I babble, I ramble, and I rattle …

No, it’s not a mispelling of the word ‘kipas’ (fan) but a service provided by the Immigration Department of Malaysia. It is short for Kiosk Pembaharuan Pasport (Passport Renewal Kiosk).

It was the first thing that caught my attention when I reached the 2nd floor of the Kompleks PKNS in Shah Alam to renew my passport. I had no idea what it was and instead of turning right to the kiosk, I turned left to the Immigration Department. There, I was informed that I could and should use the KiPPas facility since my old passport was of the new version with a chip embedded in it.

A middle aged gentleman was renewing his passport when I went in and a few minutes later, his business was concluded and it was my turn. The machine itself looked harmless enough, resembling a banking ATM. The instructions were very clear and after inserting my old passport and my MyKad (identification card) into the designated slots, the words ‘Reading successful’ flashed on the screen. I was ready to put in the money and the envelope with my picture inside it when I realise that the application was NOT successful.

The reason? The data in the passport chip did not match the one in my MyKad. Why on earth would the data NOT match? I used the same documents when applying for each of them.

Whether I liked it or not, I had to renew my passport the conventional way. The officer who checked my registration form noticed the envelope in my hand and asked if I went to the kiosk. He asked what went wrong and didn’t look surprised when I told him (according to the machine) the data in my MyKad and passport did not match.

When I took the number (for my turn) at 2.30pm, they were calling 2278 and my number was an exasperating 2338. I sat for a while and seeing that the numbers barely moved, I went to look for something to read and bought a copy of Cleo. I’m not really a fan of Cleo but I couldn’t find anything more interesting.

I’ve just finished reading the entire magazine when my number was finally called at 4.30pm. The lady officer too saw the envelope in my hand and asked what went wrong with the machine. Again, I explained to her what happened and asked if it has happened before. To my surprise, she replied, “Often enough.”

What could have been a mere 2-minute business took more than two hours of my time. It was very frustrating. Looking on the bright side, at least I’ve finally done something about the expired passport. All I have to do now is collect the new passport tomorrow.

Last month I repotted most of my mum’s dying plants and recently they began to bloom. I was admiring (and taking pictures of) the tiny flowers of a vegetable plant when someone decided to have lunch and didn’t mind posing for me.

.

Looking at a neighbouring stem, I noticed another company.

.

.

It was worth all the time squatting in the middle of the day under the blazing sun.

For some reason, we now have only ONE TV at home.

Usually, it wouldn’t have caused any problem as only THREE people live here; my parents and sister, Kona.

However, it is again school holiday and all Kona’s brothers came home last weekend. They wanted to play PS2 while Kona insisted on continuing her Zelda game on the Wii. Someone came up with the brilliant idea of splitting the TV into two again (the last time they did that was when they wanted to play Wii while someone else wanted to watch TV).

This time… it’s Wii on the left and PS2 on the right.

Zelda went for an adventure on the left screen while a football match was about to take place on the right.

.

.

But the best was when someone played Gitarooman on PS2… The little screen was further split into two.

.

The games sure looked weird on the screen.

(This is about the game Animal Crossing and not real life. I did NOT make real money)

Sold my turnips to Tom Nook for the price of 600 Bells each. Bought 520 of them on Sunday at 75 Bells each. Go figure how much I made today.

Yo, Boka! Don’t be jealous.

p/s: Boka time travelled to see if Nook would offer him a better price for the turnips.

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to visit Dolly & Aleq’s newborn baby (he’s 29 days old on Saturday), Ahmad Farhan for the little boy’s aqiqah.

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, I was very late. The ceremony had just finished (but not the food! ) when I arrived.

While we (me and Dolly herself) were helping ourselves to the wonderful dishes (lamb and chicken with briyani rice), Farhan began to scream cry.

It was feeding time.

After being fed, he went back to (a deep) sleep for another 3 hours before it was again feeding time. Oblivious to his surrounding, he was unperturbed despite our attempts to make him cry wake him up.

Sleeping in peace after being fed.

.

Proud parents and happy grandparents.

.

A doting grandmother.

