What's The Point?

Well it boils down to this. See, we loves our iPod, our iTouch, our Wii (in terms of our gadgets). When we first bought our iPod Video 30GB, iTunes Store never mattered to us. We could live without buying songs or games or movies for the iPod - we'd plenty of music and the Happy Tree Friends podcast to keep us occupied.

Then when the Wii was launched we knew it was just a matter of time before we got one. Asides from the fact that the Wiimote promises some new perspective at gaming, and that we're a Mario supporter, and that we have a DS that sooner or later will be used in conjuction with the Wii for some games, the Wii also had the Virtual Console.

Virtual Console gave us access to the older games, like Super Paper Mario and the old Zelda games, among others. Backwards compatibility for retro gaming (although it isn't really that retro), baby.

And we fell completely for the iPhone's/iTouch's wi-fi, which led us to getting the iTouch (by the way we're happily using both iPods still, one mainly music one semacam semi-PDA). But being Apple...they have to release a January software update that finally gives the iTouch some of the same functions as the iPhone and charge us USD20 for it! It's not free!

So.

Nintendo's Virtual Console allows us to purchase them old games but in order to do so we need to purchase Wii points. And initial tryouts at registering a credit card to buy Wii Points stopped short when we had to fill in the address linked to the credit card - because the address format was for a US address.

First attempt failed and we decided not to try yet. There's still games aplenty without needing to get old games that may require a Classic Controller or a Gamecube Controller (which we don't own and may need to buy too). But we do hope that the Virtual Console didn't deprive us of buying games that way.

Meanwhilst we definitely cannot purchase anything from Apple's iTunes Store. If we want to open an account, we'll need a US-address credit card for the account. And from what we gather, an iTunes Gift Card 'purchased in the U.S. must be redeemed through the U.S. iTunes Store'. Not that Malaysia has any stores that carry iTunes Gift Cards in the first place, we've been asking all the resellers around. We only know Thailand to have the gift cards, but a USD25 gift card there costs 1300 baht!

Huh. Here we are, trying to show our support, but do we get any support? No point if we can't get our points.

Which Witch?

When we were in Bangkok we brought along a book, Wicked: The Life And Times Of The Wicked Witch Of The West, for easy reading whenever we're free. Wicked's tells the backstory about the Wicked Witch Of The West before Dorothy 'destroys' her in The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz.

It's been decades since we've last read The Wizard Of Oz, and even then it was an abridged copy. So the gist of what we remembered about the story is that Dorothy and her dog Toto gets blown off in a cyclone from Kansas into the Land of Oz, heads to find the Wizard Of Oz to seek help getting back home, makes friends with a Scarecrow, a Tin Woodman and a Cowardly Lion on the way, destroys the Wicked Witch Of The West, everyone gets what they want in the end.

Of course there's a fair bit of how that goes, but to know more go read the book.

Well, we were reading Wicked, and the start of the book proved a bit shocking at first. Probably because sex was mentioned all over the place, and our mindset was still on a children's fairytale. Once we'd set our mind on it being more adult (heck we still aren't sure when kids should start reading Arabian Nights then), we took it for canon.

But the starting was rather promising, and the content quite rich, and things got better when the Wicked Witch, Elphaba, started attending Shiz University. After that, the story gets...messy. We had no idea where the story was going. And near the end bit when Dorothy came into the picture Elphaba seemed a bit off her rockers already.

Once we finished Wicked, we decided we had to reread The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz soon to refresh our memory of how the story went. And what better opportunity to read it then when we happened to be at MidValley for lunch alone and forgot to bring a book along. So we hopped into Borders and picked up a copy - the version published by Signet Classics with original illustration by W. W. Denslow. We thought it would be nice to read it with pictures.

Oh what a horrible mistake. It may have been that our perspective of the story had been skewed after reading Wicked. And we didn't like the pictures, so somehow the following images popped up whenever we think of the characters:

The Tin Woodman was a Steel Golem from Heroes Of Might And Magic II.

The Scarecrow was from Batman Begins.

Aslan became the Cowardly Lion. :S

When the Scarecrow was given brains by the Wizard of Oz, he looked even scarier as the Pinhead from Hellraiser!

