Hello again. It has been a while since I last blogged. One month and nineteen days to be exact. So what happened between these forty-nine days of my disappearance? A lot.

First of all, if you happen to follow my blog, and eventually gave up due to me not updating it as frequent as I have promised, please accept my most sincere apology. It was not my fault. Blame it on my web hosting provider, and blame it on wordpress. Ha ha. No, serious. The very last time when I wanted to update my Monday Blues series, I encountered some technical problem. I could not upload anything to my server. Wordpress keeps telling me it failed to upload.

After trying different solutions that was posted on the Internet, except for setting permissions 777 for my uploading folders, I gave up. The very last time I set permission 777 to a folder on my website, my website got hacked and was turned into a phishing/pharming site. I was not aware of that until I received a serious warning letter from a bank in America.

At first I thought it was some kind of joke, but after checking my website folders, I was shocked to find out that I was running a phishing site. The phishing site that was hosted here, in simple words, is a fake online banking login page. I believe the hacker has collected a number of login details, to the extent that the bank’s IT guys noticed that and kindly asked me to remove the illegal site before reporting to the authority.

Soon after, my site’s IP address has been blacklisted by a number of DNS (domain name servers) and I have trouble sometimes to login to my site or to check my emails. It was very frustrating and eventually I wrote to my web hosting provider and asked them to move my site to another IP address, which they kindly did promptly, free of charge.

But that did not solve my wordpress problem. The trick that did it was, to create a new uploads folder, set permissions to 755 and try to upload a file via wordpress. If that works, copy the entire contents of the old uploads folder to the new one and continue blogging!

Well, that did not take me almost one and a half month to solve, it is just that I was occupied by other things. I went for job interviews and finally landed myself a job that I am happy with. In between that, I spent most of my time with my beloved because once I start this new job, I will not have much time for her. Not to mention time to blog.

However, I will try to keep my Monday Blues running as usual, and post short but frequent updates in the future. Until my next post. Take care. See you soon.

p.s. While I was AWOL, one of my favourite entertainer, Michael Jackson, has unfortunately passed away. I was looking forward to his last rounds of concerts but seems like Heaven Can’t Wait. Check back soon, I will post a tribute to MJ this weekend.

Here is the list of events that took place on the first day of my twenty-eight-year-old life in chronological order.

0000hrs – My beloved video calls me to wish me a very happy birthday!

0010hrs – My mother wishes me a happy birthday too. Received a few SMSes from friends as well.

0030hrs – Continue with my work on moving the motherboard and components of my computer to a lighter casing.

0400hrs – Finally done with the CPU I was working on, tested and ran fine. Did not realise it took so long and I had to wake up at 0700hrs for Cheng Beng (Tomb Sweeping).

0715hrs – Struggled to wake up and was 15 minutes late. Washed up in a hurry and drove over to grandma’s place. Feeling like a zombie.

0745hrs – Finally everyone is ready and we set out for breakfast in two cars at a nearby dim sum place.

0900hrs – The food at the dim sum place tasted awful, I have no choice but to swallow them, as I need some energy for the tomb sweeping later. We left Ipoh and headed to Tapah for our first stop, where my great-grandmother, great-grandfather and grand-uncle are laid to rest.

1000hrs – Arrived at Tapah and there was a lot of people there already.

Ancestors' tomb in Tapah

1100hrs – After waiting for an hour for our other relatives to pay their respect to my great-grandmother, it is our turn and it took us less than 20 minutes to complete. On average, we spent 20 minutes per tomb, but our other relatives, who are very ‘filial’, took almost 45 minutes to ’sweep the tomb’.

1200hrs – We (my mother, two of my uncles, my cousin and I) stood directly under the sun, waiting for our other relatives to do their praying. Sweat is rolling down my cheeks like it was raining and everyone here is beginning to get some tan.

1300hrs – Finally…we are on our way back to Ipoh. Next stop is my grandfather’s ‘condo’, located in Bercham. Grandma will meet us there as she skipped the Tapah trip. She is having problem with her knees so it is better for her to stay at home.

1340hrs – Kek Lok Temple is where my grandfather’s ashes is being kept. It is a buddhist temple, the premises is clean and the statues look classy. I am a Christian, therefore I can only admire the architectural wonders of the building and regard the statues as artwork pieces.

My grandfather's final resting place

1430hrs – And the tomb sweeping is completed! We all head over to Pizza Hut for lunch. The pizza is bad. The bread-stix is hard and cold. The waiter/waitresses do not even have a smile on the face, they are serving us as if we were inmates.

1600hrs – Home, showered and resting. Random activities such as watching drama, reading news and books. Mind was drifted away most of the time.

1930hrs – Dinner. On my birthday, I requested for porridge for dinner. I just need more liquid and I do not really feel like having heavy food. Perhaps I am really getting old?

2030hrs – Counting down to earth hour and when the clock on my notebook turns 20:30, all the lights in the house go off. We took out the emergency light charged and surprisingly it was bright enough. I took a picture of 8TV’s transmission before turning the TV off too. During the earth hour, all electronic devices are run on batteries. Including my notebook.

8TV's transmission during Earth Hour

I looked out from the house and saw that the neighbourhood is darker than usual nights, seems like everyone is doing their part to create the global warming awareness. Or do they really know why do they have to turn off the lights for 60 minutes?

My beloved was doing her part too, lighting only candles for the entire hour to study. We chatted online and video called, but since it was so dark, it somewhat felt creepy.

Before switching on the lights after earth hour, in between 2030hrs and 2130hrs, I got so tired that I slept on the couch in the living room. My beloved complained later that when she called I just cut off her phone (which I have totally no memory of), and my mother was complaining that my snoring was the only sound she hear while she was watching her drama on TV.

And this concludes the first day of my twenty-eight-year-old life.

The last thing I remember before dozing off...

P.S. I woke up around 0900hrs the following day.