Stressed Out Mother’s Life

It has been a tiring week for me. Had fever for about 5 days… thus didn’t take care of Pea. Once I’m well, Pie came home, thus had my hands full then.

Was on MC for 2 days, therefore by the time I went back to office, was quite busy as well.

Come Friday, it was my 4th wedding anniv. Didn’t bother about office (not that I didn’t go to work, but I left early lar), quickly go home, as we wanted to go out for dinner. Went out with PIL, so where got romantic… more over 2 kids in tow

Nevertheless, we went to Marche (@ The Curve)… everyone (except Pie and I) have not been there, and I’ve been pestering to go there for quite some time now. It was a different experience, whereby you are given a card and whatever you order will be stamped onto the card. It’s self-service dining, and food are different… pasta, pizza, steak, roast chicken, rosti (potato) and drinks. After dinner, we walked around the mall, as PIL have not been there before (I think). Pea was asleep most of them, after having her milk at the restaurant.

The next day, we were supposed to go to the clinic, as I wanted some oilment for my cold sore. On the way there, it was raining heavily, so asked hubby to detour back. As it was lunch time, and hubby wanted to go to his new office at Rawang, we opted for McD instead. Went to the Drive-Thru, and had McD in the car… enjoyed the trip to Rawang… it was far (around 45 mins drive, but with the new car, cannot feel the distance). By the time we went back home, we’ve sat in the car for about 3 hours (inclusive Pea… and she had her milk at hubby’s new office… haha)

Sunday, was a lazy day… but not before we went out for ‘Dim Sum’ at Quality Hotel, KL. After a heavy breakfast, we dropped PIL and Pea back home, and then headed to Sunway Pyramid, as I wanted to collect my Income Tax Pin # (what to do, it’s almost time for tax submission). Parking at Pyramid was a total havoc, with the old parking lot under renovation. Funny thing is that inside the parking lot, there’s a free buggy (I called it tram though) service to fetch and drop patrons to the mall entrance. They have this service as the parking lot is quite big, and quite a number of them are quite far from the mall entrance. Not too sure if they’ll still have this service when the entire mall is ready. Remember I mentioned lazy Sunday ? By the time we got back home, everyone was drop dead tired… I could have just fall onto bed to sleep, if Pie hadn’t dirtied her going-out clothes… *sigh* instead of sleeping, I was washing clothes, and later on folding clothes. Never mind, will get my beauty sleep earlier tonight…

*Cough Cough* Yeah, I’m still having cold. Worst than that, I’m having slight fever as well. Yesterday, I really couldn’t take it anymore, but then no choice had to continue working (quality assuring proposal is something I really hate). When I couldn’t tahan, I left the office around 6+ pm, and went home to sleep. Continued reviewing the proposal around 8+ pm… Luckily it took me around 1/2 hour only (didn’t put any heart to review it though).

Went to see the doctor just now. She said that my immune system is low, due to the fact that I’m still bf-ing my baby. But then she encouraged me to continue bf, so bf is the way to go (for now lar)…

Crossing my fingers that I’ll be better by tomorrow, as I need to take care of Pie in the coming week, as my Mum is going to Shanghai (I’m envious)…

This week started off badly. On Monday, I was down with flu (actually started few days ago), and went to see the doctor; thus am on MC for the day. Was at home, sleeping most of the time (haha… FIL took care of Pea as MIL went out for lunch). Yesterday, office didn’t have any power for about an hour, thus did not do much work. But once power came back, found out that one customer was complaining about our people assigned (*sigh* … how tak syiok that is… to have customer complaining about us)…

So you can imagine how *good* the entire week will be …

It was kinda last minute. Well, not so last minute, but definitely not a planned trip. To me, a planned trip is something you would have planned in weeks or months, not something that was mentiond 3 days ago. It all started with hubby asking whether this weekend want to go Genting / Camerons. We actually don’t have any problems, as both places we do have apartments to stay in… don’t have the hassle to make rooms reservations. Since it was kinda ad-hoc for me, and that I’m slightly lazy to travel so far, and that not many people are going, I decided to go to Genting. With the new car now, hubby is super duper enthusiastic to travel around… must be trying to make full use of the car…

We went up to Genting on Friday night (wasn’t kidding, coz by the time we reached Gohtong Jaya (GJ), it was 10+ going 11 pm). We were all tired – once lugged in all the luggages and made the bed, we wanted to just jumped on to the bed and go to sleep. Hubby was lucky as he managed to fell asleep quite fast. I was already having nose block, but Pie had other thoughts. She slept all the way up to GJ, therefore couldn’t go to sleep anymore. Mum and I took turns to ask her to go to sleep, but she couldn’t, until I switched on the tv for Pie. She watched about 1 hour of cartoons, and I quickly switched off the tv. By the time we all fell onto our pillows, it would have been 1 am. I would love to sleep all the way till late in the morning, but having Pea around, I should count myself lucky that she only woke me up around 6.30 am (though I was still half asleep and have already put the pacifier into her mouth countless times). Therefore, the entire time I was like a zombie… didn’t have enough sleep, also never mind, I was having nose block and sore throat (am still having now).