Not only were the picturing of the characters already skewed, but we certainly have trouble rooting for Dorothy now. Nor can we easily accept that there are wicked witches and good witches. Oh, long gone is our innocence for this classic tale. We wonder just how many others stories may fall prey to parallels like Wicked.

...Still, while we won't be ever watching the Judy Garland version of The Wizard Of Oz, we'll still consider watching the musical of Wicked, if only to add to the confusion of differing storylines.

Correction Or Corruption

And now that the Chief and us are together, it is certainly without fail that some things can't remain the same. After all, it's no longer a singleton's lifestyle we're leading.

Now we've got to spend quality time with the Chief, as well as...modify certain habits where informed. There's no problem with reallocating time even now that priorities have changed:
Chief time - check.
Friends time - check.
Gym time - check.
Work time - check.
Entertainment time - check.
Cave time - check.

Personal habits, however, will require more effort. For some things have been done so long that it'll be some time before change can really happen. Oh it's easy to say, "Nothing difficult about change, you just need to make the effort." What we mean is that while conscious effort is the first step, it'll be some time before one gets to doing things differently subconsciously.

We are aware that some of our habits don't conform to the norm - hence our little oddities, like our irregular eating hours and sleeping habits. :) And there are probably other habits that may have not require adapting yet.

So it becomes a matter of give and take. How much are we willing to change or how firmly we stand our ground. So long as it doesn't cause sparks.

But here's the fun bit. Give and take goes both ways - it's not only us who faces change. :)

Now while we accept things for what they currently are (yes who knows whether we have any little niggling issue we need to bring up in the future), there will be changes made by the Chief too. And how is this fun?

Because while the Chief works to correct some of our ways, we work to corrupt the Chief to adopt our ways. And it is by far much easier to corrupt then correct.

The race is on, heh, until equilibrium is achieved.

A-Hurlin' The Clouds

Now either age has been playing up on us, or probably the fact that we'd only managed some 3 hours of sleep for the past two days (we think the former may be more likely, ack ack ack), but somehow we feel that we're more prone to motion sickness!

Well we know our limits in the first place. We've somehow outgrown carsickness and can read in the car with no problems (but not if said car ride was heading up Camerons or Frasers). We can do first-person shooter games like CounterStrike for...half hour? Fifteen minutes? We know better than to go for theme park rides that feature spinning around in circles such like that teacup rides where all one does is spin as much as possible.

Oh goodness, just imagining it makes us go wobbly. We don't have a cast-iron inner-ear vestibular system, and we don't go abusing our limits. It's not that we end up feeling dizzy with vertigo, but rather we get nauseated, our body temperature goes up and we get a wee bit tumbly in the tummy. And it puts us out of commision for a bit of time.

After all, there was this once during our final year when we went to the Blackpool Pleasure Beach with some coursemates, where we sat on one particular ride that had us sitting out of some 4-5 rides before we recovered. Lesson learnt.

So...Alex, Jin, Xav, Daemon, Junior, Chief and us took a day trip to Genting today, via some promotion where we only pay RM38 for the bus rides and cable car rides to and from Genting and an all-day all-theme park Adult ticket. Very much value for money. We'd left on the 10am bus, made our way up and made for the Outdoor Park rides while it was still cool and the sky still overcast.

Started off with the Spinner and then the Super Toboggan. The Spinner is fun and has been one of our favourites, while for the Super Toboggan we had to meet the weight requirements - the park ride operator had this weighing scale and would check everybody's weight before letting them through - and to our shock we've put on weight.

Horror.

From our steady 50-53kg, we're now some 56kg.

*ducks and runs away*

Okay, okay, so it isn't much but such weight isn't being evenly distributed! Without supervision this extra weight goes straight to the creation of a belly!

We digress. After the two rides we all head for the Pirate Ship next. Somehow, we've never tried that ride or anything similar to it before. We think we haven't mustered the courage before. :P However this time we didn't feel any apprehension as we queued up, and so we happily got on the ride and, thrill-seeker that we are, even made our way to the end of the boat rather than the middle.

