Manifesto talk...

I had a few discussions with Ving and Yun regarding the manifesto of both the rival.
Yun had favor the "scale" initially as they promised to distribute computer to student and later change her mind as she saw the photography of the computer - it was an IBM deskstop....she told me that it look like second handed product and she would call up her cousin later to double confirm the news, but I doubt that my sister in law with 4 kids would be attracted by such "bribery" act...
Regarding the EPF for wife, Ving felt good but Yun had another view - > some man would dislike the idea: why should I give part of my money to my wife to control ? the new kids on the block had different view than the old hag indeed...
Well, the BN had laid off a few female big gun and I wander if they really won, would there be any female minister ?

GE13 - my 1st postal voting

I had a good 7 hrs sleep before I woke up and enjoy my cup of coffee...(white coffee bean from Aik Chong, I purchased it from the Aik Chong Old shop in Malacca), black of coz...

It was raining when we started to clear up our tent and gear however the process was smooth as this is not our first time packing on rainy day.

We had our breakfast at a noodle shop nearby and headed up to the mission's office which is 12 km away.

outside the mission

There was this Malaysian Student Association members who were around the entrance preparing to educate Malaysians on how to vote...

It was Sunday and there is no office that is working today, the mission had set up a desk with 2 election officials just in front of the lift. We presented our IC to the lady sitting at the desk and our names were crossed and allowed to enter the lift heading to 8F. The kids had to stay at the ground floor as only voter is allowed to enter.

There is another desk in the mission's office where we were handed the envelop which content the ballot paper, envelop and borang 2.

We proceeded to the Saksi room(which is not necessary as we can find any witness as we wish). In the room, there were 2 officers and 4 cubicles with tables just like the voting center. We presented the envelops and borang 2 and had them signed in front of the witness.

During the process a young chap came and started to talking at a raise tone at the envelop collecting desk.

According to him, he had felt that it was unfair as there was serial number on the ballot papers, envelops and borang 2. He felt that the vote would be traced back to him... I looked at him calmly and restrained myself from commenting his act at that moment.

The young chap had queued up behind me and after my borang 2 was signed. He approached the Malay uncle(one of the witness) which I thought was the senior officer about the "unfair" and he had said that he is going to mail it back to Malaysia himself and asked the official how it should be done in ENGLISH. The official politely show him out and told me what to do outside the room.

What I wanted to say to him was:

1.When you met an govt. official, speak Malay if you can, and don't raise your tone especially when you use English while talking to them. ( a message to them, I am a Malaysian and I knew the language well to show that I care about the country...)

2.When you don't trust the system - don't involve = don't vote

3.Read through the internet before you asked- regarding how and where to mail the ballot paper is noted over the net....just GOOOOGLE..

4.I am not afraid of my vote being traced back to me - I want the relevant people to know what I preferred and if "flashing" my vote is not against the law, I would "flashed" it...Lim Guan Eng would not be afraid of letting other people know that who he vote ....so do I... let them trace, if them wanted to ....nothing to shout nor complained. But in fact, I read the borneopost online today morning in which the state EC director of Sabah explained "how secure" it is about the postal voting...

I completed the voting and placed my vote into the bag...a short process and I am happy that I had voted on GE13... 

Syabas to the mission, they had really done a great job on the voting process planning - a smooth flow and great setting of the ballot room...

Post voting: there was another shopping tour at the IKEA nearby and we headed back to our home by 1pm... stopped by Taichung "Red Ghost" steak house for lunch + dinner at 3:15pm...

here I am with the proof of my postal voting...

pre voting day...

here i am, sitting in the camp at the Hua Zhong camping ground in Taipei city..
after 5 hrs of straining drive, we had finally arrived at the Taipei city. Yun and Xian had wanted a tour to the book store and we had our lunch there.
In the evening, we had picked up some food and headed to the camping site...need a good sleep tonight as I have to drive a long long way home after the voting....
after reviewing the candidate profile, I had made up my mind, not a difficult one but yet I hope I could make a difference...

recognition....

