Here's My Story

Imagine that you're a Malaysian who has a bank account with OCBC in Singapore. One day, they email you statements showing that your account has been closed and all your money there has been transferred to an unknown account. No explanation is given whatsoever. What do you think happen and how would you feel? Then imagine that you call their customer service hotline to find out what the hell happened. Because you don't debit, credit or ATM card with them, they cannot verify you and thus refuse to entertain you. You are then requested to physically travel to Singapore and present yourself at an OCBC branch for them to perform the verification. How would you feel? You then emailed a complaint to them, asking for answer for where the money went to and if their response is unsatisfactory, you state that you'll have no choice but to file a police report. Subsequently, you receive a call from them, assuring you that your money has been converted to a cashier's order but statin

It turned out that we truly rarely dined at Red Kettle, as stated in this blogpost . I guess it's because we rather pay that much for good Japanese meals rather than good Western or fusion meals. The second time we were there, we brought Ban's parents and brother. It seems that they liked it but not too sure whether his parents were just being polite or not. I forgot what I had then. On the third visit, I had their Angel Hair in broth i.e. "Angel Hair, grilled pork shoulder, pork broth, cherry tomatoes, soy lava egg, cloud ear fungus, sesame & spring onion" as taken from their website .  I didn't have a good impression of Angel Hair the first time I had it years ago at another restaurant and so I was a little wary of having it again because it just reminds me of wan tan mee except that it's much more expensive. I forgot why I even ordered it :D This time, it...still tastes like want tan mee haha but the overall dish was delicious. The broth, the eggs and p

During third session, I told the therapist the following: As reported to her via WhatsApp , the pain came back an hour or two later after the stretching exercise. I added, this time, that the pain level might be slightly lower than before starting the therapy treatment. Contrary to expectation, I could slice carrot with no issue. That there was pain when I turned my toothbrush inward to brush the inner side of my teeth. That I did the minimum 2 sets of 10 x 10s of third stretching exercise using the wall. I did further sets using the slightly easier substitute. She did the usual massage and ultrasound. At the end of it, we discovered a different spot of the pain, on top of the original: slightly below the wrist, in line with the base of the thumb. Largely a pulling pain. The therapist surmised that the reason why the relief from pain was only temporary was because my muscles were not strong enough to sustain whatever repetitive movements I was doing. So, the next step was strength exer

Previously , my prawn omelette recipe included milk but I discovered that I would prefer the omelette to be more fried i.e. has less liquid. Hence, I started excluded it and it had become one of my favourite dishes. Ban also liked it a lot :) So yummy! I would lightly marinate the prawns overnight with soy sauce, sushi soy sauce, garlic powder, onion powder and Chinese five spice powder. The soy sauce is the critical flavouring. The next day, after beating the eggs, I would add a little salt to it. Fry finely chopped garlic, stir fry the prawns for a short while i.e. until they just turn pink and then finally pour in the egg. I've been getting pretty good at getting as many prawns as possible embedded within the egg. I would also have a vegetable dish. One of the better ones that we both like is green leafy vegetable with enoki mushroom: Too much water in this one though :D

Three days after the first session , I was pleasantly surprised by a WhatsApp message by the therapist asking me whether there was any improvement, which there wasn't, unfortunately. The pain level was the same. So, she suggested a second stretching exercise:   Combined, the exercises provided immediate relief but it was temporary. At the next session, she did more extensive and intensive massage and I concentrated to give some feedback on where I felt pain/soreness the most. Midway, she asked for feedback. I had false hope at first because there was no pain but then it returned very shortly :( Again, she massaged based on my feedback and miraculously the pain was gone! Ok, the pain did come back a few hours later but that was way better than just a few seconds. She ended the session with ultrasound therapy on the wrist. She introduced a third stretching exercise: right hand on the wall with fingers pointing down, arms at shoulder height. Bend knees until I feel the stretch on my l