Things went well - until some halfway through the ride. We're not too sure, to be honest, but we felt as if we were getting slightly seasick. Not a nice feeling but thankfully it was very mild. So after that we had to keep an eye out for our rides, should they cause us further motion sickness. Luckily for us it was mild, and we did get to take a break and do lunch after the Pirate Ship ride. No spew!

But asides from the Motion Master ride (Enchanted Castle was very disappointing) none of the other rides gave us cause to take flight to Watsons begging for a pharmacist to get us antiemetics, antipyretics and charcoal. Not any of the rollercoaster rides, not the Spinner (we rode that again!), definitely not the Rio Float nor the Monorail nor the Ferris Wheel.

Still, we think next time we think we shall start popping some Novomin before we embark on such trips. And gotta start stocking up on our meds stockpile, we should add in antiemetics and wakey-wakey to the inventory.

East VS West: Dear Dates

It never really struck us that Chap Goh Meh's the Chinese equivalent to Valentine's Day, you see. While we're aware that it marks the end of the Chinese New Year festivities and that there're people who'd go out to throw oranges and bananas or the likes into the river for other poeple to fish out. But that's about it.

Guess because it isn't as commercialized as VDay itself. And we never knew just to what extent was Chap Goh Meh celebrated as a romantic day.

Oh hell, it's never been significant to us, we're that angmoh. So Chap Goh Meh to us tends to be just another day to us.

We should have guessed when the Chief "booked us for Thursday". Things started out with the both of us going for dinner at Chatterbox, and we'd tickets for Kung Fu Dunk. The movie wasn't bad as they made it a comedy not meant to be taken seriously (think Shaolin Soccer, but not as good nor laugh-out-loud funny). Watching the Cantonese version felt a bit out of place really - since most of the voices were dubbed over. Watch out for the WTF moment at the start of the movie by the sifu.

So it was much to our surprise when there was more to follow after dinner and movie. Chocolates, card and flowers. *blush blush* The dear Chief had been planning this for a week!

So in this case the only diff between VDay and Chap Goh Meh lies in the fact that one is grossly commercialized while the other features lots of kam? And the only difference between these days and any other day would be that people tend to be more...aware of couples?

Plus this only goes to show that we don't really do much of a good job compared to the Chief. :(

CNY Recap, 2008

This year our Chinese New Year celebration saw the family going on a holiday rather than having a quiet affair at home. Rather a refreshing change, we must say.

It started with mum coming up with the suggestion that, since the family doesn't go back to the hometown (as all grandparents have already passed away), we might as well all go for a holiday instead. Her suggestion of Bangkok came as a surprise to us, as we already made plans for it sometime later this year, but it wasn't unwelcomed: we'll get to visit Bangkok more than once, plus travelling with the family would mean expenses would be...much easier. :)

Sis and us found it quite funny that, while we've been informed early on in January to apply for leave as we were leaving on the 6th, both of us didn't know anymore than that. Both of us didn't know whether we were coming back on Saturday or Sunday, we didn't know the flight schedule, if we were going via AirAsia or otherwise...

Well, when it came to packing, since it was our first trip to Bangkok we were a bit more uncertain as to what to pack. We guess the only guideline we had for packing was, 'pack light clothings for hot weather'. Decided not only were we going to dress light, we were also going to pack light - so we only brought along our L'Amour, our iXus, a book (Wicked), and our iTouch. We were thinking that by our next trip we would have a better idea if it was feasible to bring along the Nintendo DS and the Crumpler to stuff everything inside.

Then there was that nightmare that is budget flight.

Once we'd landed we were picked up by the Brother-In-Law (BIL). So not only were we on a family holiday in another country, we also did not need to depend on public transport. Instead we could experience Bangkok traffic first hand. It's terrible. Painstakingly slow and terrible. Nevertheless BIL has better EQ when it comes to traffic.

We stayed at the Ambassador Hotel in Sukhumvit, which the parents tell us was the same hotel they stayed in when they visited 30 years ago. Whoa. While it definitely looked old, it had the basics and it was clean and comfy. We weren't out to pamper ourselves in some 5-star boutique hotel so it was fine with us.

