90 years old!

It was my paternal grandfather's 90th birthday last weekend. So we went out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Booked 3 tables earlier and invited a few closed relatives.


The first table was for the first generation of the family, consisting of my grandfather, grand-uncles and grand-aunties.

The second table was for the second generation consisting of my parents, aunties and uncles.

The second generation. That's the 'birthday boy', standing in the middle in white. That's my mom standing at the back in pink and my father behind her, almost hidden.

And of course the third table was occupied by the third generation, namely me and my cousins.

The third generation wishing the birthday boy....

Since we're Hokkien, we tried to wish him in Hokkien for fun. But none of us in the third generation speaks the language! So we had to ask our grand-uncle to translate for us before passing the message to my grandfather. Don't ask me how to say 'Happy Birthday' in Hokkien. I forgot the moment the words came out of my mouth :p

Singing the birthday song......

We were seated on the first floor of the restaurant. At first there were other families having dinner on the same floor. But after some time, they left so we had the whole floor to ourselves! My uncles started singing karaoke. Soon everyone joined in. I was shy at first. But after some persuasion, I joined in :p

Things got real crazy when my aunties started dancing! I was again shy at first. I was never really closed to relatives in my father's side. But it's such a happy occassion, my grandfather was really happy and even my grand-uncles and grand-aunties (who have always looked strict I was sometimes scared of them :p) started dancing! So again I joined in the fun. They even partnered me up with my father for cha-cha hehehe....

Anyway, they were really surprised to see me dance. Guess to them, I have always been this shy and quiet bookworm cousin of theirs :p

So I told them about my dancing lessons :p

My grandfather was dancing on the little stage with my aunties by his side. Look how happy he was.

Posing with my beautiful cousins. I was the most casual in jeans.

Took a picture with my grandfather and an auntie.

We left the restaurant around 11 pm and gathered at my grandfather's place. Naturally, two mahjong tables were set up :p

While the first and second generations were busy playing mahjong, we proceeded to a story-telling session! With my grandfather as the story-teller, surrounded by his grandchildren as the audience. Stories travelled back to his childhood in China (he's born in Malaysia but moved back to China with his mom who was ill, and later brought back to Malaysia by his father). After the story-telling session, we played a simple game of message delivery. My grandfather would whisper some Hokkien phrases to the person next to him, and the message would be delivered until it reached the last person. I was unlucky to be the last person, where some 2-syllable phrases could end up sounding like 3-syllable vulgar words! And I had to shout those words out!

Overall, it was a happy occasion. After all, it's not everyday that we get to celebrate 90th birthday. Maybe we can learn a thing or two from my grandfather's lifestyle. I remember he used to jog every morning in a white singlet, short pants and a small towel hung around his neck. After that, he'd cycled to town. When he's not moving around, he'd be watching TV, ranging from TVB drama series, Taiwanese Hokkien drama series, Hollywood movies to Bollywood movies. No kidding! He likes Bollywood movies! I enjoy discussing storyline and drama plots with him hehee...
And during the weekend, my father and uncles will go over to play mahjong with him.

By the way, I'm the eldest of the third generation who carries the family name! I'm not my grandfather's eldest grandchild, but those who are elder are my aunties' children, and my grand-uncles' grandchildren (who carry the family name) are all very young. That makes me the eldest! I wonder if this means I'm the 长子的孙 (eldest grandchild)... or does the term only apply to grandson?

Anyway, it's not as if my grandfather owns a large estate or a hotel empire to be passed down to me :p

Else, I would not be sitting here blogging. Maybe I'd still blog. But I would blog about the limited edition milk bowl I bought for my chi hua hua :p

Or I would be off sun-basking in some islands or sandy beaches. Or busy cutting my new self-sponsored album or movie. Or just busy with manicure, pedicure, shopping in New York, Paris, Milan, London... see? I would be so busy I'd never have heard of England :p

Ok, back to reality.

Will it collapse?!

OK, before I start on what I wanna talk about, please allow me to do this:

"Yay! Lee Chong Wei beat Lin Dan! Chong Wei won the Swiss Open 2009 Men's Single by beating Lin Dan 21 - 16, 21 - 16. Yay!"

Ok, calm down. Take a deep breath...... ok , back to some serious stuff :p



I was marking some reports in my office today when I suddenly heard some cracking sound on the floor. Upon checking, I saw some tiles on the floor beside my desk bulging upwards. When I stepped closer to have a look, the cracking became louder and more frequent. The shelf above the bulging tiles was leaning to one side and my pot of cactus had toppled. All of us in the room (I'm sharing the room with 2 female colleagues) got worried as the cracking sound could be heard from the outside. We're worried that our room would collapse! We quickly took our precious belongings, left the room and reported to the staff in-charge of this stuff.

While waiting, colleagues from other departments (especially those in the civil, construction and architecture fields) came over to have a look, bringing with them measurement device, tools, etc., while discussing some of the possible reasons (settlement since the land used to be a tin mine, poor construction, tension due to changing conditions, etc.). Some even joked about earthquake.

