Ham Radio

My in-laws are ham radio enthusiasts. Last Sunday they hosted a bar-be-cue for their local ham radio club at their home. Doug is also a ham radio operator but he is not as qualified as his father is. He hasn't had much time lately to really pursue this interest.


The ham radio club members who were at the bar-be-cue were mostly older folks. There were only a handful of younger members. One of the younger guys who came wasn't a ham radio operator but he helps them put their antennas up on their roof tops. And this same guy entertained the folks at the bar-be-cue with his guitar playing and singing. He is in fact one of a trio called Still Evolving who performs at a bar-be-cue place in town. So he does know how to sing!

How do you know that a person is a ham radio guy or gal? By the custom plates on their cars, of course!


This is my father-in-law's call sign. My mother-in-law has her own custom plate on her car too.




The above are just two cars that belonged to the members who were at the bar-be-cue.



A guy from the Red Cross came by at the bar-be-cue to show off the communications trailer that the Red Cross has. The trailer is equipped with communications equipment, so that was of interest to the ham radio folks at the bar-be-cue.

During an emergency, like a hurricane, or an earthquake where most conventional communications have been damaged, the ham radio operators have always filled in the gap. In many communities or neighborhoods there are restrictions as to what you can put up on your property, but communication towers or antennas for ham radio are exempted. On my in-laws roof there are several antennas. You can tell how serious they are about their hobby!

Body Jewelry

If you are into body piercing and would like to find a wide selection of gold nose rings or other high quality body piercing jewelry then you need to check out FashionTrends.com

At FashionTrends.com not only can you find the basic body jewelry like the captive bead rings, barbells on all shapes and sizes and gauges possible, but also other body jewelry like the belly button/navel rings, eyebrow jewelry, nose rings, barbells and tongue rings, as well as flexible body jewelry.

All the jewelry is beautiful and trendy, and made of titanium, surgical steel, hypoallergenic acrylic and even 14 KT white gold, and that means there is bound to be an item or two that meets your taste. If you are new to body piercing you can find useful information on their Frequently Asked Questions page.

FashionTrends.com offers free shipping on orders of over $25. Also there are weekly discounts and coupons offered where you can save further on your purchases if you sign up to be their Newsletter member. If you open an account with them, you get a 10% discount every time.

FahionTrends.com could very well be the only store you need for all your body piercing jewelry!

Questionable Art

Should we let artists follow their own instincts even though the subject of their art could be considered obscene or pornographic?

It is reported that Elton John's private collection has been "seized by police from a gallery on suspicion it may have breached child pornography laws". The collection was seized because there was an image of a naked young girl photographed sitting down with her legs wide apart.

I have a few photos of my kids naked but not in any poses that one might call provocative. They are mainly of them in the tub, covered in bath bubbles. If someone takes a picture of a young child naked and the image that it projects is intentionally provocative, then I would be leery of the intention and innocence of the art. I would object to that kind of art because I think that kind of art is exploitative.

A follow-up article on the subject by Richard Dorment suggests that it is not the job of art galleries to censor the work of artists. Instead they should put up signs warning visitors of what they are about to see.

I don't have a problem with that except when it concerns images of children in questionable poses. Child pornography is becoming mainstream, what with the unrestricted access to such pornography on the internet. I don't need art galleries to be promoting child pornography. I don't think images of children in sexually provocative poses will ever become "innocuous" to the next generation as Richard Dorment suggested in his article. As long as there are parents and people who object to adults exploiting children for sexual purposes, images of naked or semi-clothed children in suggestive poses will continue to be objectionable.

Target Shooting

The day started off all cloudy and with a slight drizzle. Fortunately by the time breakfast was over the rain had stopped. However, Doug had a lot of things to do before we finally were able to leave the house and make our way to Los Osos where the ranch property is located. We made a stop at Walmart to buy some ammo for my Beretta 85 .380 calibre semi-automatic. :-)

This is the view from the top of the ranch. That's Morro Rock in the distance. Morro Bay is a popular destination in the summer especially for folks who live the baking hot areas of Fresno. It's hard to get a hotel room there in the summer.

That's the neighbor's horse ranch property adjoining the family property.

The picture above and below is how the landscape looks like in the summer. It does look very dry, but in the winter where there is a lot more rain the whole place will look green.

Doug and I hope that maybe some day in the future we'll get to live here! :-) Keeping our fingers crossed!


We chose a gully to do our target shooting. It was a pretty windy day, but it was slightly better in the gully. Right over head are these high tension wires, crackling with electricity! And I do mean crackling! The first time Doug brought me up to the top of the property beneath the high tension wires, I had this fear of getting electrocuted! The source of the electricity is the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.

Doug and Duncan walking towards the bottom of the gully. Duncan had all kinds of weeds and stickers on his clothes! I didn' t wear any socks so I didn't have any stickers on my socks but some managed to get into my shoes.

I did the first rounds of shooting with my .380 calibre semi-automic Beretta 85. Doug had brought a piece of cardboard and drawn a bull's eye and stuck some sticky notes with Xs on the board.

Not bad for someone who hadn't fired a shot in many years! I manged to shoot one in the nine ring and 5 others were on the board. Two must have gone in the dirt. :-) The Beretta's recoil was stronger than I liked.

Doug had his turn with the Beretta.

Dwight is a friend of ours who lives on the property. He helps us look after the barn that Doug has there. Here is Doug firing Dwight's Iver Johnshon .32 calibre revolver. That revolver is about 75 years old. Dwight said, " I love the smell of gun powder!" Haha.

Here's Dwight showing me how to handle the .229 calibre Rossi pump-action rifle. Put your cheek agains the stock, lean your face towards the gun, and use your fingers like a tripod to help stabilize the gun.

I love firing this rifle! The act of pulling back the pump and pushing it forward to load the cartridge was the most fun part. Makes me want to say, "Go ahead, Punk. Make my day!" The Rossi was also a very accurate shoot.

Here's Dwight firing his 75 year old revolver. When we met him at the ranch, he already had his revolver in a holster on his hip. I asked him why he had his revolver with him. There's a guy living nearby who is quite the trouble maker, and Dwight doesn't want to be caught off guard.

Duncan felt left out and wanted so much to fire a gun. Of course I said, "No!" He cried and sulked and Doug let him pull the trigger of his .22 calibre Ruger Mark 12. Made the boy's day! Duncan also "pulled" the trigger to the Rossi rifle. I have a video of him doing it.

The last pistol I fired was Doug's Ruger Mark 12 .22 calibre sem-automatic. I did not fire Dwight's old revolver.

Dillon, Doug's 15-year-old nephew, came with us. He was the only left handed person in the group. I don't think he has ever fired a real gun before but he was the only one in the group to hit the bull's eye! Dwight was really good too and his shots were only around the nine ring. Besides shooting at the board, we shot into the hill side just to see the dust being stirred up by our shots! Heheh. Ammo is cheap!