.

Farhan’s young uncle.

.

“Farhan, smile for the camera! Aunt Nuni is going to take a picture!” said mum and dad.

.

“Farhan, smile!” ordered dad.

.

Since Farhan still refused to smile, his dad decided to force a smile out of him.

.

Meanwhile, Farhan’s young uncles were busy wrestling each other.

.

.

.

I thought Sani and Zaki were coming and waited for them. Instead, Zaid (never expected to see him there) showed up with his family at 3pm.

After helping myself to the fruits, I figured it was time to go.

.

I wanted to leave earlier but Aleq’s mum insisted that I stayed for a while longer. I told her that I have “babies” to feed at home too. Puzzled, she asked, ” Aren’t they grown ups already? I saw them in your blog…”

First thing first…She reads my blog?!

Secondly… Despite being grown ups, my brothers are not so reliable in taking care of our sister unless they’ve been given specific orders to do certain things e.g find lunch.

As I arrived home at 4pm, I found out that all my brothers and sister were playing games and they haven’t had anything to eat for the day. Kona complained that she was very hungry but her brothers ignored her. Just as I expcted.

But something good came out of it… I didn’t have to force anyone to go to the pasar malam to buy dinner. They went by themselves.

For more pictures, please visit my GALLERY.

I totally forgot to take any pictures on the said time.

At 8.08am on 8/8/08, I was still sleeping.

At 8.08pm on the same day, we were watching the opening ceremony of the Olympic games in Beijing (on TV, of course!).

I actually remembered about the taking picture plan at around 8.00pm but when the time came, I was so engrossed in the exciting performances that I completely forgot about it. It was a splendid show of the Chinese historical and cultural heritage.

Yi wondered what Malaysia would be able to do something as spectacular. I commented that we had done wonders with coloured cardboards (Commonwealth Games, 1998) which became popular in the years to follow. Boka said, “Hey look! The Chinese have improvised the cardboard thing! They’re doing it in 3-D!!!”

No thanks to my mum’s genes, my brothers are colour blind deficient (I may be a carrier too).

Today, something interesting happened. Boka was going to save and quit his game.

In the Animal Crossing game we have four houses for four players.

Top left : Boka’s house

Top right : mine

Bottom right : Aina’s

Bottom left : Yi’s (when the pictures were taken, his roof had been changed to green)

.

The thing is that, the colour of the roofs aren’t constant. When you renovate the house to make it bigger, Tom Nook would ask what colour would you like your roof to be and he’ll change it. That’s cool.

The problem is that other villagers could also repaint your roof in some other colours without your permission. My roof had changed colours so many times I’ve lost count. The most annoying episode was when it was repainted not 5 minutes after Tom Nook had painted it according to my preference.

Anyway, it so happened when Boka returned home (to save and quit), all the roofs had similar colours (i.e the tone). His was pink, mine yellow, Aina’s red and Yi’s orange. He didn’t even bother looking at the position of the houses… he simply looked at the colours and he thought my house was his. I told him, “Hey, that’s my house, not yours!”

He then made a turn towards Aina’s house.

“That one’s Aina’s!” I screamed, half laughing.

To my surprise, he made another mistake by going to Yi’s house (instead of his).

Me : How can you not find your own house?

Boka : Hey, don’t blame me! They all look the same!

Me : No, they’re not! The colours are different. (not to mention the orientation & location)

Boka : …

Me : You mean you couldn’t differentiate between pink, yellow, orange and red???

Boka : …

On another note, we continued last night’s ‘party’ (someone wanted to play for 50 rounds but we agreed on 30, which we only managed to finish tonight) with Boka finally winning the game after two hours of cursing, cheating and shouting at each other.

Making fun of each other was also part of the game. They were constantly insulting me in the mini games and letting their frustations be known when they had to team up with me (even before starting the mini games). Just for the record, I did win quite a number of the mini games, especially when all three of them had to go against me.

Thank god our parents aren’t around. We’re planning to start another round tomorrow.

As usual, my cousin, Eiman was wary of strangers. Not that I’m a stranger but he hasn’t seen me for a while and he’s a very shy kid… But not when cameras are concerned!

