Hafiy the 3rd

Shaffik and Mini got another boy, another Hafiy (a second name given to the elder siblings and looks like will be given to this one too - Hafiy the 3rd!) Mini gave birth at about 10.20 this morning at a private hospital in Miri. Baby weighed in at 2.9 kg and both baby and mum are doing ok.

Our fifth grandchild and third grandson. The two boys were overjoyed when told that they now have another brother but Haadieya kept missing the point by refering to the baby as 'my baby sister' several times during conversations. By evening she accepted the fact that the baby is her baby brother and not sister. I guess, in her own way, she was psyching herself to accept a baby brother even though she very much wanted a baby sister.

I sat with her after the evening prayers and talked with her about what she would do when the baby comes home in a few days, that baby will be sleeping with mummy alot and that she will have to give way to baby and so on. Oh! she said, "I can still sleep with mummy and baby and I will help feed baby milk, and help baby sleep - demonstrating with her hands how she will do it" very confidently. Her excitement grew as we continued to talk and she reminded me several times that I should not be loud, putting her forefinger to her lips and whispering, "you must not wake baby up. Baby need to sleep and I will talk to mummy very softly" She rambled on and on and on about baby and I did not detect anymore of that baby sister thing. She has got over it I guess.



Hafiy the 3rd, born today at 10.20am

I browsed through to February 2005 in this blog archive when I posted pictures of Haadieya when she was born, and the pictures look almost the same, especially in the eyes region, but thay do not look identical though!!

MKI Ramblings Unlimited
Bintulu

Interesting Life Experience

A friend sent this to me......

From a 97 years old doctor:

At the age of 97 years and 4 months, Shigeaki Hinohara is one of the world's longest-serving physicians and educators. Hinohara's magic touch is legendary: Since 1941 he has been healing patients at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo and teaching at St. Luke's College of Nursing. After World War II, he envisioned a world-class hospital and college springing from the ruins of Tokyo; thanks to his pioneering spirit and business savvy, the doctor turned these institutions into the nation's top medical facility and nursing school. Today he serves as chairman of the board of trustees at both organizations. Always willing to try new things, he has published around 150 books since his 75th birthday, including one "Living Long, Living Good" that has sold more than 1.2 million copies. As the founder of the New Elderly Movement, Hinohara encourages others to live a long and happy life, a quest in which no role model is better than the doctor himself.

Doctor Shigeaki Hinohara JUDIT KAWAGUCHIPHOTO:

Energy comes from feeling good, not from eating well or sleeping a lot. We all remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep. I believe that we can keep that attitude as adults, too. It's best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime.

All people who live long regardless of nationality, race or gender share one thing in common:None are overweight... For breakfast I drink coffee, a glass of milk and some orange juice with a tablespoon of olive oil in it. Olive oil is great for the arteries and keeps my skin healthy. Lunch is milk and a few cookies, or nothing when I am too busy to eat. I never get hungry because I focus on my work.. Dinner is veggies, a bit of fish and rice, and, twice a week, 100 grams of lean meat..

Always plan ahead. My schedule book is already full until 2014, with lectures and my usual hospital work. In 2016 I'll have some fun, though: I plan to attend the Tokyo Olympics!

There is no need to ever retire, but if one must, it should be a lot later than 65. The current retirement age was set at 65 half a century ago, when the average life-expectancy in Japan was 68 years and only 125 Japanese were over 100 years old. Today, Japanese women live to be around 86 and men 80, and we have 36,000 centenarians in our country. In 20 years we will have about 50,000 people over the age of 100...

Share what you know. I give 150 lectures a year, some for 100 elementary-school children, others for 4,500 business people. I usually speak for 60 to 90 minutes, standing, to stay strong.

When a doctor recommends you take a test or have some surgery, ask whether the doctor would suggest that his or her spouse or children go through such a procedure. Contrary to popular belief, doctors can't cure everyone. So why cause unnecessary pain with surgery I think music and animal therapy can help more than most doctors imagine.

