Leaving with a Heavy Heart

I dreaded the Sundays where I am back in Seremban, my hometown, where I have to drive back home without my daughter Clarisse. I am sure many parents whom their kids are not staying with them will feel the same.

Many of us are working parents. If your old folks are not with you, you will either :

A. Leave your kid with your parents to take care

B. Send your kid to a day-care centre

C. Have a maid at home to take care of your kid

Mine is Option A. My daughter Clarisse is like a travelling nomad. Her home is either at my parents’ place in Seremban or in my house at PJ. She’s currently alternating between these 2 homes as my parents sometimes come up to PJ to stay with us. So, it’s more like 1 week they all stay in PJ, then come Saturday morning, they all move back to Seremban. Me and my wife will come back to PJ on Sunday afternoon/evening and next week when both of us go back to Seremban, my folks and Clarisse will follow us back to PJ again. It’s almost a weekly routine now. With all these weekly travelling, I am contributing more to Shell (feeding my car with petrol) & Highway concessionaires (paying the blood-sucking fellows for toll charges).

It’s really a joy to watch a young baby grow up. It can be a very hectic job ( if you can call it a job ) to look after a young toddler. Currently, she can’t walk properly yet. Hence, she crawls most of the time and you have to chase after her. She likes to put things in her mouth too. One minute she’s playing with a bunch of keys and the next minute she would want to know how keys taste like. You take it out from her mouth, she will put it back in again. She also like to play with papers as well ( more like ransacking job ). Pulling out a nicely stacked of magazines or tearing leaflets count amongst her hobbies ! It’s fun to see how a young life learn different things in the early stage of life. Everything is new and curious to them. They want to explore everything and can be dare-devils too trying out different things.

When you’re time is filled with joy looking at a kid developing his/her instincts, learning new things and exploring his/her surroundings, you feel like the rest of the world is irrelevant to you. You would feel that your job and challenges you have in your daily work life are burried deep, deep away when you spend every moment you can with your kid.

For this reason, I always hate the Sundays when Clarisse is to stay in Seremban and both of us come back to PJ. I just can’t wait for the week to get by and I’m travelling back to Seremban again to see my daughter….

Good Hope Hotel - Penang

Note : This is another blog which I have procrastinated for some time. It just shows that I’m not a disciplined blogger.

I travelled to Penang Island back in Augt 09 for an overnight trip of business meeting with my Director, GM & Marketing colleague.

I have been to Penang for quite some time and frankly, I’m not familiar with Penang. Hence, I can only offer to drive along the North-South Highway. Once in Penang, better for someone who’s familiar with Penang to take over the wheels. It was a pleasant drive as we left PJ around 8.45am and reached Penang around 12 noon. We have earlier booked into an economical budget hotel since this is only an overnight trip.

Good Hope Inn was where we spent a night. This budget accommodation was recommended by another colleague who has stayed here before. Good Hope Inn is just walking distance from Gurney Drive. Other famous hotel nearby Good Hope Inn is the famous G Hotel. Back to Good Hope Inn, I like this hotel for its simple yet homely feel. It’s a decent 3 star accommodation which cost me around RM80 for a night stay. The room comes with water heater, TV with some Astro channels throw in, fan and air-con. Wifi is available at the hotel but you will need to pay around RM10-15 (which comes to roughly USD3 to use). I find the Inn to be surprisingly very clean. I have stayed in some overseas 3 stars hotel which fare even worse than this place. Probably, it’s because this place was opened for business less than a year ago.

A nice comfy bed after a hard day’s work

Just a right sized table as my working space

The bathroom

This place can certainly compete with Tune Hotel. Actually, I much prefer this place to Tune Hotel in the sense that it comes with air con and water heater while for almost the same price in Tune Hotel you only get a fan. Value for money wise, Good Hope Inn is a better choice. Just across the road where Good Hope Inn is at, you can find some nice eating places as well, including local food and even a Starbucks cafe. If you opt not to pay for Internet service in Good Hope Inn, you can bring your laptop to Starbucks for free wifi but for me that will be a hassle to work in Starbucks if you have some serious assignments to work on. Concentration will be your biggest challenge with so many people going about you in a Starbucks cafe.

For those of you who is looking for a budget accommodation, especially those on backpacking holidays, I would strongly recommend this place to stay. I will certainly come back again to this place next time around and probably give the other type of rooms a try. For this trip, I stayed in the Single Bed Room. Maybe, I will treat myself with a bigger bed next time