today, tomorrow & forever

I love you today, tomorrow & forever
I love you in health, sickness, as long as we're together
For richer, poorer, Altis, Myvi or Harrier
Whether we have Foie Gras, durian or just plain water
Whether stay in flat, semi-d or in bukit antarabangsa

I love you today, tomorrow & forever

I think its love when you..

I think its love when you
Buy the groceries and never forgets my ‘stuff’
Give me a neck rub, when you need one yourself
Make hot, tasty Milo for me
Pick out gifts for those events when I didn’t care
Remember my family events better than me
Remind me to be thankful when I start to grumble
Take care of the children when I need to rest

I know its love from both the little and big things you do
And I love you too.

Ring
First thing in the morning
I kiss & caress my darling 
Her ring on my finger
It follows me when she's not near
Reminding me of my dear

Nine years in the making
The ring's unbroken, intact
Scratched & dulled, but intact
Much like me & my dear, in fact
Still together, still in Love

Untitled

I did wrong and know it
Acted foolish and blew it
Misplaced suspicions
Baseless accusations
Wild assumptions
I did it, I acknowledge

You carried on, bearing the grief
You were stronger to forgive
Held fast to the promise of ‘I do’
Grateful for forgiveness
I now love you more
More than ever before.

Mountain Biking..

I’m relatively new to the sport of mountain biking, been at it only for the past 8 months (with one of the 8 months away on holiday), so just 7 months at it, technically. So, I’m still learning the ropes as I go along. 

I got into this quite by accident (relax, not the downhill crash kind of accident!). My first invitation to ride came from one of my suppliers (Winston) who shared his passion for the sport with me during our lunch meetings, but I brushed it aside with the usual excuses, work, family..etc, basically, I was just not interested and couldn’t imagine myself riding a bicycle again after so many years, wasn’t sure if I could still balance on a bike let alone riding it on some secondary jungle trail! The fear of falling flat on my butt at the first attempt and embarrassing myself keeps replaying in my mind. This prompting to ride came also from another source in the form of a church friend (Chow), who was considerably more persistent.

At some later time, my wife, who always had a desire to cycle around the house for general exercise, decided to buy a bicycle and we went to Sungai Way and got a t-bolt along with a bicycle for my 7 year old daughter. 

When Chow found out that I (or rather, my wife) had a MTB and not doing much with it (what a surprise!), he was bugging me no end to ride with him to FRIM, finally I relented and drudgingly dragged myself and the t-bolt out to FRIM at the un-earthly hour (for me anyways) of 7am on a Saturday morning, the outcome of that was a pleasant surprise. Firstly, I didn’t fall as I feared but instead quite enjoyed the whole experience. That first ride lead on to become a weekly fixed routine on my calendar and before I knew it, I was hooked! I grew to love the freedom to move freely almost anywhere, the trill of coming downhill fast (by my standards), avoiding obstacles, trying my best not to fall, the reward of a beautiful scenery at the top after an arduous climb, the heavy breathing (although it’s my own ;-)) and lastly the increasing fitness, health and general well being, it all felt wonderful. I even lost some excess weight and inches and can now fit into my old clothes!

It wasn’t long before I felt that cycling once a week was not enough, that’s when I was told about the trails in Kiara and thankfully, I live just 15 minutes away. My first ride there was on the tar road and I actually got lost! Took me at least 30 minutes and a lot of uphill climbs to get myself out of there. Eventually, I got someone to give me a guided tour and I was formally introduced to the 2k single track trail and it was love at first sight, and I’ve been riding there at least twice a week since then.

Just as I was beginning to enjoy my new found riding experience and thinking that I was doing pretty good, I was given a sound lesson on biking. I met two other riders and was offered to join them through the 2k trail, I agreed and (wisely) offered to go last, 5 seconds into the trail, and I completely lost sight of them! Well, I still love riding and am now more determined to ride more often and get better… 

See you at the trails!!

La Salle 5 Arts 1, 1989 Class reunion 22nd August 2008

There's just something wonderful and special about reunions, a gathering of people that has common past experiences and memories. This was especially true for my class reunion last Friday at A&W Jalan Timur.

I would have preferred somewhere different to meet, (not a fan of fast food) but I was soon educated on the significance of our place of congregation; Jalan Timur field was where our school had our annual sports day. 

When I arrived (late due to the all round massive jams; excuses, excuses!) at around 8:30pm, it was hard finding my class mates among the crowd of diners, when I finally did spot them, I was unsure as it was 18 years since I’ve seen some of them and I could barely recognize them. After a closer look at a bunch of guys crowded together looking over a photograph, at the back corner of the restaurant (some things haven’t changed), I found my long lost class mates and the faces began to look familiar to the (much) younger, fresh faces I remember from 1989.

Our conversations started with the ‘what are you doing now? Are you married? How many children? How many wives?’ type questions, where I found out what my buddies have been up to and some were incredibly interesting, one has been an air steward for 18 years and saw the world and another had started his career chauffeuring ‘escorts’! Real estate, stationary business, food, IT were the other professions among us, we were all doing alright. 

