The true story of Air Asia

Before this, I speak very highly of Air Asia. Because of Air Asia, it really makes flying so much easier for us and because of Air Asia too we Malaysians can enjoy cheaper flights too.

But boy oh boy...imagine this scenario, book and paid the air tickets for 19 of my friends for Kuching-Bali-Kuching flight in March 2008 intending to fly in September school holiday. Everything was okay then. Hence we proceed to book one of the best hotels in Ubud Bali and Kuta Bali with all the payments paid up. We have even booked and paid our tour guide in Bali to bring the 19 of us around. We are all happily looking forward to September to go to Bali.

But yesterday, we heard from rumours that the Kuching- Bali-Kuching flight will be terminated this August. In other words the flights that we have paid for has been canceled. Without believing those rumours , I rang up the helplines for Air Asia and true enough the flights are truly terminated!!!You all can imagine how angry and disappointed we are!! Moreover, the airline doesn't have the courtesy to inform us about it officially...real cruel!!

Then we requested to reroute our trip, that is to fly us there via another airport..but to our shock , Air Asia want us to pay RM 1400 for each of us if we want to reroute our flight to be in Bali on the date that we have booked earlier.

Another option they give us is to fly earlier in early August just before the termination of that flight sector comes into effect....how to fly earlier when we are all teachers and there is no school holiday on those dates??

Worst frustrations is when we have difficulties like this , we emailed the guest support, we rang them, NOBODY pick up the phone or answer our email. I have just sent another email to the CEO of Air Asia to kindly request him to reroute us to Bali and return too at no extra cost . Hopefully he will give me a favorable reply...just keeping my little fingers closed or else all our 4 stars hotel money and tour guide payment will all go down the drain!!

Will update you all again on the outcome if I can any feedback from Air Asia. Wish me luck for our holiday dreams has been shattered into 2 pieces like the cliff in Bali below:


Updated Monday 28/7/08 :

Got a call from Air Asia Kuching Office at 1.30 pm this afternon telling me that Air Asia will reroute all the 19 of us for FREE from Kuching - Kuala Lumpur - Bali and return.

That must be the best news for all the 19 of us and that was prompt action from Air Asia too. Got all our air tickets for the reroute already .The only thing is, we will reach Bali only at 7.45 pm instead of 3.45 pm and my best friend Mary will miss her mum first death's anniversary on the 2nd of October since we will only reach Kuching at 10pm on that day. But nevermind , thanks to Air Asia and especially to Tony for reading my email and take into heart our humble suggestion. That does put back the trust we have in Air Asia that has been in us all this while.

An Untold Story

Many many years ago...a young girl of 17 years old , let's call her CSH married a young man and let's call him KTH. They married by match maker arrangement . But a year later they gave birth to a girl X and then divorced or is it separated cos they did not have any legal papers to prove it. Only after a few years , it came to the elders' knowledge that that KTH had actually married before this but the first wife out of frustration or what had gone insane ...and she too had a baby girl borne by this KTH.

After the separation, CSH could not bring up this child on her own thus literally dump girl X at girl X maternal grandparent's house to let the child grew up on her own. Then at the age of 4, suddenly that KTH wanted to reclaim that child and came one day at CSH's mum place and told girl X that he wanted to bring her to buy sweets. Being a naive girl, she followed him and she was brought back to one of the kampong at the river bank . CSH' s mum came to know of this and was so sad that she phoned her( at that time CSH was working in another place) and hearing that her mum could not eat and sleep for 3 days, she chartered a speed boat which cost RM 50 ( that was in the 60's). On reaching the river bank , she saw the child playing at the side of the river bank , without a second word, she grasped the child and brought her back to her grandma. That is the last time the girl X heard from her so call "dad".

For some unknown reasons, this CSH just "hate" this girl X ...from her small age up to the age of 18...whenever CSH could get on this girl she would just hit her, tortured her by cutting her hair to make her so unpresentable to her classmates. One time when she found that the girl had become a catholic and in order to please her present husband who was a strong pagan who beleieve in the " monkey king" religion , she beat the poor girl up in front of that new husband and threw away her precious rosary....Any occassion she came home to her mum's place, she would definitely beat the girl up...for reasons best known to herself....

