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| Long weekend in sight |
| 04.29.05 (7:32 pm) |
Yes, a long weekend is in store for us.
Monday will be a public holiday because Labour Day fell on a sunday (1st May). Will take that time to just rest and catch up on some personal stuff like finishing up Full Spectrum Warrior on my PS2.
I really must start organizing the pictures in my iMac. Frankly speaking I've never gotten the hang of organising my stuff. Be it paper-based things or even MP3s or my DVD collection. No matter what I'll always end up with an organised mess. I start off fine but then all things end up piled up on top of each other.
Wifey has been bugging me about this even before we got married. In a way, I believe my mind is organised in such a way. It's a miracle that I can find stuff installed in this mind of mine.
Mac OS X 10.4 - Tiger is out for the Mac so I'm looking forward to getting my hands on that. Yes, Mac-addicts will always be Mac-addicts. We believe that the universe centres around one constant. The ever so-cool Mac machines.
Hm, think I might get myself an iShuffle...wifey will probably stretch my neck.
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| Bills in my ears |
| 04.26.05 (2:37 am) |
It's that time of the month again.
The time when every bill collector in the city is your bossom buddy. The bank remembers you, the utilities company threatens to shut down your water and electricity and you mull over the credit card bill with a toothpick. You know what I mean.
Tonight I'm going on my rounds to all the banks that are my friends. Dishing out all my pay just to live through another month. Its sad but thats the routine.
No money = problem, too much money = problem. Life is vicious.
Malaysia is currently going through a phase of adjustments. I'm beginning to see that the government is slowly pulling back much of its support or funding for certain sectors.
Soon you will need to be covered by insurance in order to get medical treatment. Previously the government subsidized the hospital rates. This ensured that everyone could get proper medical aid. Things will change soon, now that the government is pulling out such monetary aid in favor of insurance.
I pity the village folks who have never heard of insurance.
Fuel is also heavily subsidized in Malaysia. Making Malaysia the best place to buy fuel. We have some of the cheapest rates in Asia. But recently there have been a slight uproar over the rationing of diesel fuel. Apparently there is a difference in price for industrial-use-diesel fuel and consumer-use-diesel fuel. What has happen is that some parties have resorted to buying huge amounts of consumer-diesel fuel (which is cheaper) and then selling it to those in the industry. This has cause a shortage in the consumer side of things.
The government's response?
Ration out the consumer fuel.
Never in my life have I ever seen a queue for fuel as bad as the ones in this city. The trucks line up the whole stretch of the road blocking petrol user (like me) from even entering the petrol station.
I can't wait to see how the government untie itself from this knot.
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| Only in Malaysia - burn the good book. |
| 04.22.05 (7:56 am) |
Thanks to screenshots for highlighting this.
The never ending saga of the bible in Malaysia. One moment the government say bibles in the national language cannot be used since it might upset the majority, next moment the Prime Minister says it's ok. So what gives?
I suggest the Prime Minister asks his staff members to take reality exams just to make sure they think before they speak.
Here is another interesting story concerning Putrajaya, the smart city of Malaysia. Where you have everything plan to the minute details. Your every moved monitored and where (according to realiable sources) rats ate the cabling. Yup, they built everything high-tech then forget to rat-proofing the cable networks.
Only in Malaysia.
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| Living on a holiday. |
| 04.20.05 (5:17 am) |
Tomorrow is a public holiday, no work, I can wake up late.
I've managed to upgrade my iMac operating system to MacOS 10.3. It feels faster and got some cute additions but all my pre-10.3 applications are now dead. Sigh
Still recovering from a bout of flu and a slight fever. Hopefully my sore neck will also get better.
I've been attending meetings for the pass few days with the last one on friday. Finally a major project that has been stalled for the past two years is finally moving along. I can actually rest easy when this project is finished.
While all these things are happening other stuff popped up. Including payment for a "dent" car. Yup, the car I backed into last friday, the repair bill is on me. The funny thing is it was parked in a non-parking area, like in the middle of the drive-way. I'm amazed that the owner has the nerve to send me an email requesting that I pay for the repairs.Sigh
Come June, I'm visiting my grandparents. Bringing along Ryan and wifey. They've never seen my grandparents.
It'll be a good trip since my paternal grandfather is really advance in years and I might not see him that much anymore. It'll also be a chance for me to see my cousins and their children. I'm like the invisible uncle, they probably see more of my brothers then me.Sigh
So whats eating you today?
