Hope you can understand. I’ll call you.

Brandon has taken on the role of big brother with as much enthusiasm as any 1.5 year old—totally oblivious. To be fair, he’s been really affectionate toward his sister, always wanting to carry and coddle her—except for the fact that she being a girl and the narrow age gap between the two—she’s almost two-thirds his size now and catching up fast. Which usually means when he realizes how heavy she is, he can’t push her off his lap.

So far, it’s been amazing watching these two grow. There’s ups and downs, but the ups always made up for the the sum of downs (gotta keep telling myself that!). Michelle’s a real superwoman in raising the children. Believe me, it’s no mean feat to maintain a breastfeeding regime for the younger one and having to manhandle the older one at the same time.

Work is awesome! My company experienced phenomenal growth in the last couple of months, this directly translates to more money for great job satisfaction at one of the world’s most democratic workplaces for 2008. We were also mentioned in a local daily. Some sites I’ve launched recently were TrafficMarks, WordButler, FinerMinds, and a dozen other e-commerce sites. I’m working on many interesting projects, one of which we hope to launch in a big way some time this month or so—I will talk more about it when the launch date is more concrete, sufficient to say it’s a revamp of one of our Web 2.0 properties.

That’s it for this post, hopefully I’ll get to blog about my LEGO obsession the next time I find some time or follow me on Twitter and FriendFeed which gets updated slightly more frequently.

Just over a year ago, I posted this update over at my wife’s blog about my son’s delivery and since then he’s been a real trooper and continues to fill our lives with much joy and laughter. Today, my wife and I are all set to welcome our second child with the same amount of enthusiasm and anxiety as our first born.

Yesterday morning, Michelle experienced some close contractions and decided to get checked up at the hospital. We dropped Brandon and Ratih off at my parent’s place, before heading to Pantai Medical Centre to have her contractions monitored expecting a false alarm—as by then her contractions has pretty much subsided to almost nothing. After monitoring for about an hour, the nurse conducted a routine examination and discovered that Mich’s cervix has dilated to about 4-5cm—which as far as procedure goes—is about as committed to labour as you can get (a fully dilated cervix is about 10cm). The doctor promptly had her admitted to the hospital and we’re to be ready for delivery—three weeks ahead of schedule!

However our girl is not quite ready to be booted out of mother’s womb as Mich’s contractions fizzled into nought. Our doctor asked us if we were ready to burst the water bag, but we thought we’d let mother and child settle down for the night at the hospital and see how the labour progresses. Baby seems rather comfortable to remain inside for the time being.

So, here I am back home to clean up a bit and to get a few more things for Michelle. I’ll probably try to catch a short nap before heading back to the hospital. The apartment is very quiet without everyone around. It makes me realize just how much I miss Michelle and Brandon, even though it’s only for a short while. Really looking forward to bringing everyone home and welcoming my baby girl to the family.

P.S. Shout out to my dear friend, Min Yen. For your sagely advice concerning our iffy situation. Thank you!

1. I still see buses, lorries, trucks and other heavy machinery on our residential roads spewing thick black exhaust with impunity. I want to see stricter regulation on emissions for all vehicles because I don’t want petroleum by-products in my lungs.
2. Roads around Petaling Jaya are still riddled with hazardous potholes and ditches. The long running joke of having resurfaced roads prior to elections no longer applies here. The turn-round time for these roads to deteriorate back to their rally-like state happens quickly due to the above mentioned heavy machinery using these roads. Oh, and the constant layer-cake resurfacing technique has turned manholes into potholes, so it’s all not really helping the situation. I want better manage roads—and since I’m wishing, it wouldn’t hurt to have all our roads more pedestrian friendly either.
3. The food court in the building where I work is called the gas-chamber by my peers because it’s a smoking area. They have a small no smoking room for the minority—very considerate. I’m also quite sure the toilets in our building are designated no smoking areas but the smokers don’t care because they are the majority after all. KL Sentral is definitely a huge designated no smoking area—but only inside. Which makes everywhere outside the terminal a designated smoking area, which once more, our fag loving majority utilizes fully—usually huffing and puffing away in clusters around all the entrances. All this makes being a non-smoker in Malaysia a moot point. We all might as well take up the habit, at least we’ll be inhaling our own filtered smoke. Just goes to show how serious our country’s anti-smoking campaigns really are. I want genuine anti-smoking initiatives and the culture of the non-smoking minority turned around.
4. Our public transport system can be improved. I don’t want any more locally produced, cheaper cars. We need better taxis, buses and trains—most developed nations get this, why not us?
5. Our internet is crap. Our neighbour can get 10Mbps in their home connection. The most we can get is 4Mbps. I want this gap closed.

There’s no doubt that the National Front will win this election again. Honestly, the opposition hasn’t impressed me either—not when their rallying mantra is “deny BN two-thirds majority”. That’s the best they can muster? Just aspire to be a political hindrance to the ruling party? That’s not really Change We Can Believe In is it?

So who are you voting for this coming election and why?

It took me bloody long enough to get here from the early starry-eyed dot-com days to evangelizing about W3C standards today (however I’m libertarian—not fanatical—and won’t bend over backwards to fit a square peg in a round hole—not without the right equipment anyway), ironically flogging blogs and wikis to various companies and organizations from Australia to backwater Malaysia. Despite which, I still feel all new and virginal about this whole blogging thing—it’s one thing to build blogs and websites for clients (and my wife, Michelle) in the last decade. It is another thing altogether to be rolling my own.

So, ready or not (mostly not, I’m still working on the site’s theme), this is it. My blogging début in no-less dramatic timing than the very first day of the new year. In time to come, I hope to share with you insights from my web and design-related field and maybe occasional vignettes from my life as a young parent thriving in Malaysia. Hopefully, in the process you might glean something useful from me and I’ll also get to know you, my soon-to-be subservient fans discerning reader, a little bit better.