So this girl X ws brought up with this fear of her own mum....what is Mother's love to her?? moreover this CSH showered all her mum love and concern on those 3 child that she has borne with this new husband of hers....Actually before she remarried this man , she had 3 more children 2 girls and a boy ...( father unknown??) . Like this girl X, they were all dumped at her own parents home after their birth. That boy passed away after a sickness at 6 years old...( is that a blessing to escape from all the sufferings in life....)

Girl X grew up in a very harsh way surviving on her grandpa meagre slary of RM 10 per day to feed so many unwanted children and his own family too, poor grandpa....who worked and toiled up to the last minute of his life and died from tuberculosis at the age of 60.

Girl X passed her Common Entrance Exam ( = UPSR now), the only person who felt happy in the world for girl X is her grandpa who gave her an apple for passing that common entrance exam. Later girl X passed her Sarawak Junior Examination ( =PMR now). The grandpa offered to buy that girl a bicycle for passing that exam. But girl X said no because she understood her grandpa difficulties and burden .

Every school holidays, to cut cost to feed all those unwanted children, grandpa would send them back to CSH. This period of time could also be called "torturing time" for these kids because there is no mother's love only beatings, scoldings all these except LOVE!!

Then girl X grew up passed her senior cambridge exam ( = SPM now) . This was after a very hard life in school at the teasings and snarings of her classmates who knew her family background well. But girl X strove on and succeed to be one of the selected few to pursue her Form 6 in a selected college. To help the girl to get to that place and also to pack the grandparents borrowed money from the neighbours to buy the air ticket , a suitcase and clothings for the girl to continue her studies. Thay did rang up her mum, like always , she would say..." Girls no need to study ...study for what??" and with that said and reasoned she sent NO MONEY....

Girl X still survived on whatever food that was given to her in the college without daring to ask a single cent from anyone ..be it her grandparents or anyone. Except on one occasion.. that is paying the exam fees for her Higher School Certificate ( = STPM now). She has nobody ..really nobody to turn to...then she turned to her step father ( the person she hated really) to ask for money for her exam fees. He did help out for that which the girl was grateful of.

Girl passed her Form 6. Then just before she went to work as a temporary teacher in another place . she told that good news to her grandpa and the first question her grandpa ask is: do you need to buy new pyjamas....girl said .."no need , grandpa...for she knew that her grandpa was in big financial difficulties at that time...moreover grandpa was very very sick at that time too.

Girl left her grandpa's house for another town to teach. On the third night, she dreamt about her grandpa and then the next morning she rang home and found out that her grandpa had passed way the day before. The girl could not even attend her beloved grandpa's funeral because she had no money to go back since she just started work.

Lucky for girl X , things are smooth sailing. She applied for teachers' training that year and she was accepted . she survived on RM 40 allowance every month given by the training college and only went home once a year. Later she worked and sending home RM 400 to her grandma as a way of saying a BIG THANK YOU to them for all their efforts in bringing her up even though her own salary was only RM 500 per month.

Then this CSH came into the scenario... she keep telling all relatives that that girl X very no use one...never gave her any money......now now...if not because of those marvellous grandparents will your girl that you abandoned, beaten etc etc ,,be what she is today?? Is that what people called " MOTHER'S LOVE??"

Then girl got married , has children and not once during the girl's pregnancy and child birth that CSH rang and asked and show conecrn ..again ..is this called " Mother's love??" Girl X hated Mother's day for it is really really meaningless to her

Now girl X treasured most is her own family..promising herself to Kingdom Come that she will never want to be a mother that she herself had....

Creativity

This souvenir is created for our principal who is going for retirement next week . My friend Josephine, an art teacher designs the Chinese character, Lucy provides the album and self made dried flowers collected fron New Zealand, I photoshop the photos and the rest provide their images here including the 久 命 instead of 长命 joke.

Nice and meaningful, right?

Scarry thoughts

Son#2 was on the way back from UK yesterday. He was flying on Emirates Airlines via Manchester- Dubai- Singapore- Kuala Lumpur.

I was checking the Dubai Airport flight information , Changi Airport flight information and also KLIA Airport informtion constantly to get his flight info online. Late last night when I checked Singapore Airport information, I found that his flight was delayed for a good 3 hours. I was telling hubby that it is very unusual for Emirates flight to be delayed. Hubby was also a bit worried after he heard the news that Iran was testing 6 of their missiles yesterday.

