Mun Yee

 

I love you girl!

You are da best! ^_^

Thank you for your lovely X’mas card!

Family-Friendly Hotels in Johor Bahru, Malaysia

 

We just came back from a 2 days 1 night trip in Johor Bahru from 16 Dec to 17 Dec, and spurred by the positive experience we had, we are thinking of making another trip there too! ^_^

I really love the experience of exploring new places and new hotels, so though Mutiara Hotel was a great place to stay,  I want to try out a different hotel for the upcoming trip!

But with two kids in tow, we have to be rather selective in our choice of h0tels.  Did a quick research, and here are some quick evaluations of the hotels in the JB area which

	Hotel	Price	Locality	Remarks
1	New York Hotel		22 Jalan Dato Abdullah Tahir Johor Bahru,	Does not cater to more than 2 adults per room
2	Crystal Crown	RM 195.00		Allows up to 3 adults per room but must pay for extra bed at 45RM
	Hotel Selesa			Does not seem to cater to more than 2 adults per room
	M Suites			Has suites at
	Naza Hotel			Has Premiere Suite with twin double beds
	Thistle Hotel			This hotel looks very nice and has good reviews but sadly, it does not seem to cater to more than 2 adults per room ~.~
	The Zon Regency			This hotel is right beside the sea and has WIFI ^_^.  Not sure if they have rooms with twin double beds but they have something called Club Suite which might accomodate a family of 4?
	A-Vista Melati			Standard 1 double bed + 1 single bed. 1 minute walk from KTM station according to the link.
	Okid hotel			They have one configuration with 1 double bed and 1 single bed.
	Suria City			Limited room types (One Double bed or twin single beds)
	Embassy Hotel & Service Apartment			They have a Two-Bedroom Suite with two bedrooms, published rate is 390RM for this
	Seri Malaysia			They have only one room type! Called Family Room and this features one double bed + 1 single bed.  Location is in Larkin, so its 10 mins walk to the bus terminal.
	Hanta Satu			This is a Malaysia “guesthouse” or budget hotel but it has a “Family Room” configuration at 140 RM which sleeps 4 Doesn’t have a website
	GoodHope			Got triple sharing (3 single beds)
	Grand Hallmark			Limited room types (One Double bed or twin single beds)
	Dorsett Johor			From the pictures, it looks like they have this configuration of one single bed + one double bed though the website says both are single beds.  WIFI enabled.
	Tune Hotel, JB			Twin rooms have one single bed and 1 double bed. This is near Danga City.
	Eurorich			Family Suite A offers two double beds. WIFI Promotion rate up to 31 Dec 2010 is 180RM Location is a little more north-bound though, 15 mins away from main JB City Centre
B	Tiong Nam Hotel			Surprisingly, this budget sort of hotel has WIFI and has a room configuration to sleep 3 persons ~.~ Doesn’t have its own website, but here are some links that have more information on it: Laterooms.com TravelBlog LetsBookHotel
B	Rose Cottage			Budget hotel with WIFI too! ~.~
BO	Kozi Hotel			Family room with WIFI: 138RM nett. In Skudai
	Hotel Grand Far East			Apparently, it has an Executive suite which sleeps 4, more info at activehotels.com. WIFI. Photos of the hotel From hoteljohor.com
	TS hotel, JB			Twin room which has 1 single bed + 1 double bed. WIFI.
	Hotel Grand Paragon			It has a Junior suite, Family suite and even 2 bedroom apartments but otherwise, the lousy website doesn’t offer much information about each configuration!
	11@Century			It has a configuration of 1 double bed + 1 single bed and also a suite.  But no other information was available at its website
	Grand Paradise Hotel, JB			Published rates look quite ridiculously high
	Puteri Pacific			The standard rooms do feature those standard one double bed + one single bed configurations I think, but they also have the suite room types with separate bedrooms.
	Grand Blue Wave			Family suite with two bedrooms
	Mutiara
	Kingston Hotel			WIFI. This hotel is near the Second Link.  Has a family room too.  More info here RM158
	JB Central			Has standard twin with 1 double bed + 1 single bed and extra bed at RM40. The location is good. But read the reviews, they were not so good ~.~
B	Aspen Summer Hotel			Facebook page One double or 2 single beds kind of configuration
B	Heritage Hotel			Can’t seem to find any info on it except from this Google Map link. But gosh, it is damn near the CIQ!
B	Great Wall Hotel
B	Hotel Aromas
B	Yang Tze Hotel			WIFI. Has a family suite to sleep up to 4. More info here
B	Hotel  Time			Has Family room that sleeps up to 4 with WIFI. RM108 only ~.~ but far from city centre apparently.
B	8 Days Hotel			Boutique Hotel with WIFI. the Premier Double room can sleep up to 4 More info here
	Swan Garden			At Masai. Sleeps up to 2 persons at most. More info here.
	Jomi Homestay			Can stay 2 adults + 2 kids. Info here