I  believe that there is a very small number of the chinese independence school graduate that had joined the government service... well, with an unrecognized diploma, we the one that is left out.
With a high school cert that is unrecognized plus a unrecognized medical degree, the pressure was more tense during my school days. Most of the people that knew my parents had "advised" them to reconsidered their decision and they had to tolerate the comment for all those years.
Well, fortunately those people were wrong. I am one of the countable government servant (ex of coz) in my family and registered with the medical council back in Malaysia. Well, I heard from my parents that one of my cousin is studying medicine
locally at the moment. For chinese providing good education is very expensive if you had planned to send your child overseas, but yet studying a degree in Taiwan is cheaper then doing it in Malaysia in certain field( eg, medicine). The recognition of unified exam does not change anything, I doubt that there would be a lot of chinese unified exam cert holder would join the government service with an junior entry post
The BN could have just announced the recognition of the unified exam on the spot and gain some extra chinese vote to make a difference in some area, but yet ....

preparing for the vote...

We would be heading up north tomorrow. I had successfully booked the camping ground in the Taipei city and would be putting up a night.  Strenous drive but still worth the experience...
The Taipei city council had set up a camping ground near a bridge at the old Wan Hua Area. We had camped there for a few times and it is a well maintained. The fee is a good RM55 for a night.
I had gone through the procedure of postal voting and would be reviewing the candidate information tonight...maybe I would change my mind....

the path for Yun

Yun is graduating this year from primary school and after months of discussion and negotiating, she had finally compromised and wanted to go to the MH high school.
Few years back, after chatting with some parents, I had decided MH is the school for Yun - the reason is simple, I want a school with "normal teaching".
In Taiwan, many secondary school had replace their PT subject or art subject with other subject that is relatively more important - math, science or what so ever. Some of the school had even opened up night self study class and retained the student till 10pm. The "night self study" was however a fake and teacher utilized the period for extra teaching a.k.a tuition and most of the parents love such class like dont know what.
I don't want to add any burden to my children, I wanted them to enjoyed a  easy but fruitful secondary school. life The thinking process rather than the art of memorizing, the creativitiy rather than the scoring in examination
Yun had wanted to go to the local govt school which is mixed of all kinda of student. There is also this "famous" high school which is stressing more on the result. Yun had resisted and protested in a very strong way and finally we successfully persuaded her.
She had taken the entry exam and successfully made it to the top 25 % and enabling her to enroll in the school.
Well, the war had just begun and Yun had shown an interest in Math....hope I could replicate my experience and benefit her in her future life....

HxNx....

There is one confirmed case of H7N9 last night. The news had made it look like a disaster. I had this lady who was seen in OPD clinic 2 days ago for upper respiratory tract infection and came to ED asking for screening. She was afebrile and despite of complaining of worsening of symptom, she claimed that she tolerated it well. She had travelled to the Zhang Jia Jie, Hu Nan Province, which is not at endemic area.
She had expressed that although she had not visit to the related province, however she had contacted with peoples that might had come from the above area. I reassured that she is afebrile and there is currently no evidence that it would transmit from human to human and discharge her.
I do feel comfortable seeing patient with URI symptom at the moment but if there is evidence of human to human transmission, than it would be warzone again for me. I had to don the "full gear" to see feversih patient....risk taking job but still it is my job,unlike the SARS, we had this tamiflu now

GE13 anxiety syndrome...

I do feel anxiety about GE13, I had tried to surf over the net to test the direction of the wind…

Here is my observation:

1.   99 % of the blog I have read are pro Pakatan (one of the exception is a blogger “.seng” who is a Singaporean with plantation business in Malaysia-> he is pro BN for the sake of his business)

2.   most of the overseas Malaysian who expressed their wishes to jom balik undi are pro Pakatan…

3.   There are associations/bodies which are subsidizing Malaysian flying back to vote..

4.   The Taiwan Malaysian Student Association had rented buses ferrying absent voter from the south and central part of Taiwan on 28/4.

5.   There is this survey center with the name of "independence" which conducted some survey that result favor BN but their sample is head shaking…

I had come across this news regarding this ruling party Chinese leader in N9, he claimed that he should be contesting in the safe zone. According to his theory is –

   I should be elected and with the status and authority, I could lead other young people reps to perform in the duty…(no power =can’t lead, but in my humble view is “I gotta have power first than take care my subordinate”…)

A strongly diversified version from Kit Siang who chose to fight in enemy stronghold….well, hope most of us is wise enough to make the decision.

No pain no gain trainning...

After 12 hours of strenuous event, I had seen 30+ food poisoning patients. There event took place 60 kms from our unit, in the mountain area where I visit from time to time during my Friday specialist clinic. The crowd of 70+ had eaten bento (a.k.a lunch box with rice and dishes) provided by a local supplier after the church gathering at noon.

