lyanne batik - the good wife

she must be going bonkers, several times she has urged me to get a job. my, is she blind: blind and stupid, a very potent combination, can't she see that i can hardly write???. she would be better off bringing me to see bankers, where i can try to persuade the bank to give us a loan. the kuantan job has really panicked her, when will she start thinking about going back to chemor, where she belongs among the kampung bumpkins???

my stroke recovery

today's walking exercise went as planned and then when i sat down on my sofa for my break my affected arm arm and leg started to twitch, today's twitching was more often than before, each still lasted only a few seconds but alhamdulillah this went on for around 1 hour. could this be the beginning of better things to come???

lyanne marketing- brother-in-law

i had a very fruitful discussion with my brother-in-law, azlan, re my efforts in trying to get lyanne marketing off the ground. i pray and doa that he will be agreeable as his current position, past experiences and contacts would be a perfect fit to my grand plan. can't help but wonder that perhaps this is the goodness that alah has in store for me, syukur alhamdulillah, i now await anxiously for his decision, ya allah, please help me here.

hari raya haji

yesterday was hari raya haji, our junior annual festival but one with massive significance, so for the first time in two months i had a break from my walking exercise. truth betold, i missed it and today's walking exercise was another booster.hari raya haji commences with a small family breakfast, then i went with the boys to the mosque for the requisite prayers, here, the imam went a bit over board, the khutbah went on for over 1 and a half hour, can't blame him though, the script was written by the state religious body, so his job was just to read it out, easykan. we did not wait back for the korban or slaughter because we have seen it all before, but went home to pick up the ladies and go to visit graves of our elderly. opt out from going to the bukit kiara graveyard, where my father-in-law was buried as by my reckoning it is going to be busy there, it being the premier muslim graveyard in the klang valley. went to the nearby graveyard of my recently departed mother-in-law, first time i am going there and upon sight of her grave , i rejoiced as inshaallah, there is very little chance of me being buried next to her as the adjoining plots are already occupied. one of my greatest fear has subsided, inshaallah, imagine being terrorised by her even after death, no don't, it's frightening.

lyanne batik - the good wife

she is now having the jitters, in the past 3 years that i have observed her managing the batik business, i must salute her for her sense of arti.e. she surely knows what sort of design that would be acceptable and purchased by people, but she is definitely a non-starter in the exploitation of opportunities. her brand of management was just to sit back and expect the opportunities to materialise. perhaps it's good as that way it's less stressful, the downside is that when there is a problem, however slight, there's nothing left in the form of contingency, so it's alright if you are married to or your father is a millionaire. it sounds like the typical kampung malay businessperson, kais pagi makan pagi, it's ok if the kais is enough but most of the time it's not, thus the endless whining and berleter., letihlah!!!. what to do??? one has to lie on the bed that one makes and quietly plan an exit strategy, inshaallah there is always god, so things will not remain static, alter pain, there is relief is god's intonation in the koran, pray that it will be soon.

prestroke- my working life - eniwetok

aspatra group consists of around 100 companies. unfortunately, most were just hobbies for leo and were bleeding money. only later did i find out that's why he took or considered all that bank bumiputra money his. my division, under serply, was one of the very few making money. i must say that don did very easily establish contacts among the movers and shakers in the oil/gas industry and his contacts were ultimately loyal to him, helping out more than necessary. the best deal was the eniwetok deal whereby leo is a shareholder in an oil exploration rig, the first by a malaysian and serply was just in the right place to provide manpower and logistics to the eniwetok operations. it was a very lucrative contracr bearing in mind that the eniwetok at that time had the highest charter rate in malaysia from carigali, at around usd67000/- per day. leo's partner was the famous atwood firm out of houston, usa, a good friend of george bush senior i was told later. that was my first dealings with american businessman, my weren't they brash and their favourite tactic is fishing and the exploitation of it thereafter, that's what henry kissinger was famous for. not exactly my kind of businessman, mind you.

my stroke recovery

at first today i planned to take a break as my whole body was aching badly. nevertheless i proceeded to slog on and alhamdulillah everything went ok except a slight wobbling after the sitting room, i sat down and managed to instantly get up, did my 15 rounds, weeding, etc and back in the room by 11 a.m. most likely i will take a break tomorrow due to the hari raya haji, must go for prayers by 8a.m., another 659 days more , inshaallah

lyanne batik - the good wife

amidst all the bad news in the world financial business, my good wife, puan BS, is getting the jitters and her mind is swirling with numerous options of action to take. i find it utterly stupid and considered her actions as that urge to show that she is responsible, berlakon lagi-lah my reaction to that, which i very carefully concealed within myself, is that if like that don't do business in the first place. a businessman must be able to ride along during good times and cower quietly during bad times. after bad times, surely there will be good times as invoked several times in the koran, so the thing to do is plan on how to ride through the bad time and prepare for the good time that will surely come as morning come after night. the thing is to plan. My opinion is that surely the world trade wouldn't just come crashing to zero, there will still be trading activities ans the best and most prepared will prevail.the billions that the various governments are preparing to dump into the economy will surely have it's trickle effect. the thing is to plan so that when it eventually trickle down to your level, you are ready to cash-in.

my walking exercise

nothing abnormal today, only that i started around5 minutes late, everything went as planned , and i was back in the room early, by 11a.m.,no more twitching on the leg but several on the arm, could it be that dr halili will be proven wrong, inshaallah, the good doctor very quickly and demoralisingly said that i will never regain use of my left hand. he is supposedly a good doctor, am eager to prove him wrong, god is almighty and if he deems that my left hand will heal, it will,it's not for a doctor to give a patient no hope, at the least it is a doctor's duty to provide clear and professional diagnosis,in my opinion, so long as we are alive, there is always hope.