All in all, during the 5 days we were there, we covered:
Day 2: Paragon, Little Siam, Siam Square, MBK.
Day 3: In Ayutthaya - Wat Chaimongkhon, Wat Chaiwatthanaram, Wat Phra Sri San Phet & Wat Phra Ram. At night we explored the street stalls on Sukhumvit.
Day 4: Chatuchak Weekend Market, JJ Mall, Wat Pho.

Of course, while dad did mention some other things that he would have liked to have done (like go watch a kickboxing match), time, traffic and tiredness sorta prevented us all from doing so. Still, it was all good.

The only downside we find about this year's CNY celebrations was that we missed out on the visitations as well as on the Klangite dinner meetup. And CNY is coming to a close already. Well on the bright side we did get to have a couple of yee sang sessions!

CNY Bangkok Photolog

Wake Up Wake Up On A Saturday Night

Now Lifebook asked us on Friday if we were gonna be free on Sunday morning. Or Saturday night. It's a tad blurry now. Just that he was to fetch a certain Expatriate Elf to the airport and asked if we wanted to tag along. What time was Lifebook leaving to fetch the Expat Elf? 4am.

Great. At an hour like that we could approach it from two ways: either we could sleep in early, so that we could get enough rest before accompanying them to the airport, or we could stay up till 4am and sleep after we get back from the airport.

Heck, we're a night owl. Of course we opt for option 2.

We'd used to do something like this during our uni days, especially during the exam weeks - we'd sleep in the afternoon, wake up either during dinner or by midnight, then slog through till morning, breakfast with the housemates, head off for the papers, then come back and hit the sack. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Well anyways we didn't think we would have been able to wake up at 4am. Much easier to stay awake. Kept ourselves busy with a Ramlee burger and Batman (whoa, Michael Keaton was so young!) till Lifebook showed up. Then it was off to pick up the Expat Elf.

Who, heh, had only a couple of hours sleep prior to our arrival and thus was more like a Zombie Elf. Well at least he could sleep once on the plane.

We ended up nodding off in the car until we reached KLIA - and after the elf gets his boarding pass we headed to McDonalds. We were craving for french fries during the whole trip somehow. But we were told that they didn't have fries then, only the breakfast sets. :S Can you believe it? No fries. Nada. Nix.

It's rather a first time that we weren't happy having hash browns. Even as we write this now we're still thinking of fries.

Anyways after seeing Expatriate Elf off, we crashed in Lifebook's car. Could not just stay awake for long. By the time we were out of his car we had a slightly stiff neck. Dragged ourselves to bed and had a good 8 hours of sleep. Guess we're not young anymore to pull off lasting an entire day without sleep.

Good thing Lifebook slept before driving us all then. We wondered how did the Zombie Elf do then. Maybe something like this might have happened on board:

In Celebration Of V-Day

Everyone's talking about today, the one day in a year where we celebrate the vagina. That luscious labia, that sexual sheath, that sweet spot. Women rejoice! Happy Vagina Day!

As you can see, even kids are in awe of the vagina, that they want their own...



Then there are those who own the dreaded vagina dentata. We're quite curious about this one actually.

What? It's not Vagina Day? Then why are people going, "That dreaded V-day!" Oh! It's Vasectomy Day then? Only thing dreadful is having to face the scalpel. Vichyssoise Day? Nothing dreadful about cold soup.

In other news, tonight The Chief and us did Valentine's Day with dinner at La Bodega followed by A Night On Broadway at BSC.

While the tiger prawn tapas and the alcoholic Valentine's Day drinks were good, dinner was slightly unsatisfactory as our tapas took ages to arrive, plus the salted cod tapas we ordered never turned up, and only after questioning we were told that they'd ran out of that and would we like to order something else? As by then it was already 8.15pm, no. Our show was starting at 8.30pm and we couldn't be late.

