Is it Hazy?

Woke up this morning and thought that the sun was a bit dull this morning. Maybe the report on the cool wave going to hit Malaysia might be true.

Bracing myself for cold weather was one thing, but haze was a completely different thing altogether.

As long as it won't be causing problem to my boys breathing and we were free to roam in the park, I could cope with that....

Breakfast for One

The boys had already left for school early today. And today would be the last day of school until the Chinese New Year. A long break for them. Again.

Very likely there would be havoc from tonight onwards. I would be on call tomorrow, so the party would have to start later.

For the time being, Anita had been hard at work organising Irfan's birthday party. It looked like everything should be finalised by Monday.

Looking forward to the party.

Hipster Walk

I finished my afternoon round early yesterday - I don't have afternoon clinics on Tuesdays - and left the hospital early. There were people doing some repairs at the apartment with my maid keeping an eye on things.

I decided to go do some errands and take my camera out as well.

Of all places, I ended up at Pavilion and Low Yat. And there were plenty of people there. But contrast that to weekends, there were not many hipsters and teenagers carrying their oversized DSLR round the place. It was just me....

And the weather was great. Great until ingot a phone call to return to the hospital for an emergency admission.

But I had a couple of hours to burn. Coffee and ice cream at the cafe, and just going around Low Yat checking what was new.

You could tell that there was nothing much going on when the main foyer at Low Yat was showcasing beddings. I knew this was Chinese New Year and all, but this ain't no Parkson! What wer were they thinking?

No new gadget to have a look at, just old stuff. The camera lens I wanted to buy was still not in stock. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Bukit Bintang instead.

Still trying to figure out who's idea it was to turn Low Yat into a bedding store ....The traffic back to Subang was surprisingly reasonable with the traffic police doing their job making sure the flow was good. Took me around 30 minutes to get from Pavilion to SJMC. Hmmm.... I must do this again!

Stay Extended

Instead of leaving the apartment to return to Gombak last Sunday, we decided to extend the stay until after Chinese New Year. The fact that the boys' school would be closed for almost ten days during the CNY period sealed the decision.

And I was happy with that.

That would make planning for Irfan's birthday easier to manage, and with me being on call during the CNY period, less headache for me.

Next thing would be slowly buying stuffs to fill up the apartment. The place was still bare. Homey touches desperately needed....

Another Setback

Let me be honest, I wasn't expecting much from the visit to Stamford Bridge. All I was asking was a good account of ourselves. To a certain extend we got that at the beginning of the game. And things began to unravel the moment Eto'o got the lucky looping deflection over de Gea. We were missing the clinical edge at the bottom and top third of the pitch.

Let's start with the defense. There was no real problem with the personnel. Vidic was solid especially, but the positional play as a unit was suspect. Often, Carrick had to drop deep to pick runners up, while Ashley Young lacked discipline in helping Evra out on the left side of the pitch.

Chelski found plenty of joy rummaging down our left side, and the astute Mourinho saw that from a mile away.

The right side was a bit more secure, due to great understanding between Rafael and Valencia, plus also the help they got from Jones.

The fact that Jones and Carrick being pulled to help the rest of the team allowed Ramires and David Luiz to dominate the centre of the pitch. And they were both adapt at making the simple masses and keeping things ticking while the more creative players do the damage.

Then the final third. Wellbeck and Adnan were a couple of schoolboys for the Chelski defense. They had to find space either deep or on the left to receive the ball. Any long diagonal would be snuffed out easily. At this level, quantity of possession was meaningless and you were unable to make it work. The lack of quality possession just spoke volumes. Put simply, we were unable to hurt them.

I think tactically, we were found out. No point pointing to the return of Rooney and van Persie, as it would not do much unless we deploy the right personnel on the wings. This was where Adnan and Valencia would thrive. And when we were this desperate, we have to play to our strength.

Onward....