Recently, I was recounting to my sisters lucky incidents that happened to our family. For me, I brought up the example of how I got the scholarship to ANU: The only way I could study overseas was to get a scholarship that must at least cover tuition fee. Hence, I was scouting for university that had Actuarial Science course and offered scholarship. In Australia, at that time, I only knew Macquarie University and University of Melbourne offered the course but neither offered scholarships, at least not to oversease students. A schoolmate, who was also interested in Actuarial Science, asked me whether I want to go together with her to the Australia Education fair. I declined because of the reason I gave above. Later, after she had already gone to the fair, she told me that ANU offered the course and also scholarship that we could apply. I was luckly on 4 fronts in this instance: ANU had the course I wanted, they offered scholarship, a schoolmate went to the fair specifically looking for t

I changed my mind: I still used the ointment on the right wrist because it soothed the pain. However, the progress seems to have stalled. I was keen to get healed before going to Australia late December and so I decided to consult a physiotherapist at Relive Physiotherapy & Rehabilitation . The funny thing was that on the morning I woke up, there was no pain in the wrist even when I did the wrist movement that would usually tell me it's still there. Since I want to accurately point out the pain to the therapist, I did the normal push-up just to strain the wrist a little and that worked. The therapist confirmed my suspicion (after getting information from me) that I have De Quervain's tenosynovitis. Thereafter, she massaged my arm to loosen the relevant muscles. Amidst this, she pointed out the fleshy part of my palm just beneath the thumb was swollen compared to the left palm. After the massage, the swelling went down significantly and that I could do certain stretch more c

 

I have adverse reaction to pseudoephedrine but I was hoping that medicine like Clarinase, which has both decongestion (pseudoephedrine) and antihistamine (loratadine), can work for me than just antihistamine alone. I tried during the day and like the cough syrup that has pseudoephedrine , it made me drowsy. I risked it to take it at night the nex day. The good news was that it didn't cause me RLS. The bad news was that it was awake the whole night. It was the same the next time I took it @@ Oh, well, that's too bad. I gave it to my mum: it works well for my mum's rhinitis.

During the 4-month period after the previous appointment , mum continued to improve her walking: she could walk further and further. At the end of it, she could walk for half an hour without any pain. However, because she was forbidden to squat, she had been doing physio exercises on her bed (firm mattress) instead of on a mat on the floor which would have required her to temporarily squat when getting up. During the appointment, based on the information from Dr Tan (some of them were a response to our queries), mum doesn't need to use the back brace support any longer, she can temporarily bend forward (e.g. when picking things up), even better with knees bent, and she can temporarily squat when getting up from, say, the mat after exercising. He encouraged mum to gradually increase the duration of her walk to aim for an hour of walking without discomfort.  He said that it's likely the next appointment, in 6 months time, will be last. I think he's making sure the bones have

Sushiya is one of my favourite restaurants at One Utama and also one of my favourite Japanese restaurants. The food is delicious but expensive. Since we seldom go to One Utama, I tend to dine there when we are there. One day, after I got home from dining there, I discovered that their bill was incorrect: they applied SST on the service charge, which shouldn't be the case. So, I lodged complaint with KPDN via ezAdu since there was action taken the last time concerning Nichiya Ramen although admittedly for different reason. Later, a KPDN officer called me with regard to this complaint. Despite praising me for doing the right thing, he said that SST-related issues were under Malaysia Customs Dept's jurisdiction, not theirs. I mistakenly told him that I successfully lodged similar complaint earlier this year but he still advised me to approach Customs. I tried to google to get the correct contact to lodge complaint with Customs but all of them were for retailers/companies, not or

Months ago, I had been curious about this shop. It looked like a drinks and cake shop shop. There wasn't any menu outside or on its window/door and so I couldn't be sure. One day, a menu stand appeared outside and I noticed that they also served Western food, some of it were suitable for Ban and I. I kept forgetting to try it until I noticed that there was 10% discount for Butterworth resident. I still forgot thereafter haha but one day, I remembered because I told my nephew we were going there for dinner after picking him up from school. He's a Butterworth resident :) The pasta was delicious. The taro cake was yummy. Unfortunately, the food was a little small even for a small eater like me and it was expensive too.. The cake helped to bridge the gap but it's just not feasible to always have expensive cake to do that :D Food was definitely insufficient for Ban and so since then we have not been back there.

