Lake Gardens

On Sunday, we woke up early... or rather Ryan woke up early (which means we had to wake up too) and we decided to goto Lake Gardens. Unfortunately it was raining. So we decided to go for breakfast and see what happens.
After a hearty breakfast in SS2, that also saw us buying some dough fritters (yau char kuai), we decided to make the trip to Lake Gardens. Because it was after the rain, it wasn't that hot, so it was quite pleasant weather. We walked around the place. Actually there's quite a lot to do here. Some of it is free and some of it you gotta pay. There is enough free stuff to keep us busy for awhile, so we wandered around, pushing Ryan on his stroller.
One of the free parts is the deer park, which has mousedeers and deers. Hi Bambi! Thinking that there might be one or two pathetic deers, we were pleasantly surprised.
The lake itself also has ducks and geese around it. You can also rent a boat and paddle round it.
All in all, a good way to spend some time with nature (and the family).

Bagan Lalang

We decided to take a day trip to Bagan Lalang. It's about 1.5 hours away from where we stay. So we packed up and drove all

the way to the place. Not too difficult to find. It's supposed a beach that had sand added to it to make it more "beach-y", as the area and surrounding beaches were formerly mangrove swamps, so it would have had muddy soil. (Actually I wonder what happened to the mangrove swamp?)
It's an ok beach, nothing fantastic, but it's a good getaway if you need a beach. You get away from the city and see a bit of the countryside. During low tide, there's lots of tiny crabs digging and scurrying around the wet sand. It can get pretty busy on weekends. Some eating places, open mainly at night.
Directions
i) Take the ELITE Highway to KLIA.
ii) After the KLIA toll, take a left towards the F1 track/LCCT.
iii) You'll come to a roundabout, take the 12 o'clock (straight ahead).
iv) At the traffic lights, take a left - the Sepang F1 circuit will be on your right.
v) At the next traffic lights, turn right. At this traffic light, you can see @Enstek.
v) Keep on driving straight until you reach Sepang town. At the T-junction, turn right. Immediately after that, turn left. There are shops here. Follow signs to Sepang Gold Coast and/or Bagan Lalang.
vi) As you continue driving, you'll pass by oil palm estates and cross bridges over small rivers (eg Sg Keruh).
vii) You'll come to the town of Sg Pelek. Keep going straight.
vii) You'll see a sign to turn right (Kem Bina Negara). Follow this, turn right.
viii) Continue going until you see a sign for Bagan Lalang that points left. Turn left and follow the sign that says Sepang Gold Coast. Keep going and you'll be there soon.
ix) There are two main beaches that I saw. So drive on a littlle more.

Fireworks!!!

I was pleasantly surprised when I stepped out on the balcony of my condo and managed to catch 4-5 fireworks displays going on at the same time on midnight of New Year's day. I guess they were coming from the Curve, 1Utama, Tropicana Mall and from KL city, probably was Dataran Merdeka. So nice! Fireworks are beautiful and wonderful.
Of course, there were also some overly intoxicated people shouting around the condo as the fireworks went off.

Happy New Year everyone!

Avatar 3D outing

My wife and I decided to go catch Avatar after Shawn suggested we try it. No just in 2D, but in 3D. So we bought the (exorbitant) tickets and watched the movie. Put on the 3D glasses and the movie takes on a whole new dimension. It was an enjoyable experience. There were "layers" to each scene. Cool seeing images "float" out or off the screen.
If you didn't have the glasses, it would have looked normal, but with the glasses, things were so different!
So, our world is interpreted by what lenses we look through :) So keep your lenses accurate :)

Have a great Christmas everyone!

Greeting from the family!

The gory details - part 3

After the whole thing was stitched up, gauze was put into the mouth to stop the bleeding. Press on it... ok sounds simple enough. So I hold my jaw shut to keep the pressure on. After the anesthetic wears off, however, keeping the pressure on starts to become painful. And it's constant. Hey, after the anesthetic wears off, a lot more things start to hurt. I'm taking painkillers but they don't really deal with all the pain. Agony and pain. This is when you ask... when will it end! It's not the sharp pain but it's a dull radiating pain that doesn't stop. It goes on, hour after hour. You start to ask yourself, when will it end. When? When? WHEN????!!!

You try to take your mind of it. Think happy thoughts, surf the web, watch Tv or distract yourself and it works somewhat, but very little.

I haven't even talked about the swelling. Yes, imagine a golf ball growing slowly out of the side of our face. The jaw starts to swell and the pain and discomfort increases. No chewing, so it's just liquids. (You start to lose a bit of weight... which is a good thing, I guess).

Then fever too! Yup, got a fever.

So can you imagine, 5 days and nights of that? 5 days!!!
Only on the 6th day, things start to improve dramatically. Swelling starts to go down, fever goes down, pain gets less, jaw starts to be more mobile. Solids are easier to chew! (In my mind, for some reason, I'm thinking... KFC, KFC, KFC)

All I can say is... I'm grateful it's all over!!! No holiday. Some people said I'm lucky to be away from the office on medical leave. Right! Why don't you try it? A tooth can cause so much discomfort... so much to learn from this... but the lessons later. Wanna see my tooth? : )

The gory details part 2

Previously on this blog...
Alex is in the oral surgeon's chair with his mouth open, gums cut open and a drill being used to chip away bone at the back of his mouth, in order to remove a horizontally impacted wisdom tooth...

The surgeon is going at it, drilling, prying, poking and manipulating with all the instruments at his disposal. After removing bone and making enough space. It's the tooth's turn. A rather big tooth, the surgeon sections it. He decides to section it into two. The drill starts again... brrrr... it's cutting up the tooth.

All this while I'm staring at the ceiling and lights. My mind is wondering how much blood is all over my mouth. Can't taste or feel much, everything is numb. Just pressure here and there. Though you don't feel any pain, it's the mental torture of wondering what's happening in your mouth that requires so many pieces of equipment.

After the tooth is sectioned, the surgeon slowly manouvers the first half out. It takes a few minutes but he wants to get it right. The first half is removed. After that, some more instruments go in to probe, prod and manouver the second half of the tooth out. As the the tooth is moved around, you can hear/feel the scratching of the tooth against the bone.

The tooth is out. The surgeon puts some homeostatic compound into the now gaping wound to help the blood (which by this time there must be lots of it!) clot. He then takes this thread and stitches the wound. I think it was 4-5 stitches. It's strange to have someone pull a thread in your mouth and tie it up.

A few more things to clean up the wound and the doctor is done... is this the end? or the beginning?