Living in Fear

17 Mar

When 2020 came around, there were many positive thoughts and attitude towards the new year. After all, it’s the start to a new decade, and maybe a better outlook after what felt like a dismal 2019. It will be the best year to come, many thought.

How wrong we all were! Barely three months into the year, humanity has been threatened by a new contagious virus never encountered before: the Covid-19. As such, everything has been disrupted with daily routines being thrown into disarray to circumvent the spread. You could say the whole world has almost come to a standstill with the pandemic outbreak. Unprecedented!

My country has not been spared. With a surge in cases at the beginning of this week, the government of Malaysia has imposed a partial lockdown starting tomorrow until the end of March. Panic buying has also occurred here. Luckily we were sensible enough to stock up our food supplies last week.

It’s as if the virus is a smarter-than-us alien attacking mankind like a gripping sci-fi movie from Hollywood. Always one step ahead to avoid detection, it lurks then pounces on the unsuspecting and weak. The intention: to take over our world and make it their own, wiping out mankind in the process. Horrifying thoughts in overdrive mode here. Shudder…

Do we need to collectively pray for divine intervention and perhaps a miracle to overcome this? Or should it be social consciousness or even civic-mindedness to prevent the spread? I can’t find the right words for this…

Every single human being has to do their part and be socially responsible, whether directly or indirectly to combat this together. The phrase “United we stand, divided we fall” is so apt right now. Otherwise the whole world will be living in fear until there is a breakthrough to fight this infectious virus. When? We don’t know… God help us all.

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Impulse Buying

16 Mar

Sometimes the act of impulse buying is merely to appease the buying urge than the need for the item itself. That’s why it’s called impulse buying.

Once in a while, I succumb to this impulse when I am cooped up too long doing the daily routine and feeling like a robot. Life has been without excitement lately, and especially so given the pandemic Covid-19 that has gripped the whole world and crippling all sorts of movement and activities.

Like everyone else, we have been keeping abreast with the daily development of the situation and have been dutifully avoiding crowded places. Practising social distancing to stay safe, we haven’t gone to the mall for ages. So much so, routine has become so predictable, dull and boring.

Over the weekend however, I was at my golf club and there was a golf equipment sale and I bought a Maruman Conductor 5-wood! Honestly I don’t really need it because I already have my XXIO MP 900 golf clubs complete with the 3- and 5-woods plus a U-5. So why did I buy it?

Well, the impulse buying urge for one. Secondly, I haven’t bought anything of late and grocery does not count. So the purchase was for some form of gratification to excite the otherwise predictable, dull and boring life.

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My shiny new 5-wood to complement the other two clubs of the same series!

The new 5-wood complements the Maruman Conductor 3-wood and U-4 that I already have and had been retired for some time. Maybe from here on, I might change my XXIO MP 900 woods for this set for variation to make golfing more interesting.

This—my game that is—has been too routine and boring as well; there’s no excitement anymore approaching the game. Same routine, same mistakes, same near misses… so predictable.

Well, put it this way, this impulse buy may be just what I need to vary the mundane, predictable and dull, be it my golf game or my daily routine, the story of my life now.

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Borderless Love, Part 2

13 Mar

It was drizzling and gloomy when we got home. And I had dinner to prepare in the kitchen, so I got things going. Hubby went to the garden and our adopted pet, the Golden Retriever from next door heard him somehow.

The adorable fluff ball dashed out of his house for a quick love pet and exchange.

However the fleeting moment was interrupted. His mom called out to him and reprimanded him for the sudden escape into the drizzling condition. I guess she doesn’t know he’s sneaking out for love pets from us. Heheh… So the poor fella had no choice but to go back indoors. Awww…

But he got his happy love exchange, hubby did too and I didn’t. Shucks.

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The End is Nearer

10 Mar

You know how apps are automatically updated? Of course this is if the device is set up for it to do so. Over one mid-December weekend, something unusual happened with my iPad Mini. It was updating Candy Crush Saga in the background whilst I was playing the Soda version.

Suddenly the game quit unexpectedly and a black screen with the Apple logo appeared. Uh oh. Then the next thing I knew, the Candy Crush Saga app disappeared! Is this a sign that the end is nearer for the iPad Mini?

I had to do a complete shut down, wait ten seconds then switched on the device again before the app appeared. Haish… why do this to me?

Seriously methinks the Mini wants to retire for good.

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Friday the 13th

9 Mar

A day before the ominous Friday the 13th in December last year, my MacBook Air crashed and died. I never saw it coming although there were tell tale signs of instability after installing MacOS Catalina 10.15.1 a few weeks earlier. I caved in and updated because of iTunes and my iPhone XR. To cut a long story short, I had to update the OS in order to have the latest version of iTunes that could sync with the iPhone XR. Otherwise, I could not back up my phone, something that I don’t do that often.

So all was fine and dandy except a few small matters like several of the softwares. The Adobe and Microsoft softwares that I have—essential but not critical—could no longer be used because the versions I have were not supported with the 10.15.1 OS. But since I hardly use those softwares these days and I could back up my iPhone XR, this was all that mattered I rationalized.

On that faithful eve of the ominous day, I had my Skype launched and ready to have the weekly session with M1. Suddenly, the app was acting up and I had to restart the laptop. Several times in fact. A prompt came up and caught my eye – the OS needed to be updated with Catalina 10.15.2.

Reflecting back the several instances of instability and the recent wonky behavior of Skype, I thought perhaps it was best to update the OS. Bad idea, really bad, bad idea.

The laptop could not install the OS and hung several times. A black screen kept appearing with each restart. Uh oh. Even with Global Network Recovery and all the steps I could find online could not save my MacBook! Oh no….

