Injections

Ali had another jab today, his first MMR (I keep meaning to get him one of these). And as per usual for our two, he had a little shout for thirty seconds, then was all quiet.

His sister was exactly the same (she doesn't have any more now until she's five or six), barely a peep out of either of them despite having a nasty great needle stuck into them.

I have a feeling I wasn't quite so stoical.

And if anyone reading has any concerns about MMR, don't. Instead, head on over to the ever-excellent Bad Science website for some education.

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Posted by: David Harris, at: 13:06:28, on Wednesday, 14th May, 2008, from: 50200 KL

In memory of Sophie Lancaster

This post is dedicated to memory of Sophie Lancaster.

Link: http://www.myspace.com/inmemoryofsophie

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Posted by: David Harris, at: 18:14:42, on Saturday, 26th April, 2008, from: 50200 KL

Gong Xi Fa Cai

The Red Lanterns are raised, and there are pictures and statues of various Rats and Mice everywhere. Yes, this week, the Pig gives way to the Rat, according to the Chinese Lunar calendar

The decorations went up in our office about half an hour after the Christmas decorations came down. Speedy, not even your cheapest thrift shop would manage it that fast.

It also means I have two days off this week, to go with the two days leave, one for Ali's birthday - he's One already!!!!! more later, with photos - and one for Super-duper Tuesday in the American primary elections.

So,  a very Happy and Prosperous Year of the Rat to you.

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Posted by: David Harris, at: 15:01:04, on Tuesday, 5th February, 2008, from: 50250 KL

Bye-bye 2007

A slow year on WavysWorld this year, though perhaps not in Wavy's world.

The first major event was obviously the birth of Ali Ashley, our son, at the beginning of February. From such a wee thing then, he's grown steadily and he's now a delightful chap, with a lovely sparkly grin. He's also almost walking, at about the same age as his sister was when she took her first steps. Aysha herself, is now running about gaily, with an absolute mop of curly brown hair. It obviously skipped a generation or two from my family since mine is, well, wavy, and Lynn's is typically Asian - long, straight and black. Two is enough, we've decided.

On the work front, I've been learning a lot, especially away from the world of messaging, and also using new versions of products I've been working with for years. Earlier this year, I and a couple of colleagues were the booth-bunnies at the company's first trade show as exhibitors. One day, I'll have to make it as a speaker. The user group sadly, has gone nowhere this year. I'm not sure whether it's going to in the next either.

On the sporting front things have been a bit up and down. West Ham started the year as cast iron certainties for relegation and yet managed, with a massive contrribution from Mr Tevez, to escape on the last day - thanks for the 6 points each, Arsenal and Man U. Now we end 2007, and begin 2008, with games against who? Man U and Arsenal. We're not going to repeat the trick this season, having already lost to Arsenal at home, but the Man U part is still on ;o)

Elsewhere in sport, it was a year of almosts: a terrible England side almost qualified for Euro2008, which would have been horrible to watch and subjected us to yet more of Maclaren's turgid football; England came from a terrible start to reach the rugby world cup final, eventually losing  to a better South Africa side, but beating Australia on the way; Lewis Hamilton came agonisingly close to winning the Formula1 title in his debut season; and Ricky Hatton finally lost, although won a lot of friends on the way. Joe Calzaghe on the other hand, just carries on.

So for 2008? Well, it will be our last full year in Malaysia, for one thing, so we have a lot of saving to do for 2009. As the children get bigger, I suspect that our apartment will start feeling more and more cramped, but I think our efforts will be better directed at getting back to the UK in early 2009. We will try to get to Java to meet that set of grandparents, and for Lynn to go home before we move back.

On the work front, I have to get some more exams, both IBM Lotus and Microsoft - I have one coming up this week. I'll also be looking to get some more consultancy work under my belt, rather than systems management which is most of my work now. I've being trying to get some initiatives off the ground internally, but it can be a slow process when it isn't directly revenue-generating.