Now I'm thinking I should join an indoor shooting range and learn to fire more accurately with my pistols. Ahemm! :-)

Gone Shooting

“A Canadian is sort of like an American, but without the gun”

This weekend we are going to visit my in-laws. They live in the beautiful San Luis Obispo area in the central coast. It is about a 6 hour drive there and I don't think we have been to visit them at all this year. They have been to visit us though at least twice this year. My father in-law had hip replacement surgery about 2 months ago. He still can't drive very far, err, but I think they did drive to Las Vegas last weekend! :-)

That's my sexy hand posing with a Beretta. :-)

Anyway, while there, Doug hopes to take me shooting at his parents' ranch. The ranch is somewhere in the hills and there are places there where we can shoot our guns. It has been years since I fired a gun. Doug and I talked about going to a shooting range here in Sacramento but with young kids and having to arrange for a baby sitter every time we want to go any where by ourselves is such a hassle. The other problem has been time. Doug has been really tied up with home improvement projects since the beginning of the year.

I was talking with my elderly neighbor three days ago and asked him if he was going to the Neighborhood Watch meeting at the police station that night. He said, "No." There have been a rash of burglaries and suspicious activity in our neighborhood the last several months. I often leave my windows open when I go to the store or drop the kids off at school. Now I am afraid to do it in case some burglars try to break into my house. My elderly neighbor said he leaves his windows open all day long and said if a burglar comes into his house, he doesn't know how the burglar is going leave the house. I understood what he meant and suggested, "In a stretcher?"

Doug shooting his Firestar .45 automatic when he went target shooting with friends last year.

That is why I need to be handy with my gun. Sounds extreme, doesn't it, but better to be safe than sorry. I have young kids in the house and having a loaded gun around is also not safe. Doug is teaching the kids about gun safety and telling them the difference between a toy gun and a real one. He's teaching them not to point a gun, even a toy one, at anyone even in jest. But it's hard to get Duncan to understand that because he loves to play with his toy "boom boom" and trying to shoot at things. He got all excited when his dad shot his BB gun at a dog that strayed into our back yard. He didn't hurt the dog, just wanted to scare it away from the back yard.

Hopefully the weather stays dry this weekend during our trip. Some rain is in the forecast. I won't be firing any guns if it is wet and muddy at the ranch! :-)

Soccer better than jogging

Those of you who jog to keep fit, maybe you should switch to soccer for a better workout and better muscle mass! I don't do either, so I won't be changing any exercise habit, or lack thereof! Ahhh, Tai Chi, now that is a different story!

Very soon I will have to start driving my kids to soccer practice! I can see Duncan playing soccer but Denice? I don't think she is the kind who likes rough and tumble sports. But dancing, now she'll love that! She is forever imitating Angelina Ballerina's (cartoon character) moves and telling everyone she is a ballerina.

Here's the story that says soccer is better than jogging when it comes to exercise.

Each period of exercise lasted about one hour and took place three times a week. After 12 weeks, researchers found that the body fat percentage in the soccer players dropped by 3.7 percent, compared to about 2 percent for the joggers.

The soccer players also increased their muscle mass by almost 4.5 pounds, whereas the joggers didn't have any significant change. Those who did no exercise registered little change in body fat and muscle mass.

"Even though the football (soccer) players were untrained, there were periods in the game that were so intense that their cardiovascular was maximally taxed, just like professional football (soccer) players," said Dr. Peter Krustrup, head of Copenhagen University's department of exercise and sport sciences, who led the study.

The soccer players and the joggers had the same average heart rate, but the soccer players got a better workout because of intense bursts of activity. Krustrup and his colleagues found there were periods during soccer matches when the players' hearts were pumping at 90 percent their full capacity. But the joggers' hearts were never pushed as hard.

Full story here.

Busy Day

This morning I went to the flea market where on Wednesdays it is produce day. I bought some exotic vegetables that we Asians love like daun ubi (tapioca leaves). I bought some last week, but felt like more! I also bought some bananas for banana fritters, kangkong, some ginger and some ground nuts. I felt like eating some kacang rebus.

When I left the house it was cool but usually it gets warmer later in the morning but this morning it was windy as well and so it remained cool. I didn't expect the cold so I wasn't wearing a sweater or a light jacket. I hurried with my shopping and drove home immediately.


When I got home I went online for a while and then I started with the banana fritters. Mmmm, lovely! Been a while since I made banana fritters!

Then I decided to set up the new computer that Doug bought me. I cleared some table space in my studio. I got everything working but when I tried installing the driver for my wireless adapter it refused to install. Arrrgggghhh! It was not compatible with Windows Vista!

And then it was a hurried lunch. After that, I went back online and updated two other blogs that I have. Once I was done with that, I called up my Malaysian friend in Florida, who's also married to an ang moh, and chatted with her for a while. I have been encouraging her to start blogging. She works two days a week and the rest of the week she stays at home and does nothing in particular. She is visually impaired so she doesn't drive herself any where.

Next, I started setting up the quilt that I promised a customer I'd finish in two weeks. Today is exactly two weeks since she dropped off her quilt and I'd only started with it! It's a hard quilt to work on because of all the appliqués on it. I had to think of how I was going to work around the appliqués. I prefer where all I need to do is quilt it edge to edge. Nothing to think about, just follow the pantograph pattern! I haven't progressed very far with the quilt. I did about a yard of it and decided I didn't like what I'd done, and so I started ripping off the stitches. And that is where it remains today.

Chicken cooked with daun ubi and coconut milk.

At four p.m., I started preparing the daun ubi for dinner. It was going to be chicken with daun ubi cooked with coconut milk. Quite a bit of work because I had to tutuk (grind it with mortar and pestle) the daun ubi. Fortunately Doug decided to leave the office early today and so I asked him to picked the kids up at preschool on his way home from work. The house was stinking up royally when they got home. I had fried some onions, garlic, ginger, lemon grass and some belacan for the chicken in daun ubi. And to add to the stinkiness, I fried a salted fish (ikan masin garupa). Yup, the house still stinks! Right now I've got a scented candle going. Hopefully some of the stink will dissipate. :-)

It's after dinner now. The kids are back in the house after playing outside in the cold. Now I am ready to put them in the tub and let them sit in there for a while.

Ciáo for now! :-)

P.S. U.Lee, so now you know why you beat me to it with the new entry! Heheh.

Cool Day

The readings in this picture is in Celcius. Not Fahrenheit!

I was at the Flea market today and it was cold and windy! Well, cold by California's standard, anyway It is almost fall and elsewhere in the US the weather is much cooler but here in California fall weather comes a bit late.

Usually what makes it cooler in the Sacramento valley is the ocean breeze. It was quite breezy and the wind was strong enough to blow some of the tents about at the flea market. I knew it was cool when I left the house but usually the weather warms up a little bit more once the sun comes up a bit higher. So I wasn't prepared for the cold and did not wear an outer clothing.

I had to rush the shopping a little bit because it was getting too cold for comfort. I got all the vegetables I wanted and rushed back to my car. Next time, I'll remember to leave a jacket in the car in case the weather is cooler than expected.

