Day 7 : Fussa, Akishima Tokyo with The Iwamotos

On our itinerary we planned to have this 2 days of our stay to spend with the Iwamoto's family since these were the only 2 days everyone was off from work. My sister's ,Wendy Iwamoto, has a beautiful family with a super nice husband,Hiroyuki Iwamoto and 2 wonderful kids,Joshua and Airin. This is indeed a real good example of God's family and a very blessed and happy family.

We woke up to a sumptuous breakfast prepared by Wendy even though she kept saying it was a light breakfast since she planned to bring us to Moritown in the afternoon to have buffet lunch at

 Grand China Restaurant.

Quiche made by Wendy Iwamoto from organic spinach sent by her "best mother-in -law in the universe" for our consumption which includes home grown rice, organic soya beans, organic cabbage, organic huge white carrots, organic tomatoes, organic water melons, organic ferns,organic plums, organic Shiso  : 紫蘇 which will guarantee long life.

"どうもありがとうございます." Doumo arigatou gozaimasu to Mrs Senior Iwamoto for your wonderful  wonderful food.

Quiche baked with much love from Wendy:

Yummy yummy  scones baked from the grinded organic beans after extracting the

soya bean milk

organic plums

                                    shiso 紫蘇

After breakfast, Wendy brought us to a nearby Fussa No. 1 High School

 ( within walking distance)to watch their school sports day. 

Japanese students are super disciplined and very well organised during their sports day.

They all sat down neatly and orderly and waited for their events. After running for their 

events , they returned orderly to their seats. 

 See how orderly they were seated, waiting for their turn to run.

 Mind you, they are big grown up boys and not small kids , if you think they were

by looking at the photo above.

 Love those head bands , simple, practical and easy way to distinguish each other rather

than spending a fortune buying coloured T shirts.

This is what we Malaysians schools  need to learn from the Japanese. During

the Sports Day, parents would bring uniforms that their children cannot wear anymore to

the school and give away free to other parents whose children can wear them. Brilliant

idea - real caring and sharing.

Another thing that I noticed was the Headmaster's phone number was put  at several

places near the school gates so that parents can call him / her easily. As compared to

our school here, headmaster's phone number is one of the best kept top secret.

Okay, let's forget about that best kept secret and let's go to Moritown for food, glorious

food.

Super nice and heavy - eat all you can lunch at Grand China@ : adults ¥1,385 and

children ¥860. Children under three eat free.

 Ramen:

                               Delicious beef with asparagus: special dish of the day

 Those are super creamy pumpkins fried with asparagus, yum yum

 I look bigger in size after so much nice food......

 Decor inside Grand China:

 Pui yer tea after meal:

The only photo we took with all the four Iwamotos together:

After a great day, what is better than to sing praises to God and lift His name 

on high!!

Recover deleted photos and video on your memory card

How do you feel if you accidentally deleted all your holiday photos? sad/ disappointed/ lost/ angry?

I was quite down last two days because when I deleted one of the photos on my camera I wrongly deleted all the photos on my holiday in Taiwan since before deleting I put all the photos in one folder so when I deleted one, I deleted all...moreover all those photos are taken by my husband...scary hor .

At first I didn't dare to tell him. I tried all ways and means while on the tour bus but I just couldn't get his photos and his video back. so when he asked to take his camera to see his video , I told him innocently that I have accidentally deleted all his photos and videos........

When I came back home and after a good rest, the first thing is ----I goggled search on how to recover deleted file on memory card. I found this page: I tried free smart recovery 4.5 and it took me around 3 hours to get that 96 photos in my folder but at the end of that 3 hours, I still cannot view my deleted photos and videos.

I tried and googled search again and and found this page .


As for the model name it is the found on the first line at the back of the memory stick ( MS-MT2G) and the serial number is the second number of the three rows of number shown here (C903L5L) . After that , answer the questions asked and download the software and then connect your memory card to the PC either via camera or card reader and tata.....after 7 minutes I got all my deleted photos and video back ...so happy now!!!

The best thing is everything is FREE...this is the best Sony e-support I have encountered.

Oh....those heavy bags....

