2013 Q3 Year School Holiday with Kids in Cameron Highlands

Normally, Q3 school holiday is a week but this year is longer due to conjunction of Hari Raya was on a week prior. Hence, the kids enjoyed two weeks school holiday with the replacement classes planned later this year. It's also the best moment for the parents to spend time with their kids. For this round, I have chosen Cameron Highlands. Our trip was scheduled on Mon - Tue 12-13 Aug and taken leave to avoid the Raya / Holiday traffic. We were using the Simpang Pulai Route as per advised by many that this is a better route compare to the old road which is curve and narrow. I started our journey at 9-10am and arriving in Simpang Pulai around 11:30am. We spent an hour uphill, cut through the Hills, and valley before arriving at the Brinchang. The road was busy at the Brinchang pasar pagi and malam. We enjoyed the scenery throughout the journey and also the fresh air. We checked in to Smoke House at per planned - 2pm and settle down for 30 minutes before heading to for lunch at a Cha Siew shop. The food was cold and price was terrible RM102 for 5 ppl. Perhaps, the duck dumpstick cost me RM22 alone. After lunch, we head tea farm and had our tea break at their station. Few photos were taken and then to the Lavender Park which I believe was newly opened with entry fee. Jasmine, Baby and Brandon had their good time with the strawberry self pick and also bought another box RM10 from the shop. After Lavender, we went to a bee farm (small size) and purchase few bottle of honeys. As the sky is drawing dark, we stopped by at the pasar malam. Jasmine and Victor went to purchased some vege. Then we head to the Tanah Rata for steamboat dinner. The served meal is acceptable with good price. We arrived back to hotel at 9pm and spent another hour on family time / checking mail etc before to bed. the next morning, I was always the first to woke up and then Victor followed suite. Both of us had to wait for the next door (2 rooms - Room 4 & 5) and I was in shock when I saw baby face was full of mosquito bites. Then I noticed that there were few big mosquito still hanging around in the room. I slapped on them and my hands were full of blood. I was not happy with the hotel facilities with the kind of high price that I am paying. Each room cost me RM350 x 2. Whilst Jasmine is putting up her make up, I brought the kids to the other farm at the way to Tapah. It was a much better tea farm and better view. We took a walk and it was slippery till I fall off and injured on right hand. the mud was on our hand and also shirt. We head back to hotel and meet up with Jasmine. Get ourselves ready for the check out. After the checkout, we arrived at the pasar pagi for another round of vege shopping. One of the thing that you shouldn't never miss is their vege, flower and corn. After the last round of shopping, we heading back to KL using the same route - simpany pulai. Upon crossing thru Brinchang, Jasmine noticed that her diamond ring was not on her finger. We were panicking and realised that she was still wearing on the photo taken during the 1st day tea farm visit. Without hesitation, we u turn back to pasar pagi and I drop off to search for the ring. Sadly, I unable to find the ring and then we go back to the hotel and search in the room. Still unable to find. As we had gave up and I also decided to use the Tapah road as we were running late. The road was curve and Z for an hour before we arrived at Tapah. From Tapah, we head to Sg Buloh for our dinner. We found the ring when Yati was house keeping our luggage Although it was an eventful journey - lost ring, fall off, con on expensive food, one room becomes two etc. But it's still a good short break with the family.

Good outing with My kids and their primary school mates

I had been promising my eldest son Victor to bring him and his friends to the laser tag battle since middle of this year after the examnination but due to busy schedule and others, I didn't fulfil the promise not till yesterday. Even that, the laser tag booking was done through the groupon.my and it reminded me that I need to fulfil the promise although it's a little bit late. However, the kids were excited when I informed them that I had booked 8 tickets (30 minutes each with 10 minutes per game) and the venue is e@curve.