As for A Night On Broadway, not only did performers Pot-Pourri feature songs from musicals (you know, 'All I Ask Of You', 'Memory', I Dreamed A Dream') but we had songs from the opera too, from 'O Mio Babbino Caro' to 'Nessun Dorma', the Flower Duet to 'Un Bel Di Vedremo' (ok, we're rather thankful for our classical compilation CDs at this point at helping us recognize and remembering what were being sung). Pot-pourri was good and funny, definitely a must catch if you can!

The Chief had suggested that we get tickets for Valentine's - but that came with an added bonus. After the show there were free wine and fondue! Probably due to it being the first show of the season.

Gifts were exchanged as the Chief sent us home - we got the Chief a Grease soundtrack as well as The Complete Symphonic Recording of Les Miserables, and we got a sporting G2000 shirt! Now to hide the Valentine's card.

Happy Valentine's Day now. Or, as JJ and Rudy have been reminding people again (as told by NJAPF since we have no radio), SAD Day.

East VS West: Maladious Medication I

Now it happened that we weren't feeling well the whole day, in fact, we felt as if we were coming down with a slight fever. Skin felt slightly clammy and there were moments of perspiration (and us working in an air-conditioned office!).

Not to mention we were in the midst of BodyAche after Monday's back-to-back class of 'Jam and 'Combat.

So thankfully we keep our own medicine stocks everywhere (literally: in our backpack, in the kitchen, in our office drawer, in our gym bag...) and we happen to have some Panadol Extend with us. Pop a caplet and after a while, it does its antipyretic magic.

But you know lah, what Panadol does is just knock back the symptoms for a couple of hours.

Then the Chief happens to surprise us by dropping by in the evening with some herbal medicine called fu cha (literally bitter tea) which we were told is mm fa cha (five flowers tea) with some added Chinese medicine. The Chief warned us that it was quite bitter and might upset sensitive stomachs. A whiff of it and we thought about this powerfully bitter plant that Lemon has in his garden.

So later at night we decided to drink up the fu cha. Pours it into a bowl (to give it that more authentic Chinese medicine look haha), and takes a sip.

Immediately goes and take our cup, mixes two sugar cubes with a bit of hot water and Ribena. Sips a bit of that.

Yes. It was that bitter. Yet somehow we had the impression it was as if we were drinking brackish seawater. Ah well. We downed about three-quarters of the fu cha, and throughout that time the brain was actually drafting this blog post...

"Reminded of brackish seawater...needed to make ubersweet drink...our tongue is fighting against the taste and is rebelling against us too...this fu cha is giving us gas..."

It was a good thing the toilet was nearby. We almost missed the bowl when we spewed. The body rebelled against the overwhelming taste it seems.

Once we'd cleaned up we called the Chief to say that we were still alive (in case it was the Chief's intention to poison us). We were told that we were "too angmoh already". :) That's rather true. Still, guess the fu cha did the trick, although not in the way that it was intended. We were definitely feeling better.

Like It Or Not

You can
Like it or not

So happens that we were suppose to send our sis to the bus terminal in the afternoon for her commute back to Sporeland. It was quite simple: send sis to the KTM station so she could get on the NICE bus before 2pm (tickets were bought long beforehand). The problem, which we guess we should have probably admitted earlier, was that we haven't driven to the main KTM station for ages that we weren't too sure how to get there already.

Well, that we've been pampered with Aeroline and FirstCoach deciding to open branches at our second home, we hadn't the need to go so far any more.

So sis and us leisurely left the house at 1.15pm, which in normal circumstances would have meant we would reach the terminal (we shouldn't call it a terminal seeing it's just a stop really) by 1.45pm latest. What we both didn't count on, of course, was us taking a wrong turn thus going a longer and more convuluted way, and that traffic decided to work against us (on this day when traffic is still mild!).

Sis missed the bus by 10 minutes, and when sis asked the ticketing counter, there were only 2 seats left for the 9pm. Sis decided to try the other coaches first. Dad and otousan helped get us the contact numbers, and sis started calling to enquire for any available seats to Sporeland. Not until Wednesday, it seems. Suggestions of taking the train or plane were discarded, sis ignored the former and it was quite pricey for the latter.

Seems that sis had to take the 9pm seat, like it or not. And reach back by 2am thereabouts, and not sleep properly before heading off to work later on in the morning. So we headed back to the coach office, where sis said she was too malufied to head back to the ticketing counter so we had to get the ticket instead.

