7 Boxes

Helped dl shifted 7 boxes home. Got 3 friends from uitm to help.

I know no one from all the 19 ppl who ship boxes back from Germany, all are dl's batch in Germany so meeting point in the mosque which i don't know and there goes the blur me wearing shorts, finally ustaz from the mosque said must 'tutup aurat'. Well, waited for 1 hour plus at the mosque's carpark for everyone to reach then we went to Glenmarie to get the container.

Pic 1: First view just after they open the lock from the container

Pic 2: Shifting every boxes out with care

Pic 3: Ours, into the van

Pic 4: "Thanks for helping ;) "

Pic 5: The 3 of them who helped. So i treated them at Kim Gary for some good food for them to regain their energy (*ohps, is their study break, trial next week*) TQ TQ very muchie!! x)

Sleepless night

I can't sleep again, so i decided to wake up and wanted to blog some other diving's pics and video clips of how i did boat dive that i got the other day from exchanging from the rest of the divers, we had dinner last week, but my computer's CD rom can't read CDs anymore!

I found so many of my belongings are not working well:-

-hp secondary camera
-car aircond
-computer CD rom
-computer router

It's like all the new stuff i brought isn't working well... hhhhmmmm...

And this 2 nights, i seems to be unable to sleep, twisting and turning around my bed, mind just go on thinking and thinking from A - Z... aaarrrr... what happen!!!!

Lunch after church

Just posting some faces here and there, after church...

Pic 1: Wahh... sedapnya...

Pic 2: Hi Liz... :D

Pic 3: Sis

Pic 4: Erin & Amanda

Pic 5: Jim & Jac

Pic 6: Jo & Caleb

Pic 7: Jason & Josh

Pic 8: Joash & Nat

Pic 9: Me & Liz

Mooncake

Yes! Mooncake! Mooncake! One of my favorite food. Hahaha... Even though I don't like sweet stuff, but not for mooncake, i just enjoy mooncake so much. Last year i didn't have any chance to taste mooncake because i was in Germany but when i saw sis carrying a nice package today when i pick her from work, i know it is mooncake and i'm just so happy. But i never buy any mooncake on my own before because it's just too expensive, i don't want to pay for it. Hhehehee...

Had the mooncake straight away when i'm driving home!

G12

Finally we had another G12 meeting... It has been months i think, that we don't have G12 due to everyone's busy schedule, uitmers' exams and holidays.

Captured few pics here and there.

Pic 1: Phebe & Lissa

Pic 2: Ps teaching his heart out! =) The girl at the side is Erin (first time).

Pic 3: Amanda... we had few new once tonight

Pic 4: Odett & Stanley

After finishing spiritual food, of course we had food but i'm just too busy eating so never capture any pictures after that... hahahaa...

Blessed

Just felt very blessed because I received something very valuable. The more i look at it, the more i fall in love. =p Thanks Dad.

AOWD Certified! (Part 1)

Hahahahhahhahahahahahahahahahaahahaaahahahahaa.... I'M AN ADVANCE OPEN WATER DIVER NOW!!!

So now i can go as deep as 40meters underwater and can go for night dive! My next mission is to go Wreck Dive. Actually it was because of my curiousity for night dive that i persue my Advance and now after i have my Advance, i would want to try Wreck Dive because of curiousity. Underwater World is amazing! Trust me!

Well, overall, i did enjoyed my diving trip. We have 8 people doing Advance (Team A - Sim, Joshua, William, Eddie) and (Team B - me, Greg, Gin, Stanley) and 4 people doing Rescue (Odett, Siew, Dave, Yew Hong). Altogether 3 girls and a bunch of guys. Actually this trip is organized by mostly Shell workers, i just tag along so i only know Odett and Stanley and well, i had the opportunity to meet other passion divers like me. ;) so now i will have kakis (legs) if i want to go diving!

Pic 1: Our dive sites

1st day - 31 Aug 2006
The first day was terrible. I only had 1 dive and it was a refresher course, my instructor, Richard Tang just taught us the basic techniques that we used to do during Open Water Dive which i have forgotten most of them. So the 1st dive was a struggle to me especially doing the mask removal technique, i'm really lack of confident in doing this even during my Open Water dive last year and this year is even worse. After removing the mask and holding it with one hand, somehow or rather, i keep on feeling that the water went into my nose whenever i exhale so i will use another hand to close my nose, so no more hand for me to put back the mask (*all this are done underwater at about 5meters and below ok!*) Goosshhhhh... i was so afraid, sure will drink some salt water, water goes into my nose and eyes! And i have to do this techniques few times during my dive this year coz my instructor just want me to have my confident to do it, everytime when my instructor wants me to do it, i will show him that i'm very scare. It's an important technique just in case your mask really came off during your dive, you know how to put it back.

