I'm baaaaaaaack!! :-D

I know some of you thought I had fallen off the face of the earth (well, that is what SOME of my friends said to me, after not finding any new postings on either my blog or facebook :-p ). My apologies for the long silence, but I am now BACK!! YES!!

As to what has been happening... well, suffice to say (or it would be an EXTRA long blog) that pretty much everything mentioned in my last blog posting actually did happen - the arrival of B&C, the trip to SG (yes, sorted out pretty much all of Ken's matters in SG), the trip to Redang (yes, scattered SOME of Ken's ashes - was heartbreaking to let him go again, but in the end it felt "right" that he should be there as he so loved immersing himself in the waters of the marine park!), and attended friends wedding. What did NOT happen was the arrival of Grace & Shanti, as Grace had an extremely bad asthma attack that morning (courtesy of the HAZE in Singapore) and could not travel. What EXTRA happened was that I organised a city tour before B&C's trip ended. It was a great outing - one of my friends was the tour guide (he has been doing this for the last 10 years, ever since he left the air force), he came in this lovely big vehicle, which was just for the 3 of us, and took us to Batu Caves, then to a small batik factory with gorgeous fabrics, then to Putrajaya, then back to KL to see the National Monument, and drive around the Lake Gardens, etc. It was the first time I had seen most of these places too :-D. I would definitely recommend him to anyone else interested in doing personalised tours. He will not take more than 6 people at a time..... which I must say is a lot better than going in a big crowd!

B&C left on 31st Mar, and I can just hear you all thinking.. well, why didn't you get online after they left??? Well, my internet connection went down on Tuesday 30th Mar!! NO thanks to Tenaga Nasional (Electricity Board) who came and did a 'planned' shutdown in our tower block, for some maintenance purposes, and when the power came back on, the internet did not! Then, of course, Streamyx (the ISP) drove me nuts, as I called them every single day from 30th March to yesterday (5th April), and it was only yesterday afternoon that I got my connection back.... sigh....

In the interim, on Saturday I went to Maxis, to see if I could get a mobile broadband device, and they had no stock of the modem!!! AAAAAAAAARGH!! Subsequently Efy offered to lend me one - so I met him and Sianny at Maxis on Sunday at 11am, so I could get the broadband SIM card, and then get their modem from them. Went home, tried it out a couple of hours later - and it was NOT working!! Double AAAAAAAAARGH! Called Maxis technical support and after a lot of to-and-fro palaver, the tech guy asks me to try the SIM card in my phone and, guess what, the SIM was not working.. GROAN, GROAN, GRUMBLE, GROUSE. So, yesterday I went BACK to Maxis to get them to change the SIM card. They were very sceptical about my claim that the card did not work, so they tested it out, and lo-and-behold, it connected - so they pointed at the screen to show the connection and (WONDERFUL) the connection DROPPED .... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Phew... OK.. so they believed me, and changed the SIM card and by then they had their new stock of modems in as well, so I got one of those too (so can return Efy's modem to him). So, there we are - I now have Streamyx working again AND I have the Maxis broadband for when I am not at home (or for when Streamyx refuses to work again!).

Oh, did I forget to mention that my sister came with me on Sunday and we squeezed in 1 hour of handbag shopping before meeting E&S? I have been hunting high and low for decent handbags, which do not cost the earth, which are good for travelling with. You know the kind, big enough to carry wallet, passport, Kindle, iPod, spectacles, pen, sudoku book, etc, without actually being a suitcase :-p... Oh, and firm enough to STAND on its own when put down, instead of just collapsing on itself! Am happy to say that my search (which started 2 years ago really) came to an end this Sunday. Cause for celebration in itself!

So, what's next? Well, I have to head back to SG again this week - have to settle car loan, renew car insurance, renew car road tax. Will drive down on Thursday, get back the following Wednesday. Settling of car loan and insurance to be done on Friday. Settling of road tax to be done on Saturday or Monday. On Tuesday I am 'house-sitting' for Tony and Peng while their aircons get replaced :-). On Sunday, Tharani, Indu and Anita have organised a get-together of ex-ICUS people at Samy's Curry House, off Holland Road, as they all knew Ken and liked him immensely and have all been wanting to meet up with me just to give their personal condolences and (I think) to check up on me that I am surviving his loss! And it is a lot easier to meet everyone at one shot, than to try and find time in their busy lives on my short trips to SG!

Heading back to KL on Wednesday, as Thursday is my sister's birthday and I am treating her to a spa pedicure for her birthday. 90 minutes of sheer bliss :-).

I have been a busy bee, and that seems like it is going to continue until I get back from this SG trip. After that I have two months with absolutely nothing planned. And I think that is going to be hard to handle because it is when I am NOT busy that I have too much time to miss Ken, but we see how it goes.

Till next time....