Tai Chi

I don't like to exercise but recently I discovered that Tai Chi can help lower high blood pressure in older adults. Older adults here mean folks over 50 years old. I am not in that age group yet but I might as well be one if you take into account my physical condition!

I decided to borrow a Tai Chi video specifically aimed for older adults. I don't know what makes me think that Tai Chi is easy! I got my video last Saturday and today I started learning the first basic steps of Tai Chi. My goodness, all that bending at the knees is hard on certain leg muscles!

I think I can follow this Tai Chi video for older adults. The movements have been adapted for older adults in mind and there are not that many to begin with. I think for me, this is a good start. Tai Chi with its deceptively slow movements does help in stretching all the muscles that need stretching which is a minimum kind of exercise for anyone who wants to stay fit. That is not the only benefit of Tai Chi. Practicing twenty minutes a day dissipates stress and reduces stress-related debilities, increases stamina, and strengthens the body and will.

I have already put another Tai Chi video to the queue of videos in my Netflix subscription. :-)

Phantom Ringing

Did you say you heard your cell phone ring? You did? But your phone does not show that you missed a call? But you swear that you heard it ring? You felt it vibrate too? Huh.

You must be suffering from "ringxiety"! Oh yes, there is such a disease now. I know U.Lee will never suffer from this disease because he doesn't own a cell phone. I know I won't either because usually my phone only rings once a day and that is from dear hubby! :-) I can count with one hand the number of times I have used text messaging. And that was when I first got the new phone and wanted to try if my text messaging feature was working all right.

A new study found that two thirds of the people surveyed, reported hearing their phone ring or feeling it vibrate when it had not actually rung.

The phenomenon has been termed "ringxiety."

The more frequently a person uses their phone, the more often they reported hearing a phantom ring, the study found.

These participants (67% of the people surveyed) had higher monthly charges, used more minutes, sent more text messages, and showed higher levels of impulsivity. They were also younger. (participants ranged in age from 18 to 86).

The study also shows that some people rely on their mobile phone to regulate moods and maintain social connectedness. Those people who prefer to use their phones for text messaging, rather than talking, evidence higher levels of loneliness, social anxiety, and problem phone use.

Source: Science Daily

Home Improvement

Home improvement is a subject near and dear to my heart. We've started working on the front and back patio, building fencing around it and have even built a pergola on the west side of the house where we hope to put a hot tub under it some day.

Another addition to the house that I'd really like is a conservatory. I have some orchids and other tropical plants in the house and I can just see myself relaxing in a conservatory with my tropical plants around me.

Building a conservatory is not as simple as building a fence or a pergola. I will need to look for a company who has had years of experience building one. Fortunately, there is such a company around. Anglian Home Improvements has been providing high quality home improvements to UK homeowners for over thirty six years.

Among the ranges of conservatories available are, among others, The Regency, The Edwardian, and The Elizabethan. The one that suits my idea of a conservatory would be The Garden Room Conservatory. I think for the finish I would choose the dual option of white and oak finish to the building so it'll complement the rest of my house.

What's great about Anglian Home Improvements is that they have a Conservatory Price Promise where they will match the lowest price out there if you can find some other place offering a lower price for a conservatory that matches all the features and benefits that they are offering. But you have to do in within 7 days after you have talked with them.

If you are thinking about building a conservatory or replacing your windows for a more energy saving kind, why not give Anglian Home Improvements a call at 0800 500 600 or check out their website at http://www.anglianhome.co.uk/ ?

Andrea Borcelli's Besame Mucho

Turn up the volume of your computer speakers and let's reminisce and sway your body to the music. This song is dedicated to U.Lee, story teller extraordinaire. I'm sure he can write a story or two relating to this song! :-)



Bésame Mucho

Bésame, bésame mucho
Como si fuera esta noche
La última vez
Bésame, bésame mucho
Que tengo miedo a perderte
Perderte después
Bésame, bésame mucho
Como si fuera esta noche
La última vez
Bésame, bésame mucho
Que tengo miedo a perderte
Perderte después
Quiero tenerte muy cerca
Mirarme en tus ojos
Verte junto a mi
Piensa que tal ves mañana
Yo ya estaré lejos
Muy lejos de ti
Bésame, bésame mucho
Como si fuera esta noche
La última vez
Bésame, bésame mucho
Que tengo miedo a perderte
Perderte después
Bésame, bésame mucho
Que tengo miedo a perderte
Perderte después
Que tengo miedo a perderte
Perderte después


English translation:

Kiss Me A Lot
Kiss me, kiss me a lot,
As if tonight was
the last time.
Kiss me, kiss me a lot,
Because I fear to lose you,
To lose you again.
Kiss me, kiss me a lot,
As if tonight was
the last time.
Kiss me, kiss me a lot,
Because I fear to lose you,
To lose you again.
I want to have you very close
To see myself in your eyes,
To see you next to me,
Think that perhaps tomorrow
I already will be far,
very far from you.
Kiss me, kiss me a lot,
As if tonight was
the last time.
Kiss me, kiss me a lot,
Because I fear to lose you,
To lose you again.
Kiss me, kiss me a lot,
Because I fear to lose you,
To lose you again.

I'm too cheap. I borrowed Andrea Bocelli's Under the Desert Sky (CD and DVD combo) album from the local library. I made an MP3 file of Bésame Mucho (cetak rompak) and if you like you can download it here. Right click and save link or target, depending on your browser.

Would you wear this hat?

Would you wear this hat? It looks like a wok turned upside down with frills on it! I will not even be caught dead wearing that hat! I think women who wear pretty hats look elegant but elegance is not a word I would use with that hat!

I learned to wear hats while living in Vietnam from 1996-1998. Everyone wears a hat or carries an umbrella while under the hot sun in Vietnam. Most people don't wear helmets while riding on their motorcycles but they do wear their hats. So if your hat is not secured properly you can be sure that it will fly in the wind while riding on a motorcycle! It never happened to me because I wore a helmet. :-)

If I have to be out for any length of time under the hot sun here in California I will wear my hat. Nothing fancy but enough to keep the hot sun from my head. In the winter, it is a necessity for me because I can't stand the cold on my head and ears.

I'd like to get a beret one of these days. Wished I had got some while I was living in Vietnam. They were cheap!

So what's your favorite hat style?

I'm a fan of PPP!

I have been doing paid posts with PayPerPost for slightly over a month now and about two weeks ago I started receiving payments for some of the posts that I had written. To date I have received $79 and will receive another $200.75 when the 30 days since I posted each one is up, provided of course none gets rejected! Is that great or what?

The money I have made so far has paid for two domain names that I registered earlier. I am thinking of using some of the money I have made as prizes for some blog contests that I am thinking of running on one of my newer blogs.

One of the benefits of becoming part of the PayPerPost community is that you can get to know fellow Posties , as they are called, who are very helpful people. For example, if I need some help in traffic generation to my blog or blogs that I am trying to get established, I can count on other Posties to help with the exchange of links or help review my blog or blogs. There are also different kinds of blogrolls going so as to help you with your blog exposure. Some Posties with PR5 or PR6 ranking are even offering free advertising on their blogs to help out Posties with new blogs. That is simply great!