To stay healthy, always take the stairs and carry your own stuff. I take two stairs at a time, to get my muscles moving.

My inspiration is Robert Browning's poem "Abt Vogler." My father used to read it to me. It encourages us to make big art, not small scribbles. It says to try to draw a circle so huge that there is no way we can finish it while we are alive. All we see is an arch; the rest is beyond our vision but it is there in the distance.

Pain is mysterious, and having fun is the best way to forget it. If a child has a toothache, and you start playing a game together, he or she immediately forgets the pain. Hospitals must cater to the basic need of patients: We all want to have fun. At St. Luke's we have music and animal therapies, and art classes.

Don't be crazy about amassing material things. Remember: You don't know when your number is up, and you can't take it with you to the next place.

Hospitals must be designed and prepared for major disasters, and they must accept every patient who appears at their doors. We designed St.... Luke's so we can operate anywhere: in the basement, in the corridors, in the chapel. Most people thought I was crazy to prepare for a catastrophe, but on March 20, 1995, I was unfortunately proven right when members of the Aum Shinrikyu religious cult launched a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway. We accepted 740 victims and in two hours figured out that it was sarin gas that had hit them. Sadly we lost one person, but we saved 739 lives.

Science alone can't cure or help people. Science lumps us all together, but illness is individual. Each person is unique, and diseases are connected to their hearts. To know the illness and help people, we need liberal and visual arts, not just medical ones.

Life is filled with incidents. On March 31, 1970, when I was 59 years old, I boarded the Yodogo, a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and as Mount Fuji came into sight, the plane was hijacked by the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. I spent the next four days handcuffed to my seat in 40-degree heat. As a doctor, I looked at it all as an experiment and was amazed at how the body slowed down in a crisis.

Find a role model and aim to achieve even more than they could ever do. My father went to the United States in 1900 to study at DukeUniversity in North Carolina. He was a pioneer and one of my heroes. Later I found a few more life guides, and when I am stuck, I ask myself how they would deal with the problem.

It's wonderful to live long. Until one is 60 years old, it is easy to work for one's family and to achieve one's goals. But in our later years, we should strive to contribute to society. Since the age of 65, I have worked as a volunteer. I still put in 18 hours seven days a week and love every minute of it.

