Half A Cup of Coffee

migration

2006-08-30T10:17:00.000+08:00

i've moved to http://nerdook.blogspot.com

desert tales

2006-07-20T21:17:00.000+08:00

yea, i know, i havent updated for some time now. Been sorting things out lately (as in really sorting things out... hrm), and my final semester in uni is starting in just a few days. =/ spent the last few days figuring out how to edit the dota map, and finally succeeded! mostly because the AI we were playing against was horribly irritating, so decided to do a brand new one. still being tested, but so far so good, i guess. at least it doesnt cheat~~

came back early to do fyp, but (oops) still havent really made much progress from last sem. better buck up. on the other hand, the holidays have been really good: nice food and family at home, swimming, games and friends back here. relaxing! we plan to make some kinda car sticker for our graduating batch, but havent really gotten around to it yet. one thing at a time for mr procrastinator, ahaha.

results were pretty much as expected this sem (i.e. average... actually it's the lowest ever for me, ahahaks), but it all seems kinda pointless when you've seen the working life for yourself. ah well. let's see what this sem holds!

oh ya and i realise im easily distracted when there's no deadline. like jumping from one thing to another.... i looked through the stack of abandoned game making efforts and it's really quite messy! haha. but i had a promising pseudo-3d flash adventure game/rpg engine thing running, so if anyone is interested i can send u a copy. i guess. if i ever continue it! :P hehehe...

highway tales

2006-04-20T01:36:00.000+08:00

yea, yea, i know, i havent updated for some time, despite the fact that life is actually quite interesting and the net in uni is much much much better than expected recently. :P

the other weekend was rather eventful: a road trip back to penang. it was only for a few hours though.. had some stuff to settle, met up with ex-colleagues, then came back. going there was pretty ok.. left at 7am, with a junior, my rmate, and his gf all squeezed into 1 tiny kancil. got slightly lost before the highway, but overall, we made it safely without much incident. :) yay~ i must say, it was a horribly boring drive though, nothing but road for miles and miles. dropped off the junior at her house, which coincidentally was very near where i stayed during internship. or maybe not so coincidental, since the island is so tiny.

had a nice korean bbq there... and as usual, i ate too much, so had to do the "im so full im puking up gas" thing on the way back, since the bloated feeling was not very conducive to driving. and it was raining heavily too, couldn't see crap past a certain distance unless the other vehicles had their lights on. so the trip back was tiring, boring, and very very wet. gah... fortunately my rmate and co was around to keep me awake. thanks roomie~ if ur reading this.

(disclaimer: oh yea and i think i shud mention that my roomie is quite good looking. i swear he's one of the most good looking guys i know... approximately 3% more handsome than me. ahaks, im kidding. more like 300%.)

so yea. crashed after we got back. did a bit of programming for a friend, and spent the rest of the weekend recuperating. currently playing oblivion, which is a nice little rpg game... and i've JUST finished the main story, hurrah. god i need a life...

hornbill tales #1

2006-03-11T22:17:00.000+08:00

I'm back!! Finally, i get to enjoy a brief 1 week break at home. shocking to realise that my final year is 25% over, and by mid year i'll already have one foot out the door into the working world. eeeeek. kinda scary.

it's actually not much of a break, brought books back to study since i'll be hit by an avalanche of tests once i get back to utp next week. better than nth though.. first nite back and had a large meal of sio bee, gubak mee and char kueh. :P a true sign of parents' sayangness, lol!

unfortunately though, this pc seems to haf a problem with its graphics card. had to revert to an ancient nvidia vanta card (!!!) since the 5700 was knocked out of commission by air asia's luggage handlers (thank you very much), and there's this weird flickering. oh, and it's stuck at 800x600 resolution too, grrr. most probably getting a new low-end card for this thing.

anyone wants anything from kuching?? :P

desert tales #1

2006-02-21T09:21:00.000+08:00

well, i'm back in utp!

lack of updates due to:
a) a totally cacated network, oscillating between ok and not ok
b) dota
c) running here and there
d) laziness

haha! anyway, im alive and kicking, and it's business as usual. just popping by to drop a quick update. ;)

island tales #81

2006-01-20T13:35:00.000+08:00

Leaving the island...

Mixed emotions. Lots of things to do before i go. Things to wash. Double check lists. Clean up.

Penang has been great fun, Intel was (surprisingly) a really good choice for my internship, and now it's the end of the road.

Going to cross the bridge in 19 hours. And then there is no turning back...

Life goes on, I guess. And now, let me check on my laundry.

island tales #80

2006-01-11T11:49:00.000+08:00

yesterday was hari raya haji, and chok came over for a few days to visit penang. spent the morning playing basketball, followed by a yummy meal of dimsum... ahh. that's actually my first real exercise in ages, and over the past few months i've actually gained THREE kilos. gasp. shock. before i know it, i'm gonna be FAT. :P or maybe not... hehe. but all that cholesterol in penang can't be good for me, so maybe i should exercise more often once i get back.

ah yes... a week and a half before our return to UTP. i have yet to touch my final report, so probably i should worry and get started. and then it's going to be another year of academic grinding, before we're set loose upon an unsuspecting world, miaHAHAHA!

quiet day at work today, everyone's off for a meeting at some hotel. oh and the picture above... is an orange carrot, a pink-domesticated-farm-animal, a blue elephant, and a rat. :D

island tales #79

2006-01-05T07:58:00.000+08:00

top reasons to keep your old shoes hanging around

1) new shoes look great! but realise that if you wear them for any amount of time, they'll probably start to feel exactly like the old shoes... only slightly worse, because you thought they were better.
2) people only have one pair of feet, which means they should only wear one pair of shoes. if you want to compare against new shoes, sprout another pair of feet first.
3) if you get your old shoes muddy, you can always wash it and it'll be as good as new
4) you already know all the little quirks of old shoes
5) there's something really disturbing about comparing unfavourably with new shoes while the old ones are perfectly serviceable. and if you keep buying new shoes, you'll eventually have too many shoes.
6) i love my old shoes.. they're irritating in all the right places :P

of course, if the shoe really doesn't fit, then by all means go out and buy a new one!

(hang on. im all too aware that 'old shoes' means something rather nasty in cantonese, but let's not wander too far, ok?? for the sake of political correctness, i've contemplated changing 'shoes' to 'slippers'... but nah. just pointing out that sometimes things don't mean anything, really.)

island tales #78

2006-01-03T07:48:00.000+08:00

It's monday! no wait. it's tuesday now. darn... and in three weeks, i'll be off this island and back in uni! but in the meantime, i might as well enjoy the speedy internet connection while it lasts. woke up in a blur this morning and, by some minor miracle, i managed to get to work extra early. there's this thumping headache at the back of my head, too. :P

there was this story spiralling in my head this morning, about turtles... it was, weirdly, a turtle climbing a hill while looking up at a mountain. and written in blazing fire across the sky was something i heard some time ago: "the higher u climb, the harder you fall, but if you don't, the view is magnificient from up here". and all the while, the turtle kept plodding onwards while smiling wisely.

which just goes to show that i need more sleep!!!! haha.

island tales #77

2006-01-02T12:58:00.000+08:00

it's that time of the year again! 2005 has come and gone, and here's wishing everyone a good year ahead...

had the RM16 steamboat meal with colleagues on new year's eve, which was good, and then we watched the new year celebrations from 30 floors up, in one of my colleague's apartments. unfortunately, we were so high up that all the fireworks appeared tiny.. and every single one exploded below us. -_-" regardless, it was a nice way to usher in the new year.

i never had new year resolutions, and i really don't plan to start now. bweks. >:P

ah, and i've been getting myself hooked on civilization 4 lately. nothing quite like the feeling of raw power.... mmmm.... waging an economic war, cultural war, military war, religious war, diplomatic war, all rolled into one. and of course, there are the bits where someone else declares war on me, and promptly gets his backside kicked, packaged and handed back to him. heeeee.

HAPPY NEW YEAR~!

island tales #76

2005-12-27T22:09:00.000+08:00

hm, I must admit, one of my biggest flaws would be a total inability to cope with people deliberately ignoring me, especially over small misunderstandings. It just triggers a completely different side of me, and I'll be out of action for a while. mostly coz people who did that last time ended up sustaining a cold war for years and years. unfortunately, that just happened today, and everything just collapsed into a metaphorical crumpled heap... was unable to drive due to a strange urge to drive right off the penang bridge. heh.

long story short, I eventually snapped out of it (thanks to a helpful team of counsellors. hehe), and now I'm feeling a lot more normal again. so please please don't ever try the "i'm gonna ignore him til he bleeds" thing on me, it works only too well... :P

tomorrow might be a better day...

island tales #75

2005-12-25T18:54:00.000+08:00

and this is how i spent my christmas.. :P this has got to be the quietest christmas weekend ever!! spent more than 8 hours crafting a four-episode movie clip (about 3 minutes each), titled "Killer Granny (Episodes 1-4)". surprisingly fun! and time consuming too.. nothing as blandly repetitive as watching the same show over and over while adding in subtitles at the correct time. the files are 6-7 meg each though, so i can't upload them. too bad.

*twiddles thumbs*

think i'll send them to my bro. :P that's what bros are for... *heading off to msn*

haf a jolly xmas everyone! oh, and for a special treat... i think i'll politely point out that i've added my mum's blog to the links on the right. she's an excellent cook, and for some reason she has decided to take lots of photos of christmas food and post it on her blog: probably her motherly instincts trying to get some sort of christmas spirit to scroogey old me. ;) check it out if you're free...

island tales #74

2005-12-24T16:08:00.000+08:00

Christmas is in the air! That special time of the year when things seem extra sparkly!

well, the good news is, the presentation on friday went pretty ok. :) i plan to take the whole 3 day weekend off (as opposed to actually going back to work on monday), and spend the time clearing up loose ends lying around (hopefully), beginning with this... a total redesign of the blog layout! did this from scratch in a text editor, and i'm proud to say that the final results looks... awfully similar to a newspaper. hm.

had problems with my hotlink account, and couldn't top up. stranded with RM2. Luckily, mum contacted the maxis customer care, and they settled the problem pretty speedily. now the phone is back in action! yay. unfortunate, then, that i dont actually have very many people to msg this year. :P chen is back home, and carol has gone holidaying in singapore... lucky girl.

wonder what i'm supposed to do with all this spare time... regardless, here's wishing everyone a merry christmas (eve) and a happy (soon to be) new year! :)

island tales #73

2005-12-21T07:40:00.000+08:00

egads. Christmas is just around the corner.. again. Didn't it just pass a few months ago?! of course, this also means that.. my internship is coming to an end. with 4+ weeks left on the clock, and two three-day-weekends coming up, time is fully expected to move extremely fast now, and before i know it, it'll be 2006. just as im getting used to it being 2005. again.

whoopeee. with christmas around the corner, my work has slowed down considerably.. there'll be a presentation this friday, and (ahah) i haven't done anything about it. yes, i can see that i am, as always, guilty of procrastination of the first degree, and yes, i am perfectly aware that i owe the world an epilogue! oh gosh. has it really been several weeks now? :P

things to do:

-get more sleep... i've been clocking up an impressive sleep debt lately
-finish off presentation slides. or at least, get started.
-complete the other half of the epilogue... eventually :D

ooo.. got an annual dinner tonight. supposed to be a posh-ish formal event. hm.

happy birthday mum!

2005-12-19T07:29:00.000+08:00

oh yea! my mum's birthday just passed, on saturday... :) whoops, i had to be reminded about it, kept thinking it was on sunday, soli. anyway...

happy birthday mum!! : )

hope u have a good year ahead. ;) wont tell u guys her age, bweks.

* * * * *

in other news... i've been caught between 'anchored' and 'adrift' the last few days, probably due to a bunch of different reasons. regardless, it seems that the worst of the storm has passed (hopefully) and currently the decision seems to be 'anchored... for now'. sigh. need.. more.. sleep.. :(

island tales #72

2005-12-05T06:33:00.000+08:00

monday...

parents are around, yay! kinda cool, occasionally felt like i was back in kuching... nothing quite like having parents around, things just magically happen by themselves: laundry suddenly washed, food pops up out of nowhere and things-that-i-needed-to-buy-but-never-did drop out of the sky. wheee! nice. they'll be around til next weekend, and as usual they've already planned a string of activities for themselves... besides spending time with their adorable son, of course. cough.

oh, and chen fell sick. :( one day MC, so probably wont see him commenting here until tomorrow. get some rest chen, and get well soon!!

as for the spire epilogue... er... will try and get it done by today! *procrastinate procrastinate*

island tales #71

2005-11-30T07:12:00.000+08:00

i'm back! :) apologies for the long absence, I've been alternating my life between the nanowrimo novel and work, and it'd be pretty boring to update the blog with the same thing every day...

in any case, it's (sort of, kind of, almost) done! I've breached the 50,000 word limit, hurrah, and the resulting mess can be read by clicking on the link on the sidebar over to the left. no plagiarism please... copy and paste without my permission, and horrible things will happen to you... :D "say no to piracy!" and all that stuff. anyway, the epilogue is still missing, probably I'll get it up by tonight and then end everything once and for all. ;)

oh yes... i think i'll become quieter at work. i guess i'm not usually a quiet person by any measure, but hm, maybe it'd be nice to try and tone everything down for a change. Serious Sim.. hard to believe until you've seen it for yourself, i guess.

*serious mode* -_____-

happy birthday housemate!

