My aunt called me this morning and expressed her concern about the first suspected case of Influenza H1N1 in West Malaysia as her son is currently in Kuala Lumpur. To date the official has yet to confirm the status of the suspected case.

Earlier on, World Health Organization has revised the grouping & description of pandemic phases to be more precise and easy to understand. The current WHO phase of pandemic alert is 5.

In phase 1, no viruses circulating among animals have been reported to cause infections in human.

In phase 2, viruses circulating among animals have caused infection in humans.

In phase 3, an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant has caused small clusters of disease in people but has not caused community-level outbreaks.

In phase 4, verified human to human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza ressortant able to cause “community-level outbreaks”.

In phase 5, human to human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this phase, the declaration of phase 5 is a strong signal that pandemic is about to occur.

In phase 6, the pandemic phase, community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in phase 5. This indicate that a global pandemic is under way.

(Source : World Health Organization - Current WHO Phase of Pandemic Alert)

According to Wikipedia, the WHO definition of  “pandemic” are:

•  Emergence of a disease new to a population.

• Agents infect humans, causing serious illness.

• Agents spread easily and sustainably among humans.

When these three conditions have met, a pandemic can start.  A disease or condition is not a pandemic merely because it is widespread or kills many people, it must also be infectious. For instance, cancer is responsible for many deaths but is not considered a pandemic, because the disease is not infectious or contagious.

(Source : Pandemic, Wikipedia)

If you would like the latest news and the current mapping of Influenza H1N1, you can visit RSOE EDIS - Pandemic Monitoring System. This site offers the current mapping of Influenza H1N1 with statistic of suspected infection, confirm infection, quarantine and details.

Just a short reminder, if you have flu, fever and body ache, please visit your doctor straight away as these can be the symptoms of Influenza H1N1. Do drink plenty of water, get plenty of rest if you need to as this is the time to make sure your body immune system is strong.

Wishing all of you good health.

With the recent alarming news about H1N1 Swine Flu, there is a lot of confusion about influenza, therefore Readinga-z.com has created a special unit study on “Influenza” for students and teachers alike.

These free resources include leveled readers books on “Microbes : Friend or Foe” & “InFLUenza”, fact and activity resource packet, coping with illness booklet, influenza word search, body wars (how your body fighst flu) booklet, history of vaccine and map for you to track the spreading of Swine Influenza.

You can find these useful resources on Swine Influenza at Readinga-z.com.

This coming 5th May 2009 is Cinco De Mayo (which means “5th of May” in Spanish). It is a national holiday in Mexico and is also widely celebrated in US.

To celebrate this special occasion,  I would like to share with you this free ebook :

In this ebook, you will learn about the history of Cinco De Mayo, learn Cinco De Mayo songs, make Cinco De Mayo crafts and lots of yummy Cinco De Mayo recipes for you to try.

You can download the free ebook here

Do feel free to share about this free ebook with your friends & happy Cinco De Mayo!

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner!

This is the day to share with the ones you love especially your family members and children. To make this year’s Valentines a special day for you and your families, Fun  Learning Express would like to present you “Valentines Fun Ideas For The Whole Family plus Romantic Ideas For Mom & Dad” free ebook :

Do feel free to download it here

 and have a fun filled Valentine’s Day Celebration!

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You can find more Free Ebooks @ Mom’s Wish List Free Ebooks List ^_^

Are you searching for baby or child sitters for upcoming holiday parties, last-minute holiday shopping, and New Years Eve? Do you need pet sitters and house sitters if you are traveling this holiday season?

Sittercity is offering a 10% off a monthly or annual Sittercity membership with Coupon code : SCSAVE10.

Visit Sittercity today :

For those of you who haven’t downloaded the “Halloween Fun Recipes And Party Games”, it’s still not too late to check it out for some great Halloween fun and yummy treats!

Click here to download “Halloween Fun Recipes And Party Games”

Have a great Halloween!

