June 2006

sigh… stress levels peaked yesterday as the search for sydney accommodation continues. the thing is i can’t do as much at home, so much time is spent on this activity in the office. and the office is already hectic as it is, with the stupid little issues that get under your skin. and then there’s my mom’s HK3 tax forms to submit. argh, so many expectations, so little time and brain matter.

it didn’t help that i got creamed in BF2 that evening; there goes my only source of stress relief. i’m also still bummed out abt my puter…

well, at least superman returned. to a hot MILF i might add (plagiarised from Merv-speech) 😛 when it comes to watching movies in a cinema, i’m still amazed at how people can manage to get their legs and knees up against the seat in front, even with the huge amount of leg space given. it’s like going as low as possible increases the amount of enjoyment. maybe they admire the back of our heads.

i curse thee with cronic back pain!

to my utter dismay, i’m still experiencing artifacts with my new card! :O thinking back, this might be attributed to me not seating the previous card in its slot properly when i was booting up this one time. :O

that points to one thing: my radeon 9800 pro is not broken. 😛

so… anyone wanna buy? 😛 i’ll need more