This is going to be an eccentric post, so please bear with me.

This year’s Chinese New Year falls on the same day as Valentine’s Day (February 14) Do I give a hoot about the former? No. The latter? Yes Anyways, I’ll be working the whole weekend…I prefer it that way. The only nice thing about Chinese New Year is that I get to take a break from my teaching, so that’s definitely a plus point (this is one of our major Malaysian holidays, Miss Miller, and yes I do work)

It was very nice of my music school administrator to give me this New Year hamper (or basket, for my American friends) There’s a variety of stuff inside, including edibles and dunno what else, LOL. And yes, I’ll open it later. The picture was taken as usual with my Canon PowerShot SX120 IS; I just love this camera, the colors are so vibrant.

I’ve written two new posts for My Musical Life, my other blog. Please have a look.

I’ve watched Avatar twice…once by myself and once with my Mom. Since the tickets only cost $1.80 per adult, why not? I thought Mom would doze off halfway thru the movie but my word, she was glued to the screen! She said it was a good flick. Rumors are flying about the Internet that James Cameron will make a sequel. Of course I’m not going to hold my breath (it took him 7 years before Terminator 2 hit the screens)

Unlike all the other citizens here, I am not a fan of Chinese movies. In fact I absolutely despise them with a vengeance, especially the Cantonese soaps and serials—yuck! Give me NCIS, Fringe, CSI, Criminal Minds, and Bones any time—these are my favorite TV shows.

Music? My current fave is Katherine Jenkins, the Welsh singer. Beautiful voice, and her latest album Believe is pure magic. My favorite songs there are Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry, Richard Marx’ Fear of Falling, and Queen’s Who wants to live forever. Buy this album, it’s superb.

Unfortunately I’ve had to cut down on my swimming—the doc said I was overdoing it, can you imagine that? So I now swim maybe about 3 or 4 times a week, 16 laps maximum. And I’m supposed to eat more protein, so all you chickens had better watch out. My glucose levels have actually decreased, which is good since my Mom’s diabetic. My cholesterol level has dropped from 5.8 (2 years ago) to 5.4 now. I’ll be guzzling the oatmeal for sometime yet!

I still give thanks to God for everything that I have, especially my health and my eyes—it’s been months since my cataract operation last year and I still can’t get over the fact that I wake up each morning and can see clearly when I open my eyes!

I’ve been having ham and cheese sandwiches for breakfast, besides oatmeal and peanut butter sandwiches. Bananas are my favorite fruit because they’re good for…oh well never mind (don’t blech, Miss M) And Tudor Gold dark chocolate is simply wonderful, full of antioxidants and it does elevate my happiness levels.

There are challenges coming up for me this year—I don’t like them, but I have to face them. Might as well get them over with.

Penang’s weather is awful at this time of the year. Hot, with very little rain, and pollutants make my nose itchy and sore—ugh!

For you lovebirds out there, yes Love does make the world go round. My favorite quote for now is this one: “You don’t love a woman because she is beautiful. She is beautiful because you love her.” Happy Valentine’s Day.

Told you this would be a quirky post.

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It’s amazing how often people meet like ships in the night, and then drift away…it happened to me way back in 1981 when I met someone whom I liked a lot…our paths crossed for a brief semester at the University of Arizona, we went out for one solitary date, and then she just—disappeared. I was completely dumbfounded—she was a person I would have liked to know better. Slowly time made me forget, since I had other friends in college. Our two ships set their own different courses in the sea of life.

Fast-forward to 2009, and I was writing my blog series about my years in America. I intended to include some of my American college friends in it, and suddenly she flashed into my mind. Oh what the heck, since I’m on Facebook why not humor myself and do a Facebook search? Something just prodded me on, so I entered her name and clicked on Search. Lo and behold, the search results came back (there were several hundred entries) Gosh, am I going to search through all that? Again something urged me on, so I clicked on the first results page—nada. Second page, third page, fourth page, nope. And then there she was—slightly older no doubt (so am I) but there was that recognizable smile.

I hastily penned a message about adding her as my Facebook friend and clicked on Send. I remember writing something like “If I’ve got the wrong person, I do sincerely apologize.” A day or two later, I received an email from her, and eagerly opened it (I half-expected it to say that I’d got the wrong person) But fortunately it was her! And she remembered who I was. Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, two ships have managed to steer back towards each other, after an absence of 28 years.

We’ve been using WLM to stay in touch since then…it’s delightful to know about what has been going on in her life, while I tell her my own gory details. This is not a publicity campaign for Facebook (and it doesn’t need it) but without it two friends would not have reconnected again. Friendship transcends all barriers, be they physical or otherwise. There is nothing more congenial than knowing and confiding in a good friend. Friendship is truly the best ship of all. Thank you for being my friend, Crystal.

“Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” Aristotle

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Just did this on a whim, I was feeling happy with myself. And yes, the Canon PowerShot SX120IS is a fantastic camera!

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I can’t believe that more than one and a half years have passed since my last blood test. My mom had been nagging me lately about having one done, but I’ve always procrastinated, until last Wednesday when I had some free time. So I made a bargain with myself—I’d go for that blood test, and then reward myself by going to watch Avatar afterwards. It was an awesome movie, coming from James Cameron (seems the man can’t do anything wrong) and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even forgetting the fact that it was 2 hours 40 minutes long. The only weak link was James Horner’s prosaic soundtrack—he’s written good ones in the past (just listen to Titanic) but this one was tired and appeared more like a rehash of what he had written before. Cameron should have enlisted John Williams to compose the music for Avatar. That would have been stupendous.