2005-11-10T22:41:00.000+08:00

~~~Happy Birthday ch3n~~~

It's chen's birthday! so, erm, happy 21st to my current housemate, loyal blog reader, fellow e&e engineer-to-be, utp coursemate, penang co-driver, etc etc etc.

CRAP MAN I THOUGHT IT WAS TOMORROW!! I swear someone is stealing my time and memories these days.. :P anyway thanks to ur mum for the dinner and cake... haha... hope you have a great year ahead. :)

happy birthday carol!

2005-11-08T07:56:00.000+08:00

8th november.. carol turns 21 today! wheee.... all together now, everybody say:

~~HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAROL~~

wishing you a great year ahead, etc etc, big girl deee, kuai kuai ar, don't be too naughty, try not to bully people (ahaha), and hopefully cyberjaya'll suddenly turn into a fun and wonderful place to be. :P

interlude

2005-11-04T12:27:00.000+08:00

okay, i'll be taking a break from nanowrimo for today. Weee... friends are visiting penang, so we're bringing them around. Well... will be cooking up ideas to add to the story, and then make up for the lost words this weekend. :D

cheers! p/s anywhere really fun in penang to go to?

nanowrimo is on!

2005-11-01T08:51:00.000+08:00

it's here! nanowrimo started officially today... and i've started a new blog to post the story. head on over to http://nerdookspire.blogspot.com to read the story as i update it.. in the meantime, normal blog posts will be posted on a less regular basis. :)

and this morning we accidentally ate maggots. EWW. went for breakfast with colleagues, and after eating we saw the worms crawling in the soy sauce. DOUBLE EWW! but apparently all it does is cause stomach aches (at worst), so fingers crossed.

EW. im never going back there again... :P

island tales #70

2005-10-28T20:21:00.000+08:00

there was a farewell yesterday for one of my colleagues, who's leaving for (hopefully) greener pastures. he's been a real nice guy (actually, everyone's been really nice to me. i still wonder why), so it's kinda sad to have him go off halfway through my internship. regardless, all the best to him!! :)

anyway. the farewell dinner thing was held at this place called bukit genting, which apparently is located at the far south of the island. i was pretty surprised when the road started winding round and round, and the town just faded away on the sides of the road. pretty soon we were driving up a hilly road (kinda like the initial d roads, but erm a lot smaller), and the last km was practically a first-gear journey.

the view from the top of the hill was pretty breathtaking, but what really took my breath away (literally) was the extremely cold wind at the top (plus the fact that it had just rained). the food was pretty ok, lots of hot and spicy stuff, and by the end of it we were definitely not cold anymore... :P

the downhill trip was the most fun. not recommended for the weak of heart. weeee.. try it one day and you'll know why!

* * * * *

there's been lots of interesting events at work, but i won't talk about it. :P i'll be working tomorrow, and monday to wednesday, with sunday tentatively hanging in mid air, in order to make sure that the work gets done. it's a busier week than normal, but the good news is, the young lady (hehe: i added young this time!!) who works with me is coming back on monday! yay... now i dont have to do the stuff alone. :P

(ouch my muscles just twanged. had badminton today.)

ahhhh raya is coming. happy puasaing to all my muslim friends!!! :) and happy raya next week! :P and also, happy deepavali to everyone who's celebrating it... phew, it's great living in this country. so many festivals!

*festive mood*

island tales #69

2005-10-26T07:17:00.000+08:00

i first heard about it while reading strizzt's rantglass.

it sounded interesting enough to be filed into the 'keep in mind' folder in my head. 50,000 words in a month? sounds do-able... didnt i use to churn out 500 word essays in an under hour back in secondary school? quick calculation: 500 words an hour, would mean a hundred hours of writing. which equals roughly 25 hours a week. 2 hours a day on weekdays, 7 hours and then some on weekends.

then i read about it again in the papers. and again in 5xmum's blog.

so yes! count me in! check out the guy carrying the pencil on the left if you have no idea what im talking about. click on that pic to find out more.

* * * * *

as for the whole indecision thing... i guess it has been resolved for now. :) sometimes life is like a ship: long periods of calm weather, and then a storm comes along and you crash headon with it. i've heard once that it's always best to sail directly towards a storm rather than try to outrun it, and hope for the best. hm.

current weather: drizzling!

island tales #68

2005-10-24T19:42:00.000+08:00

sometimes, the road of life turns into a big t-junction.

im standing at one now, and im swimming in the indecision... there doesnt seem to be anymore right or wrong decision, just a choice between right and left. right? left? or neither? sigh.

i think i'll spend some time in my sphere of peace and quiet. or spend the time playing games... games are so simple. :)

right? or left.

island tales #67

2005-10-23T14:22:00.000+08:00

oh joy! i bought 2 games over the weekend: F.E.A.R. and age of empires III. both of them actually caused the new comp to lag (wat the heck...), but after lots of tweaking, i upped the details and lowered the resolution, and now it's working fine (more or less. not fast, but definitely playable).

F.E.A.R. is great. with all (or almost all, anyway) the details on, it's pretty creepy, too. and playing at 640x480 (ugh) gives it a grainy video look that makes it even creepier. go play it if you can: it's good fun!!! age of empires is more or less the polar opposite: sunny, bright, and no creepy effects.

phrase of the month: shader effects. i suppose it refers to pixel shading, and HOOBOY it makes a lot of difference in the games. instantly lower frame rates, for example... :P

back to the games... and oh i saw petertan this morning, at church. obviously he doesnt know me at all.. but kinda cool to see someone in real life after reading the stuff he writes about. :D

island tales #66

2005-10-19T08:07:00.000+08:00

hm. the last few days have been strangely boring... after the flurry of activities for the past weeks, this period of strange calmness seems rather weird. feels kinda like sitting in a really quiet room.

*listening to the intense silence..*

but then again, i've always preferred quietness to noise (even though, ahaha, i can be real noisy sometimes).

* * * * *

i want to make a game! actually i've always wanted to make a game, and i've actually gone and done it a few times, but i've never actually made one that i wanted to play after it was completed. rats... but in this case, i want to make yet another game, and this time, i'm planning to make one that has a pretty much impossible purpose: it has to appeal to guys and girls...

if there was such a thing as a complete and utter opposite of the phrase "expert on girls", it would be a very good way to describe me. with my extensively collected experience in the female pysche, the game would need to include:

i) shopping
ii) many colours
iii) fashion
iv) a bit of extremely complex thinking
v) the ability to predict accurately what the user wants
vi) more colours
vii) occasional pampering
ix) not too much non-stop action

i think im gonna fail...

island tales #65

2005-10-17T07:36:00.000+08:00

greetings, readers~

i got to work later than usual today, darn it. hmmm.. inexplicably, the alarm on the phone didnt go off, but im bunking in chen's room for the weekend so i get to sleep in a subartic environment for a few days! haha...

the houseowner and the family dropped by for a visit (and probably for an inspection as well.. lol), so it's been yet another weekend screaming by with a loud whooshing sound. among the things that happened:

i) had a gathering/mini-party thingie at my colleague's place: initially expected to last until midnight, but it went on until well past 2, so i guess i caused a few more white hairs to sprout on my mum's head, since she always worries when i go into nocturnal mode... heehee. the thing itself was kinda fun, and we had supper afterwards, so i reached home at almost 4. hmm. there were a bunch of illegal bike racers on the way back, so i was driving in extra-alert mode.

ii) played diablo2: lots and lots of it! chen too. im (quite literally) blazing through with a 100% fire-based sorceress, switching to ice as a secondary skill halfway through nightmare mode (curses, you fire-immune creatures~~). fun......

iii) had dinner with the family in farlim. nice, but i got really full after that. another bite and i would have burst right open like a squeezed orange. or maybe not.

* * * * *

mondays are the best days of the week! too early to wish it was the weekends, and too late to, erm, wish it was still the weekends.

island tales #64

2005-10-13T09:37:00.000+08:00

"now that she's back in the atmosphere
with drops of jupiter in her head...

she acts like summer and walks like rain
reminds me that there's time to change...

since the return from her stay on the moon
she listens like spring and she talks like june...

but tell me.. did you sail across the sun?
did you make it to the milky way to see the lights all faded?
and that heaven is overrated?

tell me.. did you fall for a shooting star?
one without a permanent scar and
did you miss me while you're looking for yourself out there..."

that's 'drops of jupiter' by train. a very apt song, for me.

* * * * *

carol left this morning, on an 8.20 flight. quietly woke up at dawn and drove north to pick her up, quietly put her bags in my car, quietly drove to the airport, we had a nice quiet breakfast there, and she quietly left.

and i guess she's becoming more cunning than i am... after she left, i found a card addressed to me in my glove compartment, with a cute little monkey attached. :) shall put it on my monitor to as a little souvenir of her visit to penang.

and now, life goes on.

island tales #63

2005-10-09T23:04:00.000+08:00

it's been a really good weekend. :) spent a lot of time with carol, which is rare, and i've never driven so MUCH of penang until now! i am most definitely a creature of habit, and the sudden departure from my usual weekend (sleep eat sleep play sleep, repeat day two) left me feeling rather odd, and also a bit tired.

but it was most definitely worth every moment spent!

i've always thought of the people in my life as belonging to distinctly separate spheres. there's the familiar and comfortable family sphere, the wild and wacky university mates sphere, the now-dusty-but-nostalgic ex-schoolmates sphere, and the just-created work colleagues sphere... and of course, for the purpose of this discussion, the girlfriend sphere. heh.

it's kinda cool: usually these are kept separate, with the occasional references to one another, but this weekend the spheres collided for a brief moment, and it was good. :) brought carol to the company barbecue (which was pretty eventful to me, incidentally: more on that later) and she spent a lot of time with my housemate (who falls firmly under the wild and wacky category).

sure there were some hiccups (sorry carol!), mostly due to the fact that a guy and a girl's brains operate at totally different frequencies... and the fact that sometimes us guys are a LITTTLEEEE bit dense. ;) ergh, dont ask. i'd say everything went great overall though, and regretably i'd better concentrate on work (and recovering) for the next few days. definitely going to send her off on thursday! :)

* * * * *

memories are a funny thing.

memories...

...of being able to drive someone you care about here and there, and back again, and here and there again and again...

...of not minding how much that costs, coz some things are always going to be more important than money...

...of the shopping cart (ahaha!!)...

...of never ever EVER being able to understand what is so fun about shopping (and tagging along anyway in the hope of finding out, and failing again)...

...of a nice meal, lots of walking around, a funny movie with a cute girl and a cute guy, and of buying a book on the spur of the moment...

...of early mornings and a different church...

...of gurney drive, umbrellas, the long way around and one really hot sun...

...of a 'proper' shopping trip, at last, and of not being able to find what you wanted...

...of searching for the shop, and of finding our way (and a lesson learned)...

...of us, and me, and you! and of baboons and ostriches, and assorted farm animals. of hellos and goodbyes. of goodnights and good mornings. memories of everything and anything, and nothing in particular, and memories of the two of us which i fully intend to file away under the category of... "Happy Memories". :)

* * * * *

p/s the picture is a forever friends bear. if you don't know why, then you don't need to know why, and you are not encouraged to wonder... too much. :P

* * * * *

oh yes, and the barbecue was eventful coz i had to drive back after it was over. lost my wallet, you see. but to my utter embarassment, it turned out it had fell out in my car. whoops. but im glad it turned out ok... probably one of the BigGuy's little tests. phew.

another week has come and gone!

island tales #62

2005-10-06T06:56:00.000+08:00

The Ostrich has landed!

hehe. for me (personal opinion, your experiences may vary), when you're in a medium distance relationship (is there such a thing?? i consider mine medium distance anyway), no matter how many hiccups or problems there was, there's ALWAYS that Perfect Moment when you get to meet again after a long time apart. :)

there's nothing quite like waiting at the airport arrival hall, nose pressed against the glass, scanning the people inside, looking patiently for my own carrot-coloured ostrich.

nor is there anything quite like finally spotting her, breaking into a big smile, then being able to play the "Hi I Am Your Macho Boyfriend" role by carrying her big bags to the car.

and nothing really compares to quietly laughing at her silliness, occasionally squeaky voice, or the greedy little look she has when she gets her cheesecake and chocolate.

or the silent pride of listening to her piano playing, the astonishment at her limitless patience when surfing the net to read blogs and fan fiction, and the irony of her total impatience when playing sims 2 on my new comp.

we got lost looking for her friend's place, yet it was the most fun getting-lost-adventure i ever had. haha. big thanks to chen for accompanying me.. else i would have ended up elsewhere on the island on the way back! and big thanks to mum&dad for worrying, but things turned out ok. ;)

* * * * *

came to work in a mini-storm, my favourite kind of weather. there was the usual bunch of crazy drivers doing in excess of 100km/h, hazard lights blinking furiously, weaving in and out of traffic in the blinding rain and cutting on the left AND right, but hey, this is penang, after all. hehe.

current mood: excellent. :)

island tales #61

2005-10-03T07:26:00.000+08:00

it's the rainy season here in penang! been raining constantly for a few weeks now, quite unlike when i first arrived... back then the weather was kinda hot, and rain was really rare. probably an island-weather thingie.

i went church yesterday for some silver jubilee celebration, and i think i saw 5xmum from chanlilian.net... (woohoo! celebrity sighting. haha.) she was one of a large group of *ahem* lenglui and lengchai choir members draped in grey, red and white robes. there was some kinda buffet after the service, but i skipped it since my housemate was still waiting at home. hehe.

the weekend was wasted playing diablo2... a true oldie but goldie. nothing like mindlessly cleaving through wave after wave of enemies with a buddy... *chop! chop!* we blitzed through the first three acts of the game over the weekend, using a paladin-druid duo. i took a lot of naps over the weekend too, due to the rainy weather and the brain-strain resulting from too much diablo-ing. :D

2 days until carol arrives! and work is piling up again...

i wish i had my own doraemon. :P

island tales #60

2005-09-30T06:06:00.000+08:00

update. I've been really busy. it's now 6am and im the only person at work... there's nothing quite like going to work extremely early in the morning. no cars on the road, for one thing... hehe.

this week has been really hectic, with the extra workload and all, but mostly i'm busy coz carol is coming next week, so i'm squeezing as much extra time as i can into work this week, then i get to spend time with her. hehehe. hopefully.

oh, and the extra time i do have was spent playing SWAT4. pretty fun, and pretty tense. quite noisy too, at times. cool part: having your team mates stack up at the door, blowing it open with those small explosive packs, *flash-bang*, storm in, shouting "GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES!" "DROP THAT WEAPON!" bang bang bang... i have yet to get tired of it. :P

rite. time to drown myself in work once more. until next time~

island tales #59

2005-09-26T19:17:00.000+08:00

sometimes, i suspect that The Big Guy Up There waits for us to grumble about this and that, then twists our lives so completely that everything just gets turned upside down.

went to work today in the midst of a rare early morning heavy rain. which means i woke up with my favourite weather condition raging outside (yes, i just adore stormy weather! makes me more motivated in doing work. no, i dont know why either. yes, i know it's weird.), so going to work was actually pretty fun, and not as scary as i had dreaded.