In total, there were 6 of us - Victor, Brandon and their school mates - Kelvin, Chen Hao, Kim Yip and I. All of them stayed at our home a night before Sat (8th Dec) excep Kevin only joined in at 5pm on the day itself. The whole family departed from home at 5:30 and arrived at the War Zone counter around 6:20pm. We were asked to wait for 10-15 minutes as there was another game going on. We sat in a room and watching the CCTV displayed on the battle happening inside. After much anxiety, we were called to go into the departure room and armed with the laser gun and jackets (heavy ~2-3 KG). An Malay instrutor was given us the instruction of how to using the gun and also when to press the shot hurdle and when you are shot by others, the color turn white, and 5 seconds you will be normalised. etc. The 1st game was fight against another group of Malay friends. We are Green and our opponent is Blue. We walked inside the war room (literally dark) with laser lighting and also many blades which allows you to hide behind and avoid visibility by others. We were asked to be on standby and game will start when the music play. Since, it was our first game and without much experience, we were beaten badly by our opponent although few of them are much younger than our group. We were by far in term of scoring behind them. but it was a good game. After 1st game, we want to continue with 2nd game but were told that our opponent needs to rest hence, the instructor told us that we will go with solo game fighting among ourselves. When the music started again, I was like the little chick running around without hen and shooting at each others. I scored badly among the kids when the result displayed on the LCD screen outside the glass entrance. Kevin emerged be the winner with the higher points. I prefered to war game with opponent rather than solo and we decided to take a rest as well since some of us require a break and twisty since runnin around non stop for 20 minutes. The break had given me some breathing space and allowed to re-strategise the game. I was frustrated especially in the 1st game where I was always shot by others without given a chance to re-venge. The 1st rule of thumb is that I must find a secure space to hide myself from others and at the same time, enables me to shot at others with greater impact. We went for a drink at the same floor and opted for the bubble tea kiosk. after the drink, we went back to the waiting room and wait for 10 minutes. When come to our turn, we were against the same opponent. But this time, I run toward the far corner when stepping inside the war room. I received resistent from the opponent as they also want to take the same corner. But with much resistent as I standstill as same positive and unwilling to move else where. Few of them came over and attacking me but I took my own sweet time to return armour at them and they run out of patience and give way to me and move to other places. By hiding at the corner, I had much of efficiency on shooting the opponent as they tend to forget that I was staying at far corner and not hiding away my attack on them. There were few occasions where I managed to shot few opponents at the same times. they were frustrated and revenge on me but I used the same mind game to avoid them taken our the uppper hand corner - territory. The end result turned out to be fruitful and although we still the loser but our score was much closer to the opponent especially the last game (4th) where we were just 2000 points behind. We enjoyed the game and gave ourselves and opponent a round of applause. Well done and kudo to all the kids. I can see the kids are sweating and the game was not only entertaining but also burning calories. All hard work was wasted when we go for the McD after the game with two order large big MAC and fatty foods. Not to rest our laurel, we proceed to Mine convention centre for big bad wolf book fair. we reached home after book fair at around 1am and the kids stayed up till 4am. I hope that victor and his closed friends still keep in touch as they are moving on to different secondary schools next year. It was a moment for appreciate and value their friendship for the past few years. I sincerely wise all of them success in future.

Registered enterprise by myself - only RM70

Few years ago, I assigned an agent to register the JAsDecor for me and I remembered that price is expensive between RM300-400. I collected info from the lowyat forum and understand that I can register by myself in "The Mall". This morning, I decided to do it myself and arrived in the Mall shopping center around 9am. The main escalator to the shopping hall was still closed but there is a side lift. I checked on the directory and noticed that SSM is at 16th floor. I took the lift and come out from 16th Floor. Surprisingly, there was no crowd and I can go straight to the collect the queue no. the guard was telling us to photostat the IC, so I went down to 4th flr, paid 40 sen for the photocopy of IC and went up to 16th Floor again.

My no is 2009 and wait for 10 minutes, my no was called. I filled in all the necessary data into the application form and paid only RM70 for the processing fee. My first choice for the company name was TuitionAds but it's not valid since it carried the word "Tuition". the officer told me that she chosen the 2nd option - Vision Cloud
I wanted to revise the name but it seems like she was not very friendly and didn't give me a chance to make any last minute change. Upon signed off, I was asked to wait for 30-60 minutes to collect the company cert at another counter.

Finally, within one hour I managed to get the company registered and I went to 4th Floor to print name card which cost me RM25 only for one box. Overall, it was a good experience and save me a lot by doing it myself. I spent less than RM100 for registration and card printing. Now, I am the proud owner of this start up company and full of ambitious to expand and make it a success !!