 

Me: Next time I'll try kopi C tanpa gula. Ban: Yes, tambah gula. Me: TANPA, not tambah. Ban: Tambah gula is the bagus. 😅

When GX Bank started, they offered 3% p.a. interest rate on its saving accounts, with interest credited on a daily basis. That was way better than what CIMB offered then. Yes, I could physically go to a CIMB branch to negotiate for higher rate for a FD placement but I would need to go back there again once it matures to again negotiate for a higher rate than normal. Troublesome. So I shifted fund to GX Bank and enjoyed those high saving rate. I was prepared to transfer them back to CIMB should they offer high rate. Few months later, earlier than expected, GX Bank announced that starting 1st Oct, the interest rate would be lowered to 2% p.a. So, I checked CIMB FD rates. As an example of what I found, the interest rate for a 6-month FD was 2.6%. What caught my eye, however, was promotional rate for 6-month FD-i (Maturity Returns): 3.6! What is FD-i? There are 3 forms of it but the common features are  they are all offered by CIMB Islamic Bank,  profit rate instead of interest rate, and p

In the past, each time Citibank charged me annual fee, I always wrote to them, using the secured mailbox (DBS made it easier: press "0" on their hotline or just talked to their digibot), that I would like them to waive the fee and that I would give up the bonus points that was normally given upon renewal. The latter was something I learnd from them the first time I asked for waiver. This year, however, I received this message even before I was billed the fee: That's fantastic: saved me the trouble to write in :)

I had a shock when I tested my cholesterol level: it went through the roof! Total cholesterol and LDL were significantly higher than 6 and 4 respectively, benchmarks that was set by the doctor, given my lifestyle and assessed low comorbidity risk. In fact, those were the highest so far. Yikes. My immediate thought was to purchase artovastatin on the same day I got the results but later I thought maybe I didn't fast long enough (should be at least 10 hours) and therefore tainted by the two walnuts that I ate late at night. However, my sister pointed out that walnuts supposed to lower cholesterol, not increase it. The other possibility was what I had 4 days earlier during an outing with friends: had a sweet drink (forgot to ask for less sugar) and a slice of cake but I'm not sure. Since this was a significant abberation, I retested 3 days later. The good news was that both total cholesterol and LDL dropped significantly (more than 10%) but they were still higher than the customis

We did try this one more time but during dinner and so there was no lunch promotion. Once again, the portion is quite huge but quality is so-so. Apparently, this is a recurring comment in the Google reviews. Also, I wish there was more fresh vegetables, to complement the rest of the dish. This is why I haven't had fish & chips in a long time. That was my last try because I don't think it's worth it. Incidentally, the outlet at One Utama is permanently closed.

After I started using ASUS Zenfone 8 about 2.5 years ago, I noticed how slow Ban's phone (Samsung Galaxy J6 plus) was. It became more obvious as he needed to install and use more apps on it but he was still fine with using it. What changed his mind was the sudden erratic clicking of the phone's pointer i.e. it moved erratically and randomly clicking everywhere. The technician at Dr iDevice guessed that moisture had somehow gotten in and messed up its inside. After trying her best to dry its inside, she advised Ban to observe. Didn't charge him, even though he offered :) It didn't come back for sometime but when it did, coupled with him dealing with the slow process of using more apps, Ban decided to get a new phone. As a birthday gift (he rarely needed anything!), I offered to research for a phone that suited his criteria and helped to purchase it. This was the list of criteria that I came up with, based on my observation of how he used his previous phones, which he a

Upon's my sister's suggestion, I purchased a number of items on Shopee for the my unit in Butterworth . All had no issue except for a couple of items from EKS EXPREZ: (1) 8th Sep: Purchased items. (2) 9th Sep: Status on Shopee showed that seller was preparing to ship the parcel and that the oder was being fulfilled by non-Shopee Supported Logistics. "Your order is likely to arrive in 3-4 days (except digital goods). Otherwise, you may choose to extend Shopee Guarantee or reach out to the seller to inquire about the parcel status." Incidentally, the option to extend the guarantee was not there even though it was supposed to be discontinued only from 12th Sep 2024 . (3) 13th Sep: This was the expected delivery date as shown by Shopee but my sister had yet to receive the items in Butterworth. Upon enquiry, the seller showed a screenshot of a logistic timeline that showed that the items were in transit from PJ to Penang. (4) 16th Sep: Received email from Shopee asking me