I'll also be trying to keep in touch better with friends, and taking more photos of the kids to bore people with.

So, to both my readers, I wish you a very happy 2008.

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Posted by: David Harris, at: 10:05:03, on Monday, 31st December, 2007, from: 50250 KL

Lemongrass

One of the things that's annoyed me since I've been in Malaysia is the fact that I just have not been able to get to grips with south east asian food. It's not the smell, or that it's spicy; hell spicy? I was eating vindaloos at fourteen, ffs.

 But there's always been something about the taste of a lot of stuff that I just can't take. I mean with Thai food, it's obvious and  predictable: coconut milk. I just don't like it, or many things coconut. Which was a bit of a bugger the times Lynn and I went to Thailand, but that's not this is about.

 Now, the thing is, my dear wife is a fantastic cook and I walk into the flat to the fantastic smells of her cooking (or frying fish, which is NOT so good). The problem comes when I actually put some of it in my mouth and my taste buds buds start raising the big red flags and singing 'Talkin' 'bout a revoultion'.

This has bugged me. But at last we know why.

Lemongrass. I can't stand it

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Posted by: David Harris, at: 00:56:00, on Saturday, 27th October, 2007, from: 50200 KL

The thing about Carlos

From before...

Back in January, I wrote "In March, April, May, we'll have the 'can West Ham stay up?' sweepstakes." Stay up we did, thanks to Senor Tevez, and a great parade-raining win at Old Trafford for the last game of the season. A fantastic end to the capaign, winning seven of the last nine games. If we'd played like that all season, maybe it would have been our parade at OT. Still, some people forget thata football is won on the field.

"Ineligible player" they shrieked, until they got their points for safety. So now we have the ridiculous situation whhereby no-one's sure who's playing, or rather not playing in the Premier League next season. WHo would you think deservers it more, a team with twenty points out of their last twenty six, or a team who, on the last day of the season, against relegation rivals, couldn't get the single solitary point needed for safety, and gave away a needless penaltyy for handball.

"But Carlos was ineleigible" they wail. Er no, sorry, he wasn't. Eligibility in football relates to one thing and one thing only: registration. The only offence that warrants a points deduction is when a player's registration is not transferred with complete and correct details from one club to another. This is a one-page form, detailing name, date of birth, nationality, ID details, previous club, previous FA, new club, new FA and signature of the player.

With Carlos and Javier, the registration transfer was fine. No case to answer on eligibility or lack thereof.

Where we did fall down, without doubt, is on third party involvement and transparency. Bang to rights on both of them. Deserving of a points deduction? Absolutely not.

What many people have forgotten about third party ownership is that the rules in place were brough in to prevent situations where a player, or squad, or manager might be pressurised to throw the game in some way, because of a financial tie to another club. This was brought in after Derby County met Oxford United, both owned by Robert Maxwell, the known paragon of financial probity, met each other in the FA Cup.

Did Kia Joorachbian have financial ties to any other English club? Not as far as we know. Did Carlos play his heart out for West Ham every game? You betcha! Try and throw a game? You're kidding. Financial penalty? We'll certainlly get that if Carlos leaves, or if he stays. Joorachbian's company, Media Sports Investments (MSI) owns Carlos' economic rights: transfer money, image and endorsement fees. If we want that, we have to pay for it (although we at last can, have got rid of Terrence Brown et al). We should pay what it takes.

Did we behave with a lack of good faith? On balance, yes I think we did, although most if not all (Mr Magnussen, please take note), have since left the club structure.

Fuss about nothing? Get a grip, Blades - look at the dignity with which Watford and Charlton accepted their relegation.

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Posted by: David Harris, at: 17:07:33, on Tuesday, 26th June, 2007, from: 50250 KL

Oops...

