YowCH & Grace

With the HTC Touch Cruise 09 coming to 2 years, the aging problems became quite unbearable: dead vibrator, sms not waking the phone from sleep-mode, erratic battery life and sudden shut-downs. YowCH moved from Windows Mobile on the Touch Cruise to Android 2.2 (Froyo) on the HTC Desire, bought from Singtelshop at Junction 8 on 12 Feb 2011. Nice phone, but took quite some time to import the data. With a 2-year phone contract, the $700 phone was only $98, with free ‘egg’ shell and screen protector (worth $25).

The next day 13 Feb 2011, Grace managed to arrange with a seller on eBay and got an iPod Touch (G4) for $293 (shops selling at $328).

Here, you can see Joseph playing with it.

Tags: Family, Grace, Joseph, YowCH by yowch
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Grace’s grandma passed away peacefully on 23 Jan 2011. We went back to Pontian on 26 Jan evening to attend the funeral on 27 Jan 2011.

The newpaper obituary:

She was buried next to grandpa in a graveyard near Ulu Chor.

Updated 19 Feb 2011:
YowCH had a burn on the neck due to a gust of strong wind blowing up some burning joss paper (right after the photo of the flames above). The burn took off the outer layer of skin immediately, but wasn’t deep. Here’s the progressive natural healing over 3 weeks (no ointments or other medications):

Tags: Family, YowCH by yowch
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Just an update in the middle of the month. We had finally printed photos, since Feb 2010! The total for the stack was about $1,100.00!

Here, you see Joseph practicing a new trick, mouth stretching:

We joined Yan and PQ in celebrating Siu Hei’s first birthday last weekend:

Finally, YowCH, Esther and David had a walk this morning with 3 of YowCH’s colleagues at Wessex Estate for some hobby photography:

We have a small dedicated page here or you can click on the photo above.

Tags: David, Esther, Family, Joseph, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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YowCH had a minor accident on 16 Nov 2010 morning, when he turned a little too early and wide, hitting a Mercedes SLK200 Roadster just outside KKH. The dent on the Merc (driven by Dr Wee Horng Yen) was quite minor but on the metal part:

The dent on our Isis was much more as it was on the plastic bumper:

YowCH apologised and a gentleman’s agreement was reached. Dr Wee received a quote from C&C for $1070.00 for the repair and YowCH paid up immediately. Ironically, the repair of our car was $0.00 as Ricardo helped pull out the dent and the paint touch-up was done by YowCH:

On 13 Dec, Dr Wee informed that he had sent to another workshop for repairs for $430.00, and returned the remaining $640.00 to us:

This Dr Wee is one gentleman we will remember and honour. He did not even charge us for loss of use and other inconveniences.

We thank God for good people in the world.

Tags: YowCH by yowch
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Our tenth wedding anniversary was yesterday, 16 Dec 2010. We had some plans for a small party, but then again, being the year end and festive season, many friends were all away or busy having fun, plus YowCH having a company dinner. So the day passed by quietly.

We thank God for:
10 good years,
a small home we had at Redhill Close and the current one at Rumah Tinggi,
three active, exciting and fun children,
stable jobs,
family members all around us,
lots of good friends we can count on,
and a family car to get around.

The latest photo we had together was taken by YowCH’s colleague Su San at KL during the TYLin Annual Dinner:

Tags: Grace, YowCH by yowch
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We have just uploaded the full pages for the TYLin Chengdu – Jiuzhaigou Trip. For very nice sceneries, please click:

Page 1/3

Page 2/2

Page 3/3

Tags: Grace, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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We couldn’t update over the past few days as there was no internet access in the hotel or the hotel router was down.

Going back a little, on Tuesday, after returning from the high mountains of Jiuzhai, we visited the Panda Research Base and saw quite a few Giant Pandas and Red Pandas.




That afternoon, we visited Huanglongxi Ancient Town, which is a park with ancient style buildings and nice decorations.

Then it was a long drive to Emei Town to stay one night.