Context: Premium payment to AIA for my mum's health insurance policy is done via autodebit from my CIMB debit card. There was no issue for years until now. Also, each time I call AIA to enquire, they request to perform verification with my mum. Some dates below are approximated. (1) 26th Aug: Received sms from AIA saying that the autodebit failed and that they would try again in a few days. I decided to manually pay for it via their app to avoid the possibility of my mum's policy voided. (2) 27th Aug: Received sms from CIMB that my debit card was charged by AIA. A check with CIMB showed that the payment had yet been deducted from my account and so they asked me to check with AIA. AIA confirmed that they received the manual payment but not the autodebit payment. They asked me to call back once my account was deducted but I voiced my concern that I would not be with my mum then and so verification would not be possible. So, they did two things: (a) they sent instruction to the pr

(Emphasis is mine, to show the mistakes) 1. Malaymail article "Malaysian singer-songwriter sings the blues after AirAsia loses luggage and music gear worth RM15,000 (VIDEO)". Sentence: "Tan said then “ghosted” him, claiming that they stopped responding to his further inquiries." 2. Malaymail article "Boy, 12, who went viral for joyriding in Perodua Viva charged with underage driving". Section: " The 12-year-old whose driving video went viral was reportedly charged in the Magistrate’s Court here today with underage driving. Malaysia Gazette reported that the boy pleaded not guilty to the charge under Section 39(1) of the Road Transport Act 1987....... The accused is a permanent resident and small-scale carpet salesman, with five children aged six to 19 . He was represented by lawyer Nabilla Rosli."  So, this 12-year-old has 5 children aged 6 to 19? They probably meant his father.

At One Utama: Twice we passed by, on different days I believed, both times there were long queue. Served local food, priced above those in proper kopitiams but appropriate for its location at a mall. Food much be good, hor? We usually are not keen to queue, especially not this long and so we didn't try. There's also this bakery shop, which mostly likely is related: It was also crowded both times we passed by.

I don't understand what this means:

Not sure why it took me so long to search for this since I was officially diagnosed with vasomotor rhinithis 4 years ago : Found this handy information on Cleveland Clinic's website :

Despite what Ban thinks 😄, banana smoothie is still my favourite smoothie. Usually I'll mix in a strawberry or two. Sometimes I add cocoa powder. The thing about bananas is that I usually can't finish a comb of it before it goes bad and so adopting my sister's solution, I freeze them when they're about to get over-ripe. I also freeze strawberries since I cannot finish them in time. I usually don't finish them at once after I freeze them: I usually take the chance to move on to other fruits. Hence, these frozen fruits are also used as back-up. Gosh, I loved how, by coincidence, they neatly fit into this container :) In this instance, I used 6 slices of them and 1 strawberry, together with some ice cubes and a spoonful of yoghurt, to make smoothie.

The ointment method that worked on my left wrist was either not working on my right wrist or its effect was too slow / insignificant. Still, I continued with it, remembering that it took quite some time for the pain in my left wrist (pain at a few spots too) to be completely gone. Meanwhile, I looked up Youtube videos to look for rehabilitative exercises for the wrist. Later, Youtube also recommended videos for pain in thumb. Fortunately I was curious because I came across this video: Lo and behold! These techniques did lessen the pain significantly and so I started practising these massage and exercise. Recently, I also came across this: Henceforth, I stopped massage ointment at the area and use cooling agent to dampen the suspected inflammation. I also incoporated additional massages from this video.