For the residence of Kota Kinabalu, here’s a new hang out and makan (dining) place located at Sembulan - Grace Point. It’s an open air concept food court with many fine cuisines like Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Korean, Western and local Borneo Specialty.

I’ll say it’s quite a pleasant surprise for me and my family when we first went to Grace Point few weeks ago. It’s a Saturday evening with fine weather, and we could feel the cozy breeze from the South China Sea. We had a wonderful outdoor dining experience with reasonable priced meals (from RM5 onwards) and the children were having fun playing at the playground. Nowadays you don’t find any family & kids friendly dining place with playground at KK except McDonald’s There’s even jogging track for joggers too!

The Japanese cuisines are served by Wagamama Restaurant - my favorite Japanese Restaurant. You’ll find the famous Fish Head Soup with rice vercimile (meehon) at the Dowish Seafood Restaurant (RM8); Korean cuisines at Da Jang Jin (RM10 onwards); Nasi Briyani at Indian food stall; All sorts of noodles varieties at the Noodle House; Burger, grills and western cuisines at the western food stall; Pastries and if you’re craving for tidbits like fried banana (pisang goreng), you’ll find it here too.

Not forgetting my favorite food stall - Borneo Ethnics, they serve local specialties like the pickled mango (mostly eaten by the local Kadazans), grilled fish (ikan panggang) and grilled seafood. My personal favorite is ethnic rice (brown rice) served with scrambled eggs with long beans, and fried ikan kayu. It’s RM6 and you’ll feel so at home with this home cook style meal.

I’ve taken few shots of Grace Point with my W800i and it’s kind of blurry:

Grace Point Food Court

The Double Six Mournument, there are few benches for visitors to enjoy the night breeze. It’s located at the opposite of the food court.

Kiddies fun area!

Food court view from the playground area.

As it is surrounded by the Grace Ville and Grace Garden aparments, it’s sort of like a secret garden well hidden in the city of KK. It’s a great hideaway and fine dining experience for all the stressful KK city folks!

At the mentioning of nanny cams, it will sure bring up a lot of controversy among the parents and the babysitters/nannies.

To spy or not to spy?

If you are a parent, can you trust your nanny enough to not install nanny cams when you are away from home? If you have decided to install a wireless spy cams to monitor your nanny and your child, is it legal to do so?

How about if you are a babysitter or nanny, do you feel your privacy has been invaded by the nanny cams?

It’s a tough decision, isn’t it? As for me, I think it’s essential to install nanny cams. Most of the parents will decide to install nanny cams when they suspect something unusual with their child. How about there’s no outward sign like bruises or change of behavior? What if your child is too young to tell you something terrible has happened to him/her? Maybe your child has been threatened not to tell you about certain incidents? Are our kids safe in our own home when we are not around? Think again.

According to law, it is legal to videotape nannies without their consent. Generally, a videotape without sound did not violate the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act. However, laws governing use of a camera with audio do vary from state to state.

Can nannies expect privacy in the home of others? Unfortunately, the answer is NO. In State v. Diaz, 706 A.2d 264 (1998), the leading case on this topic, the court ruled that a videotape made by a hidden camera in the residence of the parents of the child was admissible as evidence in the lawsuit against the nanny for assault and child endangerment. The court decided that since there was an absence of state action, and the Constitution did not protect the nanny’s privacy in someone else’s house. (Reference : Nanny-Cams and our Privacy by Jessica Sann)

To Spy Or Not To Spy? If your answer is yes, installing or setting up a nanny cam is easier than you think. Just order the nanny cams and follow the step by step, user friendly, online video tutorials provided by the company. No fuss, no complications, just peace of mind knowing that your child is well monitored by you!

Traveling with young children is always not an easy experience for most of the parents. With proper planning and preparation, you can have more fun and relax time for your next family vacation.

