckily Anita and the boys had already moved to the apartment as the school holidays approaching, saving me from the 3 day drives across the hospitals on Monday and Wednesday.

Time to get ready for work then. Happy Monday.