Why not join me and be a Postie as well? :-)

Orchids

I have a few pots of indoor plants and none of them is the flowering kind except for my orchids and Christmas cactus. My African violets have not flowered for a long time. I have never had much success with African Violets but I keep buying them when I see them at the supermarket!

I received my first pot of orchid from a good friend. It was a Welcome Home gift after an extended stay in Malaysia in 2004. Since that time my orchid has never failed to bloom at least once a year. If I am lucky it'll bloom twice a year. The amazing thing which I never noticed from my mother's orchids back home in Malaysia is that the flowers can stay on the stalk for as long as three months! The orchid in this picture has been blooming for more than two months now. After the flowers have withered, I will have to transplant it to a bigger pot. It has outgrown its little pot, the one it came in with from the store. I think I need to give it more orchid food so that in future it'll have larger blooms.

In January I bought two pots of orchids for about $10 each at Big Lots. One died from over-watering. :-( Now I know not to let the pot sit in a dish with water in it!

My Malaysian friend who is living in Florida was surprised when she saw my orchids. She didn't know that they can grow indoors. (Her mother has some really beautiful orchids back home in Miri too.) Well, you do have to put them where they can get some light, so I put my orchids by my sliding door which gets some morning sun. I water them using a spray bottle, so the whole plant can get some moisture. Seems to work on them.

Having the orchids in the house reminds me so much of home. :-)

My Favorite Digital Camera

I bought my Fujifilm Finepix 6.3 mega pixels digital camera two Christmases ago. I bought this particular camera because I was swayed by an ad I saw about that camera on TV. The feature that most attracted me to it was the camera's ability to take good quality pictures under natural light without my having to spend a bomb on a fancier camera.

I take a lot of close-up pictures of the beaded jewelry that I have made and I do not want to use any flash light when I take them. I want the colors of my jewelry pieces to come out as naturally as possible in the picture and I am happy to say that my Fujifilm Finepix does a good job of doing that.

The other feature that is a plus on my little camera is the video function. With a 1 Gb memory card I can take about 14 minutes of video with my camera. The video function is useful because I can take short videos of my kids like on their birthdays or while they are at play outside. With additional memory cards, I can take more videos too.

When I am ready to get another compact digital camera, I'll find one where the video function is in the MP4 format. I can upload the videos to my iPod and also the video files are a lot smaller which make them a lot more convenient to upload to the internet for sharing with friends and family.

I'd love to own one of those fancier cameras like the Nikon D200 Digital SLR Camera. Won't it be wonderful to be able to take pictures with the quality of those taken by a professional photographer? I can just imagine how impressive looking my jewelry pictures will look! For now that fancy camera can only remain on my wish list. Who knows Santa Clause might even read my wish list this Christmas!

Would you drive this car?

Would you want to drive this car? It is the Toyota IQ and the world's smallest 4 seater car at 9ft 9 inches long - about three inches shorter than the original Mini.

I like small cars but this one looks awfully small and unsafe!! I can just imagine myself driving it on the highway next to an 18 wheeler. I will feel intimidated and imagine myself under the wheels of the truck! :-(

I think I'll pass on the small and green cars for now. I will stick to my minivan.

Today's Lunch

Stir fried daun ubi with anchovies

Beef masak hitam (last night's leftover) and daun ubi for my lunch today.

This morning I went to the Galt Market and found some young tapioca leaves (daun ubi). I must have not paid much attention to the vegetables sold at the market because before this I had never noticed daun ubi being sold there.

It was by chance that I saw the daun ubi because I started chatting up a guy who looked like he was Malay, and in his plastic bag were two bundles of daun ubi. He turned out to be Indonesian and he was buying stuff because tomorrow is the start of Ramadan. The vegetable vendor where the Indonesian fella bought his daun ubi had sold out all the daun ubi she had. But I found another vendor, with the help of this Indonesian fella, further down the aisle who had some.

As soon as I got home, I started preparing the daun ubi. I plucked the leaves, washed them and used my mortar and pestle to pound them. I stir fried the daun ubi with chopped garlic, thinly sliced ginger, sliced chilli, some ikan bilis and seasoned the whole thing with salt and pepper. Yummy! :-) I wished I had more than just a bundle because then I could have made chicken with daun ubi with santan - masak lemak. Maybe next week, eh.

Vacuum that car!

I have two preschoolers that I ferry to and from preschool every day. Can you imagine how filthy the interior of my car is? There are food crumbs all over their car seat and on the floor. There are candy and chocolate wrappers, papers filled with "artwork" that they brought home from school on the floor too, and worse of all stains from spilled juices.

Is the dirty state of the interior of my car all my kids fault? Of course not! It is as much the fault of their mother who considers cleaning the car, inside and out, not on the top of her priority list as it is the fault of her children!

However, if I had a car vacuum conveniently mounted on the wall in my car garage and within easy access to the car, I would be more likely to clean my car more often!

Banana Bread

I just had to give Chef Gertrude's banana bread recipe a try after seeing Rita's version of the recipe. I had some over-ripe bananas so there was no reason not to give the recipe a try!

The only problem with my attempt was that it was too moist. I knew when I put the bread mix into the baking pan that it could have done with just a little bit more flour. I used what was left of the flour that was in a bag, and it was just a tiny bit less than 1 1/2 cups. I had 2 other new bags of flour but just didn't want to bother with opening a new bag for just a tiny bit more. Arrggghhh.

Overall though, it wasn't all that bad. Denice didn't like it because she didn't like the walnuts in it. Duncan had a piece and he said, "Yummy". I liked it very much. Had some with my bitter melon tea as a midnight snack last night. :-)

Time Tracking Book

My husband works in Project Management and he knows how important it is to work with the right software in order to track the progress, manpower needed or manage the budget of the projects that he is involved in.

If you own a business, or are a manager and needs to improve project estimates, profitability and management of you business there is a time tracking book that you might find useful. This book recommends time tracking through the use of a Software-as-a-Service platform, for example with a project, which gives you real-time data for informed decision-making by allowing your team members to enter project time and expense information from anywhere on Earth.

The book also teaches you how to automate payroll and billing, comply with government regulations, and also touches on the many technological advances such as SOA, Telecom and the Internet, and Web2.0.

To get the book, follow the link to Amazon at timetrackingbook.com and save time and money on your next project.

Never Forget

Six years on, and the horror of that day has not diminished. I remember that day very well. When I woke up that Tuesday morning in 2001, I turned on the radio and there was a live coverage about the twin towers having been hit by two planes. I quickly turned on the TV and I was so shocked that all I could do was sit on my bed and watched the horror unfold on TV. The collapse of the two towers was all there on TV and I watched it live. It was unbelievable. It was a black day indeed.

I will never ever forget that day. I will never ever forget the enemy who perpetrated that horror.

Ne Obliviscaris!

