Shhh!

I played hooky today.

Wahai org2 yg ingat Oyis itu rajin. I have a confession to make. I, Oyis, adalah tidak masuk lab dan melagha hari ini hehe. Sila jgn tiru. I will tell you why ...

[1] Menyiapkan chores di rumah dahulu

Ni termasuk lah masak breakfast, mandikan Aisyah dan lipat baju sebakul yg dah jadi setinggi Mount Kinabalu tuh. I did this all today becoz I know tomorrow sampai la Sabtu will be super-busy, so x larat la sakit mata tgk keadaan yg bersepah2 itu. At this point, it was still quite early, around 11 am, and I was determined to go to school as usual.


[2] Jadi Hairstylist terjunan

And then terperasan lah bahawasanya rambut dpn Aisyah dah mula mencucuk mata beliau. Snip snip snip, maka jadilah aku hairstylist terjunan. Walaupon tiada lah aku berupaya menghasilkan pesen rambut yg hebat spt Victoria Beckham's Posh Bob, mahu pon Jen Aniston's 1990's hot hair do, aku tetap berbangga dgn style yg telah aku pilih - x lain x bukan the infamous Temenggong Jugah Anak Bareang 'do. Kelassss gituh!





[3] Pick up things from town

We ordered something from a shop in town over the weekend and it arrived today. So aku sekeluarga pergi town amik benda tu, tp alang2 nak Zuhur, tunggu Zuhur je la dulu (Zuhur masuk around 12.30 pm). Konon nya jalan sesama sbb town and Uni sama arah, so pegi together2, then pecah la kat sana. Tp paham2 je la... aku ni iman setipis kulit bawang. Kena goda sket ngan Hubs, terus kecundang... maka terikut la gi town. At this point, it was 1.30 pm.

[4] Menyelesaikan errands

Afterwards, I went running around the Uni ground chasing the Graduate School, then the Business School, then the International Student Advisory Services for a number of reasons. But each pit stop took more than half an hour, so... do the maths la skang dah pukul brape...


[5] Lunch

Then it suddenly dawned upon us that we haven't had lunch yet, and Aisyah who was sound asleep in her stroller has now woken up. So, aku kira2 balik, ok la, let's grab something to eat first, at Al-Bashar. (I had the Lamb Biryani, Hubs had the Lamb Aouzi, Aisyah had the Chicken Shish with chips).











[6] Walking the Wrong Way

Well.. since it was late, we decided to just go home. No point in embarrassing myself to enter the lab at this hour now. Especially when everyone else (undergrads mostly), are walking the opposite way (balik umah la tu, bkn baru nak enter Uni). After a few camwhoring session, kitaorg pon trudged home. Dlm hati nekad, ala... bole je buat keja dari umah pon. No big deal...







[7] Surprise!

Except for a little surprise that I got when I booted up my lappy at home. Earlier this morning (around 6 am) when I worked a little, I hadn't noticed anything funny. But around 11-ish, Aisyah started mucking around with it whilst I wasn't looking because I was busy cleaning up after breakfast (ye, budak tu dah pandai panjat kerusi study), and the lappy had suddenly switched off on its own. I hadn't really thought much of it, until this evening, when I realized that an entire partition went missing! A 150-GB, really important partition plak tu.

You see, my lappy dual boots. The Linux was working fine, so Alhamdulillah I knew my work in Linux was not affected the slightest bit, tp mana plak pegi the shared partition dgn Windows tuh? Restarted in Windows, tp x dpt nak log in pon. Asyik2 keluar Dell MediaDirect nye page je, pastu kluar blue screen yg ckp Dell detected a fault and I should change to safe mode. Tp nak ke Safe Mode pon x dpt. Mcm2 dah buat; rebooting, F8, trying to restore session from Linux, semua x jalan. Dah nak mati akal dah. I was this close to buzzing Sifoo Sake, had I not known that he was busy with training in Miri and yeah, it was 4 am in Msia. Basically ni la masalah aku, simplified,

Anyway, thanks to Mr Google, and also Hubs for calming the already hyperventilating me down, we found out ada jgk umat lain yg ada masalah cam aku. Basically, masalah aku ialah,

---> Windows does not boot, Dell splash page does not boot, windows install disk does not boot. Only Dell MediaDirect will boot but you cannot run the installation disk from there. Dell support has been absolutely worthless. Please help

Alhamdulillah, we were able to find the solution, yg apparently amat lah simple, which was,

---> Hold down the power button to turn the machine off.
Then, press the Dell MediaDirect button to turn it back on. This will switch the partition to the primary, and Windows will load normally.

