Kuala Kangsar, Here I come!

It was a tiring journey straight from work to Kuala Kangsar last evening. In fact I slept most of the way, then straight to sleep again upon reaching here. Friday has always been busy for me, with the quick ward round before starting my clinic. The clinic usually run straight through lunch, when I sheepishly made my exit for the Jumaat Prayers. I also sometime needed to come back after prayers, or worst still had to create a fuss in order to go for prayers.

For yesterday, I had to something extra since Habibah had to leave early and Edmund still in Klang. I also had to give a tutorial to the Oncology Trainees after which I had to run back to perform some procedure in the ward. Luckily I did not have to do the driving. We had the family driver doing that.

Morning walkI had an early dinner on reaching home. We were stuck in the jam however getting into the PLUS toll plaza at Jalan Duta. Once that was done, we only did one toilet stop. By the time we reached Ipoh, both Idlan and Irfan were asleep. We finally reached Kuala Kangsar at 10.45. Unpacked, then I went straight to sleep, and only woke up during the Suboh athan this morning.

Breakfast timeFather-in-law and his morning newspaperPuan Anita had to do some business this mooring, so I was at the kampung home with my two boys and maid. Still planning what to do for the afternoon. I was keen to drive up to Penang but I was not sure if the boys can cope. We will see to that later. In the meantime, I had been reading the first few chapters of 'Superfreakonomics'. It was part economics, part satire, but very sharp observation on the things that happens in our life today and why certain things happened so. There was a part explaining that prostitutes are more likely to sleep with a policeman than to end up in jail, all pretty common sense stuff but interesting read none the less.

Time to chill with the bookIt's Superfreakonomics Time!Will keep everyone updated with our plans for later. Penang sounded a good idea ….

Heading to Kuala Kangsar for the Weekend

Since my father-in-law cannot make it for the recent doa selamat in Kuala Kangsar, he decided to spend the coming weekend over there. Personally speaking I was quite keen to go as well. Puan Anita was game with the idea but unfortunately Irfan was down with fever today with runny nose.

Anita sneakily took Irfan to see our family Doctor - who my boys refer to as Uncle Lim - to get him on antibiotics. After he was all drugged up, Irfan was running around. Now I am worried about Idlan, but fear not. Anita got the doses of antibiotics for Idlan as well on stand by! I am sure all doctors have their own opinion when it comes to antibiotics news. Some avoid them at all cost considering the potential harm they may cause. Me, I am never very keen. I tend to leave the fever on for at least 48 hours, or the colour of their sputum changes. Put it another way, I will let Anita ask me about antibiotics three times before I agree with her .... Yes! I am cruel at that!

So, we got ourselves all packed up tonight. I have a full day ahead tomorrow with the clinic in the morning, followed by a session with the Oncology Trainees right after Friday prayers. I might be too tired to drive alone tomorrow, therefore one of the driver will do it for us. I'll be tweeting all the way there.

Bakugan = bersepah!

Nowadays, I can't walk around my living room without stepping onto one of these. It's a craze that my children have been having for the last few months, collecting these little round things, called Bakugan.

Buying some more in the bag!They have a magnetic mechanism which releases the spring to make the round ball pop into the various characters when they land on metal surfaces. Quite neat trick. The original ones last a long time and have really robust mechanism. The problem is, they go for RM20 each! Not cheap! So far, they have not destroyed many and over the last 6 months, I think we accumulated more than 30 of these! 

Should Have Concentrated More

Exhibit A - Dented the area above the wheel guard and the door also needed some work. Mud guard needed changing as well!As it goes, I am quite a decent driver. And my specialty is parking in tight areas. I don't do fast driving though. So, if you are in the middle of coronary or are in labour, forget about me being behind the wheel to get you to hospital fast. But once you reach there, I can come in handy when you need the car parked. Well, that myth, at least to Puan Anita disappeared yesterday after a kissing incident I had with a giant concrete pole - not my fault, it was the fault of the pole for being there in the first place.

Exhibit B - At the entrance. Pick-up tickets, sharp bend to the left ..... errr! Can I sue Bangsar Village?After picking up the parking ticket, the entrance to the car park at Bangsar Village II swerve hard to the left. I was behind the wheel of the CRV and accidentally clipped the back end, near the rear wheel onto the pole. An almighty snap, and the estimate at the bodywork shop was RM1600! Can't claim from insurance as well as it was clearly my fault! Well ..... should have concentrated more I guess!

Incidence at the Neighborhood

Malaysians are generally very accommodating. However lately, it has been very clear that we as a society are being taken advantage off. Unfortunately it is a two-way thing. We are just by nature very welcoming. We open our borders to travelers and tourist. The term tourist now extends to 'health tourism' and 'education tourism'. There are currently so many foreign students in Klang Valley especially that certain neighborhood has been taken over by these 'students'.

One of my colleague had been blighted by this problem since what he thought was a good offer to buy out a unit of condominium near to UMMC. It turned out that his immediate neighbors, both vertically and horizontally are foreigners. They are 'students' at nearby colleges and being 'student' they like to party. Not to mention a rather lower standard of hygiene and selective deafness should you want to take up issues against them. He was having miserable time but had already invested too much time and money to move away. The 'students' are mainly from Africa and judging from their attitude, they either don't deserve to come here to come over to study, or we are so desperate to get money off them that we are willing to take the baggage that come with them along as well.

Here, where I live near Taman Melati, we have plenty of students from the Middle East and North America, coming over to study at UIA. The thing is, they don't come alone. They take with them their family and parents. Looking at the condition they are staying in at the flats around here makes one wonder if they can really afford the tuition and accommodation for everybody. As far as I am concerned, with their visa status, they are prohibited from working. Today, we caught a group of them trying to break into our neighbour's house red-handed. Before we can do anything, they ran away in their car. I doubt should we be able to get to them, we were probably likely going to be beaten up. These lot are big and strong.

In the last few months, there have been a few incidences similar to this but not to our immediate neighborhood. Our community here decided to hire a group of RELA conscript as security men guarding the entrances and exits. Since then, there have been no break-in reported, until today. We think that this is due to the school being opened hence more car moving in and out of the area. It was no coincidence that all this happened during daytime. 

In Medicine, we were always preached that prevention is better than cure. I think it is about time that action be taken to curtail the influx of these 'students' into our local colleges and institution who clearly do not deserve such placement. In the last year alone, I had three such students admitted into UMMC with complications of HIV when their medical check-ups upon entering Malaysia stated that they were HIV negative. Visa can certainly be bought and our Immigrations are definitely tied up to do other things than to check up on these lot. We seemed to be more concern about Indonesians and Bangladeshis coming over into the country, when the majority were here to make a good honest living. Then again, I don't make the rules .....