Lost and Found

Yesterday this little dog showed up at our front patio. He was wearing a cone over his head and he smelled bad! Duncan even said, "Mommy, doggie very smelly." We did not know who he belonged to, so Doug put a temporary leash ( a piece of string) on him and tied him to a tree with a dog house next to him.

This morning Doug went to check on the dog and he was gone. The leash was there and it looked like somebody had removed the leash from him. We think that the dog belongs to our next door neighbour even though we had never seen the dog around before. I am happy that his owner found him because we were thinking of putting Dog Found posters all over the neighborhood.

Never Forget

Six years on, and the horror of that day has not diminished. I remember that day very well. When I woke up that Tuesday morning in 2001, I turned on the radio and there was a live coverage about the twin towers having been hit by two planes. I quickly turned on the TV and I was so shocked that all I could do was sit on my bed and watched the horror unfold on TV. The collapse of the two towers was all there on TV and I watched it live. It was unbelievable. It was a black day indeed.

I will never ever forget that day. I will never ever forget the enemy who perpetrated that horror.

Ne Obliviscaris!

Brocade bag with trim

I made this bag to match the dress that I was wearing to Monica and Oscar's wedding. A lady who was sitting at my table asked me where I found the bag to match my dress. I made it myself, I said, and so is the dress I am wearing! :-)

I made the bag the morning of the wedding, and I did not have the pink boa for the trim. I only added the pink boa later after I found it at the local Joann store. I think the boa trim makes the bag look classy. I will use more boa trims for future projects! In fact I have a piece of brown moleskin fabric that I'd like to make with brown boa trim, but I just can't seem to find brown boa. I think I'll go ahead and make the bag and add the trim later.

Paper Craft

I was at a paper craft session at the Galt Library last Saturday. I do some scrap booking but it is one of my neglected hobbies. Making cards is a bit like scrap booking because the materials you use in scrap booking are the same ones you use in card making.

Other than recycling old Christmas cards and pasting them onto new cards, I have never made any creative cards. The paper craft class at the library was free and I signed up for the class quite some time ago. The lady who taught was an English lady. Her husband was there to assist her. There were ten ladies and one guy in the class. It was a fun class and not at all complicated.

We made three cards and here are the cards I made.

Cell Phones Should Be Kept Away From Hospital Beds

My father was hospitalized for about a week in December last year. While in hospital he had his cell phone with him. The policy of the General Hospital in Miri was that no cell phone should be charged using any of the electrical outlets by the hospital beds. My father ignored the "no charging" advice! :-) His reason- How do you expect me to receive calls from my family or make calls to them if my phone's battery is dead?!

Anyway the good thing about his stay at that particular ward in the hospital was that none of the patients there was hooked up to any machines that might be affected by possible interferences emitted by the cell phones.

There are good reasons not to have cell phones by hospital beds.

Science Daily — Cell phones should come no closer than one meter to hospital beds and equipment, according Dutch research published in the online open access journal, Critical Care. Scientists demonstrated that incidents of electromagnetic interference (EMI) from second and third generation mobile phones occurred even at distance of three meters.

In this particular study, the research team examined the effects of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) signals on critical care equipment such as ventilators and pacemakers. Almost 50 EMI incidents were recorded; 75% were significant or hazardous. Hazardous incidents varied from a total switch off and restart of mechanical ventilator and complete stops without alarms in syringe pumps to incorrect pulsing by an external pacemaker.

The second generation (2.5G) GPRS signal caused the highest number of EMI incidents at over 60% whereas the third generation (3G) UMTS signal was responsible for just 13%. EMI incidents also occurred a greater distance with GPRS with a hazardous incident even at three meters.

While first generation mobile phones are used mainly for voice transmission, 2.5G and 3G phones enable internet access, sending and receiving data. They entered the market, however, with little proof regarding their safe use in the medical environment.

Dr Erik van Lieshout, lead researcher from the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, said; "Our work has real implications for present hospital restrictions of mobile phone use in patient areas."

"It is unlikely that mobile phone induced EMI in hospitals will be eradicated in the near future so the one meter rule currently in place should continue, as it is relatively safe," commented Dr van Lieshout.

Article: "Interference by new generations mobile phones on critical care medical equipment," Erik Jan van Lieshout, Sabine N van der Veer, Reinout Hensbroek, Johanna C Korevaar, Margreeth B Vroom and Marcus J Schultz, Critical Care (in press)

Paid!

I have been writing paid posts for PayPerPost for slightly over a month now and I have started receiving payments for the stuff I've written. Simply fabulous! :-) You get paid for posts that have been approved 30 days after you have submitted them.

I have not been fortunate enough to have snagged any opportunity that is worth at least $50 that I qualified for. :-( The best I have done so far was a $30 opportunity and that post have been approved. So now I am waiting for the the 30 days to be up before I receive payment for it.

I used to just take whatever opportunity was available but now I am more discriminating. I refuse to take a $5 opportunity where I am required to write 300 words. Nah, I'll pass. However if the requirement is for a minimum of 50 words or a 100 words I'll take it provided I can write about the subject matter.

I love making some money through blogging! :-) I haven't done all that well with my Google Ads though. I don't think I have made more than $20 since I started placing ads on my blogs. Hopefully as time goes by, it'll get better!

Are you making money from your blogging activity?

Argue With Everyone Political Forums

Thomas Jefferson is supposed to have said, "Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics." That is good advice but there are many of us who just can't help voicing our views, and in fact enjoy arguing with others, on whatever the political subject of the day is.

At ArgueWithEveryone.com Political Forums you can argue to your hearts content. The forums there are generally unmoderated and that means you do not have to fear that your views will be censored. You can bring up subjects like the stem cell research debate, or tell everyone why you love being a liberal, or give your views on Senator Schumer's comment about the incompetence of our soldiers in Iraq.

Go and register as a user at ArgueWithEveryone.com and participate in the forums, instead of ranting at the liberal or conservative talk radio hosts!

Sunflowers

This year we planted three sunflowers. I never realized how tall they can grow. No wonder I see a lot of sky in the background when I see sunflower pictures!

Ever since they bloomed, Duncan would say, "I see the sunflowers, Mommy," every morning as we get into the car to go to school.

It has been about a couple of weeks since they bloomed so now the flowers are drooping, and I think I should do something about trying to get the seeds out of them for replanting next year.

Rojak Sotong Kangkong

It is that time of the year where you can get kangkong (Ipomoea aquatica) at the Asian grocery stores and even at the produce market on Flea Market Day here in Galt.

Besides the usual belacan kangkong, I usually make rojak sotong kangkong with some fried tauhu thrown in. The rojak paste I used is Made in Penang, available at the Asian grocery store here in Sacramento. The squid is also available at the frozen section of the Asian supermarket.

When I am able to get all the ingredients for a certain dish here, I get to enjoy some of the foods I enjoy back home in Malaysia. :-)

Star Muscle - Celebrity Gossip

If you are one of those people who loves to follow Celebrity Gossip, then you will love Star Muscle. At StarMuscle.com you won't find the run-off-the-mill gossip on your favorite celebrities. You will get the news, the videos, the gossip, and the lies. Lies? Yep, lies, out and out lies! The site is 100% free and do check it out. The following Press Release gives you all the information you need to know about the new celebrity gossip site.


