Support Fully The Boomgate Project In Housing Estates

Crime rates have been rising every day and proactive residents of the area are going all out to ensure that their neighbourhood is safe to stay. Many have remarked that “ We dare not even go for a walk in our neighbourhood after dinner”. Imagine, we have to be all cooped up in our houses all the time, manually locking our electronic gate from inside at night, letting the radios play the whole day long and many other means to stay safe in our own houses. Why has security issue become our problem nowadays? Where are all the police?

If I take a walk in my housing estate in Damansara Jaya at anytime of the day, I could hardly see any police patrolling the area. There are so many police reports being made for cars stolen from inside the locked houses, snatch thieves and house break-ins during the day and night. We residents have played our roles as responsible citizens to lock our houses and what steps have the police taken?Lately, in many housing estates, the residents have initiated to put up boom-gates to gate their neighbourhood as the solution to security problems .Such initiatives are highly praised but it can only be launched when 85% of the residents have agreed.Also, the price to pay by each household would be greatly reduced if everyone participates in financing it. Let us make sure our full support is given to this group of residents who care and is doing a noble job to make sure we feel safe in our own neighbourhood as soon as possible!

Heed these SMS mannerism!

In this digital era, manners should still be encouraged even when one is so busily engrossed in one’s tight schedules.It’s like one of those examples of good daily practices as quoted by my friend who said “ even though I am busy, I must still have time for friends ”. It really surprises me these days that mobile phone users lack some basic manners when handling sms messages.

What then are these bad practices? Very often we encounter incidences like

· No acknowledgement of messages received

· No reply to messages whether it’s a yes or no, especially so when the answer is ‘no’

This implies that there is the breeding of the so called lackadaisical attitude which may lead to very serious consequences . Why is it so difficult to just key in the two works like ‘ ok, thanks ’ ?

Etems should go on !

Since the year 2003, English has been the medium of instruction for the teaching of Science And Mathematics in our Malaysian schools. So much effort and money have been spent to give this winning edge to our students to compete on the world platform. Given more exposure, our students are of course better in terms of delivering the English Language and this year’s UPSR results should not be the determining factor for doing away with English as the medium of instruction.The success of the implementation is not only measured by means of academic results!

I can still remember the plentiful Etems ( English for the Teaching of Mathematics and Sciences ) courses which were conducted nationwide, computer competency courses to create multimedia teaching resource materials, all the computer hardwares to facilitate fun learning and printed and electronic modular aids to facilitate the teaching of these two-six subjects in English. All these are extra effort put up collectively by the educationists to achieve the common goals for our children. How can we just throw everything away to waste when we shift the medium back to Bahasa?

The other justification is the world is getting very competitive and most references for the Science and Mathematics fields are in English. How can our children perform well globally when they have not mastered the international language? Added to this, all the internet resources are in English and in this fast changing world many other printed materials are now going online via this electronic medium. Many ideal competitions and projects are posted in English in the internet to train our young children to be innovative and creative.

The real problem to the issue is that most people are resistant to change, the authority entertains public viewpoints and the delivery system wants an easy way out. Why can’t we just leave educational matters to the expert educationists? The implementation of this medium of instruction is not carried overnight but instead a lot of time and money is given to it.

Zooming down to the problems , the teachers and education officers must play a more committed role. The tagline for a good solution should be analyse-discuss-innovate-coach. In this direction, action researches should be carried out by every school at school level to overcome the problems encountered in the apects of students studying and the teachers teaching. There is no one solution for all schools .Thus such studies are important to track down each school’s immediate problems. The monitoring of the programmes proposed is also important because our system usually carries out programmes and activities which are not monitored for evaluation of the effort made. In short, we must not do the same things day in day out.

To be with nature with mum

Last week, I took time off to drive mum to visit Laman 2008 at the Perdana Lake Gardens.This landscape and gardens exhibition is around every two years and this year it was held in our scenic gardens in Kuala lumpur.
When we arrived, being a local, I did not seem to be welcomed bcos the car park at the entrance was so fulled.After a few times patrolling the area, I eventually found a car park in front of the Kuala Lumpur Open Birds' Park. Mum and I got down to walk up the steps to see the Orchid Garden opposite.
The blooms were so beautiful and there was really no regrets to be there! They have doubled up the number of species of orchids in the garden with the expo on. I just could not resist taking the beautiful pictures of each and every specie of the orchids and the counter of my camera showed a total of 150 pictures taken.It is so nice to be walking around this garden with my mum during my retirement days. I really felt so thankful that we both had grabbed this opportunity to be with nature even though we live in the city.My mum is very independent and she moves around either alone or with friends very often. I treasure the times I have outings with her bcos we both share the same liking for plants and flowers.