This year, I’m truly blessed with 3 trips in-a-row within a month. First, we went to Labuan Island for my hubby’s paintball tourney. Second, me and my son went to Kuala Lumpur for holiday with my mom. Third, I went to Johor Bahru with my hubby for the Florafest Paintball Tournament. It’s a 7-day break in between of each trip, the Kuala Lumpur trip was planned earlier on, and the tournament trips are added later on.

Our first trip to Labuan was a total disaster. It’s not planned, and my hubby made the last minute decision about the trip (that’s 1 day before the trip!). No preparation was done except packing for the basic stuff like clothings and toiletries. On Saturday morning, all of us have to wake up early - 6am in the morning and drove to Menombok (about 2hrs drive) in order to catch the ferry about 10am. As usual, my daughter slept in the car, but my son was wide awake throughout the journey to Menombok, and lacking of sleep will normally makes him hyper active. We reached the Menumbok ferry terminal about 9.30am, and because of last minute booking, our car couldn’t get the admission ticket. Thank God my hubby managed to talk to the ticketing officer and they give us the green light to go, otherwise we would have to drive back to Kota Kinabalu and cancel the trip. There, we boarded the ferry. Well, that’s not the end of our disaster yet - children, when they are exhausted, lack of sleep and hungry too, they will either be hyper active or irritable. In my children’s case, it happens altogether at once! We were really having difficulties in keeping our kids to behave in the ferry, they were running and answering back to us when we told them to behave. In the end, my hubby has to raise his voice and it attracted unwanted attention from the other passengers. Still, this is not the only fuss, as my kids were making noise in the passenger seats, my hubby’s friend has called and told us that the our hotel room is not available. Then my hubby started calling all the hotels in Labuan, and the room rates are too expensive. We have no choice but to wait until we reached Labuan and try to look for any available inn. It’s a 1 and a half journey in the ferry but it feels like ages!! Thank God we managed to find a hotel that cost us RM150 per night for the family room, nothing fancy but at least a place for us to stay overnight. After we have checked in the hotel, I have decided to stay in the hotel so that my children would take some rest while my hubby attended his tourney. At night we went to the Financial Park Shopping Complex to have our dinner @ KFC since we do not know where to eat at Labuan. The next morning, me and the kids stayed in the hotel as I have to pack all the luggages and the Chocolates that we bought here - Labuan Island is a well know duty free island with lots of fancy chocolates - and we were supposed to catch the 1pm ferry. We have our lunch and more crisis to come!! According to my hubby our car is in the waiting list, so we took our sweet time to have our lunch rather than going to the ferry terminal early. When we went to the ferry terminal, there were lots and lots of vehicles and lorries queing there! There we waited, waited, for about 1 hours, until the last vehicle boarded the ferry before us, and nothing happened, we were still waiting at the port…means we MISSED the ferry!! We have to stay here for another night, my hubby couldn’t go to work and my daughter has to miss her school next Monday! Not to mention we totally overspent on the hotel accommodation. And the worst thing was, my hubby really worried and couldn’t sleep well that night fearing that he would be fired! And our family were really feeling tense and irritable during the whole trip…On our way back to Menombok the next day, the kids still couldn’t keep still in the ferry, and we were still very angry and upset. The air-conditioner in the car was not working properly during our 2 hours drive back to Kota Kinabalu, all of us were really exhausted after we reached home. The moral of this story are :

• Never, ever, go for any unplanned trip, especially if you are bringing your kids along
• Know your destination well, you can check out tourism information from the internet
• Book your hotel reservation early
• Go to the ticketing counter early if you need to purchase bus fares, ferry fares and so on and do not take things for granted.