6 hours later some of them had started to have crampy abdominal pain associated with vomiting and diarrhea.

There was no night clinic and the ED was packed with non-emergency patient….

I managed to manned the scenario alone and got half of them admitted to the ward.

Lem had told me that another 10+ came in the day shift and the total victims had summed up to 45.

I was glad that I had a good training during my day as an apprentice as I am able to manage such scenario without difficulty.

I had read a lot regarding the housemanship in Malaysia, unfortunately most of them are negative one. I was surprised that a HO is being paid up to RM5K per months… 2x to what I get during my days and the working hours had been shortened to 60 hrs per week. Boy, I remembered Mama Ng, the 1^st pakar perunding kanan(Senior Consultant) I had met. She is very senior in the field and during one of the meeting she told us that House officers are not allow to go home… house=in house = in hospital, she said that she would check from time to time to see if we stayed in the hostel. ( I skipped and never put up a night there, and never get caught...)

We worked

Mon -> Fri 7-6= 11x5 = 55hrs

Sat half day 7-12 = 5hrs

Sunday rounds = 3 hrs (yes… SSSSUNDAY)

Total hours = 63 hrs (without night shift)

Averagely 2.5 night shifts per week = 13x2.5 =32 hrs

Total hours = 95 hrs per week….

The experiences I gained during the 4 months proven to be so valuable during my practice. For medical officer and house officer during those day, the day shift is working under direction of specialist and the night shift is where one got more exposure(in the day 1->20 pts, in the night it is 1->150 pts) and learn how to make decision and manage patient themselves…truly it is that kind of exposure and work that make a doctor learn and advance in his/her skill…

what is your ....is yours...

It was as busy morning, patient came pouring like flood… We had a call from the emergency dispatching center during the chaotic scenario. There was this “Swimming across the bay” event held down south and due to poor weather, about 200-300 participants were unable to swim back to shore, there were expecting a mass casualty scenario and we were requested to standby.

I did not initiated the massive casualty routine as the site was too far away(60km+ ) and there are 3 hospitals nearby the area.

Many were scooped out from the sea however only 2 drowning of no sign of life were noted. Another 5 were sent to local hospital for treatment.

Well, I was quite happy that my speculation was right but not for long.

After my dinner at 6pm, 4 patients c crampy abd pain, vomiting and diarrhea were brought in. The person who brought them had told us that there is more to come as all of them had eaten the same bento(lunch box…)

I had seen 20+ food poising related case since then ….

What is yours is yours…just can’t hide….

trust no one....

I had come to work and during the past over, K had told me that there was this case that “we” saw months ago that came back asking for certificate.

The patient had arrived just before the morning pass over and was seen by K. He had passed over the patient to me later and told me to review the x-ray and arranged the referral as the family had requested a referral on arrival. The patient was noted with subdural hemorrhage and there was no bony fracture on the x-ray ordered.

K was telling me that he was reluctant to issued the certificate as there was this fracture missed out.....K had told me that there was this obvious fracture noted and he had mumbled that what didn’t I see it…

I had later review that x-ray and found that the only film of his left lower leg was this:

 

My question was : if the fracture was not noted, then why the heck the cast was applied….

Well, the question had just flashed over my head for a second and I noted the cast to be a plastic instead of cement….

Darn, I took a further look at the date and found that it was a month later from the date of accident, the pateint was discharged later and returned to our ortho OPD for follow up.

I reviewed the x-ray taken at the date of the ED consultation and found that there is no rt lower leg x-ray ordered…

My fault for not doing a thorough review of trauma again and just reviewed the x-ray and proceeded with the referral.

Well, another lesson….trust no one…

approved....

I had been checking the webpage on hourly basis today...
finally the page had shown up....

I would be booking the camping ground in Taipei on Monday....

Well, all set to go....

a life that I resisted...

I am here sitting in the health clinic located in the middle of some mountain…Friday, seeing patient in the medical clinic lead me back to life as a physician. I wear like an average office worker, short sleeve shirt and Khaki pants with leather shoes. I continued to take up the responsibility as this is one of the acts that make me remembered my specialty. This is the life my family wanted me to lead, wear proper attire and act like the rest of the doctor…a life in which I had resisted since many years ago... 

Well, a half day job and I would be on my way back picking up some mango for Xian later on….  

meat, bone and tea...