So my first dive was sucks. I was disappointed and upset at my performance because last year i did it well, i'm considered quite a good diver among my other diving friends who took Open Water with me. But well, looking at my 1st dive this year, i wanted to give up. Finally i told myself, i will give myself another try tomorrow.

2nd day - 1 Sept 2006
We had 4 dives today. :D And it was FANTASTIC!!! Of course tiring. Actually most of the time, we are all in our swim gear, never take our proper bath till late at night coz all of us need to gear up for diving when it's time for us to dive.

1st dive for today is early morning at 7.30am. We gear up, set up our equipments, wearing our wetsuit, putting the BCD properly with the tank with the regulators on it, making sure we have our weight belt, mask, fins and did our buddy check and there goes, up to the boat early morning to do our DEEP DIVE! :D We went to Nibong Laut for Deep Dive to 29.5 meters deep and did some maths at 29.5 meters deep water to test if we have Nitrogen Narcosis which will cause us to do some silly thing and to see how fast our reaction can be at the deep water, we tend to be slower in our thinking. We were only at 29.5m for 10 mins then we go higher up coz the deeper you are, the more oxygen you will take. :D During this dive, i saw 3 huge puffer fish.

Pic 2: Puffer fish

Then, did our safety stop at 15 meters 3 mins and 5 meters 3 mins and up to the boat. But well, my buoyency wasn't that good yet so i didn't enjoy as much as i can coz i don't know how to go near to the things i want to see.

2nd dive is a shore dive where we do our Underwater Navigation with compass of course. So my buddy, Gin and i will have a bearing given by my instuctor and we go our way out in the sea to find our way back to where we begin our dive in a square pattern, clockwise and anti-clockwise. So when i do the navigation, my buddy will have to keep me at the bottom and make sure i don't swim to the surface because i will be busy looking at the compass when i swim, then we will change position and when my buddy is doing the navigation, i will assist her so that we stay at the bottom. :)

3rd dive for today is when we do our PPB (Peak Performance Buoyency) and it's the skills that i'm most satisfied off learning in my dive trip this time. I thank God that i catch the skill, this is the skill that i can control my whole self underwater, how close i want to get to the corals, how to stay at that position to look at something without moving. We did a practice with our buddy with plus and minus one weight of ours and give it to our buddy to see if each of us still can stay at our position without moving. It was fun and i really want to thank God that finally i catch this skills, it's the most important skills i would say for a diver.

4th dive, the dive that i'm anticipating for since last year, NIGHT DIVE!!! Because of my curiousity, that's why i take Advance for Night Dive only... hahahhahaha.... We need to use our torch of course and we have to do underwater navigation alone underwater in the dark, our instructor gave us a bearing, we are suppose to go out alone in the dark with our torch one hand and another hand with compass, swim 15 kicks and come back to the position we start ALL ALONE! Well, i'm not afraid of this and i manage to come back to my position. Only one girl get lost during this navigation so my instructor have to go to find her... hehehhee... After all of us done with our practical, we swim around and spot for different species that swim out at night. To my surprise, we sawwwwwwww a HUGE HERMIT CRAB!! Bigger than combining my 2 palms together.
Pic 3: Example of a Hermit crab. The one i saw is with a white shell and red body. HUGE!!

Pic 4: Get together to discuss about what we have learnt earlier after a tiring day....

3rd day - 2 Sept 2006
Today, we only have 2 dives, both are enjoyable because no more practical things to do but only mainly focusing on fishes. :)

Our first dive is only at 10.30am so only today, i start taking out my digital camera and take a couple of shots. Today, the Rescue divers are also having their paper test so there goes, Odett, busy studying and each of the Rescue divers will have 4 scenarios to do to safe lifes. So whenever there are people shouting for help, our instructor will call them by name to help the victim.

Pic 5: Odett studying and Stanley besides her.

Pic 6: Greg from UK, another Advance student like me.

Pic 7: Yew Hong trying to safe unconcious Dave

Pic 8: Our instructor examining the Rescue Divers

Pic 9: Doing CPR

Pic 10: Doing CPR

Pic 11: Clap clap... pass pass... :)

Pic 12: Our dive centre, place that we get our equipments ready...

Pic 13: Another scenario for Dave to safe Yew Hong this time... :)

Pic 14: CPR

Pic 15: In the main time while waiting for my dive, there I'm taking pics... Thanks to Greg.

Pic 16: Nice beach...