Weirdly enough when we asked for the 9pm, we were told that there wasn't any more tickets left. And we were told that the next available seat was 5pm.

Eh? Heck it. We're buying it. Don't care that the ticket looked as if it belonged to someone else earlier. And we stayed with sis until she boarded the coach bus and it left. If there turns out to be any problem with said ticket it's gonna be the coach company's problem, not sis or ours.

Turns out mum's poison tongue finally did its wicked magic - sis missed her bus due to bad traffic (oh yes we won't forget that we both left on time instead of extra early and that we took a wrong turn). Oh gods. Like it or not she'll never ever fail to remind sis and us of this single (and first!) incident every single time we have to send sis to the bus terminal/airport/station of commute. Oh, how our head throbs to think of it. We definitely won't like it.

Push

You push me
Keep on pushing like nobody

Our first experience with AirAsia, and we almost learned to hate it. We say almost really because somewhere in the back of our mind we had the generosity to see that some things weren't the fault of AirAsia, rather it's the passengers.

Our first experience ever was when some Hongkie aunties and their sprog cut our cue just so she could get their luggage scanned before heading to check in and get her boarding passes at LCCT. First one auntie (mind you, she isn't old but since she has no manners who're we to bother about her age or such) cut in front of dad, who was pushing the luggage trolley while in queue, and we sorta went, "Uh-oh" in our head at this point. True enough, the following auntie and kid whizzed past us using their relative as an excuse.

If we were pushing the luggage trolley there was no way any of 'em would have passed. Or else we would have run down the other aunty and the brat. And this isn't to say we're at a proper queue yet.

Well we've heard the stories plenty of times before from others who've suffered the same. When we travel alone this doesn't happen to us but since we're with the rest of the family we'd to pull back our reins a bit. Control, control...

That everyone's begun queueing up once the gate was open (but no one was allowed to pass through yet) is fine. That the queue turns into something akin to Malaysian roads in bad traffic is another. That people jump to the Express queue is too much. That they start running to the plane?

Kiasu.

The return trip we had a hand carry luggage that actually came in rather handy - slung over a shoulder it effectively blocked anyone from cutting the queue from our left side.

We also understand that, since it's free seating, there's little chance of the family sitting near each other but that's fine with us - since we're a nuclear family, we just pair up. Head pass the Indian horde, that's already deployed one fellow at each window seat booking the row for their posse, taking up 5 aisles on both sides in all. Thankfully dad and mum, and sis and us manage to get seats together without having to split up.

We told sis that for our next trip with AirAsia we're rather tempted to bring along our walking stick, not as to depend on the symphaties of others but rather to trip them up or block their passage with a dangerous wave towards their faces.

Come on! We've never had this kind of aggravation with RyanAir before! If we only needed pay a bit more (how we wish!) for far better comfort we would gladly do so. Nevermind, the next time isn't going to be with parents so we could be more liberal with our elbows. And since the next time is during one of them AirAsia promotions for cheap fares (and Bangkok once again, hurrah!), we're sure to have to bring out all our blocking tactics. Aunties and such beware.

Isaac

Will you sacrifice your comfort
Make your way in a foreign land

Right. This happens to be the second Confessions On A Dance Floor track title that's giving us blogger's block, because we have no idea how to tie in the track title and lyrics to whatever we intend to blog.

But we have reached a point where we decided that, if we don't simply blog anyhow we will never be able to get on with blogging.

So.

Isaac.

Paul suggested Isaac somebody (Mizrahi?), who'd designed clothes for Madonna. But that topic might suit right-brained people more.

Then we thought that, since we're going on holiday for Chinese New Year, why not take the opportunity to just keep our eyes peeled for anyone, anyone, named Isaac so we could just blog about it.

Fuck it, we're just gonna use Isaac Mendez from Heroes as our inspiration.

See, Isaac Mendez can see and draw the future on canvas. In our case, we can already see the future on canvas but we don't have to bother drawing it. The canvas here in question is our face. The future is zits. Bloody, bloody zits.

