Malaysia 2008

I had just returned from a training in Malaysia. This time I stayed at the Equatorial Hotel. It's quite an old hotel comparing to the newer ones around. It's right on the Jalan Sultan Ismail road (actually Jalan means the road itself), and just about 5 minutes walk to Lot10 and Sunkaiwan shopping area.

I was there for two nights. The first of my night, I just took a walk to find some groceries for my late arrival snack. I realized that the hotel was situated next to the KL's red light street. Yeb, many of the transvestite just go out hunting on the street, yelling at the passer by, especially the foreigners. Luckily, I look like a native Malaysian, or I'm not their type. They didn't pay much attention to me. Anyhow, it scared me.

The second evening after the training, I decided to take a walk toward the Lot10 department store. it was much nicer. I just found a new shopping center that was not there when I was in KL last year. Too bad, I did not notice the name. It is right after Lot10. It is a big, new, and beautiful establishment. There are many brand mane shops all over. Of course, it didn't draw any money out of my pocket. I just went for a dinner there.

I didn't take any picture at all this time. It was a very short two-day training trip. On the last day, I have to rush to the airport for to catch my flight. As you may know, the airport is somewhat an hour drive and you'll never know what the evening traffic would be like to get to the nearest highway. I made it comfortably two hours before the flight. I noticed a slight change at the airport. There are more shops. Some old one dissappear. More of the brand name stuffs. I went looking for the bookshop. It was right at the same old place, but took me almost an jour to find it.

That was a brief trip of me during the past weekend. I hope to come back to Malaysia again for another training, but may not be this year.

Suan Nok Chan-The final episode

As mentioned in the last Suan Nok Chan, this week, we will finised things off by getting everything in place. We went to Jatujak Flea Market agin on Sunday to buy additional stuffs. We bought a few more of the plants. We also bought the wooden fence to mark the edge line for the swing-out door, and also other necessary tools like trimming scissor for the leaves trimming.

We also re-wired the fountain so that the operation of it can be controlled by an on-off switch. Of course safety comes first. Before doing works with electrical parts, we cut off the main circuit before doing any work. I also bought the water-resistant connection box as all the wiring connection will be reside in the wet area. The box was sealed. The entrance and exit of the wire are also sealed with Silicone. The system is then hooked up to a switch. Now the turing on and off of the fountain is done by the switch. It really make my garden free from busy wire and look a bit nicer.

My son planted the newly bought plants to the garden. Some of them are flowers some of them are leave plants. We both help one another to set up the fence line to mark the edge of the door path. So everytime we open the door to access to the garden, we won't be interfered with the loose rock anymore.

Finally my son named the garden, "Sukhothai". It means "hapiness heart". We had the sign made and we put up a little ceremony of hanging the sign. Now our little garden of hapiness heart is finished.

Suan Nok Chan

Over the weekend, My wife, my son, and I decided to use our little space on the balcony to be useful. We decided to make our own skytop garden.

The balcony is on the 3rd floor just under the roof of our house. We have the area of roughly 2.20 x 1.80 m. with swing out door and the shelf for the air-cond. compressors. It's not really big but it was used for nothing.

We decided to go to Jatuchak Park, a wellknown weekend flee market that has everything to be sold, esp. pets and plants. With very little idea on how our garden would look, we get help from the plant seller there. We stop at a little shop that has many beautiful plants. We went to see the owner of the shop and told her what we wih to do with our little space. She was so reluctant to help at the first place as the space is too small for a professional work on gardening design. But finally after some explaination of what we expected, she decided to help selecting the suitable plants, but we still have to buy the extra sundries for the garden ourselves.

We then went to another shop to buy the fountain jar with water spring, and another shop for the wooden fence and patio path. Next day, the lady at the plant shop delivered all the plants as she described. She then help arranging to put all the plants in place.

We used all the indoor plants that have the good meaning by their names. "Chon Ngern" (Silver Spoon) and "Chon Thong" (Golden Spoon) are the two main big plants in the area, trimmed the edge by "Bhuda Flower" and small "Phillipino Bamboo". Our garden turned out like the one in the picture on the left. Now our house is much more beautiful.