It's the 2nd Evening of Self Expression for UNIMAS's Centre For Language Studies. Dr. Soubakeavathi Rethinasamy the Dean will unfortunately, not be in attendance. However, Puan Rosnah Mustafa the Deputy Dean and Puan Farah Hanini Abdul Rahman, The Head of Language Courses Coordinator will take her place.

It will be a wonderful, enjoyable and memorable evening of storytelling & drama.

We begin with the Briefing by Patrick Yeoh the Course Coordinator.



Our Panel of Wise People Who Will Decide Who Wins


Lim Swee Wee telling his story entitled "His Story"


Group 9's play, "The Orphans". Very touching...


Group 12 presented an ethereal, sub-conscious play entitled "Sarah". It was sad, yet filled with hope at the end...


This group presented "Just Another Girl", an adaptation of a story of the same name, written by Cecelia Ong. Cecelia published a collection of short stories entitled "Death of a Longhouse & Other Stories from Sarawak". Linda directed a play some months back entitled "Death of a Longhouse".

The story of the "Unfaithful Husband" brings humour to the audience.

I'm at UNIMAS. It's the Evening of Self-Expression for the course i'm teaching - PBI 1062 English for Self-Expression. We had 600 students taking ESE this semester and whittling down the presentations to fit into 2 nights was a painful task. Patrick Yeoh - the course coordinator & founder-had the 'privilege' of wielding the axe. Thankfully, the long Hari Raya holiday helped; a number of groups could not perform because they did not have enough people. Shame.

The show's about to start and i'm doing the lights.


The first item on was a story entitled My Story. It was good.


Then, we had a hilarious nugget entitled The Diamond Ring


Soon after, we had this bit of action which no one seemed to understand...


Lazy Gadong is a story of what happens when you're lazy and looking for an easy buck!

We're buying our first home; not a house or a property but, a home. It took us 4 days to go from discovery to signing the S & P (Sales & Purchase) Agreement.

WHAT??? SO FAST???? YOU GOT THINK FIRST OR NOT OR JUST LANTAK ONLY????? (translation from Kuching speak: That was quick. Have you given any thought to the seriousness of purchasing a property and the financial consequences which comes with it? note: lantak=knock or rush into).

FYI, we have been thinking (and dreaming!) of getting a place of our own. The only problem was that the properties we liked were either (1) too close to busy roads (2) situated in (over)developed areas or (3) too darn expensive. So, we gave up looking. I had come to a point where i said to God,"I give up!"

Last Thursday, i volunteered to give Linda a ride down to work. She, of course, appreciated it very much. Traffic was nonexistent - it was the tail-end of Hari Raya (Aidilfitri/Eidl Fit'r/Eid Mubarak) and lots of folks must have taken the opportunity to NOT go to work (your's truly included!). I stopped for a lovely bowl of Beef noodles at Green Hill Corner (ah! the memories for some of you...). Lying on an adjacent chair at the table was a copy of the day's Borneo Post. Habits die hard, i read the papers while waiting for my grub - matter of fact, i read the papers while sucking down my grub! A small real estate ad caught my attention - it was simple and of the non-flashy variety - yet i had this urge to see it. Did it mention that it was only 5 minutes away from where i work???

So, drive i did, and wow... it blew me away.

The house checked all the boxes in Linda's list of "What Our Home Should Be" and most of mine - sadly, it left the "Pet elephant in backyard" box unchecked (sob!).
It's a single level semi-detached house sitting on 13.5 points of land. It's got the adjoining house on one side and a small hill on the other.

Lovely.

Linda's 100% low interest rated Federal Government Housing Loan will take care of the payments ( Ah, the perks of working for the G - it's pretty much the only decent perk left!). We just have to deal with the accompanying fees.

What a week it has been. We're on our way to becoming home-owners and being saddled with a RM219,000 debt. We love it.

Oh, it started raining heavily this morning and the smell of clean, ionised air was just heavenly. How was your day?

There goes another semester of teaching English ( for Self Expression) at Unimas! It's been 3 semesters since i started and i must say, it is different from the other language courses. It's got bits of creative writing here, a sprinkling of drama there and a whole load of confidence building everywhere! Performance nights are on the 25 and 26 October at CAIS Hall. It's free.

Muslims around the world will celebrate Eid'l Fitr (or Aidilfitri, in Malaysia) marking the end of Ramadhan (the fasting month). Folks are running (and driving) around like lunatics trying to get everything ready for Aidilfitri. It's kinda like that mad rush for everything you did not do or get during Chinese New Year or Christmas.

School's out for a while. Some schools will start next week but mine only starts the week after. Ah, the joys of being in a residential school.

David is enjoying (nursery) school. We call it nursery, he calls it school. We call it the school building, he calls it Teacher's House. We noticed him being less problematic at home after a full week at school and, his attention span has increased significantly. Thank God for Teacher's House!

I would like to announce that David Ajith Yeo Yeung Ern started attending Nursery School yesterday. We went to register and lookee see the place on Monday. He did not want to go home! We had to drag him into the car. Linda drove him to school yesterday and stayed to chat with the teachers & principal. It's a lovely little place on Ong Kwan Hin Road. She picked him up around 1 pm and he was fast asleep. Ms. Dara - his teacher - said that he was soooo excited he did not sleep a wink during naptime. The little guy slept all the way home, stumbled up the stairs, pulled the big fluffy pillows to the living room floor and slept soundly for the next HOUR and a HALF! We love school too!!!

Linda posted a little write-up on our AFS host son Craig. It's a good read.

Location: Friendship Park, Jalan Song
Date: 3 October 2007

The wonderful pond with schools of tilapia and koi are no more. Most of them died. We went -happily- yesterday for our Wednesday-afternoon-outing but ended up feeling like we were attending a funeral for those lovable fish.
When we got there, the pond was 3/4 drained and a group of men (as well as passerby volunteers) were desperately trying to scoop stinking dead fish out in order to save the still living (decomposition in a stagnant pool ain't all that great for living creatures). The water looked like the green slushee from 7-11. My guess would be pump & filter failure and an exceptional occurance of algae bloom caused by the extremely hot weather which could have suffocated the fishes. I overheard some cynical gentleman who thought someone had poisoned the pond. I think that to be rather unlikely... or is it?

What happened?

an update:

Well done for typical Malaysia Boleh incompetency. We can build but we can't even maintain what we have. The fishes died due to "a lack of water in the pond" (what the...???). The jokers in charge of repairs decided to drain the water to fix the pump (ok, that's logical) but didn't know what to do with the fishes. So, again in line with typical Malaysian apathy, they decided to screw the fishes and replace them later when "the repairs have been completed" (huh?). Folks don't care if you're going to put in bloody arowanas or expensive kois later; they care about the fish which have been there since the inception of the park. No one is responsible for feeding them really, people just took it upon themselves to care for the "upbringing" of those critters. Imagine if someone drowned your pet dog / cat / hamster?

Shame, I say... Shame.