Pic 17: Odett is the victim now and Siew suppose to safe Odett

Gears up! Is our turn! Diving for today!

Pic 18: Yes, getting ready for diving... heavy!!!

Pic 19: Team B: Gin, Stanley, Beckz, Greg. Another thing, Team B is always efficient, we always get ready first.

Today we are learning Aware Fish Identification for our 1st dive so our instructor wants us to have a competition between Team A & Team B to see which team can identify as many fishes as we can, so each of us will have a slate to write it down underwater and we are suppose to change buddy, each from different Team so we can't copy each other's answer. So my buddy for today is Eddie, good buddy. :) We gears up, did our buddy check and there goes to the boat!

Pic 20: On the boat

The very first thing i saw as i descent from the water was a huge huge turtle. (*Well, i'm good at my buoyency now, so i know how to descent fast after learning from PPB!*) While i'm waiting for my buddy to equalize, i went close to the turtle before the turtle swim away so i had a close look at it. Huge, amazing, pretty! Many people didn't see the turtle because the have problem equalizing.

Pic 21: Turtle swimming away when the camera man approached.

Pic 22: Some stewpit fisherman put a net underwater and caught some parrot fish, really so poor thing, i nearly cry when i saw that...

Pic 23: No no, our instructor wants everyone to remove mask again!!!! :( I'm scare and i failed again!

Pic 24: Our instructor lead us to play something too... somersault underwater. We did it alone first and then we do it together with our buddy holding to each other's BCD.

Pic 25: What are we waiting in the middle?? Hahaha... safety stop looo...

So Team B won for the fish identification competition and i actually jot down the front and back of my slate of those fishes that i see, eventhough i don't know their names, i just put, yellow fish, blue fish, yellow and black stripe, big eye fish... etc. and we won... hahhahaha

Then we had 1 hour break for lunch and continue our 2nd dive (last dive for this trip). For this 2nd dive, we went out using big boat and this time, Siew and Odett becomes Team B's dive guide whereas for Team A, Dave and Yew Hong becomes their dive guide. In this trip, i saw an eel!!! First time seeing an eel who look at me when i'm looking at it.

Pic 26: This is not the eel that i saw, just want to show you the pic but it looks like this. I don't believe that i encounter it myself.

And i saw a yellow box fish when Odett and I trying to look for it under a small rock, Odett peep from one end of the rock and i peep from the other end, and the yellow box fish got no where to go so we saw it... hhahaa...

Pic 27: Yellow box fish! Cute! And believe it or not, i saw it again on the way back from the shore so close to me... oooo.... :) (*Tks Siew, for this pic... hehehe)

Pic 28: After every dive, we are suppose to clean all the equipments... actually we spend a lot of time gearing up and cleaning equipments than diving itself... hehe

Pic 29: Then all of us have no choice but to relax at the canteen because no water in our room, so we cannot clean up...

Pic 30: Final exam for Rescue Divers...

Still no water, so i went sun bathing... ;p slept for a while on the beach and being pulled by our instructor to play volley ball...

Pic 31: Volley ball

Pic 32: And GRADUATION!!! =)

4th day - 3 Sept 2006

Saying bye bye to Lang Tengah, Terengganu for this season!

Pic 33: Team A and Beckz

Pic 34: The whole diving team! =)

Thalassaemia Trait

Medical report showed that i'm suffering from Thalassaemia Trait / Thalassaemia Minor. *Thank God is Minor, if Major, i would be seeing u all in heaven* ;)

What is Thalassaemia?
Thalassaemia may have originated over 50,000 years ago. In a valley south of Italy and Greece now covered by the Mediterranean Sea. The name Thalassaemia is derived from a Greek word meaning sea (*no wonder i like diving so much! Hahaha*).

Thalassaemia is an inherited disorder in which there is an abnormality in one or more of the globin genes.

Thalassaemia Major?
Thalassaemia major is a life threatening, genetically inherited, progressive anaemia common in the Mediterranean, Asian, South East Asian and Middle Eastern countries. The condition is caused by defective production of the beta chain of haemoglobin with resultant abnormal haemoglobin function.

Children with ß Thalassaemia major are healthy at birth but become pale within the first few months of life, they fail to thrive, are prone to infections and often have an enlarged spleen and liver.

ß Thalassaemia is treatable with two to three weekly red cell transfusions throughout life and the removal of excess iron which is the result of these frequent blood transfusions. The drug currently used for this iron removal is Desferal which is administered by injections. Desferal may cause local skin irritations at the injection site. It may also interfere with spinal growth and can cause hearing problems and interfere with eye sight. Those who are sensitive to this drug or are unable to comply to the injections can now be treated with Ferriprox tablets. Ferriprox is less effective in removing iron from the body than Desferal and may cause a low blood count which may result in severe infections.