 As a Klang boy, I had always been a Bak Kut Teh fan. 

My dad would usually take us out on the Sunday morning for the dishes. 

Everyone had a No 1 Bak Kut Teh in the heart…I usually go to Ah Poh Bak Kut Teh near my house.

How good is the Klang Bak Kut Teh? Darn good I should say…

I had this classmate GSW who is currently manning a good clinic in Sarawak. During my service in Klang, he had come to KL for a visit and had put up a night in my house. I had taken him to this Ah Poh Bak Kut Teh and during the meal, he had told me that he had finally realized that why I am not keen of eating the Bak Kut Teh they had cooked in the hostel, the taste here in Klang is so so so tasty…

Lem had also came to visit me once in Klang and I had taken him to the same shop and we had added the soup for 3 times….

I had asked Yun a question last night…does Bak Kut Teh really contain tea ? (Bak Kut = meat with bones, Teh = tea)…

After a few seconds, she answered me that yes…

The answer was “No” and I had told here the below facts:

Bak Kut Teh doesn’t contain tea at all. In the past, when tea was expensive, most of the people who went to the shop will only ordered Bak Kut (meat+soup and rice) but only the wealthy would ordered Bak Kut and Tea so

The poor -> Bak Kut

The rich –> Bak Kut Teh

However Chinese tea had become cheaper and cheaper, later, all of the customer would order Bak Kut Teh and it had become a name for the dishes…

Frankly speaking, the tastiest Bak Kut Teh uses fresh pork and it had to be slain early in the morning thus most of the pork are not checked by the health institution for disease. Well, gotta take risk if you want good food…

The traditional Bak Kut Teh comes in bowl and later the clay pot style becomes popular. One of the oldest shop in Klang is the one named “Tek Ti” located just beside the klang bridge – behind the Jalan Masjid Indian. Unlike the other shop where you can order the part of meat you want, they served it like the dim sum shop; a waiter would carried few bowls in a tray and walk around the tables. You picked which bowl that you like…. And  NO EXTRA SOUP would be added. If you want more soup – please order another bowl… that is one of the reason I don’t go to the shop – soup is the most attractive part of the dishes….

I really missed it…. But still, Ving is going to cook it this Saturday…… grace indeed for a Klang boy in Taiwan… 

increment....

When I was posted to Klinik Kesihatan in Tg Malim, I had done locum in a few local clinic from time to time, not on a regular basis of coz. One of the clinics was opened by a Taiwan medical graduate Dr C. Dr C wife had migrated to America along with his children and from time to time, he would take a break and escape to KL to meet with his sister. He would ask me to cover the clinic during the break. He pays RM20+/hr and compare to the pay of a poor govt. medical officer, it was quite ok at that time.

I had read news about this Dr Ika over the net and found that the locum rate was RM45/hr. Well, a 100% increased – a great leap from 10+ years ago.

it was RM2.5 for a small one 10+years ago and now it was RM4.5

compare to the price of inflation, the increment is considered as ok...

Night of no CT scan....

It had been a long weekend for me, I went off at by Friday noon and came back for night shift on Monday night. When I came to work today, Lem had told me that the CT was downed since Friday noon. The service team had come for a service routine and when they reboot the machine -> voola, it was down.Further examination had revealed a damaged IC board and it need to be shipped form Singapore. The board had arrived yesterday and after the replacement the machine is till downed and another IC board was found to be faulty; this time the board have to come from America. It is now 4^th day without any CT and if any advance imaging is needed, Lem had to me that MRI is the choice….Well,  here we are and the hospital had managed to survive the past few days without the CT scan.

I recalled those days when I served as houseman in the Klang GH. When the CT is not available, we had to send patient to Selayang or KLGH for CT scan. The houseman would have to accompany the patient to and fro for the imaging. Definitely not a good job as there would be load of task waiting for you when you returned for the errand. 

We are lucky as we have MRI as backup, but still, ordering a MRI for unstable patient is really risk taking…..

Well, just keep my finger cross…..hopefully I don’t need any urgent CT tonight…

pending....

I had been worried about the postal voting date as Ving is undergoing her chef licensing test on the 4/25-4/26. When I read that the absent voter voting date was set on the 4/30, I was relieved and started my plan.

However later I read from the news that the 4/30 is meant for the local postal voter instead for the oversea voter and that we would have to wait until 4/19 to know about the proper date.