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| America's Debt |
| 04.18.05 (3:25 pm) |
The day Bush was sworn into office in 2001, the national debt was $5.7 trillion, and there was a surplus.
On the day he showed up in Parkersburg, it had climbed to $7,782,816,546,352.29. That is seven trillion, seven hundred and eighty-two billion, eight hundred and sixteen million, five hundred and forty-six thousand, three hundred and fifty-two dollars, and twenty-nine cents [Full Report]
Check out the US National Debt Clock.
Thanks Dahar!
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| Bollywood vs Honkywood |
| 04.18.05 (3:08 pm) |
Got this via email:
Things You Would Never Know, Without Indian Movies
========================= =============
1. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating
but will wince when a woman tries to cleanse his wounds.
2. The hero cannot fall in love with the heroine(vice versa) unless
they first perform a dance number in the rain.
3. Once applied, make-up is permanent, in rain or in any other
situation.
4. Two lovers can be dancing in the field and out of nowhere, 100
people will appear from God-knows-where and join them in the dance.
5. In the final scene, the hero will discover that the bad guy who
he is up against is actually his brother and the maid who looked after
him is his mother and the chief inspector is his father and the Judge
is his uncle and so forth.
6. Key English words used in the movie (usually said out loud
between sentences) are No Problem!, My God!, Get Out!, Shut-up!,
Impossible!,Please forgive me!
7.They drop down on the ground and roll and roll while singing and
come out with different clothing.
8. They can run around the coconut trees, singing, batting eyelids,
and throwing glances at each other and changing clothes all at the same
time without being out of breath.
Things You Would Never Know, Without Chinese Swordsman Movies
========================= ======================
1. Being the hero's parents will always be unlucky and will usually
be killed by enemies when the hero is young, and the hero will become
an orphan.
2. When a man is wounded and dying, he always manages to catch his
breath and speak a few sentences to reveal the killer before dropping
his head and be declared dead.
3. Skilled people are able to fly over roof tops, up trees and
across distances without any sweat. But when travelling to towns and
villages, they still have to walk or ride horses.
4. The heroes need not have to work for money, but will always have
gold and silver with them to pay for their food.
5. The heroes and villains will meet each other very often no matter
how big the country is and no matter where they are.
6. Healing internal wounds in the body is as easy as sitting down
cross-legged, palms on the knees and smoke coming out from the head.
7. They can keep a lot of stuff in their sleeves and waistband and
never drop them (carrying especially lots of those gold and silver
ingots)
Would you like to add to the list?
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2 Comments
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| My week long silence |
| 04.18.05 (12:48 am) |
I'm back.
I'm glad its a new week. Last week I had to deal with some workshops and sick women in the family.
Ryan had a fever, sore throat and a cough. This he graciously passed on the my mother, wifey and myself. Today he's playing normally but I've got back aches and a slight temperature. Wifey has lost her voice and my mum is high on prescribed drugs.
I've been attending music practice for a upcoming youth rally we are going to have in church next month. So every tues, thurs and sunday nights I'm out. Couple that with fri and sat being days I attend to other church business plus mornings at work...I'm overworked.
Cannot blame anyone since I put myself into that spot.
So by the time I have time to myself, I am normally flat. The sad thing is, this process will be repeated this week too.
Today sent the Avanza into the work-shop. I backed into a parked car. The parked car was in the middle of the parking lot. It was situated right behind my car.
What bothers me is that, one: I did not see it since it was black and the same color as the road and two: I did not hear the reverse sensor go off.
The even sadder thing was that my car was worst off then the other car. It merely suffered scratches while I ran off with a dented bonnet and bumper. :cry:
This cause quite a stir with wifey...yes, nothing would have happened if she was the one driving the car.
The car was clearly more important then the dope-headed husband who was partially blind and deaf.
Haiya...money go out again this month!
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| Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon |
| 04.10.05 (4:20 pm) |
I came across this site a couple of years back. It came back into mind while talking to a friend a few nights back. So here it is : The Oracle of Bacon.
The theory is that you can literally link anyone in Hollywood to Kevin Bacon based on the Six Degrees of Separation theory.
The number of links is called a Bacon number, for example Tom Hanks has a Bacon Number of 1 because he co-starred with Kevin in the movie Apollo 13.
Its fun, eerie and down-right wack out cause right now people are trying to come up with the highest Bacon Number possible. The hypothesis is that the highest possible number is either a 6 or 7. So far the highest number that I've got is a 4 by keying in Keanu Reeves.
Nuts, this game is addictive.
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| Worlds most expensive pen holder |
| 04.09.05 (7:39 am) |
[image]objectzero_4997280 3.jpg[/image]
A spider's worst nightmare...I've got more eyes than you.
[image]objectzero_7587911 12.jpg[/image]
Hm, lets see what master wants
[image]objectzero_7647166 01.jpg[/image]
Master, your blue pen.
Wifey was looking at me funny when I pulled it out of the box.
Giving me the all powerful "I know what you did last summer" look, she merely told me..."Make sure you keep it in a safe place, like a viewing cabinet".
Ah, this is why I married you.
Yup, it's sitting there next to my iMac. After about a half hour of un-winding its curled tentacles I finally managed to get it standing up-right on the provided stand.
This things is heavy. The level of detail is marvelous but the paint job does need more work. One reviewer warned that once out of the box this thing stinks with some chemical odour.
It stinks, big time.
I'm now seriously considering the Mifune model [previous post] but the supplier I got the Sentinel model from warned me that the Mifune model tends to fall apart. I read one reviewer comment the same thing. His model's arm fell off, out of the box.
Yup, it must have been used for the filming of that last stand scene in the third movie. So its now a case of whether the urge to buy will super-cede my value for money principle.
Well, stink bomb and everything don't you think its cute?
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| Pope's Last Will and Testament |
| 04.07.05 (6:04 pm) |
"As the end of my life approaches I return with my memory to the beginning, to my parents, to my brother, to the sister (I never knew because she died before my birth), to the parish in Wadowice where I was baptized, to that city I love, to my peers, friends from elementary school, high school and the university, up to the time of the occupation when I was a worker, and then in the parish of Niegowic, then St. Florian's in Krakow, to the pastoral ministry of academics, ... to Krakow and to Rome. ... to the people who were entrusted to me in a special way by the Lord.
"To all I want to say just one thing: "May God reward you."
Taken from Pope John Paul II last will and testament. Last entry written in March 2000.
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| The Malaysian Job Crisis |
| 04.06.05 (10:50 pm) |
A couple of months back it was reported that over 20,000 graduates were without work in Malaysia. Today, it was announce that the government will initiate job fairs (much like pc fairs) that would offer 5,000 jobs.
Should the government insure that graduates get a job upon graduation? Should employers lower expectations? Should graduates themselves stop being choosy and just work on whatever comes their way? Should they just start their own reality tv show, much like Britney?
I just feel that graduates should look beyond just securing a job, why not create one for yourself?
There is always room enough in the Malaysian economy for another businessman or businesswoman. There's always opportunity in the entertainment industry, provided you sing, dance, act and in Malaysia; you look the part.
The possibilities are endless but there are few takers. I just feel that these graduates refuse to take up tasks that they feel are below them.
They fear that society will look funny at them for forsaking 3/4 years of uni studies to open a nasi-lemak stall or work as a hard-labourer or construction worker. Unlike the west where it is common at times to find graduates running and owning pizza-parlours or small businesses.
Not in Malaysia, once you graduate you are expected to hold some form of class "A" post. A Class "A" post in the civil service means you are an officer, allowed to make small decisions and normally you would manage a small group.
With such sentiments in mind even if the goverment opens up 5,000 jobs would the graduates dare enough to take them? Or maybe the government is able to prepare 5,000 class "A" jobs?
I believe that the problem is not in the number of graduates on the un-employment list but rather in the notion that all things will be prepared for them when they graduate. This mind-set was in-grained in their minds from the very beginning of their student life.
Rid them of this mind-set and open up opportunities for them in fields that revolve around their passions rather then qualifications then I believe we'll see changes.
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| Loosing my sleep...loosing my mind |
| 04.05.05 (9:45 pm) |
I'm sleepy.
Gosh, I'm falling asleep at my desk. This is not good. After two whole days of workshop plus some meetings at night, I am running on batteries.
Adding to my mishaps from last night, I was late for work today. Driving down the road with skills that Schummie would be proud off, I suddenly realized that my fuel gauge was a tad above E. And if that was not enough, just as I was approaching the junction to my work place, I got stuck in a crawl because a back-hoe decided to drive down that road at 9am.
Patience is best.
Back-hoe at 9am on the road doing 40KMH I can stand, learner-driver behind back-hoe doing 20KMH; I can't stand.
Its a nightmare. I'm late, I've got a meeting at 9am, I'm late...
Reached office at 9.15am.
The oversea-gods must have been really angry at me for smitting one of their own in my previous blog. I must make sure I envoke the local gods next time. But being local-Malaysian gods, they'll probably turn up late.
Now, my eyes are failing me, my hands are going limp and my mind is fading into the twilight.
Yup, I need a pillow...
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| I'm sleep deprived |
| 04.05.05 (4:12 pm) |
I've only had 4 hours sleep.
Yes, I've spent the rest of the time fixing up this blog. Managed to upload my new design this morning after constant dis-connection from the internet.
My 1MB line decided to test my patience.
It is so frustrating when your image upload gets cut-off mid-way. Worse when you are keeping your eyes open with toothpicks and fears that the ghost of christmas past decide to play tricks on your mind at 2am.
After much thought, I decided to just keep things simple. Bare in mind this is 1 out of 4 ideas I had. Eventually after scouring the net on advice for good blog design I settled for the universal "Less is more" concept.
Nuts, my brain is going into sleep-mode.
And I still need to get to work.
My day just got better.
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2 Comments
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| IE Screw up |
| 04.05.05 (2:45 am) |
My blog looks horrible on IE. The design is super-fly on Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, Firefox and Camino. Yes, I have all those browsers installed on my iMac.
Will be tweaking this blog's design while I'll solve this problem for all you IE-maniacs/users who actually read my blog....
Haiya, just download Firefox-lah.
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| Annoyance beyond measure |
| 04.04.05 (8:31 pm) |
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I'm annoyed at people who come back from overseas and think that the universe revolves around them.... NO, I'm PISSED off. These people were the ones who sent Galileo to his death. The earth revolves around the sun, not some flat-bedded grey stuff.
Or as the elves would say:
"Lle naa haran e' nausalle. Antolle ulua sulrim, auta miqula orqu" translation (look under insults)
Note: I'm currently conducting a workshop for some people in the organisation. One of which just came back from overseas and is slooooowly getting on my nerves.
I have to deal with buck-heads who THINK that they are He-man and are allowed to scream "I'm the Master of the Universe" every given chance. Like, who cares what happened then, this is the now and here and its Malaysia.
For God's sake come back to earth, stop chasing the elusive dream that you can chance the stripes of a tiger by criticizing it. You'll be gnarled at, eaten alive and probably be the most un-popular person in the organisation.
When will people ever learn to humble themselves, learn the ways of the organisation (before making off-centred comments) and then slowly try to present their thoughts? If you come in like a flood then barriers will be built up in order to contain the flood waters. You will be put under the radar and monitored. The moment you make a slip up (whatever it is) you'll be crucified.
The best approach to take when you are new in any organisation is to get to know the administration staff - the clerks, personal assistants, office-boys, technicians and even the guy who brings in the mail. Treat them as friends because for starters they know the ropes, the rules and how to bend those rules. They can push your agenda up the organisation.
Secondly, if you're nice to them, they will readily help you out even if it means bending the rules. They know the system well enough to connect you to other administrative staff in other areas. They can help you overcome some administrative obstacles and get your agenda moving in-spite of red-tape.
Thirdly, they have the ear of the boss. He depends on them so to a certain degree they can pass suggestions to him/her. Personal assistants should be your best friends.
There some tips to get yourself position well in any organisation. I'm off to lunch to calm my nerves with food and to contemplate the uniqueness of cynide as an agent to kill off irritating people.
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| Prayer for a great man |
| 04.01.05 (10:00 pm) |
I'm not catholic but I recognize greatness in a fellow Christian/Catholic.
I may not understand fully the Catholic rituals but I recognize a faithful man.
When the christian world is divided by so much, you embraced all; just as Jesus would have.
If we met, we probably talk about soccer, which I know you like. We probably talk long and hard about what we all can do for this world. We'd probably take long walks in the mountains which we both like. You'd tell me of the visit Tun Mahathir, the first Malaysian Prime Minister to meet the Pope.
The world is going to miss a great man.
If you ever read his autobiography you would understand why I have respect for Pope John Paul II. Here is a man who lived through WWII, became the first non-Italian pope in 400 years and was instrumental in bringing down communism in europe.
One of the first things Pope John Paul II did, after surviving an assasination attempt, was to meet the man who shot him in order to forgive him.
Isn't that a sign of a great man?
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