Step to check Apache port 80 status

Please find the following command to check on the 80 status in Windows 7
netstat -o -n -a | findstr 0.0:80
You should able to see the port 80 being listened by the Apache server.

upon installed the PHP, there are two things that need to be inserted into the httpd.conf


LoadModule php5_module "c:/php/php5apache2_2.dll" under the module section

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php5 under the section

Insert the "index.php" into the DirectoryIndex section.

One of the busiest day in my life

yesterday was one of the busiest day in my life. The moment I walked in the office, there are tons of to do list printed on my mind. walking around and getting the status update, discuss and move on. a lot of emails for me to follow up. I pushed myself to cope with the high amount of works and juggle around it.

Some Tips on the Apache server setup, it shown as "Forbidden - permisson denied" upon changing the Root Directory from c:\apache\htdocs to c:\apache. Upon browsing the internet and found out that this can be due to that the setup in the httpd.conf for the DirectoryIndex set to index.php since the PHP/wordpress is using this index file.

you also need to change this part to c:\apache as below

#
# Note that from this point forward you must specifically allow
# particular features to be enabled - so if something's not working as
# you might expect, make sure that you have specifically enabled it
# below.
#

#
# This should be changed to whatever you set DocumentRoot to.
#


Restart Apache using administrator user id and now, when you type http://localhost
you will see the text of the index.php instead of the page
Next step, is to configure the PHP to be workable with apache.

Re-install Apache and re-configure it to use the existing wordpress

I had uninstalled the previous Apache when playing with the BigBlueButton on my PC. However, as I try to upgrade and enhance my wordpress, I noticed that I need a test web server for me to trial and error any new wordpress plugin. With this, I decided to re-install the Apache Server and notice that there is another a newer version for Windows 7. I tried several attempt due to that the 80 was used by another Apache Server by default. Login to Administrator with you need its permission to stop the 80 service and restart the Apache server. I also chosen the custom install of the apache so that I can change the default apache director to c:\apache. there is a command which allow you to identify which process is holding up the port but later I also found that I can also check this through the task manager.

Upon several attempts, I managed to install and configure the apache. It shown as "It works!" by http:/localhost. the next step is to make the apache server to start up the wordpress page.

Sport Fishing at Tow Foo - Kundang

I was following my dad and elders brother to fishing when I was young. Last time, we used to visit my dad's farm (with 4 lakes) almost every weekend. I enjoyed the childhood and the good time of fishing still mesmerizing in my memory.

I felt like that my sons lacking of natural exploration hence I have decided to bring them for fishing. I know that to maintain their interest in fishing, I will need to search for a place where they can easily catch the fish, doesn't matter it's a small talapia. I found the above fishing pond from google search.

Three of us - Victor, Brandon and I were wake up earlier ~7:20pm and as usual, we spent 30 minutes getting ourselves ready and had a quick breakfast. We started our journey 8:30am and drove along the Sg. Buloh towards to Rahmat Putra. Cut through the RP club and made a left turn toward the end of the RP T junction.

Drove for another 20 minutes, we saw the Kundang Blue Lake on our left and further up, we found the Kundang Golf club. It was our first trip hence it took us an hour to figure out the actual location for the pond.

Finally, we arrived and parked the car at the entrance. We jumped our from the car and tried to explore the environment and also the price. The pond was next to the golf course with fantastic atmosphere. Even though we have two fishing rods (one of them was bought yesterday at Kepong Tackle) but we were only asked to pay one person fee - RM18 for 12 hours.

We hooked the earth worm and released the lines but not a single bite for the first hour. Both Victor and Brandon were get themselves used to the place and they were enjoying them in the nature even chasing after the chicken. Upon advise from the fishing kaki next to us. We changed our bait to small prawn and the fishes started to response to our rods.

We changed our depot to closer to the water motor and Brandon caught a Patin with a reasonable size - 1KG as shown in the photo. All of us were busy since then as we had gotten quite number of fishes. Most of them are small with the size of the less than 6 inches but we were having fun.

We left the pond at 2:15pm and it took us 45 minutes to reach home. Due to the blistering Sun, all of us are obviously tank and tired but we enjoyed ourselves for such a wonderful experience.