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It’s been more than two months since my last update. What’s with the newborn, the new home, children’s schoolwork, and having to ‘entertain’ the helper’s antics, no doubt my maternity leave has never been busier. No chance to ‘action tai-tai‘ walk around Orchard Road shopping with baby on weekdays like I used to during my last maternity leave.
‘Action tai-tai’ two years ago when Anaqi was just a little baby.
So what happened during my absence from blogville?
Friends came to visit.
05th and 6th Mar 2011 – I was still putting up at my parents’ when a couple of my old friends and BFFs came to visit, and showered baby Aqeil with gifts. Thank you lovely aunties and uncles for your generosity.
(More photos are up on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aprima/sets/72157626584375615/)
New ‘toys’ to play with.
10th Mar 2011 - It was the first day of IT Show 2011, P and I headed down to Suntec Convention Centre where we had plans to recce camera lenses, but were saddened when told that Canon lenses were not available for sale during the show. We then made a quick pitstop to Nubox to check on a few Apple products and in less than an hour, we were proud owners of this – an iMac! (Buh-bye Windows XP!). It comes with a 27″ LED-backlit display, 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB memory and 1TB of disk space! (yes, very tech stuff, I know)
Our purchase from the IT Show 2011.
12th Mar 2011 – After my disappointment of not getting the-badly-most-wanted-camera-lens at the IT Show, P and I decided to make a trip down to Cathay Photo at Peninsula Plaza to check out a few. I heard this place sells a huge range of camera lenses at reasonable prices and they’ve got excellent sales staff. Anyway, I tried out a couple of lenses on my own Canon EOS 40D and finally decided to get…
Sigma 18-250mm DC OS HSM
… and on top of that, I added an external flash to my checkout basket.
Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash
Guess what (or who) are the first subjects to model their first tryout?
Chak!
Such are the things that excite me! (Dresses, bags and shoes, you say? Not quite as much.)
Sister’s Engagement & Birthday!
26th Mar 2011 – Yes, my little sister Dhiah is all so grown up now. On this day, she turned 25 years of age and got engaged! (Hey, wasn’t it only yesterday she woke up for kindergarten?). Anyway, she’s engaged to a Mohd Sadiq, who seems like a nice guy. I’ve seen him twice or thrice, but I haven’t spoken to him before. But I’m so happy for them both. Insyallah, semoga pertunangan mereka kekal hingga ke jinjang pelamin. Amin.
More photos on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aprima/sets/72157626585172549/
Stay tune for April happenings and Housewarming entries in my upcoming posts soon.
Here I am trying to revive my almost-dead blog (again) after a five-month long hiatus. I don’t have any good excuses for my lack of blogging (plenty of bad ones, but no good ones). Non-coincidentally, I’ve picked a nice binary date for its resurrection 
So what’s been up (or down, if I may say) throughout this undeserving abandonment period? I try not to end up in an endless rant, so here goes…(I’ll start with the good bits first)
Hold your horses, Anaqi!
Since the last posted video of the little bub taking his first few awe-worthy steps, the boy has now mastered the art of speed. While this achievement is in every parents’ tracking milestone, I often shudder at the thought of him having bumps and bruises on his forehead each time he fail to apply brakes when he makes his little dashes, and eventually bang himself onto the wall, or high-table, or the organ, or his siblings! The last time he collided with his brother, Mika, he imprinted a tooth mark on the tip of his right brow!
Birthday Get-together: Aries and May Babies
We never fail to organize a get-together for a mini birthday celebration no matter how belated it gets. This year’s Aries birthday celebration took place at Yati’s abode, and May Babies get-together at Liz’s. Of course you’ll bound to find non-Aries/May Babies also ‘menyibuk’ blowing candles on cakes *cough*Misha*cough*
But let’s give Misha some credit for her effort in making birthday cards for Ahnaf and Nasha, shall we? 
More photos can be found on my Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aprima/sets/72157623949140720/
Sahril and Elysha weds.
Yes, the tallest one in our group of poly friends finally weds to long-time girlfriend of 15 years, Nuryn Elysha. The event took place at Downtown East Pasir Ris, and dear hubby is privileged to be his driving companion in our very own MPS.
More photos can be found on my Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aprima/sets/72157624219075462/
It’s a Digital Age.
And so I’ve succumbed to ‘the dark side’ (as many say), ditching my Blackberry Bold 9000 for the new iPhone4. The week of its launch, the husband and I decided to place an order with Singtel for a pair (yes, husband ditched his existing telco as well). Due to the huge sell-out, we had to wait for the new stock to be available. We’re amazed that it only took us 1 week before we have our hands on our ‘new toys’. But now it looks like OUR kids have THEIR hands on OUR new toys! >_< (I’ll save the details for my next post)
Crash-Boom-Bang.
02.06.2010 was a fateful day for us – a day that had led to an interesting chain of events. The husband had fetched me from work this very day, and as we turned into ECP, there was a massive jam due to an earlier accident. In the midst of cars changing lanes and abrupt braking, we got ourselves into a 5-car collision, and we were at the tail-end of the collision. How sad. We ended up having to tow the car over to the workshop.