 

One day, in order to get significant discount on  Shopee, I decided to sign up for ShopeePay. However, I was stuck at the personal information page. It refused to accept my submission and kept telling me to make sure the information was the same as that on MyKad. So I messaged a live Shopee agent. They asked me for copy of my MyKad, which I was a little hesitant to do but I thought that maybe they would manually register for me that way. Then they asked me to try filling the form again and to show the error message to them.  Agent: Under Citizen ID, you're supposed to key in your ID number. Me: Oh! I read it as "Citizen" and so I input "Malaysian". Ooops! I feel so embarrassed now. Agent: It's ok, sir. Many people did the same mistake. I think the agent was being kind :D

It's been sometime since I last blogged about my mum's eye. So, 5 months after the last appointment in Aug 23 , her right eye was ok but doctor at Bukit Mertajam Hospital still gave follow-up appointment in 6 months time. I had expected the appointments to end. I don't like going to that hospital because the roads within its compound are narrow and there's almost always no carpark space available. Furthermore, I'm not familiar with Bukit Mertajam at all and that adds to the stress of looking for parking elsewhere, where to have lunch etc. Since my sister had favourable experience with the eye specialist at Oasis Eye Centre (for her daughter), I brought my mum there. It's nearer, the procedure was faster since there's fewer patients (private eye centre, after all) and there's parking space. Naturally, the specialist spent sometime gathering mum's health history, in particular her right eye. Mum also brought along whatever reports she had from iSurgeon

This is what you get when you Google "Thai food near me" 😜😝 Actually, we ended trying this place for the first time after seeing the queue at KBN. We passed by this restaurant whenever we walked to KBN from Starling Mall and each time I reminded myself to try this place one day. The milk tea was pretty standard. That's a tick for me. This is like Thai version of mamak Maggi mee goreng. Yes, Mama mee is an instant noodle. This was delicious. It had a wide variety of ingredients. Worth it. Ban decimated the green curry beef :) Only complaint he had was that paratha bread was unsuitably paired with the curry. White rice would have been much better. We will definitely try this place again.

"So where do you want to have your hair cut?" "Don't know." "Oh, that place. Sure."  

For the past two trips, I've been flying business class from KL to Australia on my annual trip to spend time with my sister's family. The chief reason was that I can't sleep well during night flights (I'll come back to this later). However, this year, while looking at various flights, I noticed that there are day flights. The price difference between business and econocy class was over RM 6k and RM 7k for MAS and SIA respectively. I was like, wait a minute: surely an overnight stay in Melbourne would cost no where near there, right? Yup, it cost about RM 300 per person at Holiday Inn Melbourne Airport , rated 8.2 on Booking.com and 4.1 star by Google reviews. It is 8-min walk away and provides free on-demand shuttle bus to-and-fro the airport. Hence, I went ahead to book a day flight. Since it's during the day, I'll likely be spending substantial amount of time walking shows/movies in flight, instead of only sleeping (as I do on night flights). Mainly for that r

The pain in my left wrist is finally gone, after diligently rubbing ointment on it a few times daily. Phew. The pain in the inner side of my right wrist, where the tendon sheath is, is still there but seems to have lessen. As for my golfer's elbow, it seems to be better but progressively slow. I still cannot lift normally a moderately sized Zebra water container without feeling pain. Hopefully it'll be gone in a couple of months.

Wow, it just keep coming on strong recently. (Emphasis is mine, to show the mistakes) 1. Malaymail article "What you should know about: Malaysia’s brain drain and who’s benefitting from it". Sentence: "According to TalentCorp, the top five preferred countries for Malaysians who working abroad were..." 2. Free Malaysia Today article "Muhyiddin can’t stay silent on PAS-Gerakan spat, says analyst". Sentence: "Lau, of International Islamic University Malaysia, said PAS and Gerakan were merely twisting each other’s arguments without providing any solutions. He and Azmi also said that Muhyiddin should refrain from commenting on the conflict.     "Muhyiddin should remain silent and not intervene. If he does, he will have to side with either PAS or Bersatu ," Azmi said." It should be "PAS or Gerakan". 3. Malaymail article "Why is matriculation so desirable to post-SPM students (or their parents) in Malaysia?". Sentence: &qu

For some reasons, this brightened me up when I saw it:

This stall had changed hands about a couple of times. Will this latest one last? Quite possible if they maintain the quality and quantity of their food at reasonable price. Since the closure of Delifrance (remember them?) ages ago, there was no shop whose main product is crossaint until this one came along. I've been meaning to try it but kept forgetting as we usually go to An Vietz and added Ramen Hitoyoshi to our usual haunts at the mall. One day, I spotted the promotion of RM 4.90 for selected drinks (U.P. RM 6.90 - 7.90) with purchase of a crossaint and so we went ahead to dine there. It was delicious. The filling was quite a standard fare but it was balanced between meat, vegetable and cheese. I declined to have mayonnaise. The crossaint was soft and quite fluffy. It looked a little unwieldy to eat with hands and so I used knife and fork but it quickly felt apart a little. I ended having deconstructed crossaint sandwich :) Perhaps I should use my hands in future. Oh, incidenta

The chap fan shop, Restoran Butterworth, is currently our favourite place to go for chap fan in Butterworth. It has a wide variety of suitable food and comfortable environment. Two small complaints though: no seats at certain hours (and so we try to be there early) and once a while the pricing is inconsistent. There was that one time where it made no sense: I asked for a small portion of porridge. If this is small, what is big? Fyi this is the only bowl size they use for porridge.

(Emphasis is mine, to show the mistakes) 1. AP news article "France's election ends up with no clear majority. This is what could happen next". Sentence: "The results means Macron's centrist allies almost certainly won't be able to implement their pro-business proposals such a promise to overhaul unemployment benefits." 2. Free Malaysia Today article "CrowdStrike update likely skipped checks, say experts". Sentence: "The latest version of its Falcon Sensor software was meant make CrowdStrike clients’ systems more secure against hacking by updating the threats it defends against." 3. Malaymail article "Biden bows out, Kamala Harris to lead Democrats in historic presidential bid". Sentence: "Biden swiftly announced he was backing Harris, 59, who is who is the first Black and South Asian woman to be vice president in US history and..."

Usually when I ask for less ice for drinks, it makes no difference to the price. I vaguely remember there were the occassional odd shops that charged more for less ice but I can't remember when was the last time it happened. In any case, those were for premium drinks and definitely not for....Chinese tea: Actually, they indirectly charged more by giving less tea but one could argue that there was no difference in volume of tea and that the difference was that there was more ice in the normal ice tea. Could be. My point, though, was that no other coffeeshop does this and so this puts this one in a bad light although economically they're not doing anything wrong. The additional tea would marginally cost next to nothing and so it would have been better if they just followed the norm, or they can hope that others follow. We'll see.

I experience a peculiar side effect from taking pseudoephedrine: restless leg syndrome (RLS). Usually doctors prescribe the medicine to be taken at night before bed and consistently I wakes up 2-3 hours after going to bed with RLS. For context, " Pseudoephedrine is used for the temporary relief of stuffy nose and sinus pain/pressure caused by infection (such as the common cold, flu) or other breathing illnesses (such as hay fever, allergies, bronchitis). Pseudoephedrine is a decongestant (sympathomimetic). " - WebMD " Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a condition that causes a very strong urge to move the legs. The urge to move usually is caused by an uncomfortable feeling in the legs. " - Mayo Clinic RLS is not listed as one of the side effects of pseudoephedrine as far as I can tell from searching the internet. There is one documented case that''s highligted by researchers in the Journal of General and Family Medicine .  So whenever doctors ask me about my a

  Saw this  at Village Grocer outlet at Megah Rise Mall: buy 1 bottle of lactose-free milk, get 1 bottle of flavoured normal (i.e. has lactose) milk for free. Marketing team didn't think this through 😅

Spotted this resataurant at Butterworth, serving Western food. What initially attracted me was this: Intrigued, I ordered one: Rather good amount of everything, especially the vegetable. Love the sauce and the fried garlic. The only downside was that the chicken was a little dry, which I told the staff later. Unfortunately, when I brought my mum to try this, the sauce was nearly tasteless. They offered to give more sauce but my mum declined since it was no point pouring more tastely sauce, correct? However, Ban ordered something that I ordered in the next trip: salad with choice of meat. The salad had a good mix of vegetables, including ice lettuce. No other place we've been had such vegetable in their salad. It was crunchy and refreshing. Worth having.

I had been eyeing this stall at Hakka Legend @Taman Megah for a while. Its price was a deterrent. One day, I was feeling a little generous and so ordered a plate: The chicken was quite nice...and that's about it. Portion was too small to justify the price. Even with that amount of rice, I was barely full. The most unforgivable part was that the rice didn't taste like chicken rice. Yes, I never have it again.

