a cool saturday. it was raining last night and this morning the sun took a break so we are having a rather cloudy and cool day. collected two barrels of durians which together with those from the previous days were sent to city as the prophet left for city at 8:30am. he'll be coming back tomorrow.

2nd brother and family went back to HK this morning while 'Tai Koh' and family will be leaving this coming Monday for Montreal. makes me wonder when we'll ever to gather again in this manner, everyone present. dad's 80th birthday brought all of us together and now that we have to part our separate ways, i do feel a certain measure of sadness. such is the irony of life, when we were together in our younger days we didn't really treasure each other now that we are all well into our years, we seem to miss each other more. on the happy note, my wife came back safely last night from the city. the prophet and I were on a one day trip up north yesterday to visit a job site and we got back only in the late evening. after the morning routines i felt tired physically and took a nice nap while my dear wife spend her time weeding, half of the time gordon is disturbing her. the two goldens are taking turns at mucking around. they are such colourful characters.

i think we should enjoy the times we have with our spouses, families, friends, dogs and consciously avoid ill feelings and the likes of it. time flies and with each passing year we have less of it, we could pretty much accumulate more material wealth but somehow getting more time is not possible. there is always more work to do, more things to distract us, more movies to watch... a whole lot of meaningless stuff that robs us of our time. i remember distinctly the feelings of sadness I felt last year when eldest bro, sil, john and mum had to leave our place abruptly due to the interuption of water supply. we were supposed to have steamboat that evening. it's been one whole year and the scene is repeated, my two brothers are to leave for their homes on different parts of the globe. thankfully my sisters will be here in Malaysia. wouldn't it be good if we could have more time together... sigh!

Progress here at the farm is slow this last two weeks as we played host to my brothers who took turns to spend a few days here. we did some preparatory work, cutting timber to size, drilling holes, painting.. etc. we should be putting up the barns the coming week and hopefully be able to house some 'kampung' chicken before the end of the month. the dam is secured and tested, we'll put in some overflow pipes after the barns are up. irrigation pipings and water pump installed soon after. God bless and keep us all safe! Take care and say a little prayer for the Yong family.