Traffic Woes

The traffic in Bintulu, once a quiet fishing village that has grown into a bustling industrial town, is beginning to show the traits of traffic that, if their flow is not properly planned and managed, will cause daily congestions and unnecessary hold ups that will also cause unnecessary stresses for drivers. To make matters worse, drivers here are still taking the easy way out every opportunity they get, disregarding standard traffic rules and regulations. Most behave as though Bintulu is in the 80’s and 90’s where people just park their cars anywhere they please, make U-turns anywhere possible even if going against traffic. It was ok those days as there was then not much traffic on the road and the roads too were few. In the 80’s there were only two traffic lights, several more were put up in the 90’s and there are now traffic lights everywhere. And yet, drivers sometimes disregard them. On one occasion I was driving slowly behind a row of vehicles on the slow lane of the road when a car, several vehicles ahead of me, simply stop on the flowing lane to allow several passengers to disembark, one passenger even got out of the car on the fast lane side, throwing cautions to the wind!! I was stopped behind the row of cars and I just looked on in disbelief at the unconcerned attitudes of the people ahead of me.
Disciplining drivers will be a tough job for the authorities. One sure way of making them toe the line is to enforce the traffic summons. However, before doing this the road system and design, the parking system, the road surfaces and conditions must be made conducive and friendly to the public. I noticed that newly developed areas and commercial centers are built with a lot of car parking provisions. This is a good start. The parking systems they use are people friendly. You have to pay when parking your car and paying is made easy by using coupons. If you get parking compounds, paying for them is also made easy for the public.
One sad situation, adding to woes of drivers and car owners, are the conditions of roads. There are far too many potholes patchwork that the road surfaces become uneven and are quite dangerous to fast traffic. Making matters worse are the many over laden and overburdened trucks and lorries plying the main roads such that the roads become even more uneven. These lorries blatantly overload and they seem to get away with it all the time. When driving on these roads one can feel the steering wheel going its own direction when going over these uneven surfaces. A slight misjudgment by the driver can lead ones’ car to the side of the road, and the sides of the roads are usually soft earth. There are very few places where the road shoulders are hard and even very few with sufficient sides and shoulders. So, in times of emergencies one has no side table to stop the vehicle on and has no choice but to take a portion of the road to stop the vehicle, causing other traffic to dangerously swerve usually to the middle of the road and then causing disruption to the flow of traffic in the middle of the road. Accidents and mishaps can and do happen at times. This is perhaps the reason why the driver I mentioned earlier stopped on the road to discharge his passengers.
Bintulu is fast becoming a modern town, with modern buildings, shopping malls, hotels and commercial centers that are spread into several pocket areas. It is properly planned but the roads are something else. There is a dire need to upgrade the roads to a higher class road that can withstand excessive pressures of increasing traffic and heavy ones too. Most of all, there is an immediate need for proper enforcement of traffic rules. Stop double parking and haphazard parking especially at the end of school hours and on peak periods. There is at least one school located in all the major roads in Bintulu and end of school hours are just times of traffic chaos at these locations. Something needs to be done to alleviate this daily chaotic situation. If the authorities are thinking of bringing Bintulu and upgrading it to a first world city then all its infrastructure works should be designed to first world standard and more importantly maintenance and administration should also be of first world standards. It will be tough to achieve and much tougher to maintain….. We shall see what happens in the future……

MKI Ramblings Unlimited,
Bintulu, Sarawak

The Twins - can you tell the difference?

We are now in Bintulu. We returned from Wales arriving PeeJay last Sunday. I had a commitment to attend to at my last place of work on Monday. We went down to JayBee, a day trip on Tuesday, and took off for Bintulu on Wednesday and will be in Bintulu for about two weeks. I will have to go back to PeeJay in the middle of the month for another commitment to my former place of work.

We left Tenby, Wales on Friday evening and stayed overnight at Heathrow to catch the morning flight to KL on Saturday 28th March. Fahrul's parents arrived on the flight from KL early on Saturday morning (the same aircraft that we took). So, it was sort of change of shift from maternal grandparents to paternal grandparents for Najla. A few days before we left Tenby Najla kept on asking Tok Mi why Tok Mi wants to go back. "I am very sad," she kept saying, and as the departure day got nearer Najla got more and more attached to her grandma. It will be 'Tok Mi, please help me do this' and 'Tok MI, please help me do that' even for the smallest of things that she used to do herself and for which she had always been proud of declaring, "I did this or that by myself" everytime. Suddenly she was unable to do them and kept asking Tok Mi to help. She even had Tok Mi to tuck her in to sleep at night and read stories for her, when prior to this she had always insisted that her dad do it!!. Hopefully with her paternal grandparents around she will be none the worse with the separation from Tok MI.

On returning to PeeJay, I just had to make a trip to see Mum in JayBee. At the same time I wanted to take the opportunity to see my Aunty, Mum's younger sister by a couple of years, who was taken ill and hospitalised in a coma, some two weeks earlier. She has since recovered and is recuperating. Also, my sister (fourth sibling) had had twin grandchildren, a boy and a girl, from one son recently and it was just as good an opportunity as any other times for us to visit and see the twins. Moreover, my sister and family had recently moved into their new house. So, we killed many birds with one stone that day, heh heh.

We took the Firefly (an MAS subsidiary airline, their commercial tagline being 'the community airline') flight to JayBee, early morning from KL and returned by the evening flight. The weather was good and there were no hiccups in our journey. We spent some time with Mum, my sister (second sibling) and family, joining them for breakfast and stayed a while to chat. They had planned to take Mum for a follow-up medical check in the hospital later in the morning, so it was just good timimg that we went there early in the morning. We were off to see my Aunty by about 11.00am and spent some time with her. She looked frail and sickly, she had just been discharged from hospital a week earlier, and is recuperating well though. Perhaps the drugs she is taking makes her look that way. Hopefully when she has fully recovered she will look better.

From Aunty's place we went straight to my sister's place to see their new house and also the twins. We had lunch of traditional home cooking that is familiar to our family. You can just imagine how I tucked in and savoured the spread of food. I think I overate. I was sleepy soon after!! Anyway, we stayed in their house until it was time for us to leave for the airport, and of course we had time to nap. It was sleep rather than nap..... I can now claim that I have slept in my sister's new house heh heh. The twins were sleeping most of the time when we were there. They are about four months old, cute little babies. We did not hear any sound from any of them while we were there, although both of them responded to our promtings. Both were detained in the hospital for a few weeks after birth as they were then too small to be taken home.




Can you tell which one is the boy and which one the girl?









It was a day well spent, caught up with family things and issues, some of which I need to look into, being the default head honcho!! heh heh. In due time, in due time....

MKI Ramblings Unlimited,
Bintulu, Sarawak

Chocolate Chocolare Chocolate

We drove back to Tenby from York last Sunday, a six hours road journey. The weather was fine, no rain, just pockets of dark clouds here and there. We broke journey at Birmingham and visited Ram's distant 'grand'nephew who lives there with his family. He has two young children the elder one is about Najla's age and the younger about three years old. they live just outside of the city, close to the University. We were there for about two hours.

As usual, Najla was slow in fraternising, perhaps sizing up the friends first. Half an hour later they were playing together as though they had been friends for a long time!! By the time we were to leave Najla was not ready to leave. She wanted to continue playing. We had to coax her to leave with alot of persuasion and some promises too heh heh!! It is rare to see Najla sitting on the lap of someone she has just met!!


On leaving Birmingham we visited Cadbury World, the chocolate factory and outlet, located not far from the house we visited, just about 10 minutes away. It was about 4.30pm when we reached the factory outlet.The place was still crowded with people at that time of the day. There were chocolates and more chocolates of all types, varieties and sizes all over the outlet. They were all attractively packed and displayed and we just could not get enough of them. We spent quite a tidy sum buying the varieties.

We continued on our way straight to Tenby. We still had about three hours of travel time and of course, plenty of chocolates to nibble and keep awake while on our way. Surprisingly Najla was awake all the way. She was playing with her toy computer all the time. We reached home at just before 9pm, 'pooped' and ready for bed!! I slept very well that night, satisfied that we were able to spend time with my niece and her family and at the same time able to visit the other family in Birmingham, a worthwhile trip for the weekend and something to remember for a while yet......




MKI Ramblings Unlimited,
Tenby, Pembrokeshire,
Wales

Weekend In York

It's the weekend and we decided to go over to York and visit my niece, who is lecturing in the University, and her family. She has completed her doctorate programme in Environmental Economics following which she lectures the subject there. We left in the evening of Friday and arrived York at just after midnight. They waited up for us, we chatted, there were alot to catch up with, and finally went to bed at about 2 in the morning.

We had heavy breakfast next morning, nun with lamb and chicken curries, rice and salads. It was 'branch' really as it was already mid-morning then. After breakfast we took a walk to town, which was only about 20 minutes away, walking by the river, in the beautiful morning sun with temperatures hovering around 12 celcius. Many people were out then and the town was quite crowded. The cafes and restaurants were open and had seats on the patios and pavements and any open space available. I see many 'crazy' people with glasses of beers and other liquors, and that early in the morning? Wow, that's self-control gone awry perhaps! People were also taking boatrides on the river while others rowed along in rowboats. It was a pleasant morning indeed.

We continued our walk, cutting across the park and headed for the Railway Museum, touted to be the largest Railway Museum ever. It is situated in an old refurbished Railway Workshop building dating back to the 1800's. What used to be a dingy, rusty and unkemp old building with dirty and grimy floors have now turned into a clean, well organised display bulding, shining floors, clean walls and roofs receiving thousands of people passing through it daily. The display was also very comprehensive, from the oldest locomotive right to the latest Eurotrain and Shinkansen. There were also simulators, a library, a children's briefing corner and of course kiddy rides which Najla never fails to be attracted and will throw tantrums if she does not get to ride them all in turn!!

After the walk around the sprawling indoor display we stopped at the cafe that had various refreshments available and rested our legs for a while. We finally got home in the late afternoon. No we did not walk home. We got Din, my nephew-in-law, who had just finished work for the day to fetch us. He had to make two trips to ferry all of us home. The kids played in the garden when we reached home. The weather was so good then that the children refused to take naps. They continued playing until late. The adults were on the other hand pooped and just dozed off on the couch, ha ha ha.

We were brought to a very nice Thai restaurant for dinner. Apparently this place requires advanced reservation and true enough when were there the place was full. The food was good, authentic Thai, with their signature Tom Yam and most of all not as hot as the original in Thailand!!

It is Sunday, today and we are due to leave in a couple of hours. It will be a six hours drive back to Tenby and we plan to stop in Birmingham to visit Ram's distant nephew working there. The weather today is as good as yesterday, no need for the thick, wooly clothings that hinders proper movements..... Let's hope the weather stays this way for the rest of the week......








Railway Library





I wonder what this building is





MKI Ramblings Unlimited,
York

It's One Month Already?

My oh my, it has been one month since my last posting. How fast time flies and there has been alot of happenings in the last one month. To begin with, there were four February birthdays in the family, 3 celebrated together in Bintulu and one in Tenby. I had returned to PeeJay from Tenby, went down to JayBee,for a day trip to be with mum, then on to Bintulu and now back in Tenby. In between all these I had given lectures on two different one day sessions on the downstream activities of Oil and Gas in Malaysia to two different groups of new executives at my previous place of work, guided a group of young and fresh intakes of process operators of an ammonia/urea fertilizer plant in their on-the-job training, and participated in looking at the training needs and methodology for a gas plant, not full time but on a consultancy basis only. All the above were supposedly to keep me occupied, and occupied I was indeed.....

The three birthdays in Bintulu were the birthdays of the three siblings, Hifzhan, Haziq and Haadieya. Shaffik and Mini held a combined birthday party for the three kids at their local clubhouse on Sunday afternoon February 22nd which was Haadieya's and Ram's birthdays. I was in Tenby then but looking at the pictures taken the kids must have had a swell of a time. I was told that there were something like 25 kids and for that several adults had to be roped in to keep the goings lively. One adult was assigned solely for toilet services!!

On the same date there was a gathering of Malaysian families in one of their houses in Tenby. Since it was also Ram's birthday, they all decided to bake a birthday cake and surprised her with it. Of course when it came to cutting the cake the kids took centre stage, including Najla who was very excited herself.




I stayed in Tenby until the end of February and returned to Malaysia in time for me to facilitate the first lecture which was on March 2nd. Mum was in hospital, while I was in Tenby, for a suspected heart enlargement. She had difficulties in breathing and was very weak and depresed when my sister took her to the hospital and was detained for a thourough check up. Mum did not agree to an intrusive investigation as suggested by the medical specialist, and we amongst the siblings agreed and supported Mum's decision. She is 87 this year and any investigative operations may prove to be too much for her to cope with. So medication treatment was opted and she seems to be responding well since. She was in hospital for four nights until she was strong enough to be discharged. I was in close contact with my sister daily when in Tenby and I decided to visit Mum on my return to Malaysia.

So it was, after the lecture, which was planned in advance, I made a day trip to JayBee. I flew by Firefly Airline early in the morning of 3rd March (6.55am) and returned by the early evening (6.35pm) flight. Brother Kifli fetched me from the airport and we went straight to Mum's house. She was her usual self, a little run down but nevertheless cheerful. Looking at her you would not believe that she was recently in and out of a hospital!! I think the presence of all her children to see her was antidote to all that ails her. For an 87 year-old her memory is still good but there are times when she begins to forget things, or names, or places. She remembers her prayer times and spend alot of time reading the Quran, but she is beginning to forget her meal times. Sometimes she thinks its meal time when it was just about an hour earlier when she had her meal or sometime the reverse. She forgets her money and other personal belongings. My sister has been very patient with her and helping her all the time. I had the whole day with her and we chat on many things. She did not tell me much about her stint in the hospital except just to say that she did not want to be operated on and that she was happy to continue with medication only. She was more comfortable chatting with me about family things and also on politics. Yes politics, which is in her blood, the topic of which brightens her up always...... Soon it was time for me to leave as I had to return by the evening Firefly flight and had to go to Bintulu the next day.

I was on the 8.30am flight to Bintulu on 4th March. The next two weeks were spent mostly overseeing the On-the-job training of the Process Operators in the Fertilizer Plant. They were all on a two cycle shifts and for me to be able to meet them all in turn I had to schedule my time in the plant such that I can meet up with those working on day as well as those on night shifts. My hours then was like 2pm to 6pm and 8pm to 12MN. I often reminisce the times when I was working shifts and the times I was running the plants. It brought back fond memories and it even got my adrenaline flowing when the plant went into emergency situations and had to be shut down due to some encountered problems. That condition was also a very conducive learning occassion for the Trainees.

By mid March I had to be back in KL to give another one day lecture to another batch of new Executives. That night night I was on the flight to Heathrow arriving early the next morning London time (Tuesday 17th). I continued my journey to Tenby by train from London arriving Tenby at about 2pm just in time to pick up Najla from her sxhool at about 3pm.

The train journey to Tenby was an interesting one. I was on the fast train from Reading to Swansea and had to switch over to the local train from Swansea to Tenby. The fast train was a modern train just like any other diesel engine operated train. Nothing much for me to write about here. But the local train was something else. It was a one coach antique, travels at a much slower speed and sometimes stop at little stations that seemed to appear in the middle of a jungle!! The train itself appear to be using hydraulics for motion and the diesel engine driving the hydraulics gave that unmistakable sound of the engines of the sixties or seventies, a loud roar on starting that can be heard some distance away and once the hydraulics take over the engine revs stabilise out. As the train was going slowly one can hear the unmistakable sound of the train wheels trying to level the rails out with its klikkety clack klikkety clack sound each time the wheels go over the rail joints, and at the bends one can hear the sound of the wheels trying to straighten the rails!! The passengers too seem to blend with the train, mostly white haired and aged senior citizens, just like yours sincerely. They had buffet service on board, surprise, surprise, and was indeed a welcoming service, considering the time it takes to complete the journey. Even the trolley for the mobile buffet service was antique. The conductress was a petite lady but her ticketing paraphernalia was antique, blending with everything else on the train, ha ha ha. It was quite an experience. Tessa had warned me what to expect from this train as she took the same train service on her last visit to Tenby, but I had to experience it myself to really get the feel of its antiquity. It was fun nevertheless and I would certainly repeat the journey, given the opportunity to do so in the future!! Ah ha! Now I remember. Years ago there was a TV series called 'Petticoat Junction' which featured an antique train. That train however was steam engine driven, but the general outlook of which was about the same as this local train!!


At Tenby Station


Outside of Tenby Station with View of Fahrul's Apartment in the Distance

I have alot more to write, but alot more other things to do too that I have to find time to write. I shall do so, I shall do so, soon I hope......

MKI Ramblimgs Unlimited
Tenby, Pembrokeshire,
Wales