Hermit Clan Living in Urban City?

Feeling slightly better today and abit more alive but sad lor because one of babe's fish died this morning. Don't know why but the aquarium water is getting cloudy. Both of us not much experience in keeping fish and hence, not very sure what to do. We are planning to take the remaining fishes out and keep them in a pail of water first while draining all the water from the aquirium. I think perhaps, this is the only way to make it clean. I suspect the small stones are the culprit that cause the cloudiness. Perhaps the stone were not cleaned or soaked long enough before we lay the aquirium floor with it.

Anyway, my task during lunchtime later would be to go to the petshop nearby and buy a small fishing net to get all the fishes out. The idea of walking 15minutes to reach it is not very tempting but I cant bear the thought of another fish dying in our home. So, after eating the lunch I packed from home later, going to go there and ask the petshop owner and see if they have any suggestions. Hopefully, they have some good constructive suggestions because not all petshop have much idea about aquariums. I can only say a silent prayer that we opted out of keeping those expensive ariwana!

Been trying to catch up with work since...yesterday! Was it only yesterday that I start work? right now, I have about 12 pending action items with half need to be completed by today or else I might not be able to get the items out to customers on time. So many companies are going to be closing down for at least one week during the Chinese New Year holidays including plants and factories. Our vendors has already starting to send out emails notifying us of this. Even my ex-company in Kuching have been informed of one week shutdown of the office and plant. Reason given, for fab maintenance.

Now, those from this industry will know that people do not shutdown the plant/fab or factories for 9days! This shows how bad the situation and economy is now. I am lucky because we do not have the heavy liability of running a fab but even we are experiencing the pain of the reduced in orders. I was told while I was on leave last week that the VP has instructed for 2 days shutdown, i.e. the day before and after 1 Jan 09. Only those with engineers with urgent projects need to come back to the office.

Babe and I are very worried actually. Trying really hard to be very careful with what we spend and things that we buy. Although we finally got the water heater for our apartment, we have decided to stop buying other furniture and the DSLR camera for the time being. Also need to be very careful with our annual leave in case the company implement more force leave like what is happening to other companies right now.

Situation is bad and I pity those that do not know how bad it is going to be. The news yesterday reported that we now expecting 1+% economy growth this year instead of the 5+%? The numbers might seem small but this translates to increment freeze, no bonus and worse, pay cuts or retrenchments and shutdowns. Hence, it really irks me when someone try or pretend to be 'clever' but in actual fact, making a fool of themselves. Hermit Clan......sigh...