back 2 life

after a long hiatus (has it really been that long?), i am back to entertain my rabid readers with the sordid details of my decadent existence.

first to tie up some loose ends. and then join the dots. and make sense of the last couple of weeks. been a hectic few weeks. lost a few beloveds along the way.
as many of you know Lollie,Tuffy and Lobang passed away round about Easter. Then if that was not bad enough, Gege, agnes and her families beloved pet fell ill and subsequently died. individually i would have no problems dealing with their deaths. but to have so many gone for no apparent reason is too much to bear.
as for the bunnies death, it would be foolhardy to speculate on what might have led to their ultimate demise. there are all sorts of conspiracy theories abound on what may have occured that might resulted in 3 healthy bunnies dying a few days apart.
and then there is Gege.
gege has been with agnes and family for over 20 years. so it was almost as though they lost a member of the family. it all started with when i brought gege to TJV to get him (now a her) checked out for the strange noises she been making. as it turned out gege had some obstruction in his (or is it her?) airway due to fatty tissue and the expansion of the area around her neck. after we brought Gege home that day, he ...umm...she was never the same again. then started a slow, painful process of seeing a beloved pet getting weaker by the day. we had to rush gege to mount pleasant animal hospital one night when he was barely moving. in the days that followed it was vet after vet and late nights trying to come to bear with what was actually wrong with our shelled friend. then one day the inevitable happened. we sped to 2 vets to confirm the worst.
the worst part of all of this was feeling to helpless as a dear pet slowly ebbed away. and not having the words to say to those I love that would ease their anxiety and take away their grief. of all the Chin's, I believe agnes took it the hardest. she was crying for days on end and there was nothing i could do to help and nothing to say that would bring back a smile to my dears face. even the elder sister was inconsolable until the very day we left for Perak.
it will take some time for all of us to get over what has happened. but i believe that this has brought all of us closer together.

then there was the Perak trip...

the journey up was about 9 hours long, so it was ardous to say the least. but at least the bus was fairly comfortable. the bad part was agnes and myself were designated the seats right at the back of the bus. normally i would be peaches at such an arrangement, but then the fact that the engine of the bus is situated at the back of the bus, made our journey from singapore up to perak a rather shaky one. agnes in particular found it hard to sleep. my days in the army, at the back of 5-tonners came to good use though.

we reach perak at around 5 am. then it was off for the usual round of coffee and meeting up the rest of the family. the family is nice that is for sure. but Sitiawan is not exactly a bustling town, so there is hardly anything like what we would find in singapore. there were no malls that i saw. nor any touristy places nearby. so our days were spent sleeping, eating and meeting people. we had lunch at the same restaurant for 3 days in a row!
we were actually there mainly to partake in the annual Ching Min festival. but unlike in singapore, the rituals are less regulated. so there was even fire crackers let off at the various grave sites whilst we were there! and the burning of paper often amounted to huge furnaces. little wonder there were no grass fires.
we stayed over at an aunties house for the duration of our stay. that meant we saved on hotels. but also meant that we had to compromise on privacy and comfort. not there were any really good hotels in the town anyway.
the ladies did have a jolly good time shopping at the various shophouse fashion boutiques. do not think i actually bought anything myself. another highlight of the trip was meeting one of agnes cousins. a baby! and i never met such an adorable and sweet kid. he did not cry or throw a tantrum the entire time we were there. if only all kids were like him. exemplary behavior from a baby that would put most adults to shame.
as for fun, we did visit Lumut, the nearby seaside town that ferries visitors to Pangkor, AT NIGHT. so there was not much to see or that we could do at such hours. the other place we visited was Teluk Batik. there we bought souvenirs and t-shirts. at least it was in the day. other highlights were the visit to the weekend market.
the trip back home was an ordeal in itself. the bus was late and the commencement of our journey was rather circuitous as the bus made its way around town picking and dropping passengers. so we spent near 2 hours just driving meaninglessly around Perak until the bus hit the NS highway. the seats were also spaced rather too closely together that meant that when the seat in front was reclined back you would be virtually pinned to your seat. the leg raise of my seat did not work. so i had to improvise..
good thing my parents were ever so kind to send us all to and from Beach Road where we took our coach(es) from. especially so after our trip back in the wee hours.

in about a week I am gonna be an uncle for the 3rd time. at least that is according to the wicket at Baby Boyd's blog. it is gonna be interesting to see what it looks like. i know it is not gonna look anything like Andre or Alden for sure.


in mid may i will be joining agnes in hongkong. she will be there for about 2 weeks for some training. i will be joining her in between for a little bit of R&R. so i will be there about a week. am quite looking forward to it, as HK affords some nice places to shop, take pictures and eat. all the great things about Singapore without the rules and order. gonna be quite an experience.
and then at end may,me and the wifey will be heading up to Berlin, Germany for about a week. it is gonna be a long journey there (with transit in between), but it should be quite an exciting trip together. this trip is also for some workshop agnes has to attend. this is one of the perks of having a wife that gets sent on overseas trips by her organisation. i get free lodging and a chance to go to places i probably not get to go to under normal circumstances. be great to actually be in a place where so much history has occured and actually be able to document it all in pictures.

Then in July we will probably be heading to bangkok, as some of you may remember we won a 4D3N hotel stay at the Shangri-la Bangkok. and we have to redeem it by september 2008.
and it is said that in November agnes will be in Switzerland!!
although there are no plans that i will be joining her, it is nice to be able contemplate that idea.

and the renovations of the house have started. we dropped by the flat yesterday and saw work is already underway.our next meeting is on the 19th afternoon. then we will discuss the air-con locations and lights/fans before they proceed unto the next stage of the reno.

also sunny broke down the other day. had some problems with his clutch,so had sunny towed back to jln leban and repairs lasted almost the whole day. to make mattters worse we were unable to attend the morning session of the marriage seminar at SUNTEC we had bught tickets for. also Gege was not well, so we had to take cabs about all the places we went that day. we did manage to attend the afternoon session of the marriage talk though, albeit we were late. but anyway our hearts were not into it after the sad events concerning Gege. :'(

we still have to sign up for our marriage preparation course in due time. it is always good to attend such courses to better prepare ourselves for the potential pitfalls that lie ahead in our marriage life. as well as MRC, we also plan to do a comprehensive health screening. so as to prevent any potential medical complications later on in years. in the shorter term we intend to go down next week to get flu jabs. it will be good to do so before the overseas trips next month.

due to being busy and pre-occupied with 'stuff' we have thus far been unable to go down to take a look at any cars. anyway after sunny's repairs he is once again purring, so the need for a car is not so imperative at this very moment. another thing I have been unable to do lately is to exercise and jog with Noel.

with now 3 bunnies, i have more cages than rabbits. I separated Muffy and Scruffy as per dr Grace's advice so as to monitor Scruffy's eating as she is rather thin for her size, and when you carry her you can feel her bones. it is probably due to Muffy bullying her and not letting her eat as much as she would have liked. or maybe we are just underfeeding the air of them. anyway, now that they are separated we can ensure that each one gets a fair share of hay. on a sidenote, i am contemplating the wisdom of moving my 2 tanks of hamsters in my room to the outside where the bunnies now are. the main concern is pnemonia and the danger of neigbouhood cats. but now that i have the means and space to do so, it is worth considering the viability of placing them outdoors rather than in my room. my main concerns with them in my room is how their fur gets into just about everything in my room, and how bad my room smells when i do not clean out their cages.

i am sure there is so much more to write about, but i shall stop here for now. to be continued, but until then...