This picture was taken the following day at the car workshop, where the damages were more visible than during the night before. As the repairs were taking place, we started talks with our existing car insurer for policy renewal as it was expiring in a month. Sadly, they refused to renew our insurance policy. We scouted around for other insurers yet faced the same rejection. Their reason? We made 2 claims in one policy year and our total claims (including third-party) exceeded $30,000 
. When all appeal failed, we were left with no other choice but to leave our car untouched at our parking space for months.
Being too dependent on our little transportation, we found ourselves handicapped for the very first time after 4 years. It’s not easy when you have 3 kids in tow. Husband and I even decided that it’s high time to let the car go – sell it off, and see if we can get a second-hand replacement under another name. Meanwhile, someone by the name of Ken from a brokerage insurance agency came to hear of our situation and offered help. By God’s grace, on 06.09.2010, he managed to source an insurer for us, albeit with steep conditions. I was ecstatic! It didn’t matter that it burnt a hole in our pockets, but we’ll do all it takes to get our dear MPS up and running again (until the right time comes to REALLY let it go).
Now that THAT’s settled, and road-tax renewed, we’re getting it serviced and hopefully we’ll get to ride it again next week
Not a very good week for me tech-wise. Just this week alone I’ve made like 3 trips down to Sim Lim Square (SLS) to get new parts and software for my computer.
It all started when some kind of malicious code was deteched sitting on my PC and I can no longer remotely access my office desktop (yes, I occasionally work from home). Hence, I decided to give it a good formatting and re-install Win 2000, and all other applications. The first trip to SLS I got myself the Panda Platinum Internet Security Suite and an SMC wireless router cum print server. After I got everything fixed and installed, I shifted around the desks and sorted out all the cable wires. The PC seems to work fine, except now my USB PCI card doesn’t work. It could no longer detect any USB devices attached to it. Grr. I tried it on another old PC, also not working. A closer look at it, there was slight rust near the contact point, so I guess that’s probably why.
I made a second trip to SLS to get myself a 7-port USB hub, that comes with a separate A/C adapter. I also bought a 1GB DDR memory card, thinking of upgrading my 512MB one. After fixing it, my computer seems to be working fine, so I carried out my work as normal. However, within less than a day, my motherboard got fried. F*ck! Probably due to power overload or something, I dunno. The whole room smelt of burnt rubber!
So next day, a return trip to SLS – my third one – to get myself a new motherboard. I brought along my whole CPU case so that I could get their technician to check if any other devices were affected. Turned out that everything else were okay, and my harddisks are safe. Yay! The saleslady told me I need to get a CPU that is compatible with my newly-bought mobo. Fine. So I upgraded my P4 processor. She said if I were to also buy the casing, she could sell me at a bundle price which is far much less. I take a good look at my casing – my already yellowish rusty one – so I thought, okay why not? Fine. So got all three at a buncle price. Neat! So while I was already on a shoppoing spree, I got myself a new scanner as well. Heheh.
At home, the whole day was spent fixing it up. The wireless router was giving me all sorts of problem initially, but somehow I manage to get it to work the way I want it to. Finally!
Next up, a trip to NEC service centre because my wireless optical mouse no longer works with my NEC Versa notebook. I’ll probably go sometime next week. Too many tech issues in a week is giving me a headache.
I haven’t been posting since I left for my holidays about a month ago. Now that I’m back, all I can say is my trip was simply fantastic and totally unforgettable! I cannot describe how awesome it was! Minus of course the parts where P and I looked as if we were an Amazing-Race-cum-Survivor-cum-Globe-Trekker contestant *lol*. My (not-so) detailed log I had while I was there was captured in my anacam, digicam and mini-DV (actually I borrowed it from Kak Ciah, but anyway…). I have some trouble capturing it onto my comp initially because the capture card which I have can only capture analog videos, so yesterday I took a trip to Sim Lim to buy myself a new toy – a Pinnacle Studio MovieBox DV 9! Hence today, I’ll be spending the whole day in front of my pc to do a whole lot of video-editing! I had however sent my CF card to the film store to get my pictures developed. It was a full thick album of about 398 photos plus an additional 5 mini albums to store those taken from my analog camera.
On the subject of my fetus-development, I went for my third scan yesterday. I had gain about slightly more than a kilo since my last visit. The baby has grown bigger too. See how it’s resting it legs (one bended-knee and the other straightened) comfortably against the “wall”. (…kaki relak one-corner nampak…)
Ladies and gentlemen,
You are now looking at the proud owner of….
*squeels in delight*
I woke up much earlier today than the usual weekend. 9.00a.m! Thay’s way too early on a Saturday morning. But that all with a purpose. I have done some deep thinking last night and I thought I should go for it. So I did.
This morning I took a train all the way to the west (that’s not too far actually considering this small country I live in) to Jurong East IMM. It’s a big mall with lots of stores. Surprisingly though, there were not many people. I had called P up earlier saying that I’ll meet him at the electronic store – Best Denki – on the second floor. Ignoring all other appliances I steered straight to my main intention.
You’ve guessed it – a DVD player.
It took me awhile to browse the area until I finally decided on the JVC model, which comes with 2 microphone input, and also allows you to play DVDs from all regions. It cost me $199. Ouch indeed, but it was worth it. And I’m even more anxious to have it due to the fact that I have FOTR:EE & TTT:EE DVDs waiting for me at P’s home!!