and of course, once i was at work, there was that twist in the tale i mentioned. just when i thought work was crappy, etc etc, today quickly put everything into their proper perspective. apparently, the lady who worked with me (and is sort of my second supervisor) got hospitalised over the weekend with some health complications, possibly from too much stress? not sure about the cause. we went to visit her, and after that i realised my gripes were all kinda petty, and work seems kinda worthwhile again.

oh yeah. if you can, do pray for the lady. hopefully the doctors will figure out what's wrong and she gets better soon.

in other news. carol's pc conked out today, halfway through a conversation with me. all the signs point to a broken hard disk, so she wont be able to get online anytime soon. bright side is she no longer gets distracted while studying, and unlike me, she doesnt totally break down once her computer gets spoiled. :P

hm. such a strange day.

island tales #58

2005-09-25T20:38:00.000+08:00

well, i'm back. anybody missed me??

*deafening silence* :p

haha. anyway, it's been a long weekend. if this weekend was a dish, it would be a sweet and sour chicken. erm. right after i posted that friday post, things at work rapidly went downhill, and that one day pretty much ended my 4 month run of enjoying going to work. im actually dreading going back now, and feeling pretty sien about everything. sigh.

gah.... sucks... sucks... hope things get better.

but.... every cloud has a silver lining! and im pretty sure i've never been a good enough christian for most of the last 21 years, but sometimes i just gotta admit that He has a pretty good knack for cheering me up when i'm down. in this case, my new computer is finally back! :) and it cost RM80 to repair, which means it was a cheaper lesson than i had dreaded. very glad the nightmare is finally over, too.

this was taken a month ago, when i first set it up. a very trying time.

and this is it! a 3 gig processor, PCIe, SATA, dvd rom, DDR RAM (finally), and USB 2.0. sighhh... thank God everything turned out ok.. :) it's as fast as i expected, though it's also as hot as i expected.. and when running SpeedFan (which measures the temperature), the cpu temperature sometimes leaps to 80 degrees (!!!) for brief periods of time. i hope it's an anomaly! everything runs fine so far, so fingers crossed and keep on praying. :P

* * * * *

oh yea, and of course, we had a visitor this weekend. brought her around penang, and we had this HUGE meal at the food court near Northam Towers. (is it called Northam Towers? something like that, anyway). it's right next to the straits of malacca, which is pretty cool. wanted to take pics of the food, but i never brought my camera, so no pics. use your own imagination. ;)

watched 2 movies too: the american version of dark water (the japanese version was a whole lot creepier, but this one's pretty scary too) and a dvd of final fantasy 7: advent children, complete with crappy subtitles. note to self: watch everything again with subtitles that make sense.

* * * * *

it's gonna be a busy week, and im not looking forward to going back to work right now. sigh... i've also got a car service due next week. oh well.. that's it for now.

island tales #57

2005-09-23T06:23:00.000+08:00

it's 6.15am and i'm already in the office, on a cold and foggy friday morning.

* * * * *

had a great dinner with the department last night, for one of my colleagues who's going off for a while starting next week. mmm... a decent meal for a change, which means i finally get to eat veggies, fish and generally food that isnt extremely oily. phew.

some updates:

i) the motherboard is back in penang and inside its casing. the pc depot people said they're setting it up, so if it works fine i could probably collect it today, or this weekend. if it doesnt work... i guess i can wait a while longer. :P

ii) there's a new girl at work! *grin* (disclaimer: in case carol reads this, im just kidding.... haha)

iii) and we might have a visitor this weekend... one of the utp juniors is coming for a penang trip. probably gonna use this as a scouting trip for places to bring carol when she comes. hehe.

iv) i've been real busy with work (and dota), but it'll end today and start again next tuesday, or wednesday. so i get to breathe. yes!

* * * * *

right, i sure didnt come here at 6am just to blog. haha. better get back to work. ta...

island tales #56

2005-09-20T07:09:00.000+08:00

went back a bit later than usual yesterday, since i was, uh, voluntereed into driving another intern home. :P actually it wasnt very far, just had to wait til he was done at 7pm. managed to squeeze some work into the extra time though. *pats self on the head*

* * * * *

had a Good Game of dota last night, playing as a Treant Protector (i never understood the name. im pretty sure the only person protected is.. himself..). actually we lost in the end, but that's okay, it was close enough, and they were forced to break the throne straight, with one rax still standing, while we had two of their raxes down and had the slight edge. excellent considering we were holding the losing end of the stick right up to middle game.. HAH! :P

not easy to play treant, balanar and panda versus terrorblade, lion and chaos knight, okay?? :D

in other news... the computer people finally called. hm. they said the board can be repaired by the manufacturers, which would be cheaper than buying a new one, so i gave the go ahead. question.. how on earth do you REPAIR a motherboard? what im worried about is if they only fix part of it, then everything gets fried when plugged in. ARGH! in any case, im hoping for the best, and im getting them to pasang everything this time.

fingers crossed.

* * * * *

oh and... carol's currently adrift in her ocean of work, so she's gone into a sort of Ultra Megazoid Studying Mode, popping up occasionally for sanity breaks. :P erm, all the best... anyone in need of a big karma boost, send her a jumbo sized cheesecake!

speaking of sanity.

went to bed early last night (around 10.30), but to my utter horror, some genius (or bunch of geniuses) were holding a freaking CONCERT down the street in their house. there is absolutely nothing as annoying as:

a) an old guy with dubious singing ability
b) singing really old dialect songs
c) with speakers cranked up loud enough to share the joy within a 2km radius
d) in a usually quiet residential neighbourhood
e) at 10.30 pm, aka normal bedtime
f) on a freaking MONDAY NIGHT!!!

i woke up with a headache, and i havent the foggiest idea why *sarcasm sarcasm*. oh, of course, it could have been a charitable concert for a noble cause, but in the (unlikely) event that it was, i've magnanimously contributed by NOT leaving the house, starting up the car, turning on my bloody highlights, drive down the road, parking in front of that house, and HONK THE HORN THE WHOLE DAMN NIGHT!! *EVIL CACKLE*

(and there are better ways to do charity, anyway. so i doubt it.)

island tales #55

2005-09-19T07:22:00.000+08:00

i'm so sleepy on a monday morning... heh. hard to believe the weekends are over..

list of achievements over the weekend:

i) installed msn messenger, finally. using my yahoo account though. so if i know you and you wanna add me.. the address is on the sidebar. warning: i am a terrible conversationist. you have been warned. :P

ii) paid a visit to town with chen. bought battlefield 2...

...which was a lot more fun than i would have thought a week ago. good for a quick round of mindless action and fun explosions. whee! surprisingly it doesnt lag too badly at low details, so it's quite playable. still, hope i get the new computer soon. it should be here this week, I HOPE.

iii) mooncake festival! ate a grand total of zero mooncakes. it was a rainy weekend, heavy downpours on saturday night and most of sunday morning. saw mooncakes while i was in town, but on second thought, NAH. no lanterns, either. maybe next year. :P

iv) oh yea and i had penang road chendol while in town! housemate had to drop by his auntie's place, so we walked a short distance to get it. in case you didnt know: the stall's name is 'famous penang road chendol' (i think.. something like that), but apparently it's pretty out of sight. if you wanna find it, it's in one of the small roads opposite the main police station near komtar.

(disclaimer: it looks nothing like the photo. but im at work so all pictures come from a random trawl of google images... and this pic above was taken from nyonya.com, which is result #1 when u look up "chendol" in images. end of disclaimer.)

v) i finally got around to sweeping the place! swept the room and stairs. also cleaned up the rest of the place a bit, though i was too much of a lazy bum to touch my laundry. *procrastinate*

* * * * *

the rest of the time was spent on dota, of course, and i had a bunch of pretty fun games, all coincidentally involving a big spider! mmmm. spider. fun's over, it's back to work for now. fortunately, the weekdays pass even faster than the weekends, if that's even possible...

have a nice week, everyone.

interlude

2005-09-15T21:55:00.000+08:00

hm. i got spoofed on kenny's chatbox! quite an interesting experience. some guy stole my 'nerdook' nick and started posting rubbish, and of course there was no way to make sure who was who on a chatbox. kinda disappointing to be targetted for character assasination, but there you go. welcome to the world wide web!

had to reply as 'nerdookie' until he gave up. phew. my guess is he'll do it again next time, so i guess im never gonna post on that chatterbox again. he can have my nick if he wants it so much... i guess people can tell who's the impostor by then. ;)

plus side: the guy was dumb enough to use the link to this blogsite. duh.

island tales #54

2005-09-15T07:10:00.000+08:00

So it's thursday already, huh... wow. anyway, i got this little gem as a forwarded attachment some time ago, it's pretty funny. and it also means that i'm operating at 20% today. haha.

* * * * *

slept late last night... had a bunch of bad dota rounds (sobsob), then spent the rest of the time talking to The Ostrich who just had her presentation. :P

-EDITED-

and that naughty carol put this amazingly annoying picture on her blog!!! ARGH!!! :P ok im quite amused, but still!!! yea yea it's spozed to resemble me...

....oh yes, har har, very funny... ah, you won't find her blog linked from here. removed at her request.

-END OF EDIT-

surprisingly, i did manage to wake up on time this morning! my phone is still pretty much silent, but i found a working alarm clock on the dresser, so yay for that.

only problem: the alarm clock sounds really soft. its a teeny tiny *teet teet.. teet teet* sound, which definitely is NOT as loud as the usual phone's wailing electronic shriek. but i did wake up (before the alarm clock went off actually), so i'll give it a try, if it really doesnt work then i'd probably have to find a louder one.

of course, if i had my computer in the room, i probably could have whipped up a nice little flash-based alarm clock that fires off high pitched screams loud enough to wake up the neighbourhood (and my housemate). nyek nyek nyek. not that evil.

* * * * *

ah one more thing. i'm using earphones here, and for some reason there's a lot of noise. probably because the earphones are really LOUD. my volume control now looks like this:

since if it goes any louder, i can use the damn things as SPEAKERS (no joke). by the time it's halfway, it's already loud enough to blow my eardrums into pieces. so i guess the noise probably exists since the earphones are so freaking loud, and if the thing has an external volume control, then it's really well hidden, coz i sure as heck can't see it.

more notes to self: buy earphones with a volume control.

* * * * *

songs in my ears: a bunch of mushy reminds-me-of-first-sem songs by emil chou, a bunch of loud-and-sure-to-wake-me-up-completely songs from old linkin park albums (yea i know, so yesterday), and an assorted variety of other songs from 3 Doors Down's not-so-mushy songs to Zhou Chuan Xiong's even mushier songs.

word of the day: eclectic.

island tales #53

2005-09-14T15:51:00.000+08:00

ok so this is just way too funny NOT to post about. after reading desperate addict's post on the face analyzer thingie, i fired off my resume pic (nice blank background.. the results had better be more accurate..) in order to try it out for myself.

the results are here:

http://www.faceanalyzer.com/member.aspx?id=56260

go on, click on it. i found it pretty funny (and parts of it were kinda true too, i suppose). Enjoy laughing at my pic.... didnt bother to censor it. :P

island tales #52

2005-09-14T07:28:00.000+08:00

today, i was 20 minutes earlier than yesterday, but 20 minutes later than all the other days. reason: i dropped my phone yesterday, and it is now sulking by refusing to make any sounds. persuading it with chocolates and offers of shopping trips has failed miserably, which leads me to suspect that the phone is definitely not female.

heh. kiddingggggg.

note to self: find an alarm clock.

* * * * *

once again i'm halfway through another week! it's a nice cold wednesday morning, and if i was in utp now instead of working, i would most probably still be asleep. zzzz. actually, come to think of it, the chances of me actually retaining this 'sleep-at-ten-and-wake-up-at-six' routine once i get back to uni is going to be really low.

i've never been a studious person, though i always try to get my work done ~~at the last minute~~ on time. yes, i'm a procrastinator when it comes to studies!

way back in school, i usually finish my homework before going home (mostly because they got in the way of playing computer games), but for those years when i went to the shop in the afternoons, my parents would give me workbooks to do as extra work. and almost everyday without fail, i would sleep for almost half the afternoon after lunch (zzz), and upon waking up would watch cartoons until 5. the work got squeezed into the period between the end of the cartoons (usually at 5.30) and dinner (usually at 6).

those were the days!

also, i guess i've always seen my dad as the "haiya as long as the work gets done no need to study so hard life is short have fun but make sure it gets done that's all" kinda guy, but come to think of it i dont remember ever hearing him telling me anything like that. probably coz stories of his youth (from my aunt at the shop) usually paint him as someone with that philosophy. my mum's more of the "u have to be hardworking else u'r gonna fail then u know!!!", but it's probably more of a parenting rhetoric i think, coz i never did take it seriously. :P hahaha!

* * * * *

enough rambling.. back to work...

island tales #51

2005-09-13T07:56:00.000+08:00

oh. i was late for work today... well, not really late, more like later-than-usual-but-still-early-for-work kinda late. i usually wake up at 6.20, and by 7 (the latest) im sitting here getting some work done. but not today. woke up to find (to my astonishment) that the time was 7.08am. gasp. must have been all that programming.

...to hear the Rabbit say to itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat- pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on...

* * * * *

anyway. workload is quite manageable still, though, and time here plods on as rapidly as it always has. since the guys won't be able to make it this weekend, the trip is most probably postponed until the end of october, as fong needs to recover from his pox.

still no news of the computer. sigh. every call is replied with "the supplier hasn't replied us yet". patience.. patience... the day will come...

...`Have some wine,' the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. `I don't see any wine,' she remarked. `There isn't any,' said the March Hare. `Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,' said Alice angrily...

* * * * *

oh yes, and i successfully had another mini adventure, of sorts. was out of cash, so had to get to the other bank to get some. so took a detour while on the way back to work, to get to sunshine before i went completely bust. hopefully i'll get paid soon (actually, i know i'll get paid soon), and i'm also awaiting the quarterly 'big kahuna' from petronas.

mmm.. i love presents!

...`they gave it me -- for an un-birthday present.' `I beg your pardon?' Alice said with a puzzled air. `I'm not offended,' said Humpty Dumpty. `I mean, what is an un-birthday present?' `A present given when it isn't your birthday, of course.'...

* * * * *

(yes, those quotes are from alice in wonderland/ through the looking glass. available for your reading pleasure at www.literature.org, so go on, have a read. i'm off to ~~play with pink flamingos!~~ get back to my work.)

island tales #50

2005-09-11T22:00:00.000+08:00

this one's for carol/mum, mostly. in case you ever wondered what dota is. the screenshot is from a game i just had with chen and a bunch of strangers, and was the most cheat-riddled game i played today.

anyway. for those of you who have never seen dota in action: minimap in the lower left, my hero's ugly picture at bottom mid, then items and the various actions available. scoreboard at the top right, and the game itself takes up the rest of the screen. those multiple green blobs you see in the middle of the screen is a morphling who's using the forbidden manta style item to make copies of himself. i am, of course, elsewhere... :P

right. that's it then. back to the next game... haha.

island tales #49

2005-09-11T09:41:00.000+08:00

oh crap i missed church again. overslept, as usual. whoops. guess i'd better sleep earlier next saturday.

* * * * *