Labuan Island

My second trip to Kuala Lumpur was a total enjoyable trip with my son, mom, aunt and my sister. We made our airline reservation online, chose the window seat for my son, and booked the 10.50am flight from Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Lumpur. For the first night, we stayed at the Le Meridien Hotel, KL where it is located next to the KL Central, we used the LRT to the Mid Valley Mega Mall, it’s a bit congested around 5 to 6pm so we didn’t do any shopping yet. We moved to the Boulevard Hotel which is located at the Mid Valley City the next day. It’s a very convenient place to stay especially if you love to shop or vacation with young children. We have our hotel reservation booked online and got quite a good deal on the room rates. Why do I love this hotel so much? Well, we love to shop, after our hands were full with many shopping bags, we can go back to the hotel and unload! When my son was tired, we can go back to the hotel and take a rest. If we were hungry after the shopping complex closed, we still can go to the Kim Gary to have our supper, and they also open 7am in the morning, so my son who normally wakes up early can have early breakfast there. You can check out more details of the Boulevard Hotel here : http://www.hotelscombined.com/Hotel/Boulevard_Hotel_Kuala_Lumpur.htm

I absolutely enjoy my time with my son in the new Borders Bookstore located at the Gardens (the new shopping mall connected with Mid Valley Mega Mall). Since this is a family vacation, I didn’t do much shopping but rather spending a lot of times going to places that my son would enjoy, theme park, bookshops, toy shops and ice-cream parlor (his favorite place!) Here’s some tips for traveling with young kids :

• During the flight, bring your child’s activity books, coloring pencils, scrabble pads, magazines to keep him/her occupied.
• Pack your child’s favorite snack in his/her backpack in case he/she doesn’t like the in flight meals.
• Pack extra clothes, sweater in your child’s backpack.
• Write down your cell phone number, hotel’ name, hotel room number and telephone number on a piece of paper and put it in your child’s pocket. Show your child the information counter of the shopping complex and teach him/her to identify security personnel. Tell him/her to go to the information counter or security personnel if he/she were lost.
• Find out the family friendly place of interest for your destination from the internet.

Floral Fest @ Sunway Pyramid

Well, my third trip to Johor Bahru with my hubby is fine too. Since I’ve never been to Johor Bahru, I did a lot of research from the internet, especially hotel reviews. Most of the time, you’ll not get the real picture of the hotel unless you read the comments or reviews from the hotel guests. I did a bit of research on the public transport too as we were on the tight budget for this trip and couldn’t afford to use taxi transport most of the time. From the Senai Airport, we boarded the shuttle bus that cost us RM8 each to Johor Bahru city center, I found out about the shuttle bus service from the Senai Airport website. After that, we took a cab to our hotel - J.A. Residence, quite a cozy place to stay and about 5 minutes walking distant to City Square Shopping Center - one of the largest shopping mall in JB. When booking for hotel accommodation, I always opt for hotel that is located near shopping complex since I like to shop and there’ll be definitely no problem in looking for places to dine. The next morning, we took a cab to the Larkin Bus Terminal and took buses from JB to Kota Tinggi, from Kota Tinggi to Bandar Penawar, then took a cab to Desaru Damai Beach Resort. It costs us less than RM15 per person to reach Desaru (on sharing basis), if we took a cab from JB directly to Desaru, it would cost us RM120 one cab! Thanks to Wikitravel and well planning, this is a great and cost effective getaway for me and my hubby!

Desaru Damai Beach Resort, Johor

Last advice on travel survival guide : Know your destination well and plan ahead

For all the new parents, perhaps the most important thing to do after your bundle of joy has arrived is to baby proof your home. According to the National Safety Council, every year as many as 2.5 million children require medical attention from household related injuries and 90% of them are preventable.

How do we baby proof our home? Some of the basic safety measures are : installing baby gates to keep baby or toddlers away from stairs; covering all the electrical outlets that are within your baby or child’s reach with outlet cover; installing window guards to help prevent falls from windows; installing cabinet locks on all the drawers or cabinets that contain sharp objects, plastic bags, medicines, liquor or hazardous items; installing stove guard and oven lock in your kitchen; installing TV guard and DVD guard; covering the sharp edges of tables with corner cushions; installing door pinch guard; installing fireplace guard to keep your baby or toddler from it.

There are many possible injuries that could happen right in your home, hence it is important to check out more child safety tips on baby proofing your home.