So come Monday we happen to actually pop one (gods how does it look larger than the lump that's been on the face all this time?) and on Tuesday, another one that we thought wasn't ready (but apparently was, and this time we couldn't believe how something large could get through a tiny pore) yet. And we could see that there was more to come.

And we're on holiday in Bangkok. With new zits showing up every single fucking day. We are not, absolutely not, getting in front of our camera, not until this clears up. Already we made use of Paragon's lovely clean toilet to pop another one. We guess we must have been making a rather big fuss about it too, as today even the family started pointing out laser treatment beauty centres to us.

Well, one thing we learned about Bangkok is that pharmacies around here are even more rampant than in Malaysia. So we've picked up a small bottle of Dalacin-T, the first time we've ever resorted to the stuff.

Oh, Happy Chinese New Year yeah! If only we'd seen that our future was gonna be full of receiving mass-text CNY greetings overseas. T_T

How High

Was it all worth it
And how did I earn it

So we receives our usual mobile phone bill, and thinking it's gonna be somewhere along the lines of the package plan, we opened up the pdf file only to be shocked to see a total over twice of what was expected.

Mind you, all our calls are personal calls with the occasional work-related calls. This means our phone bill never hits over RM35 usually (we gets despairing texts from Maxis telling us that our total usage for this month is RM20something, call/text more to maximize usage before so-and-so date). The only times we actually hit past the RM75 mark is when we visit Sporeland (or the first time we started surfing online via EDGE on our Nok7710).

Now last December our bill came up to over RM250. That also was another shock until we took a closer look at our bill details and our payments - we somehow missed paying for November's bill it seems, and there was also ethancya's and Renzze's Sporeland wedding to consider, so a bill of that amount was acceptable.

So after the initial glance of a bill of RM170 and the cussing that followed, we suspected that the bill should be due to yet another trip to Sporeland.

And it was. For our Sporeland Christmas trip. Which was a two days, one night trip. 2D1N enough to push our bill up to 2.5x more.

Looking through the bill doesn't make it look any cheaper.

Incoming calls when overseas are RM2 per minute. About RM1 per minute for outgoing calls. RM1 per text message. And these are all quick calls to get cabs, find out where the sis is, check where people are, etc. Wow. How it all adds up - we never expect the bill to be this high. Still. It was due to necessities and comfort, so we shan't say more.

And speaking of how high, our head is in the clouds and we've a goofy grin plastered on our face as the Chief nicely surprised us at work bringing ais kacang. How high are we? We probably need to drive home very slow to avoid any accidents later. :)

Jump

Are you ready to jump
Get ready to jump

We're definitely gonna get ready to jump, for a few reasons:

One, come this Chinese New Year the family and us will be away on holiday. This is a first and a definite refreshing break from the regular CNY traditions. As the grandparents have all passed away quite some time ago we haven't been going back to their places, and currently come CNY we just have some relatives come over to our home for a simple steamboat dinner.

Where we will be going for our family trip this year, you'll know once we come back. But having a family trip is one reason to jump - for joy.

Two, we've finally got our wireless modem router working. Yet another reason to jump for joy - we're now able to get Virtual Console games for the Wii as well as surf wirelessly on our iTouch. Happiness.

Of course, there's still one more reason to jump, and it's sorta linked to the above reason.

See, given that we've gotten the wireless modem router for our birthday and were puzzled no end as to how to get it fixed up, and after we had lad and Lifebook come over to share their expertise (with no success) we finally took it back to the shop that lad bought it from, to get some one to check it out and show us how to set it up.

The technician updated the software, sped through the setup, tried out his username and password, had some hiccups where it only occasionally logged on and connected to the internet. After a bit of frustration he took out a new wireless modem router and tra-laaa it worked fine for him.

But not for our username and password.

Sigh. It seems that another call to TMNet sometime soon may be needed.

However, after connecting the wireless modem router back we decided to give it another go - and try a variation to our password. And heck, it works. Damn alphanumeric passwords! But this is after the technician exchanged the router for us too, so it could have been that the first router also had problems! :P

Now to jump away before lad and/or Lifebook kills us.