What Colour Is Your Aura?

Your Aura is Green

You're very driven, competitive, and even a bit jealous.

However, you seek out balance in your life - and you usually achieve it!

The purpose of your life: inspiring others to be better

Famous greens include: Tony Robbins, Donald Trump, Martha Stewart

Careers for you to try: Guru, CEO, Talk Show Host

Want to know the colour of your aura? Take the quiz here.

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RH Residences Sulaman Brochure

For those of you wanting more information on the above, I’ve scanned the brochure that I got when I visited the showhouse. By the way, I am not an agent or anyway related to the developers. So, I don’t get anything in return for this post. Anyway, the developers are more than welcome to send some commissions my way for this post. Ha ha ha.

Here are the scans:

Front Cover

Development Layout

Layout I

Layout II

Back Cover – Contact Information

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Books 2009 (2)

I've completed reading three more books the past three days. I know it's crazy but that's me. If I find a book interesting, I'd try to finish the whole book in a single reading. If I read over a few readings, it means I have to go back and remember what was written earlier on, which I don’t enjoy doing. If the book's not so thick (around 300 pages or so) and got reasonable text size, I could probably finish it in less than five hours.

The books I’ve read are as follows:

• Paul Thoreaux’s The Great Railway Bazaar: A travelogue of his train trips from London to the Far East and back. A good read. He did a similar trip 30 years later and has written about it in another book. I’m looking forward to reading this one.
• Noel Barber’s The War of the Running Dogs: Malaya, 1948-1960 - A very interesting historical account of the Emergency in Malaya, first published in early 1970’s. As Malaysians, I think we were lucky that the British were committed to fight the Communist Terrorists and eventually won. It’d be interesting what would’ve happened if the Communists Terrorists had won. A good read.
• Doreen Orion’s Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own – Another travelogue and this one was set in the USA. A good read too.

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Books 2009 (1)

I am in the middle of reading another book right now. Since the beginning of the year, I have completed reading the following books:

• Friends and Lovers – Robert Raymer: A collection of short stories set in Malaysia (mostly).
• Catfish and Mandala – Andrew X. Pham: A travelogue of an overseas Vietnamese on his travels in Vietnam and Japan.
• Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Sanction – Eric Van Lustbader: The sixth novel in the Bourne series.
• What on Earth Have I Done? – Robert Fulghum: Refer to my previous post.
  

It’s not a bad count considering that Malaysians have been reported to read only 2 books per year. Given that, however, it’s not so good for me because I've still many unread books in my bookshelf at home. It’s going to take some time to finish them all.

At the same time, my habit of buying books is not helping at all. I spent quite a lot of money on them last year, enough to fully utilise the book tax relief given by the Inland Revenue Board and not just for me alone. Anyway, since the economy is said to be going into a recession, maybe I should seriously consider cutting down on buying books. We’ll see. Ok, let me finish my book now.

By the way, this is the blog’s 100th post. Yeah…

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All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten

by Robert Fulghum

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don't hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours.

Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

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What on Earth Have I Done?

It’s the title of a book I've just completed reading. The writer is Robert Fulghum who is famous for All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I first read his book when I was still in college, which was a long time ago. You can learn more about him and read his writings on his personal website, www.robertfulghum.com. The website loads ever so slowly now, may be you can try later.

So, what do I think about this book? Well, I wouldn’t recommend it outright unless you have read his previous works. I think you just have to get used to his style. Still, the book is worth reading.

One thing that I liked from this book was a list of twenty three items he compiled (now, I shall refer it to Fulghum’s list) as conversations lifeboats. You can preview the list here. For someone who’s a not great at conversations especially around new people, I’d say each item on the list is worth a blog entry. So, I’ve decided to work on them from now and hopefully, I can post them in the future. One post at a time.

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10 Things to Do in Kota Kinabalu

Well, in Kota Kinabalu (KK) and the surrounding areas. Earlier today, a close friend called and asked about which places to visit in KK. Last year, I had a similar post on Bangkok. This is the KK’s equivalent. Here goes:

1. Be at the Gaya Street Fair (Sundays only) – the city version of a typical local weekly market or Tamu.
2. Shop for souvenirs and trinkets at the Filipino Market. Some say prices at the Kampung Air night market are better.
3. Catch the sunsets in Tanjung Aru Beach or any seaside location around KK. Have a picnic if you can.
4. Visit the Sabah State Museum. There are life size replicas of traditional native houses in the compound.
5. Make a day trip to one or two or all of the islands in Tengku Abdul Rahman Marine National Park .
6. Visit the Kinabalu National Park, after Mount Kinabalu, after which KK is named. Include the hot springs and canopy walk at Poring.
7. Visit the Tip of Borneo or Simpang Mengayau.
8. Go whitewater rafting on Kiulu or Padas river.
9. Visit our relatives, if you believe Darwin, the Orang Utans and the Proboscis monkeys at the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park.
10. Eat all the seafood you can in the numerous seafood restaurants in KK as well as those in Gayang and Salut

Nos. 6, 7, 8 & 9 are not in KK but you can easily arrange for the trip from KK.

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Early morning flight home

I am in KLIA waiting for the flight back to my hometown. There isn’t much to do at the airport at this wee hours in the morning. The shops are closed and the people you’d see are most likely to be fellow travellers on the flight or the cleaning crew at the airport.

It’s almost 330AM now, and the flight will be at 4AM. Based on the departures information, this is the first flight out of this airport today. The next one goes to Dhaka and leaves at 635AM. I used to catch this kind of morning flight during my student days. It was the cheapest one, whereby we’d get 50% discounts if we travelled in a group of at least three people. I don’t think it's available anymore. Then, we’d paid about RM500 for a return flight between Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu. These days, you can get the same for less than RM200.

Anyway, back then in my student days, we’d go to the airport (in Subang then) the night before and camped in the airport until flight time. We’d either take turns sleeping or spend the whole night talking. Well, I don’t think I'll be doing this kind of flight anymore anytime soon. The logistics of getting to the airport is still a nightmare as before. By the way, thanks to my friends for sending me off this morning. It's very much appreciated.

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Blog’s 1st anniversary

Well, today is this blog’s first year’s anniversary. Frankly, I am surprised that it survived this long. Actually, I had tried to photoblogging before but quit after 48 posts over 48 days. It was supposed to be a daily photo site. I thought it was an easy task but finally, I found it difficult for me to do. You can visit the website here.

A blog performance is probably measured by the number of posts and the number of visitors. This my 95th post and that gives on average, about one post every 3.8 or 4 days. I feel I can do better but we’ll see how the next year goes. Check back come 4 March 2010.

As for visitors, I am not so sure how many visitors have visited this website. I don’t a counter put up anywhere in this blog. I know at least a few regular readers who come and read what I put up. They are mostly my close friends. Thank you guys and Thank you to you my silent visitors.

All I can say is that I will strive to blog more often in the coming year. I’ve some ideas but I just haven’t got around to doing them due to work commitment and my travels. I hope you all will continue to visit my blog from time to time. You all come back you hear.

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