Jewelle Tan Personally

When I picked Eu up from school on Saturday, she asked me what the rest of us did earlier in the morning. I told her that we went for the Lexus Roadshow a.k.a “car show”.

Eu : “I thought you didn’t like car show?”

It’s not exactly my favorite thing to do but I was a little curious to see the latest Landcruiser LX570 - a staple car for many of the Sabahans tycoons and politicians.

Perhaps it’s because I live in Brunei that during every trip back home that I make, I noticed that one in every ten cars on any roads around Kota Kinabalu on most days will be a LandCruiser.

Our fascination with this car was to the extent that it even has a special name. Calling it by its proper name will not register much among the average Sabahans - but say the magic name and eyes will light up : “Ninja King“.

Those who can (or think they can) afford one will spill their plans on buying this RM200-400K cars while those who can’t (even in their wildest dreams) will have a story or two about those who drives one.

If Sabah is “Land Below The Wind” then Kota Kinabalu can comfortably be called the “City Of The Ninja Kings”.

And this is the latest “Ninja King”.

Personally, exterior look wise, I much prefer the previous model. I find that it’s too low but my husband said, it’s probably the setting of the suspensions. The interior however was something else and you can see the finer details at Jan Shim’s.

An interesting description about this car that I heard from Brunei folks when it comes to it’s $150K price tag.

“You can buy a house!”

Dollar for a dollar, at RM150K you can only get a Hyundai Tucson or similar cars. And at RM150K, don’t dream of getting a decent double storey in Kota Kinabalu - correct me if I’m wrong Sabahans.

Anyway, our local reporter was enthralled with the LS460L - which comes with a massage facilities for the back seats.

If asked to choose, I am slightly more interested in the GS300 and that is only because it comes in this deep red colour which caught my attention when it was once featured at their Gadong showroom. It’s too bad they didn’t bring that particular model - not that it will make any sales on their part from us.

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My post on adoption the other day reminded me that we were not one of those couple who were blessed to have children easily as some couples do.

I would like to share our experiences because we have a few couple friends who have been trying to have kids unsuccessfully for a few years and there is one common trait that I discovered among them.

NONE of them have many any effort to go for medical check-up.

Nevermind that they have been married and trying for more than 3 years. One couple told me that they are planning to while another couple was not even sure what to do or who to see!

In my opinion, if you haven’t been able to conceive within at least 2 years (depending on your age) of trying, you should not wait.

In our case, after nearly 2 years we went to see the doctor at our local government clinic and he made us an appointment with a Gynaecologist within days. To tell you the truth, I was not uninformed when it comes to the business of the “cycles”, “processes” and “techniques”. However from the very first appointment, I learned that there are many things about the whole process of conception that I did not realized.

We were asked to do a series of test such as the Dye Test for myself - which involved injecting some dye into my womb to check for any blockage. This was a little scary and uncomfortable but it was quick and I was clear.

Both of us passed all our tests and at least, at that stage we knew that there was no health problems.

After that, it was all about knowing the right techniques (fertile days using body temperature) and the rest we left it to fate.

Thankfully soon after, we were blessed with Eu and later Qi.

The point is : you should not wait before you consult the doctors.

Even if everything is normal, you might be surprised to know that the process of making babies is not as easy or straight-forward as you think. If there is, unfortunately, a problem then at least you have more time on your side to do something about it.

And with this, I would like to share with you an amazing story of a couple who beat the odds and became the parents of the first IVF-conceived baby in Brunei. Read their story for inspiration and hope.

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When I said I had NO help in setting up my blog in this domain - of course you don’t think that I meant it literally?

Of course I had help and I’m going to share with you some of the things I learn over the last few days.

Some of them will seem very basic for the experts so think of this as the idiot’s guide. Besides, I need to record this down because I will definitely forget it by next week.

1) Get Lilian’s simple 15 steps guides.

If not because of this guide, I would not attempt to do it myself. It’s not all self-explanatory but at least if you’re not sure, you know what to read on.

2) If you’re still deciding on your host, get one with Fantastico.

Not all comes with this but it makes installing Wordpress easy (the alternative is uploading Wordpress using “ftp” - and you don’t want to go there…)

3) Buy and pay your domain name straightaway.

I actually bought another name but didn’t confirmed the payment till the next day - and by then it was “stolen”! Lucky me, I actually regretted my original name and the domain name thief actually “saved” me…

4) Research and Read
I didn’t ask anybody for help because I wanted to try it out myself (even though it actually took me AGES to figure out that my cPanel and Wordpress are not related…) but of course, there are loads of kind folks out there who has written guides on what to do - read, read and read!

So far, it is still confusing but all in all, it’s been kind of fun!

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Welcome to my third online home : Jewelle Tan Personally.

Here I’ll share a bit more of what I see, hear and learn - every single day.

I didn’t have any experience in coding etc and I knew that setting up my own domain would be tough - and all I want to do is blog!

But anyway, I am happy to say that I’ve pushed aside my procrastination and indecisiveness.

On March 8th, I bought my domain with NO help from anyone and managed to set it up as you see it now (actually I had a lot of help from my host support staff who’ve been extremely helpful and even took the trouble to do some of the setting up for me…).

There are still a lot to do obviously (widgets, plugins and themes galore!) but I’ll take it one at a time…

So folks, here’s another place for me to share what I find interesting, funny, useful life’s lessons and of course where I will show (off) my non-DSLR pictures.

In case you’re wondering, Life in Lumut and Dining With Jewelle will remain.

Enjoy!

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