this picture was taken from a random google image search for "giraffe". i kinda look like one sometimes (as long as my brother isn't around!) since i am skinny and tall too, except i dont have a several-meters-long neck and i dont chew leaves off tall trees. erm. just posted this pic coz 5xmum is running a guess-what-animal-she-resembles post, and neeshen mentioned that i look like the animal pictured above. LOL.

*does some giraffe sounds and prance around a bit*

* * * * *

oh yes and i've added some new links to the sidebar. met two of them on kenny's chatterbox (which functions like a primitive version of irc) while some flamers were running amok. one of them is kenny's own desperate addict, who's as desperately addicted as her name suggests. the other one's alynna (that's not her real name though. im still wondering why she called herself alynna). hm, and i feel really old whenever i stumble across people so much younger than me. *feeling like an old giraffe*

oh, and if you enjoy the feeling of your hairs standing on end, go to the addict's site and listen to the audioblogs for kenny. haha.

* * * * *

plans for today: clean up the house. probably as my punishment for missing church again. hehe.

*EDITED*

oh yes. speaking of flamers. i forgot to add this amazing line i got from some dilbert's work wisdom list:

never enter an argument with an idiot, he'll drag you down to his level and then beat you with experience.

how true! :)

*END OF EDIT*

island tales #48

2005-09-09T20:56:00.000+08:00

I'm back from a friday night dinner! and boy am i in a mood for ranting...

right, so for the past few weeks or so, i've been having most of my dinners at this hawker place just down the road from here. it's convenient coz it's situated between home and work, and it's nearer and easier to get to than anywhere else.

but today's trip was rather unique. a little background information: to get to my food, i need to get past two traffic lights. even if one is green, i'd have to wait for the other one, coz they actually take turns to change colours. no big deal, it's a 100 plus second wait, and even when both are red, it's faster than walking. right?

right. except.......... for cases like today. for BOTH lights, i somehow managed to get not just one, but TWO drivers who really really enjoy driving slower than the speed of a dead turtle going backwards through peanut butter. yes, that's right, i had one insanely slow driver for EACH light. i'm usually a patient guy, and coming from kuching (and tronoh), i still find the drivers here kinda reckless sometimes. but these two clowns were REALLY taking their time... and so, i ended up being the Second Car From the Red Light Change twice.

gah.

the really weird part came when i reached the hawker center. that's when i came across something that really made me wish i had a camera in the car, since it's one of those sights that you dont see everyday. obviously, it was...

...a rather large herd of cows walking in a rather long line down the road...

...and on the correct side of the road too. except that i had to wait there since i was NOT keen on driving in the middle of a large group of cows. you know, in case they mistake my kancil for a predator and start attacking it. so while waiting for them to pass, i observed them doing cow-like things such as sniffing each other's asses, or swinging their cute little udders as they amble down the road.

sigh.

* * * * *

dinner itself was pretty alright. had my usual hawker combo of char kueh tiaw, nomaikai and a small-ish char siu pao. also, since i usually eat alone (and i find that strangely calming), i had time to look around and observe the usual people around the place. there was the rather cool ponytailed drinks guy who always replies my hokkien in english (maybe i sound weird), the friendly husband and wife who sells nomaikai/pao, and the surly looking lady who fried char kueh tiaw. there are other stalls as well, of course, but i've yet to get tired of my usual meal so i havent actually tried most of the other food.

quirky point about me: i tend to order the same food for a longgg time if im eating at the same place. i have no idea why, either.

now im back and enjoying a quiet friday night. perfect for chatting with my (insert adjectives here) carol, my (insert more adjectives here) mum, and (possibly) some gaming, too.

ahhh... my ideal idlyic lifestyle. :P

* * * * *

p/s and in case you're wondering.. YES I GOT A SLOWPOKE IN FRONT OF ME ON THE WAY BACK TOO. who did not move when the light turned green, so i had to wait twice. it was just not my night...

island tales #47

2005-09-08T20:45:00.000+08:00

overtime..

i'm still at work even though it's close to 9pm. hm. it's actually the first time i've stayed to actually do work long after the sun has gone down... and it's not really my work, per se, but helping out a fellow intern, sort of. not that i'm a really helpful guy or anything.. :P but i'm gonna run some of my own stuff as well, save myself the trouble of getting it done tomorrow.

kinda fun so far. feels like a sleepover. haha.

k back to work. want... dota.... :P guess that'll wait for the weekends.

island tales #46

2005-09-06T21:30:00.000+08:00

damn it, i have the hiccups again. and it's those painful hiccups that feels like someone is hammering your chest.. from the inside. *hiccup!*

ouch. im guessing it's the custard cream puff i had for lunch. anyone knows if custard cream contains lactose? hm. that would explain it though.

* * * * *

yesterday i was off on an exciting adventure! sort of. the car felt rather odd lately, so i had a quick look around and found that the tyres were kinda sunken. not good... so drove to the nearest petrol station for a quick tyre pump.

now, this is my very first tyre-pumping experience, and i was rather nervous at first. dug out the car manual to find out the correct air pressure... but it turned out the value is written on the frame of your car door (i definitely did not know that!).

also, i actually needn't have bothered: the tyre pumper thingie is digital, and it's already set to 29 psi (=200 kPa, i think), all you have to do is take out the valve caps on the tyre, plug it in and wait for the signal to stop. had chen along just in case, so thanks housemate~

it turned out to be pretty easy after all. and the tyres were seriously in need of air.. 16 to 21 psi, on average. wonder where all the air went?? and you are advised to keep your tyre pumped to save fuel, etc etc....

* * * * *

note to anyone who doesnt know it yet: the RM1 coin expires as legal tender in december. so don't accept them from shops if possible, and remember to change your coins before then. it's being repeated on the radio daily, so i just had to pass it along... :D

island tales #45

2005-09-04T20:46:00.000+08:00

you know what? i realised that both my parents read this blog, but only my mum comments. hm. therefore.... i'm gonna dedicate half this blog to my dad! aint that nice. :P

gosh i love this pic... hehe. i have no idea how old i was when it was taken, but it's definitely more than 10 years ago. my dad looks pretty much the same as above, except he has (slightly) less hair. similarity with my bro: both have more muscles than me (sob).

anyway, i've always thought my dad's character is the total opposite of my mum's: mum is (to me) very talkative (hee) and extremely concerned about everything, while my dad is (to me) the embodiment of the silent, macho, muscular man. hahaha... actually i found out it's not exactly true, he's pretty concerned about us too, but (like me) showing concern/care so blatantly is just SO girlish. nope, not something us guys wud do, nuh uh. :P nawps.

i honestly think my dad is kinda cool, coz he plays computer games too (which was actually how i got hooked, come to think of it), though he never did take up the offer to join me and my bro's networked games. hmm. guess he doesnt like competition? :P plus it's usually my mum who calls me on the phone, except when i'm sick (or when my mum mischeviously shoves him the phone), and i'd get to hear his gruff, macho, controlled voice! haha... shh dont tell him i said that. :D

so yea. that's my dad. and if you don't know him, he sometimes does appear kinda scary! darn i wish i had that scary look. heheh. the things i could do... but surprisingly, i think my mum was more of the disciplinarian in the house.

(gee. i wonder how he'll react to this post.)

* * * * *

completely different note: tomorrow is my ex-roomie's birthday. so..

happy birthday yaw!!

that's him on the left. i'm the slightly taller guy on the right. and this is one of the few pics that only has two of us. also, he's one of the members of the gawd-awful F4 Gang (i shudder everytime i mention it). erm. we totally hated F4 way back in first year, but coincidentally there were four of us then, so uh, erm, it was very logical (in a backwards kinda logic) to name ourselves after them. ARGH. why am i telling this... hahaa....

anyway happy birthday yaw. hope u have a nice year ahead! (doubt he'll read this. oh well, it's the thought that counts)

island tales #44

2005-09-02T22:12:00.000+08:00

it's yet another one of those friday nights...

end of another week, and beginning of another weekend. i guess friday nights mean partying night for most people... but obviously not for me. it's always been GAMING NIGHT! :P yea, and a quick check of my computer reveals that I currently have 11 games accessible from the start menu. here's the list:

capitalism II, diablo II, insaniquarium, monopoly tycoon, dynomite/rocketmania, the SCUMM virtual machine (with sam&max), simgolf, starsiege tribes, sims 2, uplink, and of course, warcraft III (and dota). i've also got VOS and chaos overlords stashed in another folder. sigh... yea i've just realised that most of these games are OLD... i've only just deleted GTA: san andreas and underground 2 since they were taking up a HUGE amount of space.

Hm. most of the rest of my 40 gig contains utilities/programs for studies: matlab, pspice, etc etc, stuff engineering students would be familiar with. probably gonna have to transfer everything over to the new computer once it arrives.

can't wait for the weekends. though i have this itch to finish off my work in the office... hahaha....

island tales #43

2005-09-02T07:37:00.000+08:00

nightmare! went back home yesterday after a long day at work (downside of midweek holidays: the work just snowballs), looking forward to a night of doing absolutely nothing but play games and surf until my eyeballs fall out. or at least until it's time for bed, whichever comes first. but noo, some things were just not meant to be... clicking on the little 'connect to streamyx' icon resulted in the usual connection window... which promptly mutated into a box that declared some remote computer somewhere was not responding to my urgent pleas to connect to the net.

what the hockaloogie?!?!

a quick inspection of the modem revealed that its usual (happily lit) DSL connection light was off. not even a blink. horrified, i restarted the modem. nothing. picked up the phone. dial tone sounded ok. scratched my head. shrugged. and i went to take a bath.

streamyx was down! there were in fact two possibilities: either my modem was screwed (i certainly hope not!!) or the streamyx exchange was out of commission for the night. either way, i wasn't going online anytime soon... though after the initial irritation was gone, i was off playing a bunch of offline games.

fortunately (and fatefully, i guess) alvin decided to pick that night to invite us to a round of cybercafe games. woot! we left at 9.35, and got back just past 1 am. :P observation: i'm really surprised by how many kids there are who play in cybercafes until very late into the night. hm. don't they need to eat/study/work??! (heh. alright, actually im not that shocked. i'm perfectly aware of how time moves at a different rate for gamers. "what it's night already?!?!")

in any case, i got to work half an hour later today. and it's back to the grind i go. but first: yes, streamyx IS back up... :)

island tales #42

2005-08-31T20:16:00.000+08:00

Living the Malaysian Dream!

Today's Independence Day for Malaysia, so I'll put something a little more suited to the occasion here. The Malaysian Dream: to be honest, I have no idea what it is. Do we have one? The only one we have, as far as I know, is to be a fully developed nation by 2020, something I learned wayyy back when I was a kid. And up until I was in upper secondary school, I did not have the slightest idea how a fully developed nation was different from the country I lived in.

So for those of you who, like me, did not know what it means to be fully developed, I'll share what I've managed to decipher so far:

1) everything seems cheaper when you are fully developed, except for stuff like gas/petrol, housing costs and various forms of taxes

2) you get very fast and very cheap internet connections, and cheaper cars, and cheaper computer stuff. but food prices go up.

3) everyone will be able to afford the expensive original stuff (as opposed to sneakily using dirt cheap pirated software/pirated goods)

yep. can't wait to be developed.

here's my malaysian dream: to be able to live out my life in a quiet city, zero (or low) pollution, not too hectic, but with cheap food, cheap goods, low taxes, fast telecommunications, friendly people, low crime, and the possibility of a good life for my kids (if any).

racial policies/attitudes? i sure hope they figure out a way around that soon. corruption? well, it's hard to change greed, but let's hope they can find a way to get that out of the way too.

hm. perhaps that's too much of a thing to dream for after all... :P

island tales #41

2005-08-30T07:04:00.000+08:00

tuesday... tomorrow malaysia turns 48, and to show how patriotic i am i won't be coming to work! haha. and that also means that it's fong's birthday, so...

happy birthday fong!

that's fong choong chiu, for the other fongs out there. who kinda looks like the picture below...

(erm. or maybe not. but there is a slight resemblance.)

heh. and work has resumed for today, after that it's a whole day off! woohoo... i got myself a brand new dvd-rom drive (yes, was too lazy to replace the old one which has been spoiled for a VERY long time now), and installed sims 2/diablo 2 in preparation for the holiday, weekends and everything else between now and the return of the new computer.

and yes, enough of the sims jokes, i'm well aware that it's very cute to share my surname with those adorable little creatures. so enough already!!! no more simcity/the sims/simcard jokes, it's getting really stale.. :P right. the games will probably keep me occupied for some time. meanwhile life goes on as usual, week 12 out of 32 of this internship is already halfway through....

happy merdeka day everyone. here's hoping our country becomes a great place to live in!

island tales #40

2005-08-27T21:45:00.000+08:00

hola. here's something slightly different for a change... my nephew (answers to brian... er, dad's eldest brother's second daughter's kid) got entered in some baby competition thingie, and being the loving uncle who's only seen him a couple of times, i've decided to plug the little guy here. heh.

click here to vote for brian! (you handsome/pretty/attractive person, you)

cough. end of plug. thank you for your attention. and hey if YOU put ur baby in some future competition i'll be sure to return the favour. *convincing grin*

* * * * *

in other news. i've been working a bit overtime this week to catch up with the work i lost while sick. and the rest of the time after that was spent sleeping to catch up with the sleep i lost while overtime. and the rest of the time after THAT was spent playing games to catch up with the playing i lost while sleeping. and i also did my laundry...

got myself a spanking new mouse again too. black and silver with a funky blue light coming out of it's mousewheel. and optical. i havent used optical for a long time... so decided to try it for a change. my previous, not-so-new-anymore-mousewheel-broken-cheapo mouse is now a spare. together with the other two mice upstairs. (erm. anyone needs an extra mouse?)

and YES! i more or less successfully completed the first round of stuff at work. second round starts on tuesday, and this time i'm a lot more prepared for it. going to plan it so i can get everything done on time this time around... wish me luck!

* * * * *

oh and don't forget to vote for brian. u'll need java to do it though (what were they thinking?? havent they heard of php/asp??), so there might be a slight hiccup if you dont have it and dont want to download it. but if you do get it... er.... you'll get to hug the kid if you ever meet him. :D

cheers~

island tales #39

2005-08-25T06:59:00.000+08:00

i'm back! not completely recovered, still feel slightly blur, but headaches are gone, fever's gone and cough's been reduced to a mild throat irritation. yes!

all that's left to do now is to catch up with all the work that got pushed back due to the worrying and falling sick. oh, and thanks to my mum and dad (you guys can stop worrying now... :P), carol (you can stop worrying now too.. :P) and chen (i believe i still owe u the chicken rice..).

strangely enough, i dreamt of sun wukong (the monkey king that is, not the dragonball guy) almost the whole night. hmmm. i've always found him a fascinating character: cheeky, mischevious, gets away with the most audacious stunts, but deep (deep) down he's actually a rather nice guy... in other words, completely unlike me. (confession: i've been a fan of this naughty monkey since i was a small kid.) hm.

*back to work*

island tales #38

2005-08-23T18:10:00.000+08:00

this is a whole new meaning to the phrase 'worried sick'. i think i have the flu... weather's taken a turn for colder times. sigh.

island tales #37

2005-08-22T13:51:00.000+08:00