Worked like magic. Syukur!

Mmg notty notty Aisyah ni. And double notty, notty Ibu biar Aisyah main laptop. Never again!



[8] Usual commitment ptg2...

Solving that little 'scare' just now took almost an hour, and I am shaken, plus mentally exhausted dah. But since the lappy is already on, what better to do than blog, right? ;P


There. Alasan knp hari ini Oyis tidak bekerja hehehe..


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Ok la, I cheated a bit. Pagi td aku buat light2 reading gak sebenarnya, and discovered something fascinating (at least to me, Oyis the Geek). Tp ada kaitan dgn kisah semalam...

Last night, Hubs was transferring and resizing these photos on the laptop when Aisyah approached him.









Hubs (pointing to the gazillion pics of Aisyah on screen): Baby la, baby...
Aisyah: Pabi
Hubs: Ba.By
Aisyah: Pabi
Hubs: Ba... By
Aisyah: PabiPabiPabiPabiPabiPabiPabi...... (infinitely)

Which was cute, except for the fact that it sounded a lot like the 'kerbau kaki ampat' in Malay! And nope, neither me nor Hubs swears in front of Aisyah, so no, she didn't pick that up from us. A simple child's attempt at imitating the word Baby, but alas, belom perfect lagi.

So imagine my excitement, when I was reading an article on 'The Origins of Music' by Miranda (1999) this morning, I came across these passages,

"... babies are generally more sensitive rhythmic patterns in the left ear, and to pitch and timbre in the right ear. Babies have a unique disposition to extract little chuncks of sounds from the undulating patterns of speech and to imitate these sounds. In order to extract these little chunks of sounds, the left ear seeks timing cues in the signal. The task of the right ear is to listen for short sound coloration cues such as the tone of the voice and the melodic contour of the utterances. Indeed, babies do seem to respond better to clearly articulated syllables and exaggerated melodic contours. Preferences for listening and imitating the sounds of the mother toungue begin to emerge due to positive feedback responses which babies receive from their interlocutors. Sooner or later, children start to form lexicons, to make sentences, shape grammars, and to engage increasingly sophisticated linguistic experiences..."

Maknanya, lps ni, kena sebut secara exaggerated la perkatan2 dkt Aisyah, maybe sebut 'Baby' mcm ni "Buh-eeyyyyy....beeeee", sambil mulut tutup rapat masa awal konsonan, and sengih nmpk gigi di vowel terakhir tu. And bila berjaya kena sentiasa praise (which we already do, but kena even more so lah lps ni).

In case you're wondering why la aku baca artikel ni, it's bcoz music and linguistic goes together. Lg satu ayat aku suka drpd artikel td ialah,

".. We by no means assume that people are born with a ready-made music machine. What we are suggesting here is that our musical predisposition forms the basis for the development of the sophisticated discrimination and categorisation machinery that are very important for language. But our musicality, so to speak, develops together with language as we grow up..."

Ha... jdnya music awareness ni jg harus dipupuk, dan bkn nya 100% from the music genes. X jadi pengganti Mozart, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, etc buat masa ni pon x pe la Aisyah. As long as you don't go around saying words that sounded a lot like obscenities sudah la ye, sayang... hehe...

Btw, mlm ni dia dah sebut Baby dgn ok. Tp kdg ada juga tersebut Pabi or Bapi. Hmm.. pelan2 kayuh, kata org...

Oh and one more thing, she starts to call me Mummy. Hamboih, omputih nya anak aku, padahal aku habis kemp la ajar suruh panggil Ibu aje, x yah glamer2, tp dia sendirik yg decide. Tu lom gi nursery lg tu. Konflik dlm jiwa aku ni skang, sama ada nak kekal bahasakan diri Ibu ke tukar Mummy. Sbb pikir2, esok dia nak masuk nursery x la dia konfius kalo cikgu dia kata, 'Look, your Mummy is here', and aku pon x la rasa awkward if I have to converse with her in English, e.g. 'Oh, honey, come to Ibu...'

Pendapat pls?