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This Old House

Farhan inside the little hut

This house was completed early last quarter of 2001. I did some renovation to it, then did some DIY stuf like putting up the wooden panels, lighting etc. All bulbs, save for the lounge and kitchen, are energy-saving bulbs…even outside. I see a reduction from the usual RM5xx electric bill back at Bukit Rahman Putra using conventional lighting and two airconditioners to just around RM50 per month with the lights outside remaining on for the whole night every night and three rooms using airconditioner.

My next project is to complete the fence lighting, and another pond behind the bonsai tree.

You can view more of the house HERE.

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Love Plus One

Where to dive?

What’s with the title? It’s actually the name of a song from 1982 by Haircut 100 called Love Plus One (what else could it be?). There’s a part, a bridge if you like, in the song that goes like this:

Where does it go from here?
Is it down to the lake I fear?

I was singing that part to myself when wondering where to go diving.

Yes, it’s mid-January and the question that I am getting frequently is: “When is your next dive trip? Where will you be going?”

The short answer would be: Port Dickson.

Other than that would be Pulau Payar…or an LOB trip to Pulau Jarak. Another interesting place would be Roach Reef as there’s a special package offered for 4D/3N – 3 boat dives a day, unlimited shore dives, food and accommodation included. And it’s cheap.

Come March I’ll have to go back to Pulau Bidong, after that maybe an LOB trip to..wherever because the whole vessel has been chartered by a friend.

Maybe I’ll do just that. Organise an LOB trip every month and get people to pay cheap.

So where will you be diving next? And when?

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Dangerous Liaisons – Part 2

B*tch!

I found out that this b*tch came back to the house at 3am to sleep here. So that was when she decided to let go her lies to the wife. No wonder the wife only asked me early this morning.

What is this? Gain points by jeopardising someone’s marriage so you could sleep in their house?

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Dangerous Liaisons

Angry wife

What is it about wives that they are never satisfied with whatever husbands have to say?

Let’s take this case as an example: my wife is an office-bearer in a political organisation and is the envy of many of her peers. Her blunt methods in dealing with people have also not gone down well with many. Back when we had just gotten married, character ‘A’ made up a story that nearly caused our marrige to collapse. And all because ‘A’ had a fallout with her then good-friend ‘B’. And because ‘B’ became close to my wife, ‘B’ became a convenient subject for her to relate to me in an intimate way (I won’t use the term “romantic”). Initial explanations were met by a brick wall that the wife had put up. So, I thought it would rather be wise for me to shut up and let the truth prevail. In the end it did.

Yesterday, after almost 5 years, ‘A’ appeared at my house. Now she sees that the house has gotten three times as large as the one she went to previously, and there is more than one car sheltering in the porch, not including the ones parked outside. ‘A’ has had yet another fallout with a good friend, ‘C’, who is a divorcee, and is also in my wife’s good books. I woke up at 5 this morning to a barrage of non-sensical questions from the wife trying to establish a link between ‘C’ and I. And as it went, the only time I had a talk with ‘C’ was when I asked her to rethink about leaving her husband, ‘M’, who happens to be a good friend of mine. ‘C’ admitted that brief encounter two years ago in her SMS to the wife. But being hot-headed, the wife refuses to believe any of it and still insists that there is something going on between ‘C’ and I, and it is also putting ‘C”s relationship with her current boyfriend in jeopardy. I refuse to entertain anymore of my wife’s stupidity.

The same thing happened to my wife when she was married to her previous husband: a good friend of hers who was jealous that she managed to bag a big fish (a Class ‘A’ contractor from Kelantan) conjured up a story about the ex-husband having an affair with this so-called good friend. And my wife, being her, decided it was best to confront him and accuse him of all this, and shouted abuses at him. This resulted in her having to endure 18 stitches to her calf as her ankle was almost severed by the blow of a golf club the ex-husband had used to whack her. This same friend, tried to do the same with me but failed.

It seems that the wife is always forgetting lessons that should be learnt: that when you’ve got a Number One, the only way is down. And everyone is very willing to see her tumble so they can laugh about it and take her position. If only she has common sense…

And to think that my late grandmother was better looking that any of them…

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Pampered

Thai massage

Two days since the end of the 28 dives plus underwater assembly and moving of scaffoldings etc. Whole body still aches. Well, pay was good…received a 4-figured pay for 2-days work….food was good, free-flow and free. So I shouldn’t complain.

Anyway, at 7am today I sent my daughters Hana and Iqa for their co-curricular activities at school. Picked them up at 10am. Then at 11.30am sent my mom to the Honda Service center for her to pick up her car.

Went back home, sent a text message to The Cute One. Then fell asleep. Woke up, body was still aching. So went to get a good massage. The last thing I remembered was asking forgiveness from the masseuse if I fell asleep. And that I did. I must have snored away while being massaged for a good two hours. Woke up and asked why had she stopped. That was when she pointed to the clock.

Imagine sleeping through the back-breaking, neck-snapping process, and pressure points being elbowed and knuckled etc.

I still wonder how I managed that.

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2 Days and 28 Dives Later

Me and Brigette at the underwater set

For two days I was part of the safety diver team, the underwater grip team, counsellor to a talent, for a commercial shoot for a Lebanese company. I was in-charge of the safety of namely the Malaysian talent, Brigette. There were two other talents, Francine from Brazil, and the main talent from Russia whose name I did not get.

On the first day we did rehearsals, mainly for the respective safety divers and their charge to have somekind of understanding on hand signals and safety. I did 8 dives on the first day that lasted from 10am through 9.30pm. We also assembled the scaffoldings underwater and moved them to the correct positions.

On the second day, we did more rehearsals while waiting for the shooting of the spa scene at another location to complete before the director could attend to our location. The day started at 8am. We only began shooting at nightfall to get the correct ambience. We wrapped up at 4.30am the next day, and I logged 20 dives (with lots of bounces). And remember, 20 dives means all dives were of 21 minutes or more, not including the bounces where I spent less than 5 minutes on the surface while assisting the talent I was in-charge of with safety.

It was a good experience, albeit a very tiring one. We divers finished up 3 bottles of 100% oxygen to minimise inner-ear decompression sickness or any other decompression sickness that may affect us due to the nature of the dives.

Many people forget that every dive, even those in pools, is a decompression dive.

You can view more pics by clicking here.

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Madman’s Song

Akon’s “Smack That” is quite catchy. Walking Vibrator used to like the other one: “I’m So Lonely” but changed the lyrics to “I Am So Horny.”

Anyway, my son, Farhan, would remark saying that “Smack That” is a madman’s song because at the beginning of the music video has Akon singing alone in the prison cell. And everytime I sing the chorus, my daughter Nisaa would put her hand over my mouth.

And of course, PADI’s most-macho Divemaster a.k.a Holemaster doesn’t lke the song too.

So enjoy here this song! Haha!

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Farhan’s First Day Away

Farhan's first day at school - 8th January 2007

This is Farhan on his first day away from home…that was yesterday. And for the first time in 35 years, I had to spend a full day at a kindergarten. Today, I sent him there again and left him. He cried and yelled and whacked his class teacher…but I was advised by the Principal to leave him there and let him “grow up and grow out of being too attached.”

It was sad watching him there…apart from the stupid deployment in Langkawi, and my occassional dive trips, he’s never really been separated from me. Well, the deployment in Langkawi wasn’t stupid. The people who had wanted it there were stupid.

Although he’s just turned 4, he’s really 5 this year. He’s a grown-up boy now.