Worried and with much thoughts I went to sleep then woke up and checked the online info again at 4 am and found that Emirates had departed from Changi Airport at 2.11 am this morning instead of 22.55pm last night. From the info online , at least I know that he and his girl friend are safely on the flight home.

Only this morning when I rang him he told me why the flight was seriously delayed. And on further checking online I found this news:

Drunk man causes bomb scare on flight
By Alia Al Theeb, Staff Reporter
Last updated: July 09, 2008, 10:46

Dubai: A drunken British passenger triggered a bomb scare on an Emirates flight from Manchester to Dubai yesterday, Dubai airport sources told Gulf News.

The British male was "extremely drunk" and was taken into custody for questioning, said police. Airport sources said the passenger had an argument with a stewardess and told her that a bomb was hidden in the aircraft, which turned out to be hoax. The stewardess immediately informed the pilot who alerted the airport control tower, said the sources.

All passengers were evacuated from the plane upon landing and the aircraft was searched thoroughly, they said.

"Dubai airport officials alerted security officials who took all necessary precautionary measures. There was a bomb hoax and we took all safety measures to ensure that there was no untoward incident," a police officer at Dubai airport told Gulf News.

A passenger who sat next to the inebriated man said he was was unruly.

"I was on the flight sitting next to this passenger. He was initially just a rowdy drunk, not someone who would seem threatening in a pub but on a plane it is completely different. The staff were great and the security response was hugely reassuring," he wrote in to Gulf News.

An Emirates spokesperson said: "We can confirm there was an incident involving a passenger aboard EK20 from Manchester [yesterday] after it had landed safely in Dubai. The captain immediately alerted the Department of Civil Aviation who took charge of the situation. The passenger is now in police custody.

"The safety of the aircraft was at no time compromised, however, Emirates takes such incidents very seriously and will not tolerate disruptive passengers on board our aircraft."

A passenger on the Indian airlines, who witnessed a similar scare on his flight to Mumbai, said reactions were very different.

"The same thing happened a few days ago to the Indian airlines flight to Mumbai. But there was no evacuation or anything of the sort. Is this happening too often? And why was serious action taken only for the flight [from] England?" he said.

- Inputs by Emmanuelle Landais, Staff Reporter

As parents we are always worried for our children safety when they are on long haul flight..

Dinner @ Sweet Happiness

Last Saturday we had our regular get together gather at Sweet Happiness. Reason for the get together...very anxiously waiting to go to Bali but still such a long long time to go, so eat first while waiting to go to Bali..( super good reason to celebrate, yeah? )

Sweet Happpiness is a very new restaurant opposite Stutong Market and it is just a corner turn away after passing J&J Cafeteria.

What did we order?

1. Cold dish RM 60.
Not that delicious as compared to the Li Garden's




2.Herbal chicken in coconut..very yummy and cheap too ..only RM 10 per coconut






3.The restaurant signature dish - curry fish -RM 40. Served best with fragance rice.



4. Butter prawns - RM 45




5. Brocolli with abalone- RM 25




6. Honey Ribs with buns -RM 32





7. Signature Taufu - RM 26




8. Crabs fried with salted eggs - RM 52



Nice restaurant since we manage to book the sole room there. Best thing is
: - no corkage charge for we brought some Kwai Fei Lychee wine and Bailey's Irish Cream along

- no service tax

All in all we only pay RM 25 per person for that nice dinner.

Next on our mind ...where to eat for the next dinner before our September trip to Bali........

My confession

Bless me Father for I have sinned. My sin is..... I am stealing internet connection from my neighbourhood at the moment. I have preferred not to steal but the lightning coming striking again this afternoon. ( it struck last year ) If you don't believe me, then read this .

It is not that I like to steal other's connection. This was because I only found that the lightning struck when I came back from work at 7 pm, By then my beloved technician cannot come to fix my internet. Without internet it means that I cannot check my email. cannot update my blog, my sharescore will drop because I didn't log onto their website and the BIGGEST cannot is...I cannot talk to my son#2 on MSN.

Another thing hor,,God why the lightning struck again hor..and this time it is exactly like last time, wireless D-link gone, Satellite TV gone again..Next time can ask the lightning to make a detour or not????

I promise that I will not steal if no lightning strike my wireless D-link and my modem ,ok ? God? Are you still there ...helllllllloooooooooo...??

Why I choose to retire at 56 ?