We woke up early on Wednesday morning, and took bus up a very winding road to the Mount Emei Cable Car Station, then walked up 219 steps to the Wannian (ten thousand years) Temple.


After lunch, we visited the nearby and famous Leshan Big Buddha, viewing it from a boat on the river.


Dinner was very special, every dish is served in small portions in small bowls, that is the famous Sichuan Xiaochi (small snacks).

And on the last day, 4 Nov, we went to Wenshu Yuen, a monastery.

That was followed by a Fengshui Taoist talk and sales, which we skipped and roamed the streets instead.

Lastly, just before boarding the plane, we went (window) shopping at Chunxi Lu, which is just like Orchard Road, in looks, variety, shops and price. We had coffee at Starbucks, and bought two local flavoured McDonalds chicken burgers for a snack at the airport before the in-flight dinner.

The flight back home was on time, and Gene picked us up from the airport at 1:00am on 5 Nov 2010.

Thank God for a good trip, with good weather where it counted and a wonderful time for YowCH and Grace. Big thanks to Grace’s parents for looking after the children.

And now, we need to find the time to sort the thousands of photos for printing, and then do up a dedicated webpage for the trip.

Tags: Grace, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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Today was generally getting down from Jiuzhai to Chengdu, but there were still quite a few activities. In the morning, we visited the ancient city style hotel called Jaipa, up in the mountains. Very cold as it was close to freezing.

After that, we had a stop at the gems showroom, and then lunch and airport. It started snowing just as we reached Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport, and we were praying that the snow will not delay our flight (since it had just started, the snow can last VERY long, forecast was for snow throughout the night at Jiu Zhai). Thankfully, the plane took off on time before the snow got heavy.

Upon reaching Chengdu, we visited a bamboo garden.

Then, after a herbal dinner, we watched a cultural show with face-changing as the highlight. One of the items was an opera from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, here, you can see the heroes.

Tomorrow we will be going up to Mt Emei, and might not update.

Tags: Grace, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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Today is the third day, and we spent the whole day in the main attraction of the trip, that is, Jiu Zhai Gou or Nine Villages Valley. The sceneries in JZG is fantastic, and all water based. However, we were also interested in mountain, trees and clouds.

Here are six teaser photos, there will be better ones later.
Nou Ri Lang waterfall, the first major stop we had:

Did you notice the rainbow in the photo above? Next was Mirror Lake, but not perfectly reflective as there was wind.

Here, we were at the Five Flower Lake:

The roads are quite dangerous, being narrow and close the the edge:

This is a view of the Long Lake, which is actually much longer than what can be seen here, much like a sea:

The last lake we visited was Five Coloured Pool, very nice:

We will update when we next have internet access. After JZG, we’ll be visiting Mount Emei and the big buddha at Leshan.

Tags: Grace, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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YowCH and Grace left home on Thursday to catch a flight at 2:00am to Chengdu for the TYLin company trip to Jiuzhaigou. The children did not join this trip, as it is mostly bus rides and walking, with sightseeing in between, none of those children friendly activities. Big thanks to Grace’s parents for looking after them.

Here we are, just landed in Chengdu on 29 Oct morning.

We then visited Luodai Ancient Town and the Dujiangyan irrigation system. The river and scale of the system is huge.

We had dinner with the TYLin Congqing office colleagues at a Sichuan hotpot restaurant, and enjoyed great numbing spicy hot soup steamboat and a nice strong liquor “Wu Liang Ye”.

The next day, 30 Oct, we went to the airport to fly to Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport at 10:20a, but due to heavy fog, the flight was delayed by over 4 hours. We reached Jiuzhai at 3:10pm, after waiting in the plane for 4 hours and a shot 40 minutes flight. The plane took us over the clouds and mountains, beautiful views.

After we landed, and having lost 4 hours, the first stop is a tea house where we were expected to buy some tea (typical tour shopping stopover). The scenery of the rural area was fantastic.

This is a short trip update. More updates later on, and a dedicated page to file the trip.

Tags: Grace, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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