i feel like... i just climbed to the top of the tallest peak in existence, tripped, and fell several thousand miles into the deepest hole in existence, which i then slowly crawled out of.

in other words, im feeling pretty damn weird.

finally upgraded my pc, though some parts were not available so it ended up being slightly more expensive than i'd budgeted for. so decided not to spend more money by choosing to install everything myself. in retrospect, that wasnt the wisest choice i had ever made in my life...

and of course, the computer is now spoiled. after a sleepless night (where i dreamt of the invoice cackling madly in my face while pointing to the phrase "NO WARRANTY CLAIMS FOR DIY F-UPS"), i spent the morning in a totally dazed state (as i always do when any one of my computers conk out. my colleagues said i looked like a total wreck, as if someone just died. hm.), and finally couldnt stand it anymore, so took a break to get it to the shop.

the technician insisted it was my fault, and i insisted it was a hardware error. so the motherboard is now on its way to the factory to be validated for warranty claims. i got a nice green reciept that says (more or less) "we will try and claim for u, but u might not get the claim approved", but at least im now able to function normally!

heh. i hope the warranty claim is approved. will find out in two or three weeks... so far it seems like everything other part survived the catastrophe. I CERTAINLY HOPE SO! else i'd have to dig in my pocket some more...

and the moral of this story is: destroying my computers will certainly have a cataclysmic effect on me. so please don't! it's cruel~

(and everyone also says i place wayy too much importance on those stupid boxes...)

island tales #36

2005-08-21T21:54:00.000+08:00

it's the convofair! utp holds one everytime there's a convocation, so me and chen took a trip to tronoh to meet up with friends and revisit the uni. and this here is chen's vehicle, which was how we got there.

the convofair is mostly a huge pasar malam/carnival/exhibition event, with lots of stalls being set up in the field near the new hostel villages. there are mini car shows, food stalls, exhibitions held by various companies, carnival game stalls (including an archery station and a giant yoyo), and stalls selling everything from computer parts to shirts and posters.

here are my utp buddies, minus me.

and here i am! hair looks really short in this pic though.

this was dinner! a quick before and after shot of our pizza. ordered the wrong one, supposed to not have beef. but it turned out ok in the end.

this here is the ayam golek madu (chicken cooked with honey) stall, which was where we had lunch. it was quite alright, though there was quite a wait for the chicken.

after dinner, we visited this newly opened cafe right next to my old hostel block. it's larger than most other cafes, and i was really surprised to find this above the cafe:

pool tables! it was RM3 a go, but i dont play pool. watched the guys play instead... looked pretty fun. and speaking of pool, there is actually a KOI POND next to the drinks stall in the new cafe... with koi fish inside!

oh and there's a foosball table too. but there was nobody playing.

it was supposed to be a day trip, but there was lots of stuff to do so we decided to bunk over at gordon's place for a night. was up by 7.30 thanks to the faulty internal clock, and spent the time watching CSI episodes while waiting for the rest to wake up. oo and took an early morning shot out the corridor window:

and we left at 11 plus after breakfast, headed for home. here's the v5 car park, where you can see lots and lots of cars...

and here's the new mosque... still under construction though.

and i present to you the world's most advanced guard post! complete with a fountain nearby, it's located in the middle of a roundabout after the main entrance.

goodbye utp!

and 2 hours later, we came to the penang bridge.

home sweet home! :)

interlude

2005-08-20T07:51:00.000+08:00

*brief interlude*

yes, i havent had a proper update for a while. and there probably wont be one for a while yet... in the midst of planning for a brand new (electronic) baby. i'm strangely excited... the last time i felt like this was three years ago, when i got my current computer. mmmmmmmmmm.... that burning feeling of anticipation......

i can't wait. :P

probably heading for utp later today.

*end of brief interlude*

island tales #35

2005-08-17T21:10:00.000+08:00

i'm amazingly tired.

lost the basketball match in the first round (no big surprise..), 5-4. was pretty fun, havent exerted so much energy for a long long while now. but was so tired after the game, practically lost my vision for a few minutes as my (weak) lungs pumped oxygen like mad to the rest of my body. driving back was pretty whacked, had to concentrate real hard due to the recovering body and the oxygen-deprived brain.

note to self: don't get that tired again if driving back is involved.

went out with alvin choong and his friends last night for... wat else... dota! first time i actually saw so many computers in one room all running the SAME GAME. a bunch of fricking crazy people out there.. i'm pretty sure they play a LOT more than i ever will. the games were rather ok, tho i look real rusty next to the maniacs who play this game for a living.

and of course, life at the workplace has evolved into a kind of high-speed grind, where you have to get lots of stuff done while time whizzes by. i've resorted to actually making a time table (help me im becoming like my mum!) to keep track of what needs to be done by when. guess the honeymoon period is well and truly over... it's not too bad actually, just very similar to constantly shovelling water out of a bucket under a tap that has been turned on full blast... (and that has got to be the worst analogy i have EVER come up with...)

supervisor visiting tomorrow. not much idea what to expect, let's just hope it goes okay. now if you'll excuse me, i have a lot of recovering to do.

island tales #34

2005-08-16T07:15:00.000+08:00

Simmie's Survival Tips #1

Here's the situation. You start your car one fine day, and to your utter horror, the needle is best buddies with the ominous red dot labelled with an 'E'. You're miles from the nearest petrol station, and worse, it's rush hour AND there is an accident somewhere along the expressway, so the roads are crawling with cars. Now what?

1) Rule number one is Don't Panic. That is possibly the worst thing you can do in any situation. Take deep breaths and try to remember Simmie's Survival Tips (now available in printed form at a reasonable price of... whatever it costs for you to print out this page, adjusted for local inflation), it's a slightly better option than Panicking.

2) Before you do anything else, plan the rest of the journey. (insert cliche here: he who fails to plan, plans to fail). While you're at it, try and include a gas station somewhere along the route. Preferably somewhere AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE along the route. Not to put too much emphasis on it, but when you're running desperately low on fuel, a gas station would, perhaps, have a rather high priority on your list of desired destinations.

3) Conserve fuel. Which means no revving the engine to sound cool, no sudden 180km/h handbrake turns, no playing with the highlights, no stressing the air conditioning systems at full blast, no extremely loud music thumping out of your speakers, and if possible keep the car moving until you get some more gas into the tank. In other words, drive like those old guys you find on the road early sunday morning.

4) Should you actually run out of fuel halfway, activate your hazard lights, guide the car to a safe spot (on the shoulder of the road, a parking lot, whatever), whip out your mobile phone and call for help. Be sure to state where you are: statements such as "OI FRIEND! (insert expletive of choice here)!!! I RAN OUT OF FUEL! (insert more expletives)!!! COME HELP ME LIAO!! *hangs up*" will really help you vent that pent up frustration on your unfortunate listener, but aren't of much use to whoever it is you are calling.

5) Again, always remain calm. And next time, for goodness sake, check your gas level before starting any journey! (insert cliche here: avoidance is better than cure)

This social message was brought to you by Simmie and the Half a Cup of Coffee's Self Preservation Foundation. Please forward all gratitude (monetary or otherwise) to the less fortunate in your neighbourhood.

* * * * *

And on a totally different note, I'm thinking of getting a new computer soon. Still undecided on the exact specifications, but i'm planning to switch to DDR/DDR2 RAM, a 3 gig processor, new motherboard (USB2.0, SATA, PCI-e), SATA hard disk drive (160 gig, most probably), and a casing with better airflow. Everything else will most likely be recycled, including the fx5700 im currently using.

Hm. Only one small problem.

* * * * *

Dear Santa,

I hope you're reading this blog. I have been a good boy this year, i think. How's the North Pole?

Yours sincerely,
nerdook.

island tales #33

2005-08-15T07:15:00.000+08:00

the haze seems to be gone for now.

spent the weekend coughing, nursing a headache and cursing the haze. grrr. fell sick upon waking up on saturday, with a dry irritated throat and a thumping headache. the haze was better by yesterday, and this morning it seemed to be completely gone. and i feel much better already... yay!

hm, and this weekend was spent with the visitors: gordon, samick-f2b, longkang and fish. pretty fun having them around, though sleeping in an air conditioned room worsened my situation somewhat. i cant seem to sleep properly in aircon rooms... even hotels make my mouth and throat really dry. just another one of my many quirks, i guess. the concert seemed to be pretty ok too, but four of them were pretty much on the verge of collapsing upon reaching home, after 5 hours of standing around.

went out for dinner last night with chen, his (rather cute) sis, and the rest of his (rather cute) family, including two (rather cute) young cousins of his at this beachside food court opposite Northam Towers. was pretty nice, except that my eyes had pretty much given up functioning by then, and my headache had evolved into a migraine, so most of my vision was filled with streaks of light dancing around to a funky beat. but it was a nice meal...

monday! work awaits. quote of the week: "the young want to get richer, while the rich want to be younger." something which has been running around in my head since friday.

island tales #32

2005-08-13T01:56:00.000+08:00

I got back really late tonight.

Had a barbeque session over at a colleague's place, which was really really fun. lots of food (tho the butter used on the barbequed chicken limited my appetite somewhat), and lots of fun. also i left rm35 poorer thanks to greed (and loads of bad luck)... lol. we had this card game thingie, and though i don't gamble as a general rule, i guess this was an exception. most of the cash in the final pot (and there was a lot left at the end!) went to the hostess and the rest was used to pay for the food and stuff, and in any case, we had loads of laughs over one round where a mindboggling amount of RM120 was lost... it was eventually returned to the guy, of course, that was way too much cash!! went for limteh (drink tea) session after that, and honestly i havent had so much fun in a while. i dont usually go out with my batch people to these kinda functions, usually coz the girls are there, and the rest is a pretty long story. ask me some other day.

anyway, the event probably marks the end of my more relaxed period, since work rolls in on monday. and tomorrow, a bunch of utp people will be over in penang for the 8tv concert thingie. no plans as yet, but i definitely would be staying home... no concerts for me, not my kind of thing.

* * * * *

updated: oh yes, it's now 8am and im wide awake. reason: it's hard to sleep with the smell of smoke everywhere. oh yes, that's right, the haze has reached penang. not sure how bad it is, but everything's already blanketed by the foul smelling cloud. here's the pic: it might not look so bad, but take a good look at the sky, and you'll see that it is WHITE IN COLOUR... which is just how bad the situation suddenly became. hm.

gah. let's hope it goes away soon. in the meantime im going to boil more water and stay indoors...

island tales #31

2005-08-09T20:21:00.001+08:00

this was my dinner. triple char siew pao... cost about rm2.50, and i've only eaten one so far. kinda full from lunch, my whole team stuffed themselves at kfc in tesco. other than that, it's been a pretty typical tuesday. saving the other two buns for tonight, just in case i get hungry.

and this here is a sign that says ladies' toilet.

why did i put a picture of that here? heh, it just so happened that i walked right into one today! dont ask... it's a long story... but anyway, was pretty funny (yes, it really was) and in any case it was a part of the building i've never been to.

lesson of the day: always read the sign on the door before going in. :P

island tales #30

2005-08-08T22:03:00.000+08:00

it's the end of yet another monday. chen's off on a family dinner, so it's a pretty quiet night. took a quiet moment picture to remember the eeriely tranquil "monday night atmosphere"... bag dumped on the piano seat upon getting back from work, lights on in the porch, waiting for my housemate's return. empty seats and empty tv screens. just the way i like it...

once again, time has hurtled past at a breakneck speed, which is something that has always puzzled me. one hour these days doesnt seem to last as long as one hour back then, and before i know it another day has merrily zipped past. work was pretty okay, but it seems like the honeymoon period is going to be over soon... the workload seems to be gathering momentum day by day. by all indications, i'm going to be neck deep in work from next week onwards all the way to next year... hehe. certainly sounds exciting.

here's a shot of the dining room table. not particularly exciting, but not exactly boring either. the perfect analogy for my life at the moment.

birthday!

2005-08-08T00:01:00.000+08:00

and we interrupt our normal programming with a special news bulletin:

happy birthday to my little bro!

hehe. that's right. it's my brother's birthday today... and how cool can you get, he was born on the 8th of august, 1986. which makes it 8/8/86... haha, off by a single digit. which means the guy is 19 years old now, and he sure as heck does not look like the pic above. a lot taller, for one thing. and certainly not bald. and slightly less cuddly. but heck, i prefer the smaller version, so im gonna stick that picture up with this blog! (mostly coz i look cute as well)

so yes, happy birthday bro. let's hope you get wiser and richer, have a great year ahead, and good luck for ur exams this week (ahaha!). please don't grow any taller. and for the record... i needed to sleep early, so i cheated on the time this is posted. it's only 10.50pm and it's still sunday, but hey, who cares, eh? :P

have a great birthday! p/s he's still single and available too....

island tales #29

2005-08-07T08:32:00.001+08:00

finally... after missing church for the last two weeks, i managed to drag myself out from bed early enough to make it to church. and amazingly it's my earliest arrival yet, though it's still a good five minutes after the thing started... the place is a catholic cathedral, so everything is pretty much identical to church back home. except of course, the priest is a different guy.

ah, and in a flash of inspiration (and also because i was only half awake at the time), i snapped some pics of the place this morning at seven am. yea dat's right, seven am!!!! insanely early for a sunday, but thanks to waking up at 6 smth everyday, my body insists on opening my eyes (despite vehement protests from the bloodshot eyeballs) and getting out of (the warm, comfortable) bed every freaking morning at six am. even when i have nothing to do. gah...

so here are the pics:

this is my computer, and it has been left on for more than 24 hours now. currently plugged into the modem and shuffling several million bits of data into its gut. and this also happens to be where i spend almost all of my waking hours at home.

and this is a photo of the street in the early morning. i kinda like the reddish hue caused by the street light, mixed with the barely blue sky. and the reason everything else seems dark is... because nobody else is awake yet.

it seems like a lovely sunday so far. there is a pcfair here in penang, might visit again later to see if there's anything worth buying. hm.

island tales #28

2005-08-05T07:03:00.000+08:00

i've always tended to remember my dreams, which are of course usually quite bizzare. like last night, for example. for no apparent reason, i dreamt i was going to russia... of all places.

apparently you can just walk across the nearest border (with a quaint little checkpoint) and tadaa~ you're in russia. complete with sudden climate change and everything. i rented this little place there just down the road from the checkpoint (surrounded by uh mango trees?!), and visited the nearby uni (again, conveniently located along the same road) to look for my russian medical friends. and all this without being able to speak a word of russian, but fortunately for me the road signs there were in chinese... uh.... and i could have sworn there was a russian spiderman zipping along above the streets. and then i woke up.

anyway.

staying at the shop half the time as a kid has plenty of advantages. and one of them is.. a supply of cigarette carton boxes!!! and no, i dont smoke, nor do i enjoy people smoking around me, and i definitely am not encouraging you to light up. back then, i used the boxes to draw on, with their blank insides serving as an excellent replacement for paper.