One of them broke a piece of tile to check the structure below. To our relief, the concrete structure was still strong and flat. Only the tiles had come off. See the pictures below:

Take a look at the bulging tiles.

See that? The tiles had come off......

Glad that my room won't collapse after all. But we are monitoring now, and if something out of the ordinary happens, we'll request for a new room.

Anyway, I started commenting on the poor quality, poor workmanship..... until a colleague's remark shut me up.

The magical remark?

"Even Parliment leaked."

It starts with a 'T'

Lately, I really like this song (and I swear it has nothing to do with the cute singer :p).... don't ask me whether it's a Chinese or English song, cuz it's kinda complicated :p

It's easy to fall in love with a song when you get to hear it almost everyday. I first heard of this song because it's the ending sub-theme song of a local Chinese drama series. It's in Mandarin. One day, I heard it played in Cantonese on the radio, sung by an HK artiste Eric Suen (孫耀威). Feeling curious, I checked out the name of the singer of the Mandarin version at the end of an episode. The name 'Chin' appeared. The first thought that came to my mind was, "he's probably some unknown local artiste" :p

The name 'Chin' came up again a few days ago in a local Chinese daily. That was when I found out that he's a Thai singer of French-Thai parentage. The song was originally in the Thai language. Anyway, he's trying to break into the Chinese market. He went to Taiwan recently to act in a Taiwanese idol drama series. He also did a commercial for Sony Skinny T Digital Camera, which was how the Mandarin version came about. There was also an English version for the commercial.

Besides his Cantonese version, Eric Suen also recorded his own Mandarin version, but the lyrics and song title are different from Chin's.

Ok, after ranting for so long, you still do not know what song I've been talking about :p

So here they are, in different versions/languages:




Chin's original Thai version called 'Term Mai Kuey Tem'




Chin live in Malaysia during his promo tour. A half-Mandarin-half-English version called '遇见你 (Meeting You)'





The Sony Skinny T commercial. Shot in Taiwan if I'm not mistaken (I've seen the Ferris wheel in a Taiwanese drama before). It's broken into 3 short episodes. This is the first episode. The story is kinda cute and romantic! :p




Eric Suen's Cantonese version called '只要和你在一起' (As Long As I Can Be With You)

Ok, there is no need to include all versions of the same song here. But I cannot get enough of it :p

My mom likes the Canto version hahaha... probably because she gets to listen to it almost everyday on the radio.

I prefer Chin's versions, especially the original Thai version, even though I do not understand a single word he's singing.

And now while we are at it, I'd like to introduce another famous Thai singer-cum-pianist :p

'Tor' is his name. If you had watched the recent MTV Asia Awards, he won the Best Artiste of Thailand. No, I did not watch it. I only heard of him a few weeks ago during a live interview on the radio when he was in Malaysia to promote his latest album. And I was wowed by his piano-playing skill. There was a part during the interview where he showed off his skill. He asked the DJ to select and press any 5 keys within a range of keys in random order while Tor had his eyes closed. Not only was he able to reproduce the keys in the selected order, he actually created a new song right there and then using the 5-key melody! Maybe this is very common and easy for those of you who can play the piano, but I was fascinated! No wonder he is known as the Prince of Piano in Thailand.




Tor singing a song called 'Rak Ter' (I Love You) live



First we had J-pop (which probably started with GTO), then we had K-pop (how could anyone resist the oh-so-romantic Winter Sonata? :p). And now........ drum roll, please..... braze yourself for the invasion of .......... another drum roll..... T-pop!



No, I honestly do not think that T-pop started with The Iron Ladies (人妖打排球) :p

What's your style of gardening?

Some like to disperse a bagful of seeds, and pick the best seedling out of the lot.

Some prefer to pick the best seed and take good care of it, hoping that it would germinate into a healthy seedling .... and if it does not germinate, then only pick another seed.

I prefer the latter. The only problem with this is that not all seeds can wait. Some have 'expiry date' :p

What's your preference?

Student antics

I was commenting on the reports submitted by a group of students, saying how they copied and pasted one paragraph from this book, another paragraph from that website and then put them together as a report. In order to explain my point, I likened it to watching a movie which shows scene A and then suddenly jumps to scene B without any connection between the two scenes.

While I was making my 'movie analogy' point, a male student suddenly stood up, pretended that he was holding a machine gun and shooting away (scene A), then suddenly turned to his friend and started 'smooching and kissing him' (scene B).

Talking about making a clear point.... :p

That was a good fight

Sob... sob....

He was defeated again....

Just finished watching All England Men's Single Final between our very own Datuk Lee Chong Wei and China's Lin Dan (nicknamed 'Super Dan' by the media.... kinda funny).....

Lin Dan won 21-19 and 21-12.... gotta admit that he's a strong player.... but Chong Wei (ooops sorry.... I mean Datuk Lee... even though he's only one or two weeks older than I am :p) put up a good fight too.... and screams of "Malaysia Boleh!" could be heard all through the game.

Looking forward to the next time they play each other again!

Keep fighting, Datuk Lee!