Press Release:

Welcome to Starmuscle.com, your backdoor into Dirty Hollywood. Star Muscle is a 100% Free site. I know every website says that’s its Free, then they lie to your face, well not me and not here. You are going to get the very best and worst: Star News, Star Gossip, Celebrity Speculations, Celebrity Death Pool, Star Misfortunes, Satire, Comedy, and Out and Out LIES! You are going to get a very unique spin on Hollywood news and even be able to read what your favorite celebrities are thinking, but TOO SCARED to say. If there is a wardrobe malfunction, Starmuscle will be there. If a nipple seems to pop out at just the wrong time…..you’ll see a closeup of it right here.

So why the name Starmuscle.com? Simple….all the good domain names have been taken and this crappy one was left over. I still have to come up with a catch phrase I guess, like “Flex your Star Muscle”; maybe “Show me the star muscle”; or even “Star Muscle - Paparazzi on Steroids”. The more I think about it, the more cheesy it gets. Let starmuscle.com mean anything you want, as long as it keeps you coming back.

I hope you enjoy this website and please don’t spam the comments with useless affiliate links or self-serving links to your websites. We want to keep this site SPAM-FREE and also advertisement FREE for at least one year. This website is rated PG-13 with crude humor, drug references, racial sarcasm, vulgarity, and mild nudity. Please tell all your friends and family that are over the age of 16 to Add it to your favorites and keep coming back.

My name is Zack and you will get a free one way ticket into my twisted brain. I’ll admit it’s scary, but it is a fun ride. I hope you will laugh, cry, and enjoy trashing these spoiled, overpaid, celebrities and help bring them back down to mother earth.

Beverly's Quilt

Beverly was one of my regular quilting clients. She used to come to my place to drop off some quilts with about three or four other ladies. She was the most spritely looking of them all and was the driver of the van that they drove in to get to my place.

Last Wednesday, I received a phone call from her son-in-law. Beverly passed away last Monday of pancreatic cancer. I was saddened to hear the news because just this past week, I'd been thinking about this group of ladies.

Beverly had a couple of quilts that she had completed before her passing and one of them was for a son who was living in Texas. The son-in-law wondered if I would be able to finish off the quilt quickly so that the son could bring it back with him to Texas after the funeral. Of course I said sure, and told him to bring the quilt as soon as possible. That same day one of the ladies who had been to my place with Beverly came by and dropped off the quilt.

I finished machine quilting the quilt yesterday and left a message with the lady who dropped it off. Later in the day I received a call from a gentleman - I didn't quite get the relationship this man had with Beverly - and he said he would come by to pick up the quilt tomorrow, Saturday. I told him the quilt still needed to be bound. Maybe one of Beverly's friends could do it?

But after the call, I began thinking that maybe there wouldn't be enough time for anyone to bind the quilt in time for the son's trip home to Texas. So this morning I went ahead and did the binding on the quilt. That's the very least I could do for Beverly. I won't be receiving any more quilts from her. :-(

Tagged

Here is the tag :- Ten Questions

These are the rules :-Five answers to each question and then tagged five others.

Instructions :- Remove the first Blog and add your own blog last.

A Great Pleasure; Wishing On A Falling Star; Bokjae; simply888here; cat cat; Puteri's Musings 3



Here it goes.....


Q1. What were you doing 10 Years ago?

1. I was working in Vietnam.
2. I visited places in Vietnam with a handsome young Frenchman.
3. I watched Princess Diana's funeral on TV at the Guest House at the Hanoi Agricultural University campus.
4. I went on a boat trip down the Perfume River in Hue, Vietnam.
5. I visited Ho Chi Minh City for the first time.

Q2. What were you doing 1 Year ago?

1. I was spending too much time in front of my computer.
2. I drove my kids to daycare at 9.00 a.m. from Mon-Fri.
3. I picked up my kids at 5.00 p.m. from daycare from Mon-Fri.
4. I spent too much money on items for my hobbies.
5. We celebrated Doug's 50th birthday at his parents' house.

Q3. What are 5 snacks you enjoy?

1. Potato Chips
2. Cashew nuts
3. Low Sodium Wheat Thins
4. Nestle 3 in 1 Cereal
5. Dried Fruit

Q4. What are 5 songs you know the lyrics to?

1. Eternal Flame
2. Silent Night
3. Away in a Manger
4. London Bridge is Falling Down
5. Ring Around the Roses

Q5. 5 things you would do if you are a Millionaire?

1. Pay off any loans.
2. Buy myself the latest model Mercedes Benz.
3. Stay at the fanciest hotels while visiting Europe.
4. Live in a bigger and fancier house with a landscaped English garden.
5. Buy my parents a new house.

Q6. 5 Bad habits?

1. I like to pick at my teeth in front of people after a meal. Gross!
2. I don't wipe my sink faucet dry.
3. I spend too much time in front of my pc.
4. I let my laundry pile up before I put them in the washer.
5. I let Doug's clothes pile up before I iron them.

Q7. 5 things you like to do?

1. Spend time in front of my computer.
2. Eat out.
3. Sleep in.
4. Shop for shoes.
5. Go for a pedicure.

Q8. 5 Favourite Toys?

1. My laptop
2. My digital camera
3. My iPod
4. My cell phone
5. My massage chair

Q9. 5 things you would never wear?

1. Thick make up
2. Thongs
3. See through underwear
4. Red lipstick
5. My bra to bed

Q10. 5 things you hate to do?

1. House work
2. Cook dinner
3. Go out on a really hot day
4. Wash my car
5. Exercise

I now tag:

Cokelatrawkz
Chantique79
Feli
Nightwing
Macyln

Bitter Melon Tea Part 2

I started drinking bitter melon tea because it is supposed to help lower your blood sugar level. I have been drinking it almost every day since I first bought it.

One wonderful effect I discovered from drinking the tea is that it helps me sleep! I suffer from insomnia and I find that each time after I've drunk a cup of the bitter melon tea, I would start yawning and my eyelids would feel heavy! This is wonderful! I don't know what else is in the tea bag besides bitter melon. Maybe there are lotus seeds in there because I smell something like lotus seeds in the tea.

Many years ago, a Vietnamese friend got me a bag of lotus seeds tea. It did help me sleep but it had a negative effect on my stomach. I had gastritis and it made my condition worse so I stopped taking it. Actually tea has that effect on me, that is why I drink my bitter melon tea after a meal or after I've taken a snack.

If you suffer from insomnia, try drinking bitter melon tea. The tea is not bitter at all despite the name! In fact is reminds me of "liang teh". Err, what exactly is "liang teh"? I love that tea too!