i would draw people and animals and superheros and cartoon characters, then cut them out and uh, use them as the characters of whatever storyline i was conjuring in my head at the moment. sometimes, i'd add in 6-sided dice, make up some rules and then, urm, aggressively persuade my brother to join in. hehe. he was a lot smaller back then!!

oh, and i used to take cellophane tape from the shop downstairs, until it was pointed out to me that this was called stealing. whoops. that was honestly one of the most astonishing revelations i had as a kid. cello-tape consumption was reduced from then on and i made sure i actually asked before i took anything... *sheepish grin*

of course, i no longer get to cut my own toys out from cigarette carton boxes, but i guess that's one of the reason i found programming so fun... now i can move little people around on the screen! and my brother's too big to bully... haha. but i've always wanted to make something i imagined as a kid: a machine that can design, make and repair other machines! but i guess that's not gonna happen anytime soon...

friday again. i've got a larger than usual lunch to go to later... 2 birthdays and 1 farewell rolled into one. well.. back to work for now.

island tales #27

2005-08-04T07:54:00.000+08:00

rainy morning today... im sniffling slightly due to the sudden cold upon waking up, brrrr. *sniffle*

spent the night reading kenny sia's blog.. thats www.kennysia.com for those who are interested. i actually think he's done more to put kuching on the map than a stack of government brochures, and it actually makes for an entertaining read. you'd be surprised to know how many west malaysians consistently mix up sarawak and sabah cities... more than once, telling people im from kuching earns me the reply "ooo.. in sabah?"... sigh. so yea, if you're bored, go take a look. he's funnier than i'd ever dare to be, haha. just take everything there with a pinch of salt.

also, today is thursday! which means it's time to start planning for the weekend (which actually starts tomorrow afternoon)! currently hoping that it'll be a nice relaxing weekend... i'd probably spend it taking more pics to put up here, and make more of an effort to get myself to church (which i've missed for 2 weeks now), so no more late saturdays, hopefully. and yes, another week has just whizzed past, which means i've just passed week 8 of the internship... exactly a quarter of the way through.

wow. feels like i've just arrived.

not much else to update everyone about, unfortunately. life is very quiet on all fronts, with no expected storms in the horizon. or is there?? *dramatic crashing music!* hahaha...

island tales #26

2005-08-02T07:10:00.000+08:00

it's tuesday!

this week is turning out to be busier than expected. the malacca trip thingie is off for now, as everyone here is running around getting stuff done, so this weekend is definitely going to be a welcome relief for everyone at work...

had a nice hotel buffet dinner last night for a grand total of RM4 (for the parking). it was held at evergreen laurel along gurney drive, which coincidentally was one of the places where we visited way back in first year, with the gals in my batch. actually, i would've totally forgotten about the place if it wasn't for the fact that chen was there the last time as well.. :P i found it nice, but was kinda full driving back. *burp* so decided to skip the monday post, hope nobody missed me.. ;)

* * *

and let's talk about dota! yes that's right, again. i'm well aware that there are plenty of unhealthily fanatical people out there whose lives revolve around this game. and i'm also well aware that, on occasion, i'm one of them! haha. trawl through the net and you'll probably find lots of fanboy rants and an equally vocal amount of anti-dota sentiments hammering the dota lunatics and their obsession with the game.

hm. quick background then for those who are lost: dota (defence of the ancients, and more often than not refers to the dota all stars version) is one of the many many custom maps available for warcraft III, and it happens to be the most popular by far in malaysia. it pits 2 teams of 5 players each (or maybe less) against each other, backed by a neverending stream of disposable soldiers controlled by the computer. there are three lanes between the 2 teams, and first one to wipe out the enemy's Big Building wins. simple, isn't it? :P

as to WHY it's such an addictive game: i really have no idea, but i would hazard that it's because the game rewards teamwork as much as individual skill, and so it appeals to quite a wide spread of its audience. prefer to support? be a healer. love sneaking around? bone. or be a spellcaster, close-range fighter, or even the guy who has so much hp, he just sits there and gets hammered by the opponents while grinning (the term is 'tank').

in this sense, it's got plenty in common with superhero comics (a small team of individuals with diverse skills and abilities... naruto, anyone?), sports games (5 on 5 basketball demands tactics, teamwork and skill as well), and warcraft III's production qualities are so high that the various special effects feel incredibly satisfying even on low end computers.

so why are there people complaining (mostly girls, as far as i know) that guys prefer this stupid game to their companionship? and for the record, carol does feel that i spent way too much time on this game last semester (the root cause of a few of my reddened ears)...

i haven't the faintest clue, except for the assumption that it's because a single bloody dota game usually takes 30 minutes to 1 and a half hours to complete, averaging just over one hour. this means that once you start the game, you wont be able to walk away until an hour later (on average!). and guy, notoriously enough, have the self preservation tendencies of a suicidal lemming, so even with half an hour left before something happens (i.e. the gf pops up online, gf shows up at the door or gf wants to go shopping) they would STILL decide that they have ample time to finish a game. and since you are heavily discouraged to leave halfway through a game (penalty is usually some kind of ban from future games), guys will stay glued to the monitor throughout the game, screaming at whoever is beckoning in the real world to "wait just one second im about to pawn these guys!!", and this leads to flare ups and a sense of extreme annoyance on whoever is waiting for these baboons to get back to their real life.

and yes, on occasion, i have done it all. guilty as charged! not so much on friends (since almost all of them play the damn game as well), but definitely on my mum and on carol, lol. oh, and once i was (ever so slightly) late for a lab session in uni because of dota. but (importantly), not always... more often than not, i'd choose to do SOMETHING ELSE now if i realise there are people waiting for me, or simply if i can't afford to spend the time to finish that one game.

so girls (and parents)! here's a friendly piece of advice. there really is no need to stop anyone from the game, but there sure as hell is a need to make sure they don't get so absorbed in it that they lose all sense of the real world. freely admitting that i am a gaming geek, i still try to get most of my work in the real world done (studies, projects, tutorials, housework) before relaxing in a game. of course, i wish you the best of luck in changing the attitude of a guy (it's unbelievably difficult, isnt it? ;P), but if i were you, the best solution would be to (jeng jeng jeng) introduce him to some other EVEN MORE ADDICTIVE game that allows you to quit any time you like (haha..), so he would at least have something to play while waiting for you, you won't need a crowbar to pry him from the computer, and you can save everyone involved a lot of grief. if this still doesnt work, then i suggest you turn off the computer's power supply the next time it happens, and then cackle in glee as he leaps screaming and spitting back into the real world... :P

i'm only writing this because carol referred me to some of the dota victims' exasperated cries for justice on the web, and i thought i'd offer my own views on it.

* * *

well that was a pretty long post. i'd better get back to work, it's gonna be a long day. do leave your comments as usual, there is the usual chicken-or-beef choices of the comment box below or the shoutbox to the left. take your pick. would probably only be able to reply by tonight... until then, im off!

island tales #25

2005-07-30T21:29:00.000+08:00

well it's a saturday night, and the weather is nice and cool, just the way i like it. :) had a leisurely 10 minute walk to dinner (hawker center, just down the main road), and stopped by the supermarket to buy drinks and ice cream on the way back. heavenly... :P

woke up real early, around 6am, more out of habit than anything. had breakfast, and got a hair cut! my (notorious) curly hair was getting a bit shaggier than i'd like it, so cut it back to its default short cropped self. oh, and i played a record 7 dota games (yes seven!!), and since they take up an hour plus each you can tell how i spent most of my day, lol.

fell asleep around noon (right after dota game number 3), and woke up at 2 smth just in time for lunch. decided on...

...mcdonald's! lol. not something i'm particularly crazy about, but since it's been a busy week i decided to treat myself to a mcchicken + sundae + apple pie, without the drinks and fries. was pretty nice! :) chen's out for the weekend so it'll probably be quieter around here than usual.

oh! and on the way back i could have sworn i saw a couple making out in a car parked at the side of the road. was pretty shocked but hurried onwards, so i could be wrong. but i was definitely NOT staying to find out for sure... haha. you get all sorts.

well it's tv time, something i havent done for quite some time. so i'm signing off for now...

island tales #24

2005-07-29T07:12:00.000+08:00

it's friday again... :) i plan to stay back after lunch despite the half day's work schedule, and get some more stuff done before heading home. no badminton for me today, maybe i'll squeeze in some dota games instead.. hahaha.

it's been a pretty busy week so far, and things are expected to get exponentially busier as time goes on in the coming month. oh, and i might be going to malacca (a famosa waterpark, to be exact) next weekend with my department for some team building thingie. tentative plans though, nothing concrete yet. and gordon aka jleong will be visiting on august 12th, some concert being held here in penang.

weekend plans: i want to watch a movie!! maybe the 'seven swords' show, it seems nice. i want to get a hair cut!! i want to play dota!! i want to be a piggggg... :P but nah guess i'll most probably be cleaning up the place and spend the rest of my time glued to the monitor. but one thing's for sure, i am definitely not going to spend another bucketload of cash this weekend!

aaaahhh.. few things feel as good as waking up early in the morning to get stuff done. fresh air~... it's really different from waking up with the sun in your face! maybe i'll wake up earlier next year as well... :D

island tales #23

2005-07-28T07:35:00.000+08:00

time passes day by day... and another week of my life is almost over. i really do wonder if it's just me, or does everyone else also feels like there's not enough time to spend on anything at all these days? maybe it's coz im working, so there's always something to do, or something to look forward to.

* * * * *

and today i will expound one of my old theories (although i must hasten to add that my bro says he thought of it first, years before me.. man we must have been bored when we were kids... but anyway this is my version), which is the Many Me Theorem! actually, i've probably said this before, so if you have heard it you can skip right to the end of this paragraph. that's right, hop it!

anyway. the Many Me Theorem states that, between any two moments of time, there are two different you's whose only link is that they share some (tiny bit of) memories in common. which also means, for example, that the person you were yesterday no longer exists, and has been replaced by the person you are today. which also means that the person who read the beginning of this sentence has just been replaced by multiple versions of you by the time you reached the full stop, here. :P

ok, not really mindblowing stuff ("hm, i knew that already"), but if you actually remember this mumbo-jumbo, you could actually benefit (in certain ways) by following a couple of simple rules:

1) if you're studying/working/doing stuff, and you're making notes for yourself, write it in such a way that it will be useful to a version of you in the future. also, ALWAYS assume that the future you is going to have forgotten EVERYTHING you wanted to remember (which is in fact an extremely likely event). and i'm sure you've experienced the feeling of discovering something useful a you in the past has left for you, and thought "wow im glad i did that for myself.."

2) if you want to procrastinate, then congratulations, you are a selfish version of yourself for the time being. throw away the guilt, enjoy the moment, then leave the rest of the work to a future version of you. hey who cares, it's not the current you anyway! certainly better than being wracked with guilt when procrastinating... which means you didn't do work and you didnt enjoy not doing work, which defeats the whole purpose.

3) on the other hand, if you never get things done, then a heck of a lot of future you's are going to suffer. if that made you feel very happy indeed, i would suggest you seek out the nearest specialized institution where they have various forms of treatment for heartless sadists like you.

and also, if all this sounds like garbage to you, it probably is. but i do apply it a lot in making notes, and doodling during lectures leaves little pictures among the notes that reminds me of things a previous me had learned before. certainly saved me a lot of time... so just thought i'd share it with everyone. :P

(legal disclaimer: if you are actually mad enough to apply this and you find that it doesnt work, you are not entitled to any claims whatsoever, and there sure as hell ain't gonna be a 30-days money back guarantee since i did not get paid and anyone can tell that this is crackpot advice. use at your own risk)

* * * * *

well that's it. oh, and i realise that my memory's improved somewhat since i've started writing the blog more frequently. mostly because i now remember important dates (such as the date today.. not today today, but today as in everyday. nevermind.) and events, which is something i've never been able to remember before. mostly due to a combination of factors:

i) i dont play games as much as i used to, so at least most of the time i'm present in the real world...
ii) i take notes of events that occur, in case i want to write them in the blog. so they stick to my head longer
iii) i remember dates since i usually need them when working, and also for the weekly internship reports

(hey i realise i love to list things out.) oh, but im still blur when doing things that have become a habit, and tend to lose myself in the background chatter of my head. but i guess everyone is like that.

so that's about it for today. oh and a special note: all the best to carol for her test!

island tales #22

2005-07-26T07:29:00.000+08:00

it's me again. :P hm, yesterday was pretty busy, had a whole day of work then proceeded to a seafood dinner + double birthday celebration for a couple of colleagues here at work. got back at 10pm, stuffed, tired, and with a petrol tank that had the needle hovering over the dreaded 'E'. went straight to sleep.

and today, i had to drive the long way round to pump fuel, then turn another huge round back to get to work. but at least i no longer run such a high risk of running out of petrol on an expressway... which incidentally did happen before (a long time ago.. it was aaron's car), which was the first time i ever drove (more like... glided) a car that had run out of steam. pretty freaking dramatic.

but anyway. im at work now, safe and sound, and about to dive headfirst into another busy day where time just FLIES~ past. just wanted to drop a post on my thoughts before that happens.

* * *

oh yes. here's a quick lesson in science. there are several constants that are assumed to have a, urm, well, constant value. examples include pi, the permeability of vacuum, the gravitational constant in a Newtonian model, speed of light, mass of an electron, et cetera et cetera.

and i think i can now add "weight of nerdook" to the list, since it has been STUCK at 60kg for years and years now. it's unbelievable. i do believe i have an auto correction mechanism (possibly with a feedback setup: something only engineers would say, haha) that burns food at JUST THE RIGHT rate to keep my body at 60kg. it just wont go up... after 2 months in penang, it should have at least gone up a teeeenyyy tinnyyy bit. but no. it has officially declared itself as a universal constant and i cant get any heavier... sobsob.

well at least im not getting any thinner either, which is somewhat consoling. maybe i should eat even more now...

* * *

oh and before i go. im wearing the neon green shirt (n.g.s) to work today, in the vain hope that its blinding brilliance will somehow make me appear friendlier. so far i am unable to ascertain the effectiveness of this theory, because there is no sign of anybody else at the moment. probably all recovering from the dinner.