Anyways, back to my blood tests. The good doc said he’d call me when he got the results but you know me, I get so edgy and impatient. So I called him up yesterday afternoon; my heart was pounding because he did appear to be a tad worried about my loss of weight—my mom is diabetic after all, so that got me all worked up too. It was a great relief when he said over the phone that all my results were normal, thank God.

I’ve been told to cut back on my swims (wah!) Apparently I’ve been overdoing it, what with the 30 laps and swimming five to six times a week. Now I’m doing just 16 laps and plan to swim a maximum of four times a week (I’ll still continue with my morning walks)

I’ve also been told to increase my protein intake, so if you have any suggestions feel free to drop me a comment. Now where’s that chicken?

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Well it isn’t everyday that my brother and his family come out to Penang from Melbourne, Australia. This time he was here for about six weeks and he has invited me to the same Chinese restaurant not once, not twice, but three times! Not that I’m a piggy (you read that right, Miss Miller) but since the food is good, why not. Today was the final day for him in Penang so we went to Foong Wei Restaurant again, and had some wonderful fish steamboat (somewhat akin to fondue for my Western readers) All in all, good stuff (and I was stuffed!)

Bon voyage, Kenny. See you the next time, and I’m buying.

L to R: My brother Kenny, my mom, Sarah, and Gaik Hoon.

My mom fumbled a bit with my Canon, but she managed to take the shot.

And here’s our fish steamboat, with oodles of noodles and fish. Yummy!

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So this morning I was seated in front of my computer as usual, doing stuff like checking my emails, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I’m Mr. Predictable. It has become second nature for me to check my blogs on a daily basis as well, looking at my stats, comments if any, and so on. And hmmm, it’s been some time since I explored some new Wordpress themes, so away I go. Ah, here’s one that looks interesting—I preview it but the preview doesn’t show (I should have smelled something fishy). But since the theme looks quite enticing I decide to let Wordpress download and install it into my blog. Then I activate it, and Boom! my blog’s disappeared! In its place was this ominous and cryptic error message:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘)’, expecting ‘(‘ in /home/username/public_html/blog/wp-content/themes/producer/functions.php on line 9

That could have been written in Klingon or Romulan, I couldn’t care less. But my blog just vanished and the page was all white—just like my face. I tried refreshing the page—no luck. I tried logging in to access my admin panel—no luck, just that same damn message appearing, as if to spite me for activating the theme. It was like an enemy torpedo had blown up my blog ship.

Fortunately, I calmed down soon enough. Took some deep breaths, walked around, pondered…out of desperation I check the Wordpress support forums. I look for functions.php (what the heck is this?) but there are hundreds and hundreds of threads. Better to post a new thread myself, and so I did. I started to get anxious again and paced around—can you imagine the distress arising within me? My patience was rewarded soon enough (around 15 minutes) when a Clayton James from New York replied and gave me the simple solution which I’m going to share here (thanks again, Clayton!)

So what do you do when a newly installed theme thrashes your Wordpress blog? Here’s the answer:

• Use an FTP program and navigate to your Wordpress theme directory. Locate the rogue theme folder and delete it. Don’t even think about it, just blow it to kingdom come!
• Open your browser, go to your blog site and refresh it. The default Wordpress theme should show up again. Choose another installed theme if you want to. That’s all there is to it.

I learn something new everyday!

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New Year’s Day saw me planted in front of my computer as usual—it’s a public holiday anyway, but I was also feeling a little nervous and excited at the same time. Why? Because about two months earlier I received a surprise email from Miss Lilian Quek (MVP Lead from Microsoft Singapore) informing me that I had been nominated for Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional (aka MVP) award. Shortly thereafter, I was informed by Lilian that based upon my contributions to the BigBlueBall forums, she had decided to push for my MVP nomination for Windows Live Messenger. My nomination would now be evaluated by Microsoft in Redmond, Washington and the results would be out on January 1, 2010.

I didn’t expect the email to come so soon—after all due to different time zones it was still New Year’s Eve in the States. But there it was, in my Hotmail inbox. The subject header gave away the good news: “Congratulations 2010 Microsoft MVP!” I was totally ecstatic (I almost fell out of my chair) I’ve been helping BBB members with Windows Live Messenger (if you’ve been living under a shell, WLM is one of the most popular Instant Messaging clients available today and it’s free of course) ever since I joined BigBlueBall way back in 2006. I’d like to thank Jeff Hester (the boss of BBB) for taking me on as a staff member and believing in me. See, kindness is like a butterfly, it may not return to you instantly, but after a while it will. I still participate in BBB, always lurking and looking out for anyone who needs help in the WLM department; of course my good friend and fellow MVP Doris mans the helm too (and she’s been such a great help) We assist because we love helping people with their WLM problems and queries. Besides, the staff are great, and there’s much more than just IM there, go ahead and check the site out. Registering is free!

So what exactly is an MVP? Glad you asked. According to the MVP website, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals are…

…individuals who are recognized by peers as well as by Microsoft for past credible participation, highest quality answers and a demonstrated willingness to share their Microsoft technical expertise with others while providing guidance and assistance in peer-to-peer technical communities worldwide.

While these individuals represent a wide variety of backgrounds and professions, MVPs share the basic characteristics of possessing very strong technical skills in one or more Microsoft products or technology areas. Microsoft MVPs also possess the willingness to share that knowledge with others.

Selected contributors earn their MVP status by being nominated by their peers in the community, Microsoft Support Professionals, or Microsoft Product Group members who have seen consistent, professional and accurate technical answers or guidance in response to customer questions.

Here’s my profile on the MVP website. It’s nice to be acknowledged by the great M like this. Now I can add one more bunch of letters to the end of my name, LOL. Thanks, Microsoft!

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