The next day, Friday the 13th I went to Machines, a local authorized Apple reseller to see what could be done. To my dismay, Machines no longer provided support for older devices. Oh no! The apprehension of this ominous day struck.

My 11” MacBook Air is a 2012 model and deemed a vintage device and as such, do not qualify for further technical support. I was advised then to go to a third party repair shop. Do I have a choice at that point?

So off to a third party repair shop I went. Thankfully, these guys fixed the problem (they took a few days though) and I also had all my data recovered for an additional fee. Phew. My MacBook Air is now downgraded to MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 and should remain at this version for optimum performance.

But less than a month after that, the laptop acted up again resulting in the decision to do a total reformat. This was after backing up all the recovered data to an external drive. So so problematic.

While updates are good, it does not necessarily add value to older devices. One should be cautious before doing so, otherwise be prepared for some stress of losing data and then a little hole in the pocket to fix the damage and retrieve the precious.

Hopefully nothing disastrous will happen to my laptop on this ominous date this coming Friday. And I have since been backing up my iPhone XR on iCloud.

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It’s a Rufous!

6 Mar

Last week, as we were getting ready to go out, I thought I’d checked the hole in the staghorn for no apparent reason. Suddenly, a little brown head popped out from it and scared the daylights out of me! I think likewise, the bird had a scare too.

I managed to have a good look at the bird as it flew away and can vouch it’s a Rufous Woodpecker. I saw enough pictures of the species on the internet when I was googling up the possibilities upon discovery of the woodpecker. So it’s good our feathered friend did not abandon the hole that he made.

Maybe in due course, there will be a family? We have to be cautious when approaching the staghorn especially when raking the leaves in order not to scare the woodpecker or ourselves in the future.

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Borderless Love

3 Mar

We have a new pet! Sort of… The Golden Retriever actually belongs to our neighbor and he sure is a friendly one. Every now and then, he would come sit at the border between our houses and stares longingly into our garden.

And whenever hubby is out there with his plants, hubby would stretch over to give the adorable dog some love – scratching and petting the head, massaging and tickling the neck, and at the same time, absorb some doggy love in return. I do the same too if I am out in the garden and see the chummy canine.

Once the exchange is over, our adopted pet would saunter back inside his house and we’d go about our routine. I find this unexpected ‘arrangement’ rather therapeutic. While we sometimes long to have another four-legged furry ball to replace our beloved English Bulldog, the thought of the long term commitment makes us rethink again.

So for now, we are perfectly happy with our adopted pet, the Golden Retriever from next door, with his borderless love for us.

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Look at that face, so adorable!

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Maybe I Can Bake, Part 2

2 Mar

The baking bug seems to have gotten me. After the success of the carrot cake, I itched to bake again! And so I did. This time I picked up two boxes! A the Zesty Orange Cake Mix and a Banana Honey Muffin for various reasons.

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Green’s baking mixes make you look good in the kitchen!

The main reason being I had leftover milk and butter from the last baking episode. They are food that I don’t usually consume, so baking was the only option to use them up.

Reason number two: the brand’s website showed an orange cake with poppyseeds choice but our regular grocer did not have this, only the one sans poppyseeds. And because I love poppyseeds—I used to eat poppyseed bagels whenever I could when I was living in New York City dinosaur years ago—I went out of the way to buy a pack of poppyseeds to add to the orange mix. Clever, ain’t I?

Reason number three: I actually have a muffin tray. Yeah… I know, for someone who doesn’t bake, my baking gadgets seems to be quite comprehensive. Previously, the tray was used to make mini quiches for M2 to bring to school. But now with her being away in college, the tray has not been used.

Back to my baking novelty, this time I was super efficient and needless to say, the Orange Cake was simply delicious as it now comes with poppyseeds. Next week, muffins! With poppyseeds as well.

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I skipped the icing topping and the cake is just right with a slight crunch of the poppyseeds

I must attribute the baking success to the brand, Green’s Baking of Australia and not so much of my skills in the kitchen. It’s the mix that makes me look good and feel good. Forget the 16/8 diet for the time being until this baking novelty wears off.

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The Lazy Woodpecker, Part 2

28 Feb

It seems that the woodpecker is a family bird, that’s why it was creating a comfortable soft cavity for a nest! Although I managed to take a picture of it, I could not see the coloring and features clearly. It flew away when I attempted to get closer.

But from what hubby described and a quick check on the internet, it resembled a Rufous Woodpecker, a species that can be found in our region. We could be wrong though. Anyway, this was a male woodpecker and typical of them to excavate a home for the missus.

While woodpeckers may be good for the ecosystem, they do not bode well with nature lovers (hubby here in this context) because they destroy the plants/trees with their pecking. Case in point the staghorn now has an ugly huge gaping hole on its shield frond.

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See the fella napping inside the deep cavity of the staghorn fern? Zzzz…

And after our discovery of it sleeping inside the staghorn that Sunday night, we have not seen the woodpecker since! We wouldn’t mind if the staghorn was used as a nest but to destroy it and then abandon without use, hrmph… I’m not pleased too.

Well, I guess we cannot reverse the situation and only hope the woodpecker will come back to use the cavity for nesting.

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The Lazy Woodpecker

25 Feb

Hubby saw a woodpecker on Sunday morning and he was not pleased. The woodpecker was pecking away at his (hubby’s) prized staghorn hanging on the tree in front of the house.

Now isn’t a woodpecker supposed to be pecking at a tree and not a fern? What a lazy woodpecker, going about his business with an easy soft surface instead of the usual hard wood.

I managed to get a picture of it before it flew away. And the damage to the fern, holy moly… quite a deep hole. I hope the staghorn can be saved.

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Just look at the depth of the hole!

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