A bit of neglect going on here I think - must do better

So where to start catching up. Well, the family I think. Aysha goes from strength to strength, getting cheekier and more beautiful by the day. Ali learned to turn himself over at the weekend,  and is already developing his crawling technique. And his smile gets cuter too. Lynn just carries on being the best wife in the world.

Back in January, I wrote "In March, April, May, we'll have the 'can West Ham stay up?' sweepstakes." Well, I just wrote some stuff that went on for far too long about that, then decided it was too much for this post and deserved its own. See above (later)

Hopefully one thing about the football season ending is that the TV companies get to renegotiate/get different sponsorship deals for their football programming. Here in Malaysia, it's been absolutely galling to watch almost every programme being sponsored by a property scam, Profitable Plots (there's another one operataing here, but not on TV, called UK Land Investments International).

It's an old scam, but one that's hard to operate in the UK, since it's impossible to get approval from the FSA. They buy up farmland, and market individual plots on the basis that they can get planning permission to build (re-zoning, change of purpose, etc). Not only is that unlikely in the extreme, but the chances of not every plot-owner wanting to sell on command, and these are plots with full title deed so you can refuse on a whim, make it impossible to guarantee that the investor will not be held to ransom by another investor. This is why this type of scheme is illegal in the UK. These companies, unsurprisingly, don't mention that.

See www.PropertyScam.org.uk for more details

Finally for the moment, an update on Genarlow Wilson, the straight-A, football-star (american-)football player sentenced to ten years and life as a registered sex offender for receiving oral sex from a fifteen year old girl when he was seventeen. At the time, full penetrative sex was a lesser crime in Georgia, and since that time, oral sex has been given the same status in that State.

Now his conviction has been overturned on appeal, with the judge stating "The fact that Genarlow Wilson has spent two years in prison for what is now classified as a misdemeanor, and without assistance from this Court, will spend eight more years in prison, is a grave miscarriage of justice."

The state prosecutor has appealed this ruling, meaning Genarow is still in prison.

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Posted by: David Harris, at: 15:52:49, on Monday, 25th June, 2007, from: 50250 KL

Injustice

Justice, Georgia-style

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Posted by: David Harris, at: 11:21:10, on Sunday, 18th February, 2007, from: 50200 KL

That’s my Boy!!

My son, Ali Ashley, was born on Sunday 4th February at 17:40 in Pantai Hospital, Bangsar, KL. He weighed in at a comfortable 3.44 kg (or 7lb 9oz), so slightly smaller than his big sister was although he looks exactly like her when she was born.

Here he is:



Ali and his mum are both fine, and are looking forward to coming home.

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Posted by: David Harris, at: 03:58:00, on Tuesday, 6th February, 2007, from: Pantai Medical Centre, Bangsar KL

Otter update

The news is, that there is no news.

Otter's* estimated due date is tomorrow, 29th January, but a check up on Friday indicated that we're a few days away still. It's looking more and more likely that it'll be a C-section again, which is very disappointing.

The impending arrival means that I'm now off until after Chinese New Year (17th-18th February), or rather after the two replacements days we get off, since CNY falls over a weekend this year. This will be the longest I've ever taken off work, apart from when I've not actually had a job. Unfortunately, it's the days from last year that I didn't get to take, rather than actual paternity leave. We don't get that in Malaysia.

I'm not going to be idle until the birth though. I've got a stack of software manuals and redbooks** to read about three feet high (or at least it would be three feet high if they were actually printed), plus several enterprise-class products to get my head around, including Websphere Portal 6.x, and Application Server, SameTime 7.5, and Active Directory. Oh, and MS Exchange, though that's only barely worthy of the description enterprise.

So, busy days ahead.

*Nicknamed Otter because of a favourite cartoon chez Wavy, P, B and J Otter
** IBM's Best Practice guides for its products, http://www.redbooks.ibm.com

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Posted by: David Harris, at: 14:15:22, on Sunday, 28th January, 2007, from: Plaza Low Yat KL