Our application as oversea postal voter are still pending and I had called up the election committee and was told that I had need to wait until 4/20 nomination date for the confirmation of our status.

But according to the net,

 

I felt a little comfortable but still I had made up my mind that if our applications were rejected, I am prepared to fly back for the voting….with a greater price of coz, but whatever la, I would like to be part of the moment of truth.

Nothing is fair

The ED and Out patient clinic is actually 2 very depending unit in our hospital. The clinic would “pushed” some patient to ED if the illness is severe or complicated enough to be managed in ED. Sometimes, some hot shot doctors with loads of patient would referred patient for admission via ED as they don’t have the luxury 10 min to sign an admission. I usually would not reject such request as we worked as a team. The existence of the OPD in the evening had lessen my work load and I appreciate that.

As for K, even though the management had agreed that the ward on call doctor would assist during the ED evening session on Saturday night, K was still very unsatisfied with the arrangement of patient distribution. He had insisted on an equal basis that each doctor should see equal amount of patient rather than the ED doctor seeing triage grade I-III and the ward on call doctor seeing the grade IV-V. He had done some compliant toward the nurses triaging skill (triaging too many patient into grade I-III) and holding back examination as much as possible lately.

Lem had a discussion with me and I had told him that K intention of drawing attention of the management was so obvious. However it is not a right way to do so….but our conclusion is nothing could be done….We shall wait and see how long would it take for the management to discover the fact….

There would be a final showdown on the arrival of the new ED physician later in August…

I just hope that my shift is not affected after that….

Playing safe....

I had this traumatic case during my last shift. A middle-aged male who had rammed his car onto a bridge pier was sent over by the EMT. He was in comatose state when the EMT recovered him. The patient was un-arousable when I saw him and gasping for air. The initial resuscitation was intubation and follow by IV infusion. The BP was ok with bradycardia of 60/min. I did a FAST (Focus Assessment with Sonography for Trauma) and there was no fluid in the abdomen. The possible diagnosis was possible intracranial bleeding. However I had also ordered chest and abdomen CT just in case I am wrong.
The head and neck CT was clear but the abdomen CT revealed a intraabdominal bleeding with hematoma at the intestine. I was wrong and luckily I did everything.....

The patient crushed and resuscitation was done and with fluid/blood infusion we were managed to get the SBP back to 80mmHg. I could do nothing and further more in the ED and sent the patient to ICU.

Minutes later a lady came and asked about the patient condition. She had indentified herself as a friend and I told her that I need authorization from family for the surgery as it was a high risk surgery and most probably the patient would not survive. The lady had asked me if we could proceed with the surgery before anyone could be contacted. I told her that surgery might not save the patient life and I need consent and fully communication before

I proceed with anything. The lady had requested to see the patient and told me that she would tried to do something and I had to sent the patient to ICU pending decision.

The patient had passed away hours later just after the family arrived.

Unlike the bigger hospital, the place I worked in does not have a 24 hrs in house consultation. I had to call the physician/surgeon and they had to take a 1 hr drive from their home for the consultation after office hour. Imaging that I had called the surgeon/anesthetist for surgery and the family had refused the ops when they arrived; it would be another 1 hr drive back home…..I had to decide if the patient need surgery instead of calling the surgeon to come over and decide further management.

At one moment, I had struggled if to call my surgeon to come and do the surgery and give the patient a chance but as the patient BP had crushed and gone into arrest once in ED, I doubt that the patient would make it through the anesthesia. Unlike the other surgeon I knew, our surgeon CJ is an aggressive person who would do laparotomy straight then guessing in front of the CT scan whether to observe to see if the patient could improve. The decision is cruel as I had just signed the death warrant for the patient… but yet in Taiwan, doing surgery without family consent could ended up with a medico-legal suit that last many years..CJ is that kind of person that would go for it and I just don’t bare to drag him down with the possible risk. Well, I am too old for those hanky panky and tried to play by the rules for the shake of my family….

coconut grater

During my schooling day back in Malaysia, there was this pasar malam(night market) in the Saturday and Wednesday night near our neighbourhood. My mother would take a rest and we would scout our dinner cum supper in the night market. There was this stall that sells coconut juice and sugar cane juice. It was one of my favorite stall, coconut juice was a must buy during those days.