.

We passed this interesting manmade waterfall at a traffic light. The sign says Melaka Bandaraya Warisan (Melaka, Heritage City). Well, Melaka HAS, after all, been inscribed as a world heritage site in July 2008.

.

After dropping Maz at her sister’s house, we went home to my aunt’s new house (new to me because I’ve never been there but she’s been staying there for quite some time). My uncle offered two options of activities for the evening; seafood or river cruise.

Me being me, shamelessly I asked if I could have both. He laughed.

That evening, we went for seafood at the new seafood complex in Umbai.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Even the dining table could not stop Eiman from getting closer to a camera.

.

His brother, Airil was very quiet but did not stop smiling to me.

.

It took so long for the food to arrive that Airil started to yawn.

.

The dinner feast was finally served almost an hour later.

Black pepper crabs.

.

Fried squids

.

Grilled fishes.

.

However, Airil was happy enough with his own bottle.

.

After dinner, my uncle brought us to the Melaka River Pirate Park where we were supposed to start our river cruise but unfortunately Eiman and his sister had already fallen asleep.

.

.

.

Me and my aunt took a stroll on the street to see what were on sale at the stalls.

.

We didn’t spend too much time by the river as the kids were all already very sleepy.

Airil turned to his brother (in his sleep) and tried to hug his grumpy brother.

.

A moment later, both of them were asleep. Airil had dropped his bottle and held on to his brother’s bottle (thinking that it’s his). Not long after this picture was taken, both woke up, fighting for the bottle.

.

On Sunday, my uncle went to a durian orchard to get me these:

.

We only opened the fruits once my family had arrived (at my aunt’s place). They were REALLY good. Some were even almost as good as the Amy Yip durians (though not as good) that I ate in Penang last year which cost about RM2 per piece (about RM20 for a fruit which had 10 pieces in it).

By the time we were done with the durians, there were still two durians left but we couldn’t take it anymore. I always tell people that if you enjoy eating something, you wouldn’t shouldn’t be satisfied until you’ve gotten sick eating it and that was exactly what I did on that day (I felt feverish soon after that). Am I not obnoxious?

No one had the appetite for dinner that night.

I had a very early start on Saturday. To catch the 7.04am train to KL Sentral, I left home at 6.50am.

Initially I hadn’t wanted to go to Nirah’s wedding in Melaka simply because I couldn’t find anyone to carpool with. I asked X (her house is near mine) if I could go with her but she said she couldn’t go. With that answer, I lost all motivation to go to Melaka but she said I should go because she’ll be expecting an album in my gallery and a post in my blog about the wedding. That lifted my spirit… a bit.

On Friday night, I called up Mus if I could follow him and Ijah but they were going to visit some relatives so the answer was no. I’ve told myself that if I couldn’t go with them, then I wouldn’t bother going at all but something made me call idora_de and that call lead to other calls which ended up with me confirming my attendance to the wedding.

Fairuz was supposed to pick me up at KL Sentral at 8.15am. Expecting delays, I decided to take the 7.04am train instead of the one at 7.24am so that even if there were delays (or me missing the train) I could still make it by 8.15am. I knew the McDonald’s there opens early because I’ve been there at 6.30am to have my breakfast (I was on my way to Seremban for a karate training camp back in 2002) and therefore I had no worries on how to spend my time waiting for Fairuz. Breakfast was in order.

It was still dark when I arrived at the Shah Alam Komuter Station.

.

.

Our train was 6 minutes late.

.

And Fairuz was late as well so after having a Fillet-o-Fish breakfast at the McDonald’s I went to this fruit stall to get a glass of guava juice.

.

.

After picking up a friend in Ampang, we headed towards Semenyih to pick up another friend but it wasn’t so straightforward as we took several wrong turns before finally being on the right track.

Once in Semenyih, we called up Maz to ask for directions to her place. She told us to make a left turn at the traffic light before the police station and look out for a school on the left. Her house should be somewhere on the left after the school.