Last week or so I saw Michael, one of my students carrying such a heavy school bag which made his young and tender backbone bent. I was thinking to myself, oh my God, if he carry on to carry that heavy bag till Fifth form then what will happen to his posture? Usually for the academically better classes, the students will bring all the necessary books of the day to school as compared to the weaker class that will bring the bare minimum to school.

For a long time already, schools has been talking about building lockers in school for the students to put their books. Our school did try out a pioneer project where students who are interested can rent the lockers from the school authority, but the project failed after a while because the lockers are broken into and also the students are too lazy to walk up to the top floor to keep their books there since for security reasons lockers has to be placed in the less accessible part of the schools , that is at the top floor to prevent vandalism.

Talking about locker, I surfed and found that are a wide variety of school lockers and also even gym lockers available online . we just need to choose the lockers, order, paid and they will shipthe lockers to us. Life indeed is becoming easier and easier.

Retirement plan

Just 3 more years to retirement, it is time for me to plan for my retirement. Home tuition is good income but we will be very tied down with our life and our holidays trips too...meaning that we cannot get those cheaper off season holidays but instead need to join the crowds during the school holidays since only during school holidays there will be no more home tuition.

Hence we are planning maybe to set up online tutoring like this one which offers science homework help, helping students to balance equations in chemistry which is really difficult for some, and also ionic compounds in chemistry.

With online tutoring, we can mark and tutor our students anywhere, anytime and at any place where there is internet connection. With that our work routine will be more flexible and the students can also learn at their own pace and time. Online tutoring is really a good field to venture into after my retirement.

Translation from English to Chinese

Being English educated, I always have problem to translate from English to Chinese. That day while I was watching a Chinese drama series, my niece MSN-ed me and asked me what I was doing, I told her I was watching a Chinese drama series and when she asked me the title I just simply cannot tell off hand to her since my command of han- yu- piyin is really poor. I am really at a loss of how to tell her the title of that drama show in Chinese over MSN because when I told her from direct translation, she will also not understand what do I mean by it because in English it is "walk west mouth" well as in Chinese it is actually "走西口"

Hence I always have to resort to Internet to help me to do translation services. One of the website is World Lingo, Goggle Translate which are free to use but it can only translate phrases. When we want to translation service like translate an article then we need to use online translation services like Translia which provides very professional translation services and they can translate nearly all the languages spoken on planet earth. Check out their language translation services

Football World Cup 2010

Is that an octopus on top of Spain's flag?

Sony or Sony!!!!

I send back my Sony DSC -T300 for repair again!! It vibrated non stop when I reached Hong Kong on the 1st June 2010. With my eyes looking at the beautiful scenery but I just can't captured it on my screen. This has happen before before my warranty expired last year. They just lubricated the lens when I send back for repair last year. After coming back from Hong Kong I emailed Sony Customer service with all my camera model number and particulars but up to today (after 2 weeks) I still do not have a single reply from them......

I search the internet and found that T300 do have a vibrating problem. I brought it to one of the shop in Miri Bintang Mall and the Sony man told me that it can be fixed by bringing it to the Sony Service centre in Piasau and the friendly man told me that it will not cost me much even though the warranty has expired. Hearing him saying that, I felt assured and happy, at least my expensive camera can be fixed .

Since I need to be back to Kuching I thought that I can have it done in Kuching since Kuching is the capital city of Sarawak so service should be better. I brought the camera to Kuching Sony authorised Service centre( the only one in Kuching) and the lady at the centre told me that they can only lubricate it like what they have done last year. I told her that over the internet they say something is wrong with the manufacturing just like Sony DSC T20 where now Sony offers free extended repair till 2011.

Looks like whatever I told them are falling on deaf or is it dead ears!! This morning I got a call from the service centre telling me that my camera is ready...I was thinking arrrh...so fast??
True enough when I collected the camera , the Sony technician ( a man) who is not so friendly told me that in Kuching they cannot do anything except lubricate the lens and that costs me RM 50 with warranty of 3 months. When I told him what I read on the internet about vibrating Sony DSC T300, he told me he is not an engineer!!!Doesn't Sony send their technician for courses??