Those patients who can consistently comply to the prescribed medications can live normal lives, those whose compliance is erratic will experience many endocrinological complications caused by iron overload (growth disturbance, failure of pubertal development, thyroid and parathyroid dysfunction and diabetes) and eventually early death from heart problems.

Treatment is by bone marrow transplantation from a Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) identical donor, a brother, sister or rarely from a mother or father.

Thalassaemia Minor? (Which I'm in this catagory)
People with Thalassaemia Minor, sometimes known as Trait, carry Thalassaemia but they are not ill. They are completely healthy and normal but some of them have slight anaemia. Most people with Thalassaemia Minor do not even know that they have it. It is only discovered if the person has a special blood test or if they have a child with Thalassaemia Major. It is important to know if you have Thalassaemia Minor later in life. The reason for this is that it may cause some problems if the person and their partner wants to start a family. Thalassaemia minors red blood cell are also different from normal blood cells.

People with beta thalassaemia minor have red blood cells which are smaller, paler, and have less red pigment, but this does not cause any health problems. (No wonder i always look so pale, always blackout, easily get blueblack and i can't donate blood!! Tried twice but get rejected. ;p )

Generally, their red blood cells are still able to carry oxygen around the body as efficiently as someone with the two usual Beta genes. Because these individuals are themselves healthy, they will not know that they have this unusual trait unless they have a special blood test.

If a couple BOTH have beta thalassaemia minor, EACH time they expect a child there is a 1 in 4 chance that their child could inherit a serous blood disease called beta thalassaemia major.

Actually i'm afraid of my future children. I don't want them to suffer from Thalassaemia Major! It's just too suffering!!! I can't take it.

Well, after getting the medical report from doc yesterday and after the explanation by the doc, I'm not 100% sure what it was until later at night when i have time to surf the net to find out more, i started to feel a bit uneasy and started crying when i thought about my future kids. Didn't rest properly at night though, only sleep for 3+ hours and dreamt that dl open a Thalassaemia Hospital to help kids who need blood transfusions! Hahhahaa... what a dream.

Only this morning, i have the gut to start to tell my close friends, sms-ing all my 'jie mui' (sister in Christ) and tell them about this news. Before that, i was asking myself, how to tell people that i'm a Thalassaemia carrier?...

Well, is not a big deal afterall if my kids won't get major. *Cross my finger*

"Lord, thank you for your protection all the while and thank you for the life you have given me. I pray that my dl is not a carrier himself and if it's your will for us to have children, they will be a bunch of healthy kids, Amen!"

My updates. =)

I'm quite caught up with my current online job. Just launched a new project 2 weeks ago, so i have been sleeping very late and approximately between 3-5 hours a day only.

Brought my 5 cats for vaccination and deworming on Sunday that cost me a boom... x) But well, still consider ok because i only bring them once a year (suppose to be twice a year but vet said is ok since my cats are indoor cats).

My new car's aircond and wiper is not functioning properly. Will be bringing it for servicing tomorrow, i hope, already pass 1000km so it is time for my first service.

This week need to catch up with my diving studies, going diving next week, doing my advance in diving this year so i need to study it myself and do the reviews from the diving book to pass up to my instructor on the first day of dive.

Ohps, feeling a bit sleepy now at 3pm, i better take a nap now before continuing my work and do a bit of studies tonite, sleep late ytd again and woke up early this morning.

But i'm enjoying every moment of my life, counting my blessings daily, and learning to be contented with what i have now. Thank you, Lord, for your mercies and goodness. Amen.

God's Provision, Our Exaltation

Finally, i'm full-time with my current new job. For the past 3 months, i was doing part-time at church to wait for new person to take my place and to sort of pass down my work to the new person.

It's really good to see how God brought me in to work full-time 5 years ago and how He bring me out now. I can say that He knows what's best for us. I can see how He bless me since the beginning and until now, He is still doing so.

Bringing me from a comfort zone (working in the church) to a place where i'm exposed to the world requires me to apply wisdom in every single steps that i take. When i was first exposed to the world, i'm not used to see so many cheaters around, so many people wearing mask when they communicate with you, and you just can't believe everyone of them. We need to be smart, another word, wise.

But whatever it is, He is there all the time. His blessings are incredible. In one moment, i'm sharing how stressful i'm about my house finances, in another moment, i'm seeing how He moved among us.

God is good, all the time. All the time, He is good.

To God be the glory...