The night was long and dreary. Your eyes were wide open. Instead of counting sheep, you had accounted for all the tiny specks of dirt on the ceiling. Still, sleep is a distant dream.

After tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, you decided to watch a movie. There on the coffee table was one of the three VCDs that you bought from the pasar malam last week, all three for RM10 only.

You plunked the discs into the player. Ghost Ship. Ah, perhaps you can scare yourself spitless since you cannot sleep anyway. It began exciting enough with Italian men in tuxedos and glitzy ladies dining, wining and dancing on board an ocean liner.

Suddenly there was an eerie silence as a steel cable that was winced taut across the deck broke loose. The gory scene of torsos being cleanly sliced and dismembered, the stunned looks of the victims as body parts began to fall off, the ensuing bloody sight on the dance floor; and you thought you were in for a scary evening.

That was not to be so. The scary factor went steeply downhill after that. This movie is a sorry excuse for a horror story. If you had loved Juliana Margulies in ER, you would respect her grit in this movie but it does not do justice to her talents. Give this movie a miss, unless you want to bore yourself to sleep - not a bad idea if you are going through one of those long dreary nights wide awake.

… nearly killed my modem. Everybody should live by the adage that if it is not broken, do not fix it. I am curious by nature. Many times, I have dismantled stuff just to see how it looks inside. On my lucky days, those devices get reassembled back as they were before and continue working. On unlucky days, I have to run out and buy a replacement because it would not work again.

Last Sunday, I fiddled with my ADSL modem settings and it refused to connect after that. Desperate calls to Streamyx Customer Support did not help much. My friend Emil offered to bring his modem and Ethernet card to troubleshoot the problem later today.

Streamyx sent two technicians this morning to check the ADSL settings in my computer. They hooked up another modem and got connected. The diagnosis was that my modem died. The technician explained that the modem was provided free and there is no replacement for it. I thought I had to get another modem and burn a hole in my wallet.

As a final resort before going out to buy a modem, I checked the tmnet.streamyx newsgroup and found the configuration to reset the modem to its default settings. Viola! I am online again. This must be one of my luckier days. Bless you goolias_andreas@yahoo.com, whoever you are.

Mum had her third blood transfusion today. I left the hospital right after the transfusion was completed therefore I am unaware if it is doing her any good. Her appetite is still poor. She looked so frail. I am beginning to get really worried for her. The illness has dragged on for far too long. The doctors have been very conservative with their treatment thus far. Perhaps it is time for a second opinion and more treatment options.

I learnt to operate the washing machine for the first time today as the laundry was piling up. I thought it would be difficult because I have never washed a piece of clothing in my life before. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised! The fuzzy logic automates most of the task and removes the guessing altogether. After I put the laundry in, the LED lit up and indicated the amount of detergent to use. It then filled itself up with the appropriate amount of water and started the wash and spin cycles all by itself. I have heard of fuzzy logic before but this is the first time I have seen it in action. And I am amazed!

Mum was admitted to the hospital again about two hours ago. She was breathless, very weak and pallid. My good neighbours Mr. Tan, Soon Leong and his wife sent her to the General Hospital. The doctor decided to keep her for observation and hooked her up on a drip. She had not been eating well for days.