It was a decent sized branch we had jumped over. I hadn’t seen it coming. I spotted a park lane in the distance and pulled over. We still had 350km to cover on our way back from Heidelberg. Our Civic is equipped with these funny tubeless tyres; spare wheel not included. We checked for signs of damage; there were none. Sneha and I sat with our heads down—until our heavy breathing subsided, our nerves no more hyper, and our heart rates back to normal.

Sneha and I remember yet another road incident from the past—our visit to Cherating. A couple of things didn’t go well on that trip. The stingray incident was one. This following is the other.

We were driving back home, and it started raining heavy. On one of the troughs on the highway, I was trying to overtake a truck—in poor visibility, in spite of wipers functioning at maxed-out speed. On one side was the concrete wall, the truck I was overtaking was on the other.

The truck began lurching towards us, and I was half way through its length. That was when we entered the trough, only to be hit by a ton of displaced water—completely blinding us. Because of the speed of both vehicles traversing through a mass of water, the water stayed in the air for a few moments in what seemed like an eternity, and knocking the living daylights out of us. That was a close call.

Now we know what it feels like—to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Our Canon Powershot A80, which we bought in Kuala Lumpur, was one of those unfortunates to develop a CCD problem.¹ It happened at a time when we were packing our bags to leave Malaysia—with no time to send the camera to Canon Service center and get it back.

With the warranty been void for more than a year, we were not sure if Canon would help. In addition, the camera was purchased in Southeast Asia; and we’re now in Europe.

When we called, Canon Nederland BV customer support was prompt, and advised us to send the faulty unit to their service center. Two weeks later, it came back promptly fixed and now as a fully functioning unit—with nothing charged to us, not even the return shipping cost.

Needless to say, we’re delighted. Thanks Canon—you’ve turned, at the least, this customer into a fan.

1. In which pictures look like Moire fringes with a lot of noise, unrecognizable, fuzzy images.

Things have been, and still are, pretty hectic for me and my family offline; even for kids without really knowing what’s going on. My wife Sneha and I are both getting worked-up even on trivial things that we normally care less about. This phase will torment us for another month, until we sigh and breathe easy.

The thought of leaving a place you have lived for over six years makes you do that.

The car is almost sold. We’ll soon have a garage sale at home for household things. (The list of things to sell is already making closed rounds among friends and mail lists.) Stuff to buy, issues to take care of and close, to finish pending work at office, school transfer, serving notices for terminating services, closing tenancy, et al.¹

Yes, we will soon be leaving Malaysia. To India first, and then to some place, about which, I am not at liberty to discuss. At least, not yet.

In these last few weeks, we are re-living fond memories, humble beginnings, cherishing those moments of joy and sorrows we have had here.

Malaysia will remain a special place in our hearts. There were many firsts in our lives here. Aaryana’s schooling started here. My career found a new dimension and my learning curve jump-started. My second daughter was born here. This website was made here. And, it was also here that I understood the true meaning of fatherhood.

In all, it has been a wonderful asian experience. We will cherish it for the length of our time.

1. Geek-attack: We have been using Backpack for everything. From a utility point of view, nothing beats it.

We spent an evening in Port Dickson this Tuesday, as it was a public holiday for us here. Since it was a day trip, we went looking essentially for that perfect stretch of the beach on the western coast of Malaysian Peninsular.

It’s funny that there aren’t many around. Even the best beach resorts do not have a decent one. Like for example, we went to Guoman beach resort only to discover that there was virtually no beach.

We built sand-castles that withered before we could complete it; we played cricket, but the ball refused to bounce; we tried playing badminton, but the shuttle flew away =). But in all, it was fun.

Has anyone heard about Stingray? I certainly had not.

Two days ago, it was a new word in my vocabulary. Well, the story goes like this (an incident from my trip to Cherating): Our hotel had a relatively unused stretch of the beach, coupled with some large boulders. The stretch had some spotty marine growth. My friends and I decided to race and reach those boulders. We, four of us, almost did before I started feeling unpleasant surface below water. So, I began to move away back to shore since my feet were hurting.