From what I gathered from friends and relatives , I came to know that very few teachers opted for 56. Most of them opted for 58. Just before signing the forms, my sister-in-law rang to ask what age me and my husband opted for, I told her 56 and she was undecided to opt for 56 or 58 since she is older than me. Two days later I heard that she too opted for 58 since most of her colleagues opted for 58 so she followed too.



So I and husband are one of the few who opted for 56. I know you are thinking why I choose 56 instead of earning governemnt $$ for another 2 years. To tell the truth sometimes I just feel very tired not with the students or the teaching ( I like and love teaching and teaching is my vocation), I am really tired with the system.

As form teacher, every beginning of the year we MUST key in the whole class info which includes, Name, IC, home address, Tel.( home and mobile) number of father and mother , father and mother occupation, name of father and mother employers , address of father and mother's employer, salary of father and mother, names of all the siblings, all the assistance the siblings received, age , school and class of siblings plus the student involvements in clubs , uniform bodies and games . This is for each and everyone of our student in our class....

Now we need to key in the same info for SMS, SMM and BMM.

Keying in SMS ( school management system) we all don't mind cos it is very good and useful. This is where we print out class list , report cards , time table, students particulars whenever required and it is undeniably a very good system.


Now for SMM ( Sistem Maklumat Murid) which is required by the Education Department we still do not complain and key in patiently all the "low so" particulars there despite of very user unfriendly system where after keying in we need to "export" into a diskette( who on earth still uses diskette???) And many of us after keying in the info for the whole night found that the info is no where to be found when we reopen the file, isn't that frustrating????
But we are told that the Department is basing on what we key in to give assistance to students like free uniform, scholarships, free tuition etc etc . So for the students' sake we painfully trying to key in as accurate as we can from all the incomplete forms that we got back from the students.



The worst one is BMM ( Borang Maklumat Murid) . It comes together with SMM but all the data are not transferable within the system except for the names of student and IC number. Hence we as teachers have to key in from the very beginning all the particulars from A to Z all over again......can die lar like this....and worst thing is, this BMM is not used at all ...but we still need to key in....ALAMAK...

Beside all these we still have TOV ( Take off value ) ETR ( ???) analysis to do for every examination....and we have 3 examinations a year...

This is the main reason I opted for 56 without a second thought....even though I know that by 56 I will only have half of my basic pay left if I still live to that age.

Live to eat

July is the month where we live to eat. I am now fully booked for 3 consecutive weekends...booked for nothing else but makan makan makan

First makan - June ( name not month), our School Guru Cemerlang gave us a treat at Li Garden...nice food and company that night.



cold dish:



Li Garden famous Peking Duck skin



Pancakes for the duck skin



This is the way to eat the duck skin


Each of us are served this dish ( roasted pork ribs) individually:


How on earth can a fried fish looks like this?


Mixed veggies , a must have to remind us of balanced diet so that we will not be too guilty being a carnivorous:


Even the fruits are so nicely arranged :

This coming Saturday another get together dinner at Sweet Happiness @ Stutong

Next Saturday - farewell dinner @ Kuching Park Hotel, for our principal who will be retiring

Hence we LIVE TO EAT

How life has changed...

While in Labuan , I was talking to my late auntie's son and daughters and we were sharing our childhood memories since we all lived and grew up together in my maternal grandma's house. Back then my grandfather was the only sole bread winner in the family working as a cook at that restaurant for RM 10 per day. That amount was simply not enough to support us as my grandma needs her daily Guinness Stout which costs RM 2 back then and my Grandpa smoked too.

Hence as young as 13 , 14 years old we all worked to support the family .. What was our work..to peel off the shell of shrimps in one of the Prawn factory in Sarikei. The after peeled shrimps were weighed and and for every kilo we were paid for a mere 3 sen . So if for an afternoon we could peel 20 kilos that would be 60 sen. The atmosphere that we worked was stuffy, smelly and very crowded with all the housewives who were there to look for part time jobs like us. During the school day we worked in the afternoon after school. Then for holiday and weekends we worked the whole day. I remembered once on my way walking home from the factory, I met a whole group of my richer and more well off classmates, I just didn't dare to talk to them cos my clothings smelled of all those shrimps and I tell it is really really smelly ...I remember once I even fainted in the prawn factory because it was too stuffy there.

Whatever we earned we didn't keep a single sen, we gave all the money to our grandpa to help in the family

Life has indeed changed....