October 2003

Ah, what a beautiful week this is. First of all, my cuzzies Hemlocke and ichaya came up to visit and I so love it when they do! Secondly, they came to see Linkin Park, and we all did and had a blast!

This concert being my first, I had no idea what to expect. I’d seen one of LP’s concert clips, and it wasn’t exactly the greatest. But that had probably been a fluke due to sore throats or something, because last night they just BLEW EVERYONE AWAY!

When the show finally got started despite a few false starts (as well as Too Phat’s over-extended opening act), things went on flawlessly! The choreographic arrangement was excellent; the more familiar high-powered songs were alternated with the subtle ones, and every spotlight seemed to move in rhythm. Chester and Mike were excellent at wooing the crowd, shouting “Malaysia Boleh!” besides the usual PR quotes. But let’s not forget the rest of the band, who were equally entertaining and pleasant.

The show kicked off at 8:30, with a full half hour of Too Phat (and gang). Sure, they’re a very decent group, but unfortunately they lacked something for such an event. What exactly it is, I can’t say since I’m not in showbiz, but from my POV their presentation was rather messy, having no coordination between the singing and the breakdancing (which was cool, btw). Plus the sound-system didn’t really help, drowning their voices in the thunderous bass beats. If someone gave me a quiz on comprehension, I’d fail. The restless crowd didn’t help either, cuz time was-a-tickin’, and we’d been counting since 6:30. Synchronised shouts of “Linkin Park” would pretty much tell you what we wanted. Well, better luck next time guys!

After they were done, it took another half hour to get the stage set up for the main event. People were getting edgy, so screams were echoing through the stadium whenever a speaker twitched. As I’ve explained earlier, things were just sweet when LP finally made their appearance. All the fatigue just disappeared and everywhere people were in rhythm with the music. Most of us knew the lyrics by heart, so it was virtually an awesome karaoke session as well!

After approximately an hour, LP seemed to close shop with “In The End”. But the mob wasn’t satisfied. We wanted more! Everyone just stayed on and cheered them back onto the stage. The encore was sweet, but too short. Another two great songs were delivered, and then they left. It was then that I probably realised that this’ll probably be the last live LP performance I’ll see. But Chester said they’ll be back, so I’m just going to hold on to that promise.

Well, it’s now Thursday night. Listenin’ to the Meteora CD I just purchased over and over again. There’s a pile of clothes that need to be ironed, and I’m trying hard to remember what my job specification was. It’s amazing how reality just swallows you back in one big gulp. Can’t stay in there forever though, and I’m looking forward to the next big concert in these parts. Concerts are fun! Like clubbing in open air. And open air is good, cuz I think I might be claustrophobic (clubbing makes me fall ill). Practice makes perfect? Not at my age. But I’m good for concerts. 🙂 Next time I’ll be more prepared in the ticket-grabbing department. Stage-side is where it’s AT!

After a quick defragment of my main HDD, Steam now works almost flawlessly. My lil bro and I have been taking turns having a go at DoD, and we’ve been having a real blast! It’s so much different playing with 32 people rather than the usual 6. Unfortunately the Steam version has reduced the scope zoom speed of the sniper rifles by quite a bit, so I can’t quite terrorize the entire enemy squad. Nevertheless, MRC is still not on Steam yet so I still have some time left to whack people up. Hur hur.

Steam also offers the usual Half-Life mods, like CS (I still suck at it), and also the original Half-Life multiplayer. Having not played HL MP after so long, it’s really fun! A shout-out to all cybercafes: Get Steam now! They even have a cybercafe version out. Cheap too.

Problem with this Steam business is that my mom doesn’t approve. Add that to my frequent Shaman King marathons and you get non-stop nag all night long. Well, hopefully my bro stays off the PC at night (I just gave him the privilege of playing in the afternoon).. and hopefully he won’t look so stoned when *I* play.

Oh, and I also just found out that my consultant’s boss has 3 extra Grand Stand tickets to LP. Grr~ and right next to the stage too. The whole office practically knows I’m mad for Grand Stand tickets, but none of them bother to tell me. Sigh~ So bad… so sad..

Yes, Shin Chan said that in one of the Malay-dubbed episodes. Pretty much what’s running through my head right now. Yay to Merv, I now have an infrared port for my PC, which I use to pirate operator logos and ringtones. Hurrah for POTC! Hurrah for pirates in general!

Next on our lineup of cool stuff is the new BitTorrent client. Version 3.3 promises to be, well, more stable.

As for the events of the day, I went to work as usual, although nothing much was happening since few consultants were around to whip us. After 1pm, a few of us decided to watch Ringu 2 using a projector in the meeting room. 😀 But due to problems with the lighting, we couldn’t achieve our targeted level of terror.

While I was bz wasting time, the LP tix have finally arrived! Hmm, did I mention this before? Oh, that was somewhere else.. nevermind. So yes, they’ve arrived, and I feel sooo relieved to have them in hand. Hopefully they don’t disappear somewhere into some dark corner of the house… Speaking of LP, I’ve still much of Shaman King to watch! Argh, and only 3 more days!!!

In the afternoon, I lazed abt switching between transferring stuff to/from my handphone and trying to play Day of Defeat off Steam. Gave the Waja a much-needed wash near sunset.

The family went to Uptown for dinner. Tried some “famous” Fish Head Curry (kinda wished I’d pay more attention in Biology). The rest of the night was spent at Tesco grocery shopping. Well, I kinda wandered off somewhere else to check out the range of DVD players. Since my mom MAY join the legion of Korean drama-lovers, I might as well get a VCD player at least.
tesco

Yay! Another week of workshops in Bangi. Free breakfast, lunch and tea! Yummie. Most of the Blueprint has been signed, and the Project Team has but a few days to catch a breather before we go into the next Phase.