He asked me to test the camera but how to test? For the vibrating problem will only come when you go travelling and taking photos continously then it will start to vibrate non stop ( just like the vibration in the mobile phone). My son told me I have bought a vibrator instead of a camera.

I really regret for buying this Sony DSC T300 ( for RM 1400). This vibrating problem has been happening so many times already on my trip abroad!! Now even if I want to change camera , I am stuck with 16 Gig memory card and one spare battery for that vibrating camera for I will never ever buy any more Sony camera in this life!! Poor customer service is one reason, lousy camera is another reason and slow to admit their fault is another reason!!

Going down memory lanes....

I was back in Tanjong Lobang College, Miri aka Kolej Tun Hj Bujang Miri last weekend after leaving the place in 1977 that was 33 years ago.

I attended my Form 6 in this college. Life was hard...very hard then. No allowance from home or from anybody, surviving on the hostel food where they cooked super hard rice for us then but they do gave out biscuits and tea at night as nightcap.

What a great diffrence the College has become after 33 years! The nice row of trees is still there but not as many trees as years back. I asked the security guard about the famous cliff (where I and my friends always go to to shout to release tensions after studying for hours and hours) is gone.

I still remember when I was there, during weekend we always climbed down the cliff to go to a beach where there was a Japanese warship which can be seen at low tide. But everytime we went there we had to be back before the tide rises or else we would be stranded. Sometimes we also go the other way to enjoy Luak Bay which is now private property.

This place has really changed and so have I !!

Online tuition anyone?

Nowadays I observe that parents are sending their kids for many tuition be it science, Mathematics , English or Bahasa Malaysia. And many parents are complaining that sending and picking the kids up are big problem especially when both parents are working. some of them are luckier to have their grandparents to help up in transporting and picking the kids from the tuition centres.

Because of this many tuition centres are going online. They have online tutors offering free online tutoring. I noticed that they also offer online Maths tutor for maths help and maths problem solver.

Even though they are well covered academically but I still personally think that- personal touch of Maths tutors are very important . Interaction with the Maths tutor online is very important to help the kids to improve their Mathematics .The children must also be very disciplined if they are to take Maths tuition online . Anyway this is good food for thought for our new generation kids.

Whys?

Why is career life getting more and more stressful?

Why people in higher authority are not thinking about others while making decisions?

Why are there so many changes , moreover changes that are so very unproductive?

Why is there more and more paper work, key in the same data here and there, over and over again?

Remember this wise sayings by my most respected Master Cheng Yen

- Be careful and mindful when dealing with people, but do not be narrow minded.

-Be empathic, be considerate of others while making changes so that they will be touched and think of you instead.

- While you make changes, you are only saving yourself, but when you can influence others , then only you are saving others

This is my most recent philosophy on my surroundings and outlook towards my career. This will also be my philosophy till the day I retire.




so many changes ....let's see ,,,one year 198 school days.....198X4 days only left...ok lar can survive up to then...

Smiley face in the sky

Just half an hour ago I got a phone call from my friend Mr Tan CJ asking me to go outside to look at the sky outside and I saw this :

and it is because of this:


WOW what a sight to behold....

Gunung Serapi

I just don't know why I love this mountain view so I can't help to pull my car to the road side to take this photo at 6.30 am . Nice hor the mountain view?

Another day another view...This time the whole mountain looks like it is floating in the air...so beautiful....wanted to take with my Sony camera but too bad it ran out of battery so I am forced to take with my handphone camera 3.2 megapixel only...cos if I did not take then, I will have no more chnace to take this 6.30 am view since this is the last day I will be driving so early to the examination centre. The last paper for my centre will be on Thursday starting at 11.40 am.



Okay, just 2 more days before my official holiday begins....and no need for me to be kept in this room anymore and looking at the same view and the same people for 8 to 10 continous hours every day..



I am telling my new found friends who are supervising with me that for the next 2 or 3 weeks , whenever I hear a knock or I see somebody putting up his/her hand ...I will automatically hand him /her writing paper after being programmed to do that for 8- 10 hours a day since 11th November!!!