The Orchid Garden is such a serene place for us to visit whenever we feel like to be close to nature. Besides us, we saw some students with their teachers, some photographers getting the best shots of the rare orchids and some foreign visitors. When mum took a shot of me in front of the abundance orchids, one of the students asked permission from my mum to take a shot of my mum with his camera! I was so surprised for my mum to be asked for such a pose. I suppose that he must have admired her to be so passionate with flowers bcos the radiance on her face always show this quality of her.She is very active and passionate with plants for her age!

From the exhibits, we moved on to buy some orchid plants. These stalls are permanent stores in the garden and they are opened for business everyday.After my first round of survey of the three shops, I realised that orchids are sold here at very reasonable prices.The usual dendrodiums cost about RM10-15 for a pot whereas the phalentrophis are sold at RM35 a pot or RM100 for 3 pots. My hands were full with these orchids as we moved to my car to park the orchids.

Since we were in the site for the exhibition, I decided to get a convenient ride on the shuttle service coaches which is a free service for visitors to move around freely. Both of us hopped into one and there we were on the way to the entrance of Laman 2008! The round-about in front was so beautifully decorated with bonsai and orchids. I moved on to the ticket booth to purchase my ticket and mum enjoyed a free ticket in. Children below 6 yrs and adults above 60 yrs were free to enter without any ticket purchased!

As many as 50 stalls were selling plants and gardening gadgets at the entrance's open space. I was looking for peat soil to germinate my petunia seeds , found it being sold very cheap but it was just too troublesome to cart it for it 's 10kg! I shelved the idea and decided to look at the beautiful orchids, air plants and some beautiful earthen pots! Mum was attracted to the catteya cuttings becos she has green fingers with this species and she has propagated so many for both my brother and me. She was given only one starter cutting and today she has easily more than 20 pots hanging in her garden at home. With these new cuttings she will end up having a good collection of catteyas of all hues and colours.

Some yrs ago, I was with my children when they were 6 and 9 yrs old in the same garden. The sunken garden in the centre still brought back memories of those days when mum and I took the children there for outings. So many yrs had gone by but today this sunken garden is relandscaped with different plants but the centre still locates the fountain against the deep blue mosaiced pond base .The Parliament Building can be seen in the far background and it was so nice to be with mum after so many yrs when the children were still small. Now, both of them are in their twenties . Both of us behaved like sisters and an American couple offered to take a shot of us together!

Moving on, we felt that we had to have a bite at the temporary food stalls there. Nothing much was offered and we decided to buy the corn in a cup for a prelunch snack. We needed this supplement to move on . With this bite, we were more energetic to walk another distance to the Edible Garden and the Floral enclave. Within the huge white tent which was airconditioned, we saw a number of gardens layout , flowers display and arrangements. Some of these displays were internationally owned and we could see the owners exchanging the faded flowers with fresh ones to last for the next few days before the closing ceremony on that Sunday which was four days away.

Besides the exhibition, there were still many available permanent gardens which are open to public everyday. Over the hill slope in front of the Floral enclave, I saw many umbrellas of red, yellow and green colours spreaded in a design over the green hill slope to create the sculpture effect to our gardens. Malaysia has indeed many places for us to explore nowadays.

On our way back, we stopped at the park entrance to wait for the shuttle service to get to our car. This time we waited for less than an hour bcos the crowd grew being past early lunch hour. We rushed to the coaches and managed to grab two seats which were singlely spaced. Never mind, somehow, we arrived at the Birds Park to get our car . It is indeed very convenient to get close to nature any time at our own disposure! My mum and I had good times together and we told ourselves that we will go close to nature again and again ! There is so much to share during our walk around.

During the last leg of our time out, we drove to Jaya One to have our lunch. There is a variety of eat-outs there to choose and eventually we settled in one of the Hong Kong style cafe to have a nice meal before going back home.