Too much TV may cause attention problems

I better cut down on the TV time my kids enjoy right now! I know it is bad, but the TV has been used to keep them occupied. :-( However, I am glad to notice that if either I or Doug is outside the kids love to be outside too ... riding their tricycles or driving around in their motorized vehicle and chasing the geese!

Watching television more than two hours a day early in life can lead to attention problems later in adolescence, according to a study released on Tuesday.

The roughly 40 percent increase in attention problems among heavy TV viewers was observed in both boys and girls, and was independent of whether a diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder was made prior to adolescence.

The link was established by a long-term study of the habits and behaviors of more than 1,000 children born in Dunedin, New Zealand, between April 1972 and March 1973.

The children aged 5 to 11 watched an average of 2.05 hours of weekday television. From age 13 to 15, time spent in front of the tube rose to an average of 3.1 hours a day.

"Those who watched more than two hours, and particularly those who watched more than three hours, of television per day during childhood had above-average symptoms of attention problems in adolescence," Carl Landhuis of the University of Otago in Dunedin wrote in his report, published in the journal Pediatrics.

Read the rest of this article here.

Some people have all the luck!

How come, ah, some people have all the luck? In my lifetime I can only remember winning one lucky draw ticket. I won a small TV set. I have never won anything else.

Can you imagine winning the Lotto jackpot twice? The odds of winning it twice is
22.5 million to one. I always say that I will buy a lottery ticket if the jackpot is over 100 million, but I never do. So how to win anything if I never even buy a ticket?! :-)

NEW YORK (AP) — How lucky can you get?

Adeline and Eugene Angelo won $5 million Thursday after buying the winning ticket in last week's New York Lotto. In 1996, they won $2.5 million after splitting a $10 million jackpot with three other people.

Eugene Angelo, 81, said he and his wife would share their new fortune with their three sons and their families. Taking the lump-sum payment of $2.5 million, Eugene and Adeline and each of their sons will get about $513,000 before taxes.

"We're a little older, a little wiser and there are a few more of us, when you count the grandkids," Eugene Angelo said. "We're still the same old people. Still very excited. It's a great feeling."

Adeline Angelo, 74, a retired medical secretary, said she hoped the new money will "buy us good health and longevity."

Me Not Like You, Mommy

My kids are 4 years old and already one knows how to say, "Me not like you, Mommy!" Ok, at least he hasn't learned how to say, "I hate you, Mommy!"

He tells me that when he doesn't get what he wants. He's always asking for a toy, or for the TV to be turned on to a certain channel and when he doesn't get what he wants, he goes off in a huff and tells me or his daddy, "Me not like you!"

I know he doesn't mean it, so I tell him, "I still love you, Duncan, even if you don't like me". :-)
Later in the day, he will tell me, "Me love you, Mommy'. These are words that a parent treasures because a child says those words often without encouragement and means them.

The following is a parenting tip that I find useful.

When Kids say, "I hate you!"

By Elizabeth Pantley, Author of Perfect Parenting and Kid Cooperation

Question:
When my son gets angry with me he yells, "I hate you! I wish you weren't my mother!" and other hurtful things. It really disturbs me, but I don't know how to respond.

Think about it:
When children feel angry and powerless, they sometimes resort to hateful words to express their feelings. These outbursts should not be taken at face value. In other words, your child doesn't really mean he hates you - he means he's extremely angry that he can't have his way, and you're the one imposing the rules! These reasons don't mean you should tolerate the behavior. But, when you look at it this way, you can temper your own emotions so that you can take control of the situation.

Teach:
Children need to be taught that it is okay to have angry feelings, but that there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to express their anger. It's usually best to walk away from a child who uses such strong language after making a short parting comment, "I won't stay and listen to you talk like that." Allow some time to pass so that both you and the child can calm down. Then, tell your child that his outburst was unacceptable. Instead of simply telling your child what you don't want, teach what alternatives you will allow, such as, "I'm really mad at you for saying no."

Respond calmly:
If this is an unusual behavior for your normally respectful child, you might want to respond in a calm manner, "That language is unacceptable. I know you're smart enough to come up with an acceptable alternative."

Find the source:
Determine if your child is hearing someone else talk this way, perhaps a friend. Talk about this person's behavior and ask your child what he thinks of it. This is a good time to have a chat about the power and meaning of words, what you feel is acceptable, and what you will accept as alternatives to hurtful comments.

Be firm:
Let your child know in advance that if he uses those kinds of expressions with you he'll be restricted to his room. The length of time would be determined by the intensity of the words, for example, "I hate you!" might warrant a one-hour solitary confinement. Swearing at you in a verbally aggressive way would warrant spending the remaining day in his room. Should he not follow orders and go to his room when asked he'll lose a specific privilege (such as watching TV, talking on the phone, or going outside after school). Once you've set the limits, be calm and consistent when enforcing them.

Excerpted with permission by NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group Inc. from Perfect Parenting, The Dictionary of 1,000 Parenting Tips by Elizabeth Pantley, © 1999

Mixed Marriages

I find the following story really interesting because I hadn't actually thought about it the way the author of the article said it. Is it true that Malaysian's Malay politicians are saying, " ‘do as I say, not do as I do’ when it comes to marriage"?

What stands out to me in that story is how many of our Malay politicians are not pure Malay, and yet to hear them speak about the Malay race you would think they are 100% pure blooded Malay! I didn't know that Tun Mahathir was once classified as Indian. Hishamuddin Hussein of the keris wielding fame has Turkish blood.

Malaysia’s Malay leaders say ‘do as I say, not do as I do’ when it comes to marriage

In early June, the Malaysian media blossomed with pictures of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in the traditional Malay suap-menyuap ceremony, exchanging bites of colored glutinous rice with his new bride.

This low-key but high-profile wedding followed another elite ceremony in May when one of Malaysia’s most eligible bachelors, the Raja Muda (crown prince) of Perak, Dr Raja Nazrin Shah, finally got hitched at the age of 50 in an unostentatious ceremony in Kuala Kangsar.

But these two weddings had something else in common, a characteristic not much commented on in the media but clear to most Malaysians: in both cases the brides were locally-born Eurasians. The prime minister’s new wife is Jeanne Abdullah, a friend and relative of Abdullah Badawi’s late wife, Endon, who died of complications from breast cancer in October 2005. Jeanne had originally been Jean Danker, a Catholic from a Eurasian family which spans Malaysia and Singapore and who converted to Islam when she married her first husband, Endon’s brother Othman, from whom she was later divorced.

The bride of Oxford and Harvard-educated Raja Nazrin, son of the current Perak Sultan, who himself was formerly Malaysia’s top law official, is Zara Salim Davidson, a chemical engineer and the daughter of William Davidson, a British-born Ipoh lawyer and his Malay wife. She herself is a member of the Kedah royal house and thus related to Malaysia’s first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. Raja Nazrin has repeatedly spoken out against racism in Malaysia. Zara considers herself to be very much a Malay despite her Eurasian blood.

These weddings thus represent what should be one of the triumphs of Malaysia its ability to break down racial and religious barriers and subsume them into a broader Malaysian identity. Unfortunately the elite all too often fails to preach what it actually practices. It is a one-way street. Marry a Malay and you will become a Malay. You will also become a Muslim and, the courts say, you will stay that way.