After the ‘warm-up’ lap, the memories of past began to slowly come back, bits by bits at first and then a mighty rush leading to the 2nd type of rhetorical line of questions like “Do you remember the time when…?”. The conversations just kept going on and on and we covered every subject that we could remember; teachers (our beloved class teacher, Mr. Chin was one of the favorite subjects, more on him later), naughty and sometime illegal things we did, girlfriends (La Salle was an all boys school, with the exception of the sixth formers), female teachers (slightly different slant on the conversation compared to teachers in general!). There was much laughter and joking and it was a great time to say the least. It was funniest when we began to recollect memories of our characters back in school; there was the sensitive one, the unpredictably mental ones (there was a few of those), the stylo ones, the ‘softer’ ones and many others. It was almost as if we were transported in a time machine back in school again and were behaving exactly like 17 year olds (I was 18 then, due to Remove class).

There were 9 of us that made it out of the 21 originally invited and confirmed, sadly we missed the other others that couldn’t make it for one reason or another, it would have been twice the fun, if at all that’s possible. Next phase of conversations centered around those that were not with us and what’s been happening with them, sadly, we spoke of the loss of one of our class mate, Raj Kumar, who perished in a car accident late last year; I had only found out of this much later than the fact and did not attend his funeral. We were told that it was well attended by La Sallians numbering in the hundreds, which was no surprise as Raj was a good friend to many and popular in school. We also spoke of others not in our class and there were some sad stories too, one was in Serenti drug rehabilitation center and some others in trouble with the law.

Our class teacher, Mr. Chin took made up a large portion of our chatter, I’ve not personally met him after school and had to rely on witness’s account of him, apparently, he is quite cool these days, trotting along with Oakleys and ‘quite happening’ as they say. He’s on an overseas teaching assignment and comes back to Malaysia every once in a while, the guys promised that they would arrange for him to attend our next gathering, which would be a blast I think… I’m dying to hear what he has to say about this bunch of misfits! He was strict but fair with us, being the discipline master; he had to be extra strict with us, since he was our class teacher.

Those who atteded: Mohd. Zaini, Shane De Cruz, Imran Hamid, Syed Alam Shah, Shah Jahan, Mohamed Ameen, Loong Kok Leong, Khumararaj & myself (James Valentine). 

To both the Shahs (Syed Alam Shah and Shah Jahan), thanks for organizing this get together, I had a great time and I know the rest did too. To the rest of the gang, thanks for the memories, you were the greatest! I am looking forward to our next meeting, don’t wait another 18 years! OK?

Dessert is served!

I just love dessert, sometimes more than the main course and most times, too much for my own good. So, it made perfect sense that I learned to whip up something myself.

There are just so many recipes and types of desserts out there, which is a little overwhelming for a novice like me, until I saw this episode of a cooking series on Astro (I forget the name and channel) and the chef prepared this banana dessert that looked absolutely delicious.

The original recipe as the chef demonstrated was: heat up some sugar in a hot pan until it melts completely and turns into caramel. Then add butter and some liquid stuff (I can't remember what this is till this day which caused my first blunder). Finally, add in some sliced banana and let it boil for a while, just enough to get the banana half cooked. Then serve and enjoy the sugary delight. It looked mouth watering on TV as the guests were tucking it in; I was convinced it was not possible to fake the look on their faces.

It seemed really easy and quick to prepare. I know most shows give that impression, obviously to keep up the pace and condense everything into an hour, but I was sure, watching the cook in action, that it was really a breeze and even I could do this, and that was what I did.

My first attempt did not turn out as I imagined. It was mother’s day (of all days, I had to choose Mother’s day!) and a very enthusiastic me volunteered to make dessert, to everyone’s pleasant surprise. It did not stay very pleasant for long. I did everything like the cook on TV said, and more, I decided to be “creative” and improvised on the part of the liquid ingredient that I could not remember and used Shandy!! It made such a sizzle on the pan that did not happen on the TV show and a smell that immediately told me that this was not going well. The taste just confirmed what I feared, it was bitter!! You could still taste the sweetness from the sugar, but it had an overpowering bitter aftertaste that lingered. It was just awful. By that time, the smell had invaded the whole house and my family had figured out that my little experiment had gone south. As expected, I didn’t have any takers on my dessert and we had to throw it all out, don’t think that even the pets would have it.

Reeling from defeat, I didn’t give up and tried again after a week, this time the approach was more conservative, no more improvising and I sticking to the original recipe, I tried to at least make it palatable. My first lesson in cooking: don’t start improvising till you at least get the original recipe right! Words to live by. Anyways, this time, with some advise from season veteran friends, I decided to leave out the ingredient that I could not remember, and use just a little bit of water instead, the rest of the recipe and execution were basically the same and this time, at the risk of being a boast, I am pleased to note that it come out wonderfully, my guests and I were enjoying it and I became my own best customer and took 3 servings!

It was a great experience, while I’ve cooked meals, this was my first at desserts and I like it, maybe more than cooking main courses (although my repertoire is limited, to say the least). I’ll be looking at new desserts recipes to try out; hopefully, the family will be more forgiving next time. And to those who have been thinking of trying this, my advise is to go for it, cause if I can do it, then everybody probably can! Just don’t believe everything you watch on TV.