prestroke- my working life

working for leo in the aspatra group was certainly intoxicating, the man himself has some strange quirks eg :-
1. he had around 4 to 5 secretaries in his outer office and rumours abound that each had been his mistress at one time or another or still is. the favourites seem to be audrey and daisy.
2. the man is a prodigious note-taker, everytime you have a meeting with him, he will take notes on this yellow A-4 paper pad which have a carbon copy and one of the secretaries would proceed to file it diligently at the end of each meeting.
3. he arrives and leaves with bodyguards of indian descent, most of the times in his red mercedes and in one of his other numerous vehicles.
4. he has several condos in wisma stephens and a bungalow in jalan pinang for his private trysts and secret meetings. we , of course, had access to themw henever they are free and of course i had my fair share of rendezvous in them.my favourite being the bungalow in jalan pinang.

5. he has his open house on new year day and not any one of the religious festival days.
6. there were many other instances and i will record them later whenever memory serves me.
6. the most memorable moment in working for him was when we were once in singapore's orchard road and passed a building and he nonchalantly said to me that he is going to buy that building, sure enough, next i heard , he had already bought it.

i reported to an ancient british relic who tries very hard to pass-off as a gentleman, don mclellan. he was a nice man although outdated, had a young chinese wife and whose ex-wife was maria musa's best friend, tun musa hitam ex-wife

fatefully, he was the one who introduced me to the lake club,scene of my destruction over a period of more than 20 years.

my stroke recovery

today, i started the walking theraphy 5 mins early, everything went smoothly, in fact i pressed down on my foot as hard as possible and walked as fast as is permissible, so much so that by now, 3p.m. my left hip is still badly aching, then i had a very busy morning, going to the pasar borong to purchase the 13 plastic containers to start the indigo cake production, each of the 13 by a variant of either medium, time or catalyst. then adnan came around at 12.30 and a fruitful discussion was had. i am encouraged that he is particularly enthusiastic about my proposal to tackle the question of traffic to our place, i.e. a batik painting competition anchored with children as the base, something similar to akademi fantasia. i must follow -up on this and not give-up . am extremely looking forward to my session with pak miz this saturday.

prestroke- my working life (3)

en-route back to malaysia, i detoured to cardiff, mainly to tie-up a loose- end, i had dinner with charlotte thomas, my flame in cardiff, mainly the dinner was to say goodbye for the last time, she came in her great black dress that we bought together in cardiff,everything was amicable, things couldn't work between us because of the various social schasm, am i relief when she told me that she had move on, phew!!!. back in malaysia, i was approached by a headhunter, MS, SUPPOSEDLY TO WORK FOR A RICH MAN IN THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY, i attended the interview in wisma stephens and for the first time met mr lorrain esme osman(leo), i then submitted my resignation in mmc and joined mr leo, the offer was too good, a salary jump of rm2,ooo/-per month plus a saab turbo car thrown-in plus other perks, travelling, petrol, entertainment and others. jadi-apa nak fikir, i jumped in with both eyes closed and left 2 years later after having tasted the various intoxicants then available in kl to the high-flier businessman, emerged although unscathed but had to carry a baggage for years,i.e. being a guarantor to one of leo's deals, in ccb. man, this leo has loans left,right and center, it was so easy for him, being a priominent banker himself. he finally attained fame in later life as the longest remand prisoner ever in the british legal system and i managed to escape from the jaws of bankruptcy many years later, probably in 1999 if i remember correctly.

prestroke- my working life

i only lasted i month in petronas after which i hastily joined the fledgling malaysia mining corpn(mmc), a company formed to consolidate our tin mining industry that were already malaysianised, with offices in jalan tangsi right opposite bank rakyat's hq. i was now employed as an engineer, yeah no more trainee and also my salary increased by around rm500/-. my job was very very simple. mmc had an agreement with the flour corporation of the usa to enter the oil and gas design engineering business and had employed around 3o draughtsman from various industries, flour sent over a designer, i.e. a glorified draughtsman, and my job was to receive instructions from him and then convey his teachings to the local draughtsman, thats how easy it was. working in mmc hq at that time had several perks, cheap luncheon in mmc's own cafeteria, a corporate american express card and chauffeured mercedes limousine wherever we want to go for meetings, after several months, i was sent to houston to be attached at fluor's office there for the trengganu crude oil terminal project. i went there with siraj, now the ceo of alam flora, we were there for around 3 months. my most memorable experience in houston was attending the OTC at the houston's astrodome, this being my first conference, i was naturally overawed, man many of the participants / visitors came with their own helicopter. other than this there was nothing else memorable, of course i experienced the american penchant for lap dancing, not impressed, better to read a magazine, strangely, for me anyway, i never managed to hookup with any american ladies, something that is true till today.no regrets there, another piece of meat, malaysians are best.

my stroke recovery

my efforts to recover as posted here must sound boring to many compared to the news on the carnage in mumbai, defiance in bangkok, excitement of obama's ruling team , but i am sure it's more interesting that the pitiful outpourings from our royalty who wants their immunity back, if anything this was one of the best legacy of mahathir, the rulers do not deserved any immunity, where have they been, oops, i know, just simply enriching themselves. nevertheless, my walking exercise today went like clockwork, at one stage i felt i could reasonably walk, am even more convinced that most of the deficits was in the mind and of course ALLAH's help is paramount. another 664 days to go, inshaallah, i should now continually remind myself that i can walk, albeit slowly,bit by bit i will reach there, i now look forward to the theraphy with pak miz , which is also a major contributing factor in my improvement, alhamdulillah