Only a few days left till LP. Was getting worried that the tix were not in hand, so I called up the ticketmaster and they say they were just shipped yesterday. Tsk. At least my leave application is settled, so it’s “sit back and relax” time! Oo, gotta get bus tickets for ichaya and Hemlocke so that they can return home, otherwise they’d be stuck here with me a lil’ longer. But hey, that’s not a bad thing, is it? 🙂

Gonna have dinner with Auntie Ruby, the wife of my former sailing coach the late Jimmy Chang (may he rest in peace), tonight. Been a while since I’ve met her, and also the other sailors from my era. It should be fun, I think. 🙂

Feeling a lil under the weather tonight… don’t know whether it was the rain, or the mad airconditioning. Maybe it was both, plus the mad gaming experience last night. *shrug*

Nothing much happened over the weekend. Breezed through the 2nd book of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Drove my mom all over Selangor while she did her usual Presidential stuff.

Towards the eve of Sunday night, we stopped by at the club to grab some dinner. But instead of the usual cheerful ardour, everyone had a serious mask on. A man was lost at sea.

On the Playlist: Kuon-killer to Nami no Kioku from FF X-2.

Finally got me LP tix. Friend didn’t manage to get Grand Stand tix, but I appreciate his/her help. Thanks a lot! You know who you are. 🙂 Well, we’re now settled for VI Stand tickets. So it looks like I’ll have to take leave on the 15th, and perhaps the 16th to allow myself some cooling off time from work. Hmm.. then I might as well take Friday off too.

It was a rather eventful day today. Just like the last two days, today was a full day of meetings. Before this I haven’t really talked about what I do at work, so I think this time I ought to leak a lil’ more information on that. Being an IT person in a non-IT company, I’m pretty much part of Logistics. Specifically, I support the HR system(s) used for the whole company, and we’re currently undertaking a project to migrate the old systems to a new platform. At the moment, the project team is in the Blueprint phase, where we take all the user requirements and figure out what to do with them.

So we took the entire day today just to discuss Retirement Benefits. And this was to be the last of many many meetings previously held before the whole sign-off next week. I’m kinda glad we’re finally starting to move from talking to actually doing stuff with the new system we have in mind.

While I was supposed to be involved in the meeting from start to end, I probably had to step out so many times that people started to notice. But it should be alright, since they all know I’m such a busy and dependable guy. 😉 The first time I left was to call my mom’s credit card company. I had purchased the LP tix online from Axcess’ website, and there was an error with their MS Access-driven website. So I called them up to find out what the dilly was. Turns out that they were attacked by a virus (figures) and they didn’t exactly apologize, but merely pointed their fingers accusingly at TMnet (duh).

Impersonating my mom wasn’t exactly easy. First off, I’m a guy trying to sound like the opposite sex, and I wasn’t a very good liar either. The operator didn’t seem comfortable, and asked me all sort of questions about her account, which made me almost choke at the end. But things turned out alright, since I just wanted to find out if the ticket transaction went through, and it did. So I called Axcess again and their sweet-voiced website admin, Linda, cleared things up.

Went back to the meeting with a wide grin on my face, only to be pulled out a while later because someone from the lawyer’s office wanted to see me. I thought, horrified, “Did they take action already?!?!” It just turned out that the guy was looking for someone else who had the same full name as mine except for the first 4 characters. Sheesh~ Well, since I was part of HR, I thought I’d help him find the real guy so that they won’t come bother me anymore!!! (this wasn’t the first time).

*my sis just kacau-ed me cuz she wants to watch Audition. yeah, she’s back for the moment. 😛 gonna rush through the rest*

Had a hearty lunch at the mosque, and came back to continue the meeting only to be pulled away by a more urgent task.

Played RISK all night at the Bodhi Tree with Az1, Wan Yee, and of course Merv. Got wiped out 2nd. 😛 Also got a live demo of how to swear, honk, and flash Malaysian drivers at the same time, from Az1-sensei.

…POT! Yea that’s me weehee.

I’ve been rather unsuccessful in getting LP tix. But there’s still hope, and at least I’m not as flustered as before. Actually, I was. Sigh~

*breathe*

Ahh, nothing but an ice-cold glass of H2O to keep that chest-pounding feeling at bay.

As it turns out, my car is still bleeding. This time it’s from the last remaining break part that hasn’t been replaced (break pump on the right). I can see a steady trail of break fluid forming towards the drain. Probably’ll go back to the workshop on Saturday (don’t worry folks, the breaks still work).

Gotta get a new replacement casing for my 5210 too. It sacrificed itself trying to save my thigh from the evil corner of my hardwood desk. Pasar malam here we go! The LCD is also a little damaged, but no biggie. It’s supposed to be shock-resistant anyway.

Man, getting tickets for a concert is tough. This concert especially! All the ticket “counters” are smack in the middle of KL, and getting there during a weekday ain’t so easy. Thought I’d try the supposedly “integrated” transit system, so I took the Putra LRT from my office to Sentral. When I got there, I found out that the monorail only runs till 3 p.m. Why? Because it’s still on promotion. That stunned me for a while. How do you promote something when it doesn’t even run the way it should? Trying to avoid wheels from falling after 3? mattaku…

Not being able to get to Bukit Bintang, I tried KLCC instead. But it was no use.. their ticketing system was down since 2 o’clock. Someone doesn’t want me to get tickets, I know it!

After a few calming rounds of Jedi Academy, I think tomorrow won’t be as bad. This time, a few more phone calls should do the trick.