guess i'd better get back to work. breakfast in less than an hour! (FOOD!)

*hums* heigh ho... heigh ho.. its off to work we goooo... lalala lala lalala lala... heigh ho! heigh ho! *end hums*(ironically.. this was sung by a bunch of dysfunctional dwarves..) :P

island tales #21

2005-07-24T19:33:00.000+08:00

hm. it may be hard to believe, but i indulged in yet another impulsive shopping trip today! and i finally bought the stuff i had wanted to buy a long time ago, but couldnt convince myself to part with the cash. :P so blitzed into tesco (again) and bought myself a new keyboard and a new mouse (BenQ) for RM30. i seriously wonder why it is so cheap. the old keyboard was getting really dirty, and my mouse was on the verge of conking out, so it was about time for a change, and it was really quite a bargain.. i think.

the crazzzzyyyy part was my decision to add a NEON GREEN shirt to the shopping purchases. it's really neon green.. no other colour to describe it. bright enough to dazzle. excellent addition to the wardrobe if i am ever in need of attention, haha, and definitely brighter than the second brightest shirt i have (which is a bright orange shirt carol gave me). but the downside is, my wallet feels light again. been spending a lot this weekend... guess it's time to tighten the financial strings.

right, time for dinner. played 4 dota games today (what a way to spend the weekend..), and boy did time pass fast. the weekend's about to end... and it felt like i spent it doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. which reminds me.. i have an edx report to write. :P

island tales #20

2005-07-23T16:13:00.000+08:00

it's a hot saturday afternoon, and i just got back from driving to perangin mall. now feeling pretty lazy to do anything but sit around and listen to songs. but before that! i am now RM155 poorer (and my wallet is so much lighter), having blown the entire amount on this thing here: a 512 MB thumb drive. wanted to get one for some time now, since i'll need to transfer files around at work. and i've been searching for a thumb drive for some time now..

right. time to take a quick nap. basketball's at 6. *stretccchhhh* goodnites everyone...

island tales #19

2005-07-21T20:11:00.000+08:00

alright alright, so you can tell from the purple sign in the corner that i did not take this picture. dug it out of a folder called 'Cute Pics', and it perfectly summarises my current life at work. but everything's gotten busier this week, been fiddling with this and that all day, and came back feeling like i actually got stuff done. which is good.

the downside is, i usually get pretty tired earlier at night, due to a whole day of working and working. 'earning my keep', i call it... and socially, i guess it's going okay, though i am a lousy judge of social relationships. really! as much as possible, i try to keep my mouth shut (which is so weird!), though i realise i've been talking more these few days. time to zip it again i think, since i tend to lace my words with diamond tipped bullets without ever realising it. ehehe. side effect of spending so much time with a machine, and i dont trust people as much thanks to my lovely secondary school life...

but in the meantime, im going to kick back and enjoy. the weekends are almost here again, and tomorrow's a half day followed by badminton in the afternoon, yippie! looking forward to it.. then it'll be the weekends again, which involves basketball on saturday evening.

ahh... the calm before the storm. oh, and you are welcome to comment on previous posts, i'll check them for replies too, since im updating pretty often these days. maybe i'll start whipping up quick posts in between work... :)

island tales #18

2005-07-20T20:59:00.000+08:00

did something strange last night, which i havent done in ages. i actually went to a wedding dinner. didn't plan to go at first, but there was a last minute shift in plans so i ended up there. of course, there was the customary ang-pau to hand over, then it was down to business.

ok, the strange thing was, once the dinner started there were people selling newspapers and keropok from table to table. but the even STRANGER thing is, this is supposed to be perfectly normal for a penang wedding (or so i was told..). everything else was pretty much standard wedding dinner fare, which included the customary presence of a bride and groom (haha, well some things go without saying!), food, red clothed tables, an utter lack of cute girls (i wasn't looking, of course. definitely not. my eyes were firmly not searching for cute girls in the audience), a room full of strangers that you do not recognize. only this was my colleague's brother's wedding, so there was an unusually large amount of people i did not recognize.

entertained by a bunch of people singing, although some of them were pretty hard on the ears, ehehe. had a string of food, which was a mixture of ok-tasting food, one quite nice fish and a bunch of bleah so-so dishes. took pics with the bride and groom! but i dont have them yet, since it wasnt taken on my camera. so will post it up once it's here.. :)

got home at 10 something, the dinner passed pretty quickly since it was a weekday and everyone had to get to work the next day. quite an interesting experience though, but i doubt i'll be attending another one anytime soon. unless any of my classmates are getting married! :P

* * *

word of the day: oubliette. derived from the french 'to forget'. possibly the worst kind of mental torture you can inflict on anyone....

island tales #17

2005-07-19T09:31:00.000+08:00

i dont know if it's just me, but i have a tendency to associate time periods/events in my life with whatever song i happened to be playing at the time. utterly strange, but perhaps not unsurprising, since i tend to listen to mp3s when doing work, since it somehow helps me absorb information faster. or in the case of coding, keeps me entertained during the endless stretches of repetitive tasks.

anyway, here are some examples:
i) form four/five: my very first mp3 downloaded was 'vertical horizon - you're a god' (yea yea, blasphemous title, but it was nice k..), so i listened to that for ages. and when i went for the surveyor's competition thingie (with roy, rom, martin, victor.. i think. anyone else??), i brought along some richie ren songs, so listening to those brings back memories of that time. ahhh.. secondary school.. an endless depository of bad memories there... the surveyor's finals was one of the better times. :P

ii) first year first sem: when i first entered uni, i had this cd full of emil chou's songs, so those hot, lazy afternoons in tronoh were spent listening to that cd on my creaky old 450 MHz computer (it is now, uh, inactive) on those plastic old speakers (currently used by my dad, who seems to inherit our electronic hand-me-downs). since gordon lived next door with fong, i had a cd of jay chou's songs as well. the jay chou songs (fantasy album) are especially connected to... morbid's era. :P

iii) first year second sem: a plethora of darker songs here (heh). also continued listening to jay and friends, but the addition of an extra thousand songs to the playlist disassociated the period with any particular song.

iv) second year-third year, aka carrot's era. several songs do stand out here, haha, mostly coz they were my sms companions. suitably jiwang collection... and added some songs that my bro downloaded. playlist populated with more english songs (mostly pop-rock fluff. what can i say, im the Average Consumer), and less chinese song updates. also lots of songs connected to movies i watched with carol. I AM NOT A ROMANTIC! i deny all accusations on the contrary.. :P

and this morning i heard avril lavigne's "nobody's home" on the radio, which is DEFINITELY associated with the previous semester in uni and all its glory: dota games, the edx montage (was listening to that from 4 to 5 am thanks to the sleepless nights), basketball, the project-after-project month, mamak nites, the tests-where-i-havent-read-anything-before, and my adorable rmate, Mr Mato. haha... one of the best times of my life.. :) all associated with the song, since my rmate had a tendency to blast songs when stressed, and this was one of them. found it nice and adopted it as the anthem for that semester..

hehe. but i cleaned out my mp3 collection recently, it was getting a bit bloated. hm. oh and as a sidenote, i freely admit that i dont understand girls. at all. and i cannot ever remember the colour of people's clothes in my memories (including my own)... hahaha...

island tales #16

2005-07-18T20:38:00.000+08:00

well, im sure you'll have noticed by now, but in case you havent, i've been tweaking bits and pieces of the blog recently in terms of how it looks. shifted the sidebars to the left, and today i recoloured everything to be black and white (and removed the hyperlink lines as well). hope everyone likes the effect, it's spozed to feel like "black coffee", lol. any further suggestions are always welcome, and it's just too bad i'm unable to run perl scripts here as well. :P oh the things you can do with scripts... haha.i'll be more than happy to make this site as accessible as possible to everyone...

since there havent been any new pictures lately, here's one of the street outside the place im currently staying in. those huge trees are the reason i have to wash my car every week, and also sweep the porch and street. this was taken after going to church on sunday, just as the sun was rising. i dont usually get to see this street at that time on weekdays, since i'll be on my way to work before 7am...

and now it's time for an anti-lactose commercial break! :P i hate cows.... only because they produce milk. so here's a picture of a cow! cute eh? ;)

island tales #15

2005-07-18T07:20:00.000+08:00

It's monday morning... my how the weekends flew by. strangely enough, i've never actually experienced the monday morning blues, getting back to work always seemed a nice change from lazing around doing nothing at home. or that could be because i havent actually been given a heavy workload yet.

oh! you can now post comments on the posts without being registered! just click comments, put urself as 'other' and add what you want to say. (thanks chen for pointing out the fact that i hadnt enabled this nifty little feature) so if you have anything to say, uh, feel free to drop your two cents worth into the comments section.

it's the beginning of a.. brand new week.. dumdedum...

island tales #14

2005-07-17T16:36:00.000+08:00

yes, i bought it. and no, i didnt plan to buy it. it just sort of happened. for the last few days carol has been talking about collecting the book with her friend who booked it, and believe it or not, it really didnt cross my mind to get a copy of my own. nor did i actually feel any excitement over the fact that "the new harry potter book" was coming out. you see, i went for lunch. and then walked around. and chen said he wanted to get one for his sis, and i thought what the heck, let's buy one. i wanna read it anyway. yes, i know u can find the (illegal) e-books online now. yes, i know it's RM89.99 (10% off thanks to chen's card). but i've always preferred reading stuff on paper, and i bought the previous book as well, so now im happily engrossed in reading it! :)

the really crazy part is, my bro ran and got himself a copy as well. *smacks head*

island tales #13

2005-07-15T22:42:00.000+08:00

i'm home from Fantastic Four! drove to gurney just as the skies started pouring, and watched it with my department people, and it was a pretty nice movie. even nicer since i got to watch it with a big group of people.. :P quite a rare thing these days, so yea had lots of fun! oh, and i left my umbrella behind at chopperboard, so that means i am umbrella-less, on a rainy night...

*notice to mum&dad: please stop reading here, in order to prevent your hair from turning white, thanks. your loving son.*

*wah still reading.*

SO! the real adventure began as i began my journey back after the movie. well, you do realise by now that i am in fact lactose intolerant, and i totally forgot the inconvenient fact that popcorn caramel is SOAKED in lactose (butter, that is). so yes, i bought a packet, and halfway thru it i remembered and went "oh sh(oo)t!!". but who cares, done was done. and so i began my journey home

a) in the rain, which happily started its second round just as i came out of gurney plaza
b) at night
c) on a totally unfamiliar road that i have driven only once last week, with chen, and astonishingly i only remembered HALF of the instructions on how to get home from there
d) with a raging lactose intolerance reaction in full swing
e) umbrella-less, too!

digression: Lactose Intolerance Reaction, for me, is defined as a series of reactions that consistently occurs when i consume lactose beyond a certain amount. the really bad reactions always begins with hiccups, which are really painful. it's like getting punched everytime u hiccup. the normal reactions only have a constant pain in the stomach, kinda like the one u get after running around a lot. and i will always experience short breaths and a feeling that i ate too much. after a while, it'll eventually progress to stage 2 where i feel like vomiting, and i'll have to keep swallowing to suppress the urge to spill my guts all over the sidewalk. at this point i have 2 choices: i) vomit, or ii) sleep it off. both seem to work for me, and vomiting sounds exactly like normal vomits, except that it usually releases lots of gas, and not the usual slime that u get from vomiting. wat a gross thought. but there u have it.

anyway! back to the trip.

good news is, i stopped by chopperboard and got my umbrella back, someone there kept it for me, yay! then i walked to the car, as the reactions started piling on the pain on my stomach. but i shall prevail! reached the car, took a deep breath, and drove.

followed chen's route as much as i could remember, and made it as far as jalan logan where my memory dissipated. and then... wat the heck! keep driving on. there were maybe 5 cars in front of me, so i gambled and followed wherever the majority of them were going.

came out at a junction, where i saw a police station i remembered seeing on the way to komtar last time. but i cannot remember which side of the road it's spozed to be on, so i dunno where to turn. so i reached into the primitive depths of my brain, dug out my trusty Direction-o-Meter, and guessed it was a turn to the right.

keep driving along this dubious path, and eventually reached a road i knew. so i made it home! yay! thank God! etc etc.

*wonder if my mum&dad are still reading this*

anyway, the swallowing stage started just as i passed the door to my house. and it's about to get worse after this. so long folks, im off to lie down a bit. *swallow i-hate-cows swallow*

island tales #12

2005-07-15T07:05:00.000+08:00

ergghh.

it's 7am in the morning, and im already at work. slept like a log thanks to the rainy weather.. oh, and it has to be mentioned that one of my Unorthodox Goals in Life is to stay in bed during a heavy rainstorm, wrapped up in my blanket, surrounded by lots and lots of pillows!! it's nice, u really should try it... :P

played a dota game last night, and amazingly, the moment i joined a game i was declared as a leaver (that is, someone who leaves the game halfway through) by a little snot called [name removed to protect the guilty]. was kinda shocked at the blatant slander, but the game did go on anyway, and 2 of my team mates left the game (actually, one of them never even started...), but it was a fun game, mostly coz i played well enough to kick mr slanderer's ass comprehensively. miahahaha. REVENGE IS MINE!!! sigh, i should learn to be less evil and more likeable. still wondering why is it that chen gets stalkers and admirers in the game he plays, and i always make a collection of enemies. and that was without typing a single word... :P

maybe it's that anti-charisma thing. hehe.

debating whether to go for badminton today. after pingpong yesterday and basketball tentatively scheduled for tomorrow, it seems like a good idea not to go. *wiggle wiggle*. ah well, let's decide after lunch. for now, it's back to my early-morning, crack-of-dawn keep-earning.

island tales #11

2005-07-14T21:01:00.000+08:00

man time is flying past!! it's almost the weekends already, and it feels like the week just started. hm, before i know it, i'll be OLD!!! no... what a horrifying thought! but strangely enough, today was pretty uneventful. so i really do wonder where the time went. *ponders*

so not much to update for today. signing out for today...

island tales #10

2005-07-13T21:12:00.000+08:00

new shirts! got these on a spur-of-the-moment shopping trip. wonder what made me do it.. haha. had wanted to get shirts for a while now, and actually saw some bright red/orange/yellow shirts that looked pretty tempting. but no, didnt feel like buying them then, the thought of parting with my cash was terrible... :P so got these instead, which are, of course, my standard dark blue and black ensemble. unfortunately that makes it look weird in the pic coz it looks like two shirts melded together... erk...

and as a disclaimer, i only uploaded this pic coz carol asked me to. yes indeed.

island tales #9

2005-07-13T16:39:00.000+08:00

speaking of genes.. im also lactose intolerant! used to think this was pretty freaking weird, until i looked it up in the wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org), and guess what... i quote:

"The normal mammalian condition is for the young to lose the ability to effectively digest milk sugar (lactose) at the end of the weaning period (a species-specific length of time usually equal to roughly 3% of lifespan). It has been established that certain human populations have undergone a mutation on chromosome 2 which results in a bypass of the normal shutdown in lactase production, allowing members of these groups to continue consumption of fresh milk and fresh milk products throughout their lives."

*blablabla*

"Approximately 70% of the human species cannot tolerate lactose in adulthood. It is thus argued that the terminology should be reversed, lactose intolerance should be seen as the norm, and the minority Western European group should be labeled as having lactase persistence"

haha! which means, people who can take milk/cheese/lactosey stuff are all MUTANTS! will be sure to mention this inconvenient fact the next time any smart aleck offers me cheese.... hehehehe.

island tales #8

2005-07-13T07:47:00.000+08:00

i have a migraine.. urgh. it's the usual one that i've been having for years, dull throbbing pain at the back of my head. and only on the right side, which is really weird. so, i did what any geek would do when faced with a migraine: look it up on the internet!

flipped through a bunch of wacky pages before i found d more useful stuff. apparently, it says right here that migraines are:
a) severe headaches on one part of the head,
b) periodic, and when it does happen it takes 3-12 hours to subside, usually,
c) hereditary (oh man, why do i always get those weird genes),
d) preceded by what they call an 'aura', or signs that you're about to have a migraine. examples include seeing lights or feeling nauseous. none of which i have ever experienced.

in any case, i really did feel sleepy the whole day yesterday, which was definitely unusual, and the headache came when i got back. errrrggghhhhhhh. managed to play rose online (haha nice game too, btw) until i couldnt stand it anymore, then collapsed in bed. and oh, forgot all about my laundry and left it soaking overnight, whoooooops.

some happy news to close this post. i've managed to get to new places to eat! and pumped fuel again, RM15 almost overflowed the tank, to my great surprise.

i've still got a mini headache. time to get back to work...

results are out!

2005-07-12T10:56:00.000+08:00

woo! my exam results are out, and after a nailbiting morning of checking and rechecking, i finally got mine...

and the results are... confidential. :P but im real happy with it, and kinda surprised too. was pretty sure it was a screwed-up finals...

oh well, thank god, time to get back to my work. :P word of the day: hubris!

island tales #7

2005-07-10T23:52:00.000+08:00

this is my current watch, and you can see that the weird thing goes anti clockwise. seen one of these before? i saw a whole bunch on sale once. i've used this for so long that my brain automatically switches itself to read the correct time, but it really disorients anyone who's not used to it. :P and of course, nothing like a weirdo watch to start a conversation with people.

ah, and yes, i am now flat broke. all three atms in tesco are out of service, and i used up my last notes on dinner. time to break open that kangaroo tube. guess i shouldnt have spent RM80 on those new bball shoes, but hey i needed something to wear. let's hope they get those cash dispensers up by tomorrow, else im gonna be living in debt... urgh.

how i spent the day: lazing around. just the way i like it!

island tales #6

2005-07-10T09:59:00.000+08:00

it's sunday! and i went church this morning, much to my surprise. and the Guy in Green was talking about the parable of the sower, which is strangely appropriate when u think about it.. and also, the closing hymn was "showers of blessing", so (u guessed dat rite!) once i came out of the church, it just HAD to start drizzling. sigh... the irony... :P

oh, and last nite i actually drove to gurney drive. missed the flyover (wrong lane) so took d longgg way round and borrowed a methodist church to u-turn. hehe. and of course, i had to choose the most BRILLIANT (not..) time to drive to gurney drive for the first time. the roads were packed coz:

a) it was a saturday nite
b) it was a public holiday due to the penang governor (or someone)'s bday
c) roads were closed due to the bday celebrations
d) oh.. this one's totally unexpected. background: fong has this poster of this singer dude named JJ on his wall, and YES U GUESSED DAT RITE AGAIN, it just so happened that i picked the night of him coming to penang (and gurney plaza, to be specific) to drive to gurney.

so yea as u can see it wasnt the brightest of ideas after all. and i only knew about (d) when me and chen went to gurney plaza (to satisfy his craving for nando's), and saw a park full of young screaming girls. and COINCIDENTALLY (they just keep piling up, dont they...) we arrived just as JJ came on the stage. so i got treated to a park full of young girls in skimpy clothing screaming their lungs out. a veritable attention seeker's dream come true, except that, sobsob, they werent shouting for me.

but anyway, i did manage to park (further up, and needed to walk a bit), and had a nice half-a-chicken-wif-rice-and-coleslaw-and-hot-peri-peri-sauce meal, but was too full to do anything besides drive home after that. and the maybank atm seems to be down yet again. oh, and im lactose intolerant, i think, coz the coleslaw+mayo was really a heck of a lot to digest. but it was a nice meal! (2 thumbs up)

on a brighter note: i found a way to play dota here! no lag, either. wooohooo! not good news for carol, unfortunately, so i guess i'd better not show too much of my joy... :P

island tales #5

2005-07-09T12:25:00.000+08:00

this is a kangaroo from carol's trip to australia. adorable, aint it?? the cute thing sits inside the blue container all day, sitting on my spare change. yea dats rite, im too lazy to keep my extra coins properly, and dump them all inside the blue container you see here, and it also serves as my own personal piggy bank. you'd be surprised at how much you can get from accumulating loose change...

things i've been doing: chen has gone back to his hometown for the day, so im practically in a "master of the realm" mode at the moment. been trying to get free online rpgs to play, and downloaded 'rubies of eventide' at a blistering speed of 110 kB/s (i haf no idea how it got so fast), but to my absolute frustration, part of the text is missing, so the game is pretty much unplayable. man that sucks!

so i went back to gta:san andreas and spent d morning mindlessly dishing out violence on my computer screen. with a break to watch 'the little mermaid' (or watever it's called.. the tv3 read haired mermaid cartoon... with the crab and the yellow fish thingie...) to balance out the excessive violence. i've got a basketball game planned at 6pm, and i gotta shop for bball shoes before then since i dont have a pair anymore.

shopping... sigh... how do people (esp women) find it so enjoyable?? mine is pretty much "walk in, take wat u want, pay and leave", which is infinitely better than the "walk around looking for wat u want and wishing u had more money" version. tho i can actually spend hours walking around the electronics section, looking for what i want and wishing i had more money... but that's totally different.

egads i think i might just possibly qualify for a geek. help!

news bulletin

2005-07-08T19:57:00.000+08:00

and we now interrupt your normal programming with a rant.

what in the world is up with streamyx, i couldnt connect for a few hours back there, and my mum couldnt open quite a few sites. carol cant connect either. any ideas?? i've got a friend who experienced the same thing in kedah so that makes it four states. cacat...

island tales #4

2005-07-08T14:10:00.000+08:00

well im home early today! fridays are half days when there's nothing on, so i get to start my extended weekend a bit earlier. and a big plus, no cars on the road at this time of the day! finally washed my car, so here are the promised pics... top is my beloved afk 819, constant companion in intel. here you see it fresh from its weekly bath, and what you cannot see is i just pumped petrol as well, so it's full AND refreshed. :P and here at the bottom is smth different for everyone, the doggie fong and hikki gave me for my bday (thanks guys!) with a reflection shot of the surrounding neighbourhood. hehe. i kinda like the effect on this pic... ;)

island tales #3

2005-07-08T07:31:00.000+08:00

thought: if there is such a thing as charisma, im sure there's an exact opposite. anti-charisma, maybe. and if there is such a thing as anti-charisma, im sure i have it in bucketloads! :P (brief indulgence in self depreciation) not that im a horrible person, not as far as i know anyway (but i admit it! i confess to kicking a few cats! one of em was about to wrestle with me for my food, and the other climbed onto my face as i was sleeping, back in utp. so i gave one a good kick (and missed... arrghh)and the other got chucked out of the door), but i never ever seem to make a good first impression. i have no idea why, haha. could be coz i talk a lot.. :P

thought: since im in a rambling mode, let me go back a bit in my own history. wayyyy back in form 1 (has it really been 8 years...), i attended a chinese tuition thingie, since i, uh, decided to take Chinese as a PMR subject (dont ask), and boy was it a weird experience. i've been studying in a non-chinese-language environment since primary 1, and speak sporadic chinese at home in a couple of sketchy dialects (and only started speaking the funny kuching hokkien in form three.. god), so sitting in a chinese class was really really.. strange. kind of similar to walking into an advanced programming class without ever having touched a computer. however, i did get stuff out of it (number one: no matter how much u think u know, u dont know enough; number two: well, at least i can write and read in chinese now, tho it's getting rustier everyday. thank goodness for chinese mp3s.), so it wasnt so bad after all, but i am definitely putting this as one of the top twenty most bizzare experiences in my life. maybe at number eleven.

thought: when i was small too, i lost my specs and after an extensive search it was found at the bottom of a lot of clothes in the cupboard. i have no idea how it got there. was accused of hiding it there... uh... right. bizzaro index: number three.

well, good morning world, time for me to get back to work. cheerio~

island interruption

2005-07-07T18:24:00.000+08:00

was driving back in a pretty down (more so than usual mood) when i heard the news on the radio.. apparently there's a series of explosions in london. hm, wats the world coming to. details are sketchy at best, so i'll probably be listening out for it as it gets updated. as to why i was down.. guess it seems quite trivial now. :P

island tales #2

2005-07-06T21:18:00.000+08:00

phew im pooped. just finished basketball practice, and now im all tired. good thing about penang is there's no shortage of cheap food, so at least im tired with a full tummy!

here are the keys to my car, and my phone in the background. wanted to take a pic of the car itself, but it's in need of a wash (despite the weekly washings) so will only take pics of it when it's cleaner. if u squint u would probably realise the faded wooden keychain says... nah, i'll let u figure it out yourself. :)

as you can see, i've added a sitemeter thingie to the right side of this blog, under "sugar n cream". it's spozed to keep track of the number of visits i get, so visit often people and boost my ego!! :P at least it'll serve as a mini motivation to keep this blog going. nothing like knowing that someone is reading wat u write to make u write more for more people to read so that you know people are reading something you write! erm. and while you're at it, do type in comments in the shoutbox (aptly named "coffee stains"), and i'll feel real proud that people are talking to me.

carol says i love attention. heehee. that is soooo not true. i've always seen myself a shy and introverted individual... :P

oh yes. was reading through the confidentiality agreement i had today and right there in bold print it said i am not spozed to write anything about the company and wat i do there. darn. so.. let me just say that it involves computers, and u can fill the rest in with your imagination, since i really dont want to get kicked out of this thanks to a silly comment on my blog. blueks. but it IS a fun place to work (for me anyway), so anyone who's looking for a spot for internship do consider it... and (dont tell chen <-- current housemate and penang fan club president -- i said this) penang is pretty nice after all. nutcase maniacs on the road occasionally, and the water quality is comparable to kl, but otherwise it's nice. idlyic, even. darn. i've been with chen for way too long...

island tales #1

2005-07-05T20:40:00.000+08:00

i've given up thinking new names for each and every update i'm posting, so for the moment all trivial updates are gonna be named by the incredibly unimaginative numbering scheme u see here. malas to think.

was pretty frust last nite over the inability to upload more photos.. darn thing kept jamming on me. guess i'd better stick to small pics next time, maybe that'll work better. in any case, i'm probably not taking any new pics anytime soon, due to the fact that i cant upload them until i do sm editing. and im way too lazy for dat! :P but in the meantime, here's a nice pic i took of a watch i got from a bowling competition while interning, hehe.

my life seems to have slip into a predictable routine. strange. waking up realll early is becoming something of a habit (wat a shock...), and the usual schedule of "wake up-drive to work-workwork-come back from work-fiddle around a bit-sleep" on weekdays is really sinking itself into my head. urgh. weekends are only slightly different, i seem to be washing the car and doing housekeeping on sundays, and for some reason time passes really fast here! hmm. cant believe a month has already passed. at least the pay is pretty decent...

and here's another observation: my english seems to be getting pretty rusty too. guess that's why i decided to start writing here again more frequently, at least my writing wont go COMPLETELY down the drain.. haha. and also on a totally different note, i seem to have signed myself up for a for-fun-only basketball competition at the workplace. and there's a 3 day weekend coming up!! cant wait for that, i guess. tho i cannot for the life of me imagine wat im going to do with so much extra time...

pearl of the orient

2005-07-03T19:18:00.000+08:00

well. it's been ages since i last posted, yet again. and yes, i'm in penang! interning with intel, until january next year. so far so good, i guess. :P

i've got streamyx here (at last) and it's a lot better than the trickling internet access i got in utp, so yay, guess i should update this site more often. unfortunately, gta: san andreas has been soaking up most of my time lately, haha, which explains the total lack of updates here. and hey blogspot seems to have added a picture update thingie. guess i'll whip out d trusty old digicam and take sm pics to be uploaded here. keep an eye out!

on a slightly different note, i seem to be getting more and more absent minded lately. hrm. wonder why... seem to have developed a tendency to wander off in my thoughts as my body goes into autopilot. this cant be good!!! help~

baggy eyes

2005-03-26T03:19:00.000+08:00

phew... wat a horrifying week. today marks the fourth night in a row im sleeping after 3am! gah! last night slept at 5.30 am with a 9am lab, and by the time my body hit the bed i was practically asleep!

reason: been coding on MATLAB since tuesday night, and (tadaa~) my project's done! squeezed into 3 days. topic: code division multiple access simulation (an ultra simple version of it anyway), which i decided to make using as simple a code as possible. i.e. zero integration, differentiation, fourier transform and all such things that would be a total nightmare to code into C. well not really, but if u can get it done simply, dont do it the hard way! :P

anyway as i type this my backbone is protesting vigorously to my brain, since it has been subjected to hours upon hours of code writing, and as such it seems my waist has given up on its usual duties and im hit by a wracking pain if it twists too much. which was bad. but replacing my lost sleep in the afternoons seems to have fixed that niggling problem...

6 more weeks to finals, and still no news for next sem's industrial training location. sigh. let's hope those applications get approved soon, else i'll be without a job. mechanical seems to have all secured positions, but ee remain in the dark...

erk. wading back into sleep now, so will post smth sm other time. oh, and amidst all this, thank goodness for carol and dota! (notice i mentioned her first, in order to prevent my ears from being twisted into a bloody pulp. haha. not really.)

nerdook

back in the meatgrinder!

2005-03-20T15:10:00.000+08:00

well im back! after a week of recuperating.. it's back to work for me. :P

aint easy being an engineer-to-be. got 2 assignments due this week which i havent touched. spent the week sleeping and eating and generally getting ready for the next 7 weeks of insanity. woot!!! cant wait...

so before i dip my head back into work, a quick post.

anyone who reads this: if you ever get a chance to sit on a plane to ipoh airport (the tiny one) from klia, do take a seat on the RIGHT of you (as you walk into the plane. if you're walking out then it's LEFT... obviously). about ten minutes before landing take a peek out and you can see the humongous stain of UTP on the surrounding terrain! really, i aint kidding, it's really big. you cant possibly miss it. ;)

k dats abt all i have time for. deeep breath then it's headfirst into the mud...

nerdook