Supposed to go up to Genting early in the morning, coz hubby wanted to bring Pie to the indoor theme park, but becoz I wasn’t feeling too well, we ended up going to Genting in the evening, for dinner and jalan-jalan a bit. Had dinner at Kopi Tiam (at First World) and it was the worst experience. It was super stuffy and the food was quite expensive. It’s supposed to be a food court, but then we can order dishes from one of the stalls, Chinese. We ordered deep fried sotong, hong kong kai lan, sweet and sour fish (entire fish) and cantonese fried noodles. With a pot of tea and rice, it costed us RM 120+. How expensive can that get, and it was not even at a restaurant. Have you ever spent so much at the food court ? After dinner (barely ate much), I felt like fainting. Mostly like was caused by the stuffy food court, coz after I sat down at one of the open areas, I felt much better. We stayed there until around 10+, then went back to GJ.

Today brought Pie to the club house. She had so much fun sitting on the kiddy rides, playing house and shooting basketballs (though Mum and I played the most, and Pie laughed most of the time). Was supposed to come back after lunch, but by the time we finished lunch and packed our stuffs, it was around 3pm. Both Pie and Pea was sleeping, so we decided to come back later.

Left Pie with my Mum, but Pie looked quite reluctant to follow her. Now with Pea around, Pie prefers to come home to me. Though still loving her sister, I can sense that she still have sibling jealousy, therefore seeking my attention very often. Do hope that I’m spending enough time with her. Will try to split my time between the 2 girls…

Should be a short post, coz I’m tired and too lazy to talk much already.

• Got a plastic cup from Oracle - Just submit the survey form and spin the wheel to get the prize.
• Got a T-shirt from Sun – Just submit the feedback forms.
• Got a computer backpack from Sun – Just stay till end of the track (around 7+ in the evening), and submit the feedback forms.

If you are wondering why I left the Day 1 post abruptly, the reason is because I did leave the event abruptly as well… hehe… what I meant was that after the last track (from my post), I left for the day. Couldn’t afford to stay back and listen to the last track as it would mean me getting myself stuck in the jam (which I totally refused to, and also because I had to bring Pie home).

Day 2 session started with a lower expectation from my side (learnt from my lessons from Day 1). The day started with a technical session on what is going on in the near future for OpenSource. Then Oracle’s technical session took over (which turned out to be quite technical and kinda boring, and half the time, none of the slides were shown on the screen, due to technical difficulties). Chose to attend track 1’s session (JavaME & Software Failure). Kinda interesting to listen (and learn a little) about JavaME, esp. when we won’t have the liberty to venture into that area (neither do we have the experience & resources). Software Failure was another interesting topic, though after each slide, the presenter will refer to his notes and talk about his past interview sessions with other top people (e.g. James Gosling). Did take note that it is one of the major concern here as I noticed at times we do not capture / throw the errors properly. Thus must learn how to handle them in a proper manner (sounds just like getting to have good table manners). Didn’t manage to sit and listen till end of the session, as I had other top priority things to do (my colleagues will know what I mean).

Bumped into an ex-colleague though (at the start of the session, I told one of my colleagues that I won’t bumped into anyone I know, as I don’t have any ex-colleagues… most of my colleagues met so many of their ex-colleagues during the 2 days session… this is due to the fact that I worked (and am still working) for the same company since I first joined the work force).

After lunch, we didn’t want to listen to the VMWare talk, therefore decided to go shoe-shopping (colleague wanted to buy a pair of shoes) at KLCC (the shopping mall of course). Went to Isetan and Parkson, but she couldn’t find one to her liking (the other reason was that they didn’t have her shoe size – I don’t even want to venture into that area coz it made me feel how big my feet was… hahaha)… She ended up getting one at Vincci… I was too tired to walk much (must be due to the reason that I walked too much, as well as not having enough sleep… that should be obvious coz I took the time to blog at such un-godly hours).

Didn’t attend the next 2 tracks either (hopefully my boss doesn’t find out about my blog)… Stayed back late just to attend the last track. Initially wanted to attend the AJAX track, but when I found out who the presenter was, both my colleague and I decided to change track, thus we attended the Concurrency & Performance track. It was meant to be a technical session (and lasted 1 1/2 hours)… at times it was quite interesting, but at times I kinda felt boring, due to the reason that quite a number of things I don’t use at all.

I attended the Sun Tech Days 2006-2007 yesterday (Day 1 session). The event is currently being held at KL Convention Center (KLCC). It was my 2nd time at KLCC; my 1st being at the Aquaria. I know where KLCC is, but had no idea how huge the place can be. As I parked my car at KLCC (the shopping mall), I had to walk through the park to get to KLCC (the convention centre), and I assumed that the event would just be at the level 3 of the entrance I came from. Boy was I wrong… it was being held at the other end of KLCC, the one furthest away from the entrance of the park. It was a long walk for me (and I was on high heels some more, wrong decision of mine). In total, I made quite a number of wrong decisions yesterday – decided to drive to KLCC instead of taking the LRT (instead I got stuck in a few jams, though not long, but all in it was an hours drive from my house), decided to park at KLCC instead of the convention centre (reason being the traffic at Jln Sultan Ismail heading towards Renaissance was super jam and I was late, therefore I took the turning to KLCC’s parking, as advised by my sister), decided to wear high heels (there were no other pair of shoes in my car) and lastly, I decided to park near Isetan so that I could get some things for my sis after the event (I ended up going up and down the lift as all the levels were totally closed, except for G).

Enough mumbling about that. Let’s talk about the event itself. By the time I reached the event reception area, I headed towards the payment booth (obviously to make the payment and get myself registered). It was around 8.45 (if not mistaken), and I heard a lady calling out saying that “Once you’re registered, pls. go directly to the hall. The event is about to start”. Once I got myself registered, I went in, and a guy came to me and mumbled something (serious, not kidding here). Out of courtesy, I just nodded my head and later on was wondering what the guy said. Must be something to do with the event kit (coz a few feet away, I passed by the area and collected the kit – consisting of the event information and survey forms in a folder, a notepad and a pen, all inside the Sun plastic bag).

On with the launching / opening ceremony. Speeches were given by the Managing Director of Sun Microsystems (Mr. Gan Boon San) and the Deputy Minister of Science Technology and Innovation Malaysia (YB Dato’ Kong Cho Ha). It was accompanied by the sounds of kompangs and big malay drums (no idea what you call it), which was ear deafening for me as I sat quite near one of the speakers). Later on, James Gosling @ Father of Java went on the stage, and started the technical session.

Truthfully speaking, I was quite enthusiastic about the event, as I was eager to find out more about the new release and technology as well as what the future lies for java. I was not disappointed (couldn’t think of a better word at this hour) with the technical demo as they demo-ed on the future technologies:

1. Performance Tester - this guy was comparing the performance of running C’s code against Java’s code and could prove that the Java’s code runs much faster than the C’s code, but apart from that, I have no idea what this guy was talking about.
2. Java Pet Store – this guy started off by showing us the traditional look and feel of the Pet Store application, and then showed us what the new technology of Pet Store has.
3. Duke the Robot – a seriously cool stuff. This lady showed us something similar to a spy camera. Using her handphone emulator, she can control the movement of the robot (It can move front, back, right and left. It can also fire, though I still do not know what it is for). The cool thing about this is that the robot can be sitting nicely in your house (and spying on your spouse / kids / maid / whoever you want to spy on) and you can be at somewhere else in the world.
4. CityGuide – another interesting thing to see. This lady showed us how we can see the hotspot of the road / area we are currently at. Using the handphone emulator (and after showing us how to create the design of the system), a script is loaded in to simulate the movement of a person. When the person passed by a hotspot, it will show on the screen the location / place it is.
5. JavaMail – nothing much. This guy was showing how he do a GUI makeover of the traditional Swing application.
6. No idea what they called it, so I’m calling it ‘The Musician’ (hehe) – This M’sian guy was demo-ing how he can get the application to search and recommend the songs based on the music beat (and other sorts). Showing us his MP3 collections in dots (it has colour representations of the music genres – blues, rock, classical and so forth), he can choose to start off with a rock song and end with a classical song. In between, the application will select the other songs so that it will jive with the starting and the ending. His song collections could also be displayed in 3D format and shows the singer / album as well. It is a kinda cool thing, but my desc. might not be that good for your reading… haha… you still have to see it for yourself.
7. Java LookingGlass – this is a 3D desktop using Java program. Seriously very cool as well. Basically, there is a device on the lady’s hand called SPOT, to mimic her hand movement and finger clicking. With the device talking to the base station (another device which is plugged onto the notebook), you can click on the windows and launch application, eventhough you are not sitting in front of the PC.

After the technical demo, it was time for technical presentations. I chose Track 1 – Java EE 5 and Glassfish (supposingly to be an informative seminar, but because the presenter wasn’t that equipped with information, I found my mind drifting away a little), and SOA Design Patterns for ESB and BPEL (I thought I could learn something from here, but the presenter made the entire session boring until I couldn’t take it, thus left early. It was past my lunch as well, so was hungry then).

After lunch, I chose Track 2 – talking about Data Warehouse (which is quite interesting) and then Track 1 – JSF (got better ideas of JSF and they even had comparison against Struts).

I’ve just changed my blog’s template, and I can say that this one totally is the one for me. Haha… I just dig the look…