Paper Boats In Class

I had fun in class today, as the students and I discussed a festival. I had only 40 minutes, but the lesson was rather fulfilling.

My 14-year-old kids and I looked into the Thai festival of Loy Krathong, where the highlight of the event is to float palm-sized rafts on waterways. The tiny rafts carry away misfortunes, and bring one's wishes to the Goddess of Water.

Traditionally, the tiny rafts are made of banana tree trunk, but nowadays, bread is often use as it is more environmentally friendly.

After the discussion, I got the students to write their wishes in a piece of A4 coloured paper. "Blue, teacher!" a boy piped. "Give me yellow!" another boy said. Most of the girls wanted pink. Lol. I love an excited class.

Writing his wishes earnestly ...

We then folded the paper into paper boats.

Showing the students how to fold a paper boat ...

The boys were all on task ....

Working together to complete the task ...

Ta-da!! Everyone's wish boats ...

It's too bad that they couldn't float their boats as there's no waterways at school. I couldn't possibly ask them to clog the drain. Lol. Hence, they decided that they wanted to decorate their classroom with those paper boats.

Anyway, I love it when everyone is engaged in class. It makes teaching seem worthwhile. Because the kids are researching into a Thai festival, their next project is to cook Thai food. I certainly look forward to that!

Darn Broadband

My broadband speed sucks, so I'm not actually in the mood to blog now. My average speed is only 35 Kbps. That's appalling! It's not even 10% of the maximum achievable data connection speed of 384 Kbps. And it's not just today that it's happened. It's been like this forever. In a month, there are only a few days that I can watch videos on YouTube smoothly. Other times, it lags and there are plenty of things I can't do.

Since I get less than 10% of the speed I'm promised, I should be paying only 10% or less of the subscription fee. That means, instead of RM68.00 per month, I should only pay less than RM6.80. Lol. If you could calculate it like that.

It certainly hits a sore point, when I see the particular service provider aggressively marketing its broadband, especially when I strolled along the malls during the weekend. Bintang Plaza Megamall. E-mart. Imperial Mall. They're selling everywhere! It's all right except that they should guarantee reasonable speed consistently.

Urgh. The more I write, the angrier I get. It's darn frustrating, and I have to seriously think about switching providers.

Blogging From My iPhone

It's kinda fun to be able to blog while walking about ... ;p

Dinner @ Airy Cafe

It was already 8.30 p.m., and we went to Airy Cafe at Boulevard Commercial Centre for dinner. That night, I got to try the Longevity Noodles with Cangkuk Manis.

Well, it was not bad, actually. The noodles were quite nice and 香 , but the cangkuk manis was a bit dry and hard.

The second item I got to try was the Sizzling Hot Plate Noodles.

It was quite nice, with lots of vegetables, button mushrooms, black fungus, pork slices, an egg and thick gravy.

Well, it was my first time at Airy Cafe, and I found the food to be quite yum. Best of all, the cafe is air-conditioned, so one could have hawker food in cool comfort. I will definitely go back there for my meals ;).

iPhone 4

When it launched in Malaysia, I was in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. I watched on my hotel room TV, the long queue of people lining up to be the very first iPhone 4 owners in Malaysia. Well, I thought. I was in no hurry to get it. After all, I had been waiting for a year since iPhone 3GS was out of stock when I wanted to get one last November.

On the following week, the urge to own a smartphone got the better of me, and I drove to Jalan Perry near the Post Office here in Miri, where I thought Digi Centre was. To my horror, it was not there anymore and I had no idea where in Miri it had moved to.

That night, I searched the Digi website and found out that Digi Centre had relocated to Centrepoint, near Standard Chartered. Lol. Since when had they moved? And so I headed there the next day.

The lady who served me was quite amiable. She informed me kindly that the phone was out of stock, and that they were waiting for another shipping, and I could have my iPhone when stocks arrived. She was not sure, however, when they would arrive, but she said they would probably get them later in the week. I decided to make a booking, and she took down my name and contact number.

The weekend came and went and I did not have my phone yet. So I dropped by Digi Centre again on Monday, just to make another round of enquiry. It paid to have former students working there, and they told me that the stocks had arrived that morning itself, and the Centre would be selling the phones on the following day, that is Tuesday. But since I had made a booking, I could get the phone there and then! Yayy!!

There was no hassle at all. I filled in a couple of forms to change my mobile plan and paid for the phone, and that was it! I was ready to go high tech ;p!

It's been 2 days now, and well, I must say that iPhone is fun. There are plenty that people can do with it. I've downloaded some apps to play around with, and the great thing is that I'm learning lots of new things every day. Today, for example, I learned how to create custom ringtones via iTunes. It's fun!

There are lots more to learn and tinker with on the iPhone, and I just can't wait to explore them all! For now, ciao!

Power Party

I was invited by my friends to attend the Shell Centenary Gala at Kelab Rekreasi Petroliam @ Lutong on Saturday night, with the theme "100 Years of Powering Progress Together". It was a grand event held at the outdoors. There were canopies being set up though, and decorated in Shell's trademark yellow and red.

The large field was illuminated with huge lanterns bearing the Shell logo. I found it to be quite quirky.


The night was hot and humid, and we sat al fresco. We had a good view of the stage too, so we could enjoy the big names lined up for the live performances. As soon as we sat down, food and drinks were served. There were bottles of mineral water with its distinctive labels. Then there were free flow of can drinks and iced cold beer.

The food was not that great but it's totally understandable, because they needed to cater to so many tables. The live performances were great, all of which I enjoyed lots. But of course, I must say that I enjoyed the fireworks the most.

As I sat watching under the dark sky, it seemed like it was drizzling colourful sparkles. How magical!!


Anyway, Happy 100th, Shell!

Sarawak Laksa @ Yakin Food Court

Occasionally, I have my breakfast at Yakin Food Court. A perennial problem for me is that I never know what to eat here. ;) True, there are many stalls, but none of them like quite stand out.

This morning, I strolled past each stall, trying to decide what to eat, when I caught a whiff of that distinct aroma of laksa. Dare I try the laksa here? Would I be disappointed? Well, I decided to go for it.

I marched to the stall and ordered a Laksa Special.

Sarawak Laksa Special

Hmn. I do not know whether my standards for a good bowl of laksa has dropped, or that the laksa here is in fact, alright. Lol.

Anyway, the gravy was sufficiently lemak, and they had all the ingredients right - prawn, shredded omelette, chicken strips and blanched bean sprouts . It even came with home made fish balls. That's an extra!

Squeeze lots of lime into it, and it was downright edible. The regular Laksa is RM4.50 while Laksa Special is RM6.00.