The good-natured Abdullah Badawi clearly has no problem with the mixed racial ancestry of his bride, or with the fact that she was baptised a Christian. Yet he heads a ruling party which is not merely race-based but at times makes a fetish of Malay racial purity. And he heads a government that supports the recent court decision refusing to allow a Muslim to become a Christian, an act of supposed apostasy. But in the eyes of some Christian fundamentalists, the gentle Jeanne is also an apostate for having forsaken Christianity.

Malays are not the only ones with identity problems. Scratch many a Malaysian Chinese and one may also find a strain of Chinese chauvinism, as is often the case in Singapore. But in Malaysia it is the Malay elite which sets the tone. This is why many believe that a more open recognition of the sheer diversity of Malaysians’ origins would help offset the divisions caused by race-based politics that identifies religion with race.

Just a brief look at the origins of many members of the elite gives the lie to ethnic purity and religious dogmatism. There is Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister. His father was a Muslim Malayali from Kerala in south India who migrated to Malaysia and took a Malay bride. Mahathir himself was classified as an Indian when at university in Singapore.

But instead of celebrating the upward mobility that Malaysia offered to this migrant from India, the politics of the United Malays National Organisation required Mahathir to bury his ethnic past and wear his acquired Malay identity on his sleeve. In reality Mahathir welcomes racial mingling. His son Mirzan married into the family of Indonesian Chinese tycoon Liem Sioe Liong, and daughter Marina’s first husband was European.

The current head of the UMNO youth, Hishamuddin Hussein, who waved a kris (Malay dagger) at last year’s national UMNO convention and offered to bathe it in Chinese blood to the ominous cheers of the audience, is another whose Malay roots are not as deep as often assumed. His grandfather, the founder of UMNO, Onn Jaafar, appeared to be a Caucasian, which was not surprising given that his Johor-based family was of Turkish origin. Onn was ejected from the party he founded because he wanted to make it multi-racial and though his son went on to become the head of UMNO and a prime minister, he carried with him his father’s inclusive and moderate instincts.

Onn lost out politically to Malaysia’ s first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. Although the Tunku placed more emphasis on Malay identity, he was certainly no exclusivist. Indeed, he had been born a subject of the King of Siam and as a scion of the royal house of Kedah spent some of his early years in Bangkok at the court of his then sovereign. His mother was Siamese, though her family originally was from Pegu (Burma). Of his four wives, one was Thai Chinese, one English, one Malay and one Malaysian-Chinese. He never hid his fondness for whisky, even while heading the Organization of Islamic Conference, or his student days in England pre-occupied, as he once put it, with “fast women, fast cars and not-so-fast horses.”

The Malay aristocracy has anyway been quite catholic in its choice of brides. Those in mixed marriagesinclude Ahmad Shah, the Sultan of Pahang, whose consort is of Pakistani lineage. The Sultan of Selangor’s divorced second consort and mother of his heir apparent was an American citizen.

Sultan Iskandar of Johor’s first wife, the mother of his heir apparent, was a British woman, Josephine Trevorrow. In this respect Sultan Iskandar took after his own grandfather, Sultan Ibrahim, who had two European wives, one British, one Romanian.

Maybe it is Johor’s geography, its proximity to Singapore and the diversity of Indonesia, but its politicians seem to thrive on marrying outsiders. Former Deputy Prime Minister Musa Hitam’s first wife was from (Catholic) Latin America and his second was of mixed ancestry . Another Johor politician, Tun Ismail, deputy prime minister in the early 1970s, was of part Chinese ancestry.

Conversions of convenience to Islam often mean that Malay mixtures leave little trace compared with other cross-ethnic marriages. But the non-Malay, but Muslim, origins of many of the elite are found everywhere, from South Asia, Yemen, Egypt, Turkey and other countries. They include the likes of Zeti Aziz, the governor of Bank Negara. She is the daughter of Ungku Aziz, the European-looking former University of Malaya vice-chancellor, whose Johor-based family came from Turkey.

Chinese roots are also more real than apparent, often hidden by conversions. But relatively recent high-profile marriages to Chinese include Tengku Razaleigh, former finance minister and a member of the Kelantan royal house who married a long-time Chinese friend who converted and changed her name to Noor Abdullah. Rashid Hussein, the prominent Singapore-born, Anglophile financier whose father was Indian and mother Malay married Sue Kuok, a daughter of tycoon Robert Kuok Hock Nian, the Malaysian-born but now Hong Kong-based tycoon. Kuok’s first wife and mother of some of his children was Eurasian but he later married a Chinese and emphasized his Chinese ethnic identity. In a recent book, “Asian Godfathers” Kuok was described by an in-law as “the biggest racial bigot I have ever met.”

Among the non-Malay groups, inter-ethnic marriages are generally much more common than among Malays. However it also seems the case that migration is the preferred option for the numbers of Malaysians who either marry across ethnic lines or acquire foreign spouses while studying or working abroad. This particularly applies to Malay women who are either not particularly religious or who see no reason why their spouses should convert.

By one estimate, there are some 150,000 mixed marriages in Malaysia, a number that seems impossibly small in a population of 24 million. The leafy, winding streets of Damansara Heights and Kenny Hills abound with matrons who entered into marriage and lives of leisure with well-to-do Malays straight out of the universities of England, where the government had sent their mates. It is forbidden for a Muslim to marry a non-Muslim, so these women, with their servants and their huge homes, stop being Jean and become Jehan in public, although seldom in private.

But while the list of Malay elites is long and rich with instances of intermarriage, at the lower economic levels the list is short, and increasingly circumscribed by the growing power of Malaysia’s shariah, or Islamic religious courts. The issue was brought to the fore in the case of Lina Joy, who changed her name from Azlina Jailani and became a Catholic in an effort to marry a non-Muslim.

With scores, perhaps hundreds, of outraged Muslims outside the courtroom, demanding that she be denied the chance to change her religion on her identity card, a high court ruled in May that she was subject to the jurisdiction of the shariah court. The shariah courts have allowed one conversion in history – for a woman who had been dead for decades.

The result is that either people do not marry, or they emigrate. Bright women who have preferred to marry foreigners found their husbands denied work permits. There are believed to be thousands living in Australia, Canada or the United Kingdom.

For Malaysia’s young to take their cues from Malaysia’s top politicians and the cream of society outside of official policy might not be a bad idea. Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, the Director of the Institute of the Malay World Civilisation (ATMA) and Professor at University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in Bangi – and himself married to an Australian, says Abdullah Badawi’s marriage to Jean Danker Abdullah is “not a catalyst but certainly symbolic.”

Marina Mahathir told Asia Sentinel that “If people think that marrying into another culture is enriching, then it will be a good thing. But some people make one person give up their own culture because they think of it as inferior.”

But so long as the elite indulges in kris-waving while marrying as it pleases, multiracial nation-building may have scant grass roots impact.