CanonScan 3000ex installed!

Oh gosh, I am so happy because after countless attempts to get the damn thing working since Apr 2010 when I first got my laptop,  I can finally scan with it!

First, what I did was to remove the existing driver from my OS, and tried to connect it again to see if the scanner would be automatically detected and the driver  installed correspondingly.

At least, this is how it is supposed to behave, according to the Microsoft Windows 7 Compatibility List here!

Unfortunately, my scanner and OS doesn’t seem to agree with what Microsoft says on it website, so I Googled for the keywords “Canon Canoscan 3000EX USB Scanner driver windows 7” and found this link to download the actual drivers with ScanGear and the Twain driver (dated 19 Oct 2009).

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/scanners/canoscan_series/canoscan_3000ex

And yup, after installing the drivers, when I reconnected the USB cable to my laptop, lo and behold, I got the highly-yearned message “Your driver is successfully installed”.

Happiness! ^_^

I can finally start scanning all my old hardcopies of photos back like this one taken in 1999 at Suntec City.  ^_^

Red Ribbon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KSL City is a new shopping complex in Johor Bahru and “Red Ribbon” is one of the interesting shops I spotted on our 1-day trip there.

 

“Red Ribbon” specialises in selling wedding flavors and couple gifts and here are some of the quaint products sold in the shop.

 

 

Us

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Me with bandaged ear, gonna see Dr Kao for review tonight.

Edison attended a calculator workshop at school today, got this Sharp calculator free.

Fleming had his violin level 2 exam and played 4 songs. He told me he got a chocolate for playing well :)

The social network

Facebook addict is going to watch "The social network" 

Thanks to dearest NRZ – my hero!

 

Two days ago,  there was a power trip at my office and that incident became the cause of my troubles this morning.

For one whole morning, I could not connect to SQL Server 2008 Management Studio because my msdb (which stores SQL Server jobs) was corrupted.

The error message was:
”Database 'msdb' cannot be opened. It has been marked SUSPECT by recovery. See the SQL Server errorlog for more information. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 926)”

I called my expert NRZ straightaway of course and complained to him about my problem.

Of course, NRZ  came to my rescue immediately and started Googling for solutions to help me.

At 11:08 am, he sent me his first link, which required working in cmd mode. Tried the instructions, but it just didn’t work!
http://sqlplanet.blogspot.com/2008/07/recreate-corrupt-msdb-database.html

At 11:25 am, he sent me yet another link which was using the SQL Server Configuration Manager in GUI mode.  Still didn’t work :(
http://rip747.wordpress.com/2008/05/26/rebulding-msdb-in-sql-server-2005/

At 12:11 pm. problem was still unresolved, so he sent me a third link.  Unfortunately, that still didn’t solve the issue.
http://paradisj.blogspot.com/2008/08/sql-server-error-detaching-msdb.html

After these numerous attempts and my urgency to get the SQL Server working so that I could work on my system, I told him I wanted to give up and just reinstall the whole SQL Server.

NRZ told me not to give up yet.

At 12:25 pm, he sent me another email. Attached to the email was a copy of the MSDBData.mdf.

And that proved to be the saviour of the day because when I copied and pasted this file to override my corrupted one, everything started to work well miraculously!

Thank you NRZ for patiently helping me with this problem today, my darling SQL DBA expert! :)