How much simpler can a direction be? Her landmark was a school and schools are big. No one should miss a school when looking for landmarks, right?

WRONG. We were so busy chatting that we missed the school. The best thing was that right after we passed the school (something like a few seconds after we passed it), I asked if they’ve seen any school. Both said no. Then I remarked, “We should concentrate more on the road and not on our gossips because we might miss the school if we’re too busy talking.” All of us laughed.

Soon after that we passed an oil palm plantation…. Followed by a Christian memorial park… Then a Chinese memorial park…

Fairuz remarked, “Maybe this is why Maz drives very fast… Imagine if she comes back from Penang at night… Then she has to pass all these places to reach home… Scary…”

Not long after that, we came across a group of bicyclists.

.

Then we saw the sign: Hutan Rekreasi Sungai Tekala

Fairuz suggested we went for a quick dip into the river as he had an extra shirt in the car. Dayah said she didn’t have anything to change into (we were all wearing very formal dresses at that time). I, who planned to spend the night at my aunt’s place in Melaka, offered her mine. We briefly contemplated the idea but of course it was just a joke. We had a friend to pick up and  a wedding to attend.

A few minutes later, there were still no signs of a village or anything. In fact it seemed as if we were going deeper into the jungle. Jokingly, I said to them, “Maybe we should call Maz now before we lose the (handphone) coverage.”

Dayah made the call and as it turned out, we have missed Maz’s house by about 10km!!!

We immediately turned back and met the bikers for the second time.

.

And again, we passed the recreational forest…

.

.

.

After picking up Maz, we made our way to Seremban and from there we took the North-South Highway to Melaka.

.

Then we realised that none of us brought the invitation card. Not only we didn’t have the map to the bride’s house, we also had no idea what her address was except that it’s somewhere in Jasin, Melaka. However, we managed to arrive at the right place after several phone calls asking for directions without really getting lost.

.

The first thing that caught our attention was the rambutan tree in front of the house.

.

A few other friends were already there when we arrived but the loudest voice in the house came from the bride herself. She was busy ushering and dictating things to be done. Even she herself commented, “I knew this is going to happen! I knew I can never sit quietly, not even on my wedding day!”

.

Needless to say, we took the opportunity to take a group picture.

.

And I went to take some random shots.

.

.

Sani arrived when we were almost done with our meals. Since the ground was sloped, his gravy almost spilled off the plate and Maz warned him just in time before it spoils his unique shirt. He then took a tissue paper and gently touched one side of the plate so that it can absorb the excess gravy. We joked that he was doing a science project (I vaguely remember doing something similar during one of our A-Level biology experiments, something to do with chlorophyll, if I remember correctly).

.

Fairuz was my groupmate when I was in Dublin and we were good friends. We haven’t met since I returned to Malaysia in March 2006 and it was a nice surprise to see her at the wedding. I simply had to take a picture with her before she left the place.

.

The groom arrived while we were busy eating so we didn’t bother going inside the house. Besides, the hall was too small to accommodate us anyway.

.

They came down for lunch a while later but I doubt they could eat much, not with the photographers around.

.

Out of boredom, Sani decided to test his manual photography skill using my camera.

.

Me : Hey, Sani! What’s this?

Sani : Am I not talented? You can see Maz’s shadows in it… Very artistic, don’t you think? Maz, what do you think?

Maz : …

It was actually an overexposed picture. He used the manual mode without changing the settings. That mode was last used by me while taking a night shot and therefore the aperture value was low and the shutter speed slow. I was surprised that something actually came out from Sani’s picture instead of a total whiteness.

Soon, it was time to leave (we were getting really really bored) and we went for another group photo.

.

Even though we’ve said our goodbyes, we still hang around the place as I had to wait for my aunt to pick me up and Maz wanted to come with me so that she could go to her sister’s place. How fortunate we were to still be there. A few other old friends arrived quite late with their new babies.

.

.

Then it was really time to leave.

.

Me and Maz followed my aunt to Melaka town while the rest made their way back to KL.

For more pictures, please visit MY GALLERY.

This time a crochet by my mum…

.

Read her blog HERE.