The other three guys continued.

Before long, one of them felt a sting with a gash of wound and started bleeding profusely. He came limping back. The gash was like a big sting, almost like a hack cut across his foot. Blood was oozing out, because apparently the sting was on his foot vein. The salty water made the pain worse. A couple of bystanders offered some clean water and paper tissue before asking “Stingray?”

After a while, the bleeding slowed-down. But, my friend was in enormous pain. One of us rushed to check medical facilities in the hotel, while the two of us helped my friend to lean on to us as we took him towards the hotel. Halfway through, he began to feel numbness in his wounded foot. The numbness continued all the way up to his knee. We checked the area around the gash again. There appeared to be no coloring (blue or black) of the skin, that would otherwise indicate poison.

The hotel had no medical officer but, the counter staff informed us that there was a clinic nearby and that would be open on that day too (it was a holiday: Eid-ul-fitr, 4th November 2005). My friend sat in the lobby, while I rushed to the room to pickup my car keys and wallet pouch; change from my beach wear and some dry clothes for my wounded friend. The three of us jumped in and went out frantically looking for that clinic. When we finally found it after driving back and forth in the area, it was closed. The cause for worry for all of us was the numbing feeling and the intense pain that my friend kept telling us about. We kept telling ourselves that it was not poisonous, because of lack of any change in the color of the skin.

Our hotel was located between Cherating and Kuantan, approximately about 20-25 km each way. We decided to go to Kuantan, since it is a relatively larger town. The road to Kuantan was full of traffic and the single lane road made our journey frustratingly slow at times. Overtaking across double lines and using warning lights to oncoming vehicles continued. It’s also during these times when you feel like you’d hurl a stone at the traffic lights. Waiting for that bloody green seemed like an eternity.

None of us had been to Kuantan before. So, after a couple of stopovers and missing a couple of turns, we reached a 24-hour hospital. The doctor on call gave my friend a couple of shots: tetanus, antibiotics and a shot for allergy in addition to painkiller pills. She refused to give any antidote since we were not sure what bit him. I learned that some venom from sea creatures can have a late effect, and may cause allergies, hence the allergy injection. Looking back now and reading extensively about Stingray on the internet, my friend seemed to have all the symptoms of a typical stingray bite.

After reaching Kuala Lumpur, the wound healed but my friend was down with fever and infection. He’s now being treated in a hospital and is under observation for 48 hours.

I never thought isolated beaches would need a certain amount of caution before venturing into, but now I’d beg to differ.

On an impulse, Sneha instructed me to pick-up our emergency sling bag and add passports in it. I did that while she picked-up the younger one and gave her to me, and she carried my older daughter. We came out into the living room with the sling bag on my shoulder and kids in our arms. We then put the TV on just to know what was happening. BBC was reporting that an earthquake had occurred some three hours ago. That news slowed our pace and nerves. It was not before another hour that we took the kids back to bed. I looked-up some news on the internet and the first website I checked was Tsunamihelp. It has become that reliable.

While I checked the rest of the news, Sneha observed: “the last one was a day after Christmas and now this one a day after easter.” Whatever that means.

1415 hours Malaysian time - Sasser struck and my company’s network went down—most of it. Poof! Every one of my colleagues’ machines started shutting down and rebooting in cycles and the entire department was forced shutdown for damage control. Hours of work lost, with possible file corruptions.

More than anything else, I am amazed at the deployment and speed of its payload - in bringing down a whole network of computers (we have 1200+) - it’s not just plain hatred & butterfies in the tummy, it’s awesome, incredulous and devastating!

What if my company was in airline logistics, defense or in life-support systems? What kind of havoc that would have caused? Would you like to fly when worms like Sasser go loose over corporate networks - demolishing every form of defense systems that we think we have.

This is not meant to be a punch but, miraculously, my machine wasn’t affected. I realized that I had patched my machine of all critical updates just a fortnight ago. That’s a hard lesson learnt by our IT staff today, i.e., not having an internet connection is NOT a reason not to update patches.