The local coconut juice was however not that tasty compare to the one sell in Malaysia and the price is higher here. The most expensive coconut juice I had drunk was the one in Club Med Cherating, it was RM20 per coconut….

My mom used to asked me or my brother to go to the local Indian grocery shop to buy dried coconut. The shop keeper would chopped the coconut in half and later grated it with a electric grater. The grater coconut would be juiced for santan later to cook curry. Occasionally my mom would make some onde-onde for us…

Ving would cook curry for us from time to time as there is no shop here selling any grated coconut, we had to used canned santan. The santan is more creamy and thick and I felt that there must be chemical inside and I had decided to seek for a new source of santan.

The southern part of Taiwan had a good supply of coconut thanks to the weather. I had tried to buy some dried coconut in the past but unfortunately I was unable to grate the coconut and produce santan as I don’t have the proper grater.

I do not have the luxury to keep a electric grater due to it’s size and price. So I had started to survey for the “appropriate” tools for grating.

I remembered many years ago, my dad had use a wooden grater similar to the tools below to grate some coconut for santan in my nanny coffee shop.

very simple grater 

A very primitive tools but effective as I recalled it. I had sought to the net trying to find a plan and I came up with some design.

With the help of my power tools, I had build this coconut grater.



a box-style stool c an iron grater



 The key to the tools is that sharp iron piece. During our last trip back to Malaysia for my passport, I had managed to get two of those in one Chinese hardware shop.

After our return, I had started the building project…

Looks fine but still need some improvement..

However the result is still good though the grated coconut is not as fine as the electric grated one back in Malaysia, but still, it is a good start…

the indon working in the shop had peel off the outer skin for me...

poor chopping half technique.....

The final product - whole wheat coconut bun....

Next try would be santan.... 

Wood work....

Ving is a big fan of wooden stuff. More than half of our cabinets are made up of wood. Since few years ago , she had persuaded me to start doing some wood craft and I had purchased  some tools…

I had an electric jigsaw, sander, drill and router initially. The tools were placed aside after I build my 2 gun rack ( 1 for the BB hand gun and 1 for the Nerf Long gun).

Few months ago, I had decided to build myself a book rack as my bookshelves were being taken over by the kids gradually. To save place, I decided to build mobile book rack like those use in the library so that I could store them under my big table.

All begin from a search over the net for plan and I managed to get one and after adjusted the measurement, I stared the build.

I had bought my wood material from B&Q. The adjustment of measurement was done so that I could do the least sawing and cutting as I had difficulty to cut straight line with the jigsaw(of coz, it can't as jigsaw is not mean to cut straight line).

The screwing and trimming of the edge took about 3 hrs and I had 2 mobile book racks build.

The result was stunning and I started my second project.

During the period, I had bought some useful book and done some reading over the net. I had created some assisting device to enable me to cut straight line with the jigsaw.

I had decided to build a small cabinet to store up my wireless router(not the power tool router), modem, linkstation, slingbox and those wires which create the most trouble for the irobot, as I had spread the above gadget over the floor along the wall..…

With the assist block, I am able to cut straight line with the jigsaw and I had started the build on one of a Wednesday afternoon.

The process was a tedious one and it took me about 10 working hours to complete the project. The key for the delay was the tools I am using. I need to spend lots of time placing clamp and block before a cut thence I had spent a great time cutting the wood.

the 3 antenna....with the chongkak

 

everything in order....

 

the opening...

After this project, I decided to build a working table upside down hanging a circular saw and router. A daring project and I had partially completed it….

New gadget for the floor

There had been quite some changes since Chinese new year. I got a small bonus (same as last year) and had added some gadgets into the house.

Ving had finally agreed that we should have a robot for floor cleaning. I had suggested irobot to Ving few years ago did not get any approval. Since then, there are many similar product emerged on the market but still irobot is still the highly recommended over the market. Lots of people had dumped the other product and gone for an irobot in the final run.I had surveyed over the net and found that there are 3-4 dealers over the market. The authorized dealer had marked up the price severely compare to the other importers. The price is 2x difference and the importers provide similar warranty over the products. The irobot is a mature product and it is broken up into many modules you can just replace the problematic part easily by itself and the importers could easily repair one locally.

I had obtained a 7 series and a scooba initially. And the effect was stunning… floor was cleaner then ever. After few weeks of using the product, we had decided to buy another 5 series for use in the garage to tackle the harey hairy problem.

A great product indeed….

GE XIII

Finally the GE13 is on its way….

After 20+ year of gaining the voting right, I had never cast down any vote…. During my 4 years of service with MOH there was no GE. When I was a child, I was told a lot of unfair events regarding the govt. by the seniors in the family. One of my uncles was even a political secretary to a minister at that time. At that time, Chinese was shouting unfair ,unfair and unfair but it seems that they are the only races who had the feelings…

There were 5 GEs held during my schooling day and the opposition had performed poorly. The govt. had actually taken care most of the citizens properly.

In the past most of the “earth prince” are cool – they had nothing to worry, govt. had taken care their of their children education fund – there is always a place for them to study without worrying about the expenses so that the financial hardship is not there like the other races. Top scorer go to overseas and the middle range one go to the top U -> false impression that the “earth prince” is academically lower , but in fact their best of the best is getting the best share abroad….

Malaysia had been developed like don’t know what in the past few years… salary increase and so do the cost of living… however there are many who felt that earning a living is difficult.

I would hear stories regarding corrupted politician on my visit back to Malaysia. A gardener who joined the “balance scale” for just 6 months could spend hundred of thousand renovating his house. A district officer who had brought a bag full of cash to Australia during an official visit organized by the district office and so and so and so…

The unfair part– the govt. should have look after the minority instead of keep stressing that the majority should enjoyed the most interest – the minority is neglected ( the African American [make up of 14% of the total population] are being look after and given more privilege than the white)

The strategic work until recent few years when the “being look after” found that a small part of them enjoy more “privilege” and they wanted a change.

I had follow up the thread of a bunch of Malaysian residing in UK filing a suit against the EC for voting as absent voter since 1+ year ago. The plea was rejected but later the EC had announced that it would allow Malaysian residing oversea to cast their votes…. Both Ving and I had sent in our application via email 1+ month ago.

I was expecting load of overseas voter but yet the result was disappointing. I was expecting load of Malaysian residing/studying in Taiwan to apply for the voting but yet I am wrong, my explanation is simple – bad habit from the ancestor: remember how our ancestor sold our right out during the formation of Malaya -> now we had the chance and yet they given it up… failure of Chinese independent school education ? I wish I knew the answer….

It would be an expensive voting for us as we would have to take the high speed rail up north (360km x 2) ….yet it is still worth every penny as both of us had never voted.

I would be looking forward for a change of sky….

losing backup, the terror

I was told by the EDP department staff that I need to add new floor to the pharmacy slip conversion program 1+ weeks ago. The hospital billing program is based on Oracle database and the system had nothing much to do with my program initially. But later I had requested the company to provide me with a “view” to read in the in patient data(bedno, chartno, name, sex…etc..) and the linkage had started since then. “View” after “view” were provided and linkage was only limited at the my program reading the “view”level. Upon the completion of ED triage program, the management had requested the computer company to read from the access database used by my program and after couple of months of effort, it was materialized.

At the end of last year, the hospital decided to upgrade the pharmacy dispensing system(enabling a 200k+/month payoff from the insurance company). The work load of the pharmacy had increased and they had refused to proceed with the billing process. The billing process required a staff to enter the drug prescribed in the ward into the billing system. To avoid error of data entry resulting in dispensing error, the staff will need a good knowledge of drug.

I usually do my programming work on the ED physician’s desk computer. My work was mostly done in between consultation/waiting for data, thence it was not my personal computer and I had to share it with some other guys. It is a Celeron 2.4GHz with 2GB ram running XP. I started with VB 2005 express then shifted to VB2008…I had the 2010 version install but did not imported my program. With this fossil type of equipment and software, I am still able to maintain the system…

After few years of doing the job, I had set up a backup procedure… I use to backup the whole project folder to a folder (which can be seen by me only over the intranet).

I had started this procedure about 14 months ago when I had lost the ED triage project file. I had just accidentally copy an earlier version over the latest working folder…. The published version was ver.18 but I had only the ver.13 project folder with me… It took me 2 weeks to rebuild the whole project and updated it to ver.18… I hack and hack and hack during the rebuild. The worst part was that, I had no idea what I had done between the upgrade…

When I called up the program and I found that I was in the same crisis 14 months ago. Well, my mistake and I had to re-do the program again but thank to grace of the LORD, I knew what I had done and it was “up to date “ again in few hours…

It was a warning and I think I had to write a auto backup program....