Seems like they have bucked up: I hadn't come across shoddy writing in months. (Emphasis is mine, to show the mistakes) 1. Free Malaysia Today article "In Sabah, Umno’s options limited, say insiders". Sentence "The term of the current Sabah government will expire in October 2025 , but Hajiji has hinted at the possibility of the next state election being held as early as next year ." This was reported on 25th Jan 2024 and so "next year" is 2025. So, what's so "early" about "next year" then, since the expiry is in 2025 anyway? 2. Free Malaysia Today article "Analysts see Zahid’s support in Umno waning". Sentence "On Fehttps://youtu.be/AYmjqWY9kK8b 2 , the Federal Territories Pardons Board announced that Najib’s prison sentence in the SRC International case ..." The huge mistake is still there when this post is published haha.

Much had happened during the 6-weeks+ period after the last appointment with Dr Annuar , the orthopedic at SJMC: I finished the prescribed Arcoxia. I took it at night after supper so that I wouldn't be lulled by its painkiller effect and thereby doing stuff that would aggravate the injury, and yet I would benefit from its anti-inflammatory property. I stopped taking it like 3-4 days before appointment with physiotherapist so that I could provide a more accurate feedback to her. I missed 3 out of 6 physio sessions: 2 due to illness and 1 was because I was away in Butterworth. Therapist said I could resume swimming, and doing assisted push-ups i.e. with knees on the mat. Both didn't cause any issue (yay!). In fact, I now could do some full push-ups. I injured my left wrist, highly likely by overdoing the physio exercises. I probably didn't recognise the limit of my strength and therefore agreed to use heavier weights.  Fortunately, it's much better now, after diligently

I've been having this long running phlegm + irritated throat + cough for weeks already. As at now, it's almost gone. It was at this stage previously after a first course of Amoxycillin but it inexplicably worsened when I was in Butterworth, a few days before Ban and I were going to bring my mum to two hospital appointments (morning and afternoon). Doctor there gave me a short course of Azithromycin but didn't seem to help much.  Two days before the the hospital appointments, I had fever. At this point, doctor was convinced it was a viral infection instead of bacterial. He asked me to return to him if fever worsens, paracetamol isn't effective in reducing it i.e. the relief doesn't last as long as it should, or it persists for more than 2 days. Fortunately, none of these happen. I was well enough to go through with the appointments but needed Ban to drive all the way. The day before we went home, my niece was diagnosed with Inluenza B, after having fever for nearly 2

In the lead up to this follow-up, mum said her mobility was better than that before the this whole issue of pelvin/leg pain i.e. better than usual. That's great. X-ray was done again, which shows nothing amiss with the spine. Key points: (1) Can resume physio exercises. (2) Still cannot squat, which surprised me because I thought it would be temporary . (3) Cannot bend forward. (4) Don't sit on floor. Dr Tan said that now it's just waiting for the bones to fuse together. Next appointment in 4 months time, also with X-ray done.

So the purchase of the condo unit is very nearly over. The last step is to receive the title deed from the lawyer after its transfer of ownership is registered by land office. I, together with my mum, sister and hubby, inspected the unit a final time and received the keys from the agent. Earlier, I was looking up on how to activate electricity and water supply and was exploring the possibility of doing it online. However, the lawyer has passed two copies of the SPA (Sales & Purchase Agreement), via the agent, to me for this purpose. Also, my sister said that from her experience, the process was quick at PBA's office (for water) but took a little longer at TNB's office (electricity). Since I hadn't yet figure out the online process, I decided to do it at their offices. In case there was lack of parking space, I asked Ban to drive me. First, I had to photocopy my IC, which I did at a photoshop. I also got another copy of the SPA as I anticipated that it would be required

I gave up visiting the outlet at Starling Mall because the amount of pork had shrunk to a pitiful amount such that it wasn't worth the price any more. However, later, Ban's brother alerted me of a new outlet at Paradigm Mall and so I decided to give it a try. Way better than the one at Starling Mall. Hopefully they maintained it.