e-books

UPSR is over...Dan has been enjoying freedom for quite a few weeks now. He has also found the joy of reading e-books. His dad has passed his old phone (Nokia N95) to him and Dan has found it quite a wonderful gadget. He has been doing stuff with it which I've never seen KC doing.

One of it is reading his e-books using the phone. He has the whole series of Percy Jackson in it...five books, I believe. Well, that is quite a lot of money saved here. He finds it most addictive. It is quite annoying when he has to read every humorous line aloud and expect us to listen and laugh with him. Anyway, it's better that he is reading books than playing games on the Nintendo. He has not asked for the Nintendo for quite a while now. The books are definitely addictive. I wonder if they have Geronimo Stilton e-books.

nature walk to Gunung Angsi

16th September...Malaysia Day. Got up at 6am and started getting ready. This is the day we climb Gunung Angsi. Dr Lim told us it will take us 2 hours going up. I was pretty excited as I wanted to test my endurance on this trail.

KHoe dropped by our house at 640am with McDonald breakfast. I just grabbed two biscuits and made sandwiches to eat up there. Along the way, we picked up Tiffany. Met Dr Lim at Senawang toll. Was surprised to see him and Uncle Ben already there waiting for us. I thought we were early.

We reached the foot of the hill about 740am. The trail up was just by the roadside....it looked pretty steep and dangerous. KC led the trail (though he didn't know the way) as Dr Lim appointed himself to be the sweeper...the last person on the team. So off we go......
We used the old road to Kuala Pilah. Parked the car here; overlooking the new road. We saw a couple sitting at the shoulder of the road dating and enjoying this view...wah so early in the morning!!!

This is right at the beginning of the hike. Really steep. When we came down, it rained. So it turned really slippery. A few of us slipped. KC slipped and sat on his butt. KH slipped also;and the mud splashed all over me.

After half an hour, we reached this camp site. There is a man who hikes up here every weekend to enjoy the solitude here. There were quite a few who camped at this place. The place has tents spread out with easy chairs and tables. This man will boil red bean or sweet potato soup for whoever who cares to stop and eat. The hikers will leave him with a little love gift. He uses wood to boil the soup. One of the hikers will carry a few 5L bottles uphill to fill it. Whoever who comes down and see the bottles will help to carry them down so that the water can be used to boil the soup.

We waited for a good ten minutes for the sweeper to sweep up two of our members. So...I was pretty quick. Of course....I wanted to walk with KC so I had to keep up with his pace. We took a group photo here. Right at the right hand corner is Michael Ng...he is a regular to Angsi. He came up the hill later than us but he was ahead of the sweeper.

There are quite a few regular hikers to Angsi. According to Michael; there is this particular chap who has made labels to put along the way. Pretty interesting.

This is funny.....

While hiking, I met Tarzan. Knowing him, he will never resist swinging on the branch. He did it twice and insisted that I take a picture of him.

Michael brought a friend with him who is a good photographer. He told us to take our time to smell the roses. So as we hiked, I made extra effort to be observant...like noticing these purple flowers.

Encouraging sign...quite accurate.

The peak...in about two hours. Not too bad. Michael is very patriotic. He is wearing a bandana with NS flag and he brought the Jalur Gemilang along. Insisted that we take pictures with it.

The view....there are a few viewing spots along the way. Get to see Senawang mostly. The regular hikers claim that on a clear day, can see Genting.

Lingzhi??

Michael and Ken boasted of long centipedes. We were so thrilled that we get to see one.

This view is before the peak. There is a river there...Sungai Terip. It is a dam; where our water supply comes from. Whenever we have water problem and call waterworks; the excuse will be 'Dam bocor kat Sg Terip'

When we came down, it started raining after we left the camp. KC decided to hold up a bark as a shade. I had an umbrella with me. Both KC and I were way ahead of the others. But at the final stretch; we stopped and waited because it was very slippery and we thought they might need help coming down. When we finally saw them; they were all in raincoats!! As usual, we didn't heed Dr Lim's advice to bring raincoats. Actually all of them except Tiff were wearing raincoats provided by Dr Lim.

It was a great hike. I enjoyed myself and am proud to say I found it not too difficult. Now, I am looking forward to a hike to Gunung Dato which is supposed to be more difficult than this. Michael has promised to organise it before the year ends.

blogger's block?

What are the causes of blogger's block? For me ....
a. books. I am a book addict. A good book and I will be glued to it till I finish it. Then I will be in anti-climax mode; looking for more books to read. Of course when I am reading, I have no time to blog.

b. Work....too busy and end up too tired to blog.

c. No 'modal'....don't know what to blog or don't make effort to find stuff to blog. Maybe I'm lazy.

d. Emotionally drained by events ... having lots of stuff going on and around me drain me out; maybe that's why I escape to my books. Like Racoon, Ma being unwell, stress at school etc. No energy left to blog after that.

e. The most recent....addiction to YouTube. The mini series Centennial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS45CkopbGY has taken up almost all of my waking hours. Once I return from school and am rested, I will be watching it. It's long...12 episodes with an average of 10 parts in each episode. Each part is about 10 minutes.

Well, these are the reasons why my blog is suffering from a blogger's block!

measuring a growing teen

When the kids were small, we used to measure their heights against a wall near the kitchen. We will write the name of the child and the date when he/she was measured. When we moved to the present house; we kind of regretted that we did not do anything to bring that part of the wall with us...I don't know how we can do it.

Every morning when Dan comes downstairs he will give me a hug with his cheery good morning. Early this year when I hugged him, he was up to my nose. Now he is taller than me. I decided that I have to keep tab of his growth....so we started measuring him again.
All he does is stand against this wall which is near the back door, I will put a pencil to the top of his head, draw a line across and have the date noted there. I wrote his name there because I thought we may be measuring others too but at the moment none of us are growing any taller. So no need to check on our heights.