The year is coming to a close. Time to reflect on the happenings of the last 364 days. The highlight definitely must be our wedding banquet in Penang. We had 300 guests celebrating the occasion with us. These are people who have touched our lives in some ways. I am grateful to them for spending their evening with us, and of course not forgetting their generous gifts. Thank you again.

2009 also saw me scaling down my advocacy activities. I have come to realise that I should begin by promoting access in the area where I live before anything else. What is the point of wasting limited resources talking about access to airports and air travel when a majority of disabled people still cannot get out from their homes conveniently and safely. We need to get our priorities right here.

Nevertheless, I conducted a one-day Disability Equality Training (DET) in Kota Bahru organised by the Jabatan Kebajikan Masyarakat Kelantan and gave a presentation on access at the Seminar dan Sesi Dialog Bersama OKU, Agensi Kerajaan dan Pihak Swasta (Seminar and Dialogue Session with Disabled People, Government Agencies and the Private Sector) organised by the Majlis Perbandaran Ampang Jaya.

Suanie got me to give a half-hour presentation on Blogging As A Tool For Advocacy organised by the New Straits Times. I conducted a similar half-day workshop at the Penang Spastic Centre organised by Tan Kuan Aw and Tan Chin Chin.

Wuan and I have also been polishing our photography skills throughout the year. Victor Chin roped us in to a joint photopgraphic exhibition at KLPac with him. His subject was on the forty day prior to his mother’s death while Wuan and I displayed my mother’s funeral and some of her belongings dating back to the 1920s. We are indeed thankful to Victor for showing us the ropes to holding an exhibition and giving us such a wonderful opportunity to showcase our photography skills or lack of it.

I do not know if it is the weather or my lack of sleep but I feel that I tire easily, more than it used to be. I sure hope it is not a sign of further deterioration of my renal functions. The serum creatinine has been constant throughout the year and I have tried, despite all the tempations, to keep to the requirements of my low-protein diet. I think I need to rest more often instead of spending so much time online although I have cut down on that significantly.

What I like about this year is that I bought a lot of books and really spent time reading them. There are enough books to last me through 2010. Reading has opened up my mind. For the past two months, I have been blogging regularly, almost daily in November. I have slacked in December though because of the festive seasons as Wuan and I did a fair bit of travelling during this period. Nonetheless, the increased output I attribute to my rediscovering the joys of reading.

So, to wrap this entry up and for 2009, I would like to wish, in no particular order, all my aunty friends (you know who you are!), my blogging friends, my Lasallian and Xaverian teachers and schoolmates, new friends that I have made this year, relatives, cousins related by blood or otherwise and friends who had one way or another contributed to the fun at our wedding dinner and all other categories of friends, HAPPY NEW YEAR. May 2010 bring you more good things.

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(L to R) Robert Wang, Tan Weng Aun, Peter Tan, Jenice Lee and Mrs. Robert Wang.

After the briefing on the MPAJ Local Draft Plan, ADUN for Teratai Jenice Lee invited us to lunch with her on Christmas Eve at the Pandan Lake Seafood Village. This was to discuss further accessibility issues faced by disabled people in her constituency in relation to the local draft plan. Jenice herself saw firsthand how we had problems getting into the restaurant as the premises did not have a ramp. We also sought her advice on the parties we should seek in the MPAJ to resolve access problems.

Currently, the provision of accessible facilities in the Ampang Jaya is still minimal at best. Although progress is slow, we will keep up with active engagement with the MPAJ to ensure that they are constantly aware of the problems faced by disabled people in the municipality. What is most telling is that the town planner of MPAJ Awang Mustapha revealed that the needs of disabled people were not included in the local draft plan until we brought it up at the briefing. Nevertheless, we thank Jenice for the support she has given to our cause since our first meeting with her shortly after she won the Teratai state constituency in the 12th General Election.

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Photography used to be expensive. It cost a bomb to buy and develop films, and then get the images printed. Now, it is still expensive but in different ways. While digital cameras do not need films, there is a need to store those images properly. Contrary to popular beliefs, digital images do not last forever. The integrity of the images are as durable as the media that they are stored in. That includes hard disk drives, thumbdrives, CDs and DVDs. All these have a lifespan.

Between Wuan and I, we have over 100GB of photographs taken over a span of six years. That does not include the scanned images from negatives which may come up to another 50GB. Two years ago, I got a 160GB external drive to store my digital images. Wuan has her own 40GB external drive for the photographs that she took. With that amount of photographs scattered across different drives, it was a chore to look for images that we needed to use.

Last week, while shopping at the All IT Hypermarket at Ikano Power Centre, we came across an offer that was hard to refuse. The Seagate Expansion 1TB external drive was going for RM299 only. I never thought I would need to buy such a large drive. William convinced me that it was best bang for the buck. Moreover, I really wanted to consolidate all the images into one place where it would be easier to look for them.

In the process of backing up the files from my notebook and 160GB external drive to the 1TB drive, I discovered that I had accumulated a lot of junk data, some from ten years ago that I had progressively transferred from one hard disk drive to another. Some were files that I thought I had lost. There was also a lot of data that are duplicates in different folders.

I have been spending the last few days reorganising the folders and files. There is still a lot to be done. I have moved everything out from the 160GB external drive and made it the primary storage for all the images from the Canon Powershot A610 and Nikon D60 which will be periodically backed up to the 1TB drive via Synctoy. Likewise, Wuan’s images in her 40GB drives have been backed up.

The Seagate Expansion 1TB external drive is plugged directly into one of the two USB 2.0 ports of the notebook. The 160GB external drive is plugged into a powered USB 2.0 hub that is plugged into one of the four USB ports of the notebook cooler which is plugged into the other USB port of my notebook. It is all in such a tangled web that I sometimes forget what is plugged into which.

The external drive itself is just a black slab that has quite a large footprint – approximately 5″ by 8″. It has USB 2.0 connectivity and comes with a two-year warranty. The external power adaptor doubles up as the power socket. It comes with a slot for different pin configurations. I used the 3-pin plug. Once the drive is connected to the computer’s USB port it is ready to use. No formatting is required. There is no audible sound when reading or writing. Data transfer ranges from 6.50 MB/sec to 9.50 MB/sec depending on where the various drives are plugged into and how many devices are sharing the same USB ports.

Like William said, it gives the best bang for the buck, and I have to agree. Now Wuan and I do not have to worry about disk space for our photographs. It will be several more years before we need to get another drive to top up the existing one. By then, the drive storage capacity would have grown many times, transfer speed would have quadrupled at least and price per byte would have dropped significantly. Just imagine, I paid RM260 for the 160GB 2.5″ drive plus casing about 18 months ago.

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