Chet’s Chatter

The “Smurf” Report

Posted on 8 April 2008 @ 06:30 in Fun Stuff

Viable Alternative Transportation

Posted on 15 March 2008 @ 11:03 in Fun Stuff

Having your own set of wheels is what a lot of youngsters look forward to as a sign of one’s independence. But I’m not a youngster anymore, and having driven my own car for the last 17 yaers (I didn’t get my licence till quite late in life), I’m beginning to welcome not driving. Especially into town.

A couple of times when I had to go into town, I’d parked my car near the Taman Jaya LRT station (the one I call AmCorp Mall LRT). But it cost RM3/- in an open-air car park. Which often meant I would return to a hot car left a few hours in the sun.

A few days back, I had to go into town - lunch with a favourite cousin, followed by meeting with my (one and only) client, both at Suria KLCC. I knew I wouldn’t be driving in, and started thinking of an alternative to the Taman Jaya LRT station.

Now, I live near the IKANO Power Centre which offers a free shuttle service to and fro the Kelana Jaya LRT Station, and is across the road from the Tesco hypermarket where I can park my car indoors and for free, too, if I went in and bought something.

So this was what I decided to do - park at Tesco and take the free shuttle to Kelana Jaya LRT station. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. The shuttle service ran on a schedule, so I had to make sure, especially for the return journey, not to miss the bus. If I did, I would’ve had to get a taxi, which I didn’t want to (just call me “cheapskate”). Instead, I went online to check if there was a feeder bus service between Kelana Jaya LRT station and IKANO Power Centre. There is. I took note of the bus number; this would be my back-up plan in case I missed the free shuttle service.

The day of my little “adventure” came. I did as planned, parking my car at Tesco and going to IKEA for breakfast (yes, this was not only a part of the plan, but a “given”).

I’d decided to take the 11:00 a.m. shuttle, so there was plenty of time. At that hour of morning, there weren’t too many people waiting for it. It was an enjoyable ride, I had an elevated view of the surroundings and saw things I would never have seen if I’d been driving and concentrating on the road and the other cars.

It was a 15-minute ride to the LRT station, and maybe another 40 minutes to Suria KLCC. By car, it would’ve probably been more, what with the various traffic lights and traffic jams, too.

For the return journey, I decided I would aim for the 5:30 p.m. shuttle back to IKANO, and to leave Suria KLCC around 4:30 p.m. The timing was good; my client had to leave before then, so we wrapped up our meeting in time. When he heard I’d taken the LRT, he was anxious that I got the train back before the rush hour began. I have a considerate client.

“Maybe another 40 minutes” turned out to be less, as I arrived back at the Kelana Jaya LRT station around 5:00 p.m., in plenty of time for the 5:30 p.m. IKANO shuttle. I didn’t have to use the back-up plan after all.

Back at Tesco, I made a quick trip in and grabbed something off the shelves to qualify for free parking (yes, “cheapskate”).

That evening, I recounted my little adventure to my sister, adding that it would be easy to have a day out in town from now on. She laughed at me.

The IKANO free shuttle bus schedule and route map:

Who says ang pow designs have to be boring?

Posted on 11 February 2008 @ 11:35 in Family, Fun Stuff

Ang pow actually means “red packets” in the Hokkien dialect. The Cantonese version, lai see, means “lucky money” and is most often given during Chinese New Year from married people to single people, with some money inside, as a form of well-wishes for the coming year.

The most common type of ang pow design is a plain red envelope. Over the years, banks have printed fancy ang pow designs to be given to their customers to use during Chinese New Year. Of course, the bank’s name and logo are printed somewhere, usually at the back, of the ang pow. It’s a form of publicity for the bank. So far, I don’t think there’s been any award for the best ang pow design. Maybe there should be one.

When it comes to cute designs, the banks have nothing on the commercially available ones (commercially as in you have to buy them instead of getting them free, like the ones from the banks). My sister, who has the weakest spot for anything cute, is one of those who favours buying such cute ang pow designs. This is the one I got from her for this year:

And here’s the one from my brother (a freebie with a logo on the back):

And yes, they both have lai see (lucky money) inside them.

Spell Wrecker

Posted on 11 August 2007 @ 13:30 in Fun Stuff

Some of us are so fussy about spelling, maybe we should use the spell wrecker instead. Or input an sms text message to un-wreck it and find out what it really means!

Spell wrecker discovered through Richard’s Notes.

Six weird things about me

Posted on 1 May 2007 @ 11:00 in Fun Stuff, Memories, Personal

Got tagged by Sharon a while back to write about six weird Chet-related things. Off the top of my head, I could only think of one, at most two. After some thinking, I came up with the rest of the list, so here goes.

Six Weird Things about Chet

I was brought up by a nanny

The three of us were - my sister, brother and I. We were not a well-off family - grandfather had a couple of Chinese medicine shops that his sons jointly ran - but we had a working mother (something quite rare in the 50s) , a work-from-home father (we lived upstairs of the shop) and a live-in nanny. Mother had always worked and continued to do so even after she married father. It was a good thing as the job took her away from the petty squabblings among the other daughters-in-law at home (yes, the various families lived under one roof). But it also took her away from her children, and growing up, I remember being closer to my father (he was the one who took me to the doctor when I fell ill) than to her. And of course, to our nanny. I’ve already written about her here, so I won’t say much more, except she was a very important part of my young life. She passed away in 1996, and on the 10th anniversary of her death, I emailed my brother to tell him, and he wrote back to say his clearest memories of her are when we were young. Here’s a “family” portrait (father’s in it, too - behind the camera - and that’s nanny in the background, a shadowy but strong presence in all our lives):

I had my fingernails painted while in kindergarten

For some reason, my strongest memory of this is a close-up of the offending fingernails painted bright red. I was in the teacher’s arms, being rushed to the staff room to have the red washed off.

I was only 4 or 5 at the time, it was a strict kindergarten (the baby section of Kung Cheng Girls’ School) with a “dress down” rule for the older girls which apparently also applied to young ‘uns like me! But we’d just returned from the holidays, and I think I’d spent some of it with my nanny’s daughter, hence, the painted red nails. Thinking back, I think that was the reason I grew up sans painted nails, or any form of make-up.

I love giant pandas

They really, really help me destress after a day (especially a horrendous day) at work. I first made a conscious effort to learn more about them at the start of this century (the year 2000, lah), and haven’t looked back since. There’s a lot of giant panda stuff here on my blog, in fact a whole category called “Stress Busters”.

One positive outcome of my crazy panda love is that I adopted a little one born last September at the Wolong Panda Reserve in China. I’m making plans to visit her later this year. Can’t wait to hold her in my arms. Here she is, at around 100 days old:

I’d named her Yoong Ping in memory of my niece and in honour of my parents but that’s just my name for her. Her official name is Feng Yi, given to her on her first day at Panda kindergarten. So yeah, she’s in kindergarten now. Not sure if she’ll have a red nail experience like me.

I used to volunteer at the Women’s Centre in Norwich, and I did pregnancy testing

I wanted to do something meaningful with my life. I was pretty impressed with the stuff the Women’s Centre in Norwich was doing - they had their own building with various things going on. After looking at what was available, I decided I could do pregnancy testing. I’d go in on Saturday mornings, sit around and wait for women to come in with their urine samples, and do the tests for them. There were two particular incidents that stuck to my mind, both happened on the same Saturday, both in reaction to being told their results. First woman, whose result was positive, looked shit scared and said “He’s going to kill me.” The other woman’s face crumpled as she said they’d been trying so long for a baby (her result had been negative). Years later, I wrote a story about both incidents, with an ending of my own choice, since I never knew what happened to the two women, especially the first one.

I shaved my head bald not once but twice while in college in the States

I’d like to blame this on my days at UEA, but I’d already left England by that time, so how can I? Or can I?

Actually, it’s all E’s fault. I saw her one sunny day on campus and she was all clean shaven, and I thought to myself, “oh cool, I must do this one of these days.” A few months later, I bumped into M in the city, she was wearing one of those furry Russian looking hats. She saw me and raised the hat to me and … she’d gone bald, too. But the effect on me was the opposite of E’s - I was shocked to see how much M looked like a concentration camp victim. I decided then, I wasn’t going to shave my head.

But shave my head I did, a year or more later across the ocean and the wide American expanse in San Diego. It had been quite a traumatic move from Norwich to San Diego, and I think going bald was my way of dealing with it. The campus had claimed to be radical (maybe it was back in the 60s) but it was tame compared to my beloved UEA. So I decided to show them RADICAL and I went bald. I was a teaching assistant at the time and on the first day of class, in a huge auditorium, the professor introduced her team of TAs, each of us standing up when our names were called. When my turn came, I stood up and took off my baseball cap to wave at the kids. But far from shocking people, someone later told me he thought I was recovering from some illness that’d made me bald. WHAT??? (Insert nasty expletive here.)

I shaved bald a second time while still in San Diego, but for reasons totally different from the first time. And yes, I did send some pictures home, in a sealed envelope and a warning on the front. Parents’ reaction? “Your father wants to disown you” wrote mother in her next letter to me. Of course, he never did.

Going bald revealed what a lovely round head I have:

Something I’ve had even when young (and in my nanny’s arms):

I have OCD

That’s Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In my case, I’m obsessive about making sure doors and windows are closed and locked (and in the case of my car, rolled up). Those of you who’ve taken a ride with me may remember I’d go around checking and re-checking that the doors are locked (even tho I’d clicked the remote and locked them) and the windows are rolled up (how? - by sticking my fingertips up the top to make sure there are no gaps to indicate windows not completely rolled up). It’s even worse at home. I’d be ready to leave the apartment, and I might’ve checked all the windows and doors are closed and the power switches off, but once is not enough, I go back and check again - and I must do this in a particular order, or I start all over again, and again - and even at the door, ready to step out, I look back and go check one more time, just in case. So if you’ve been out with me, and I’ve been late - now you know why. Altho I must say, it’s getting better.

And that’s it, six weird things about Chet. Writing them has brought back a lot of memories. Thanks for this, Sharon. And I mean it in a good way.

And now I tag the following friends to show their weirdness to the world:

Dear Gette in Kuching, Tito Rolly in Manila, Kim in Penang, Anne in Toronto, David in PJ (hmm … ), Ms Doolittle, too

I love you all and I think you’re weird enough (and wonderful, too) to join me in showing your weirdness to the world.

Your assignment - should you choose to accept it (actually, you have no choice) - is to write a blog post of 6 weird things about yourself, and pass this weirdness onto six other weird people to do likewise. Oh, and you need to state the rules clearly, which are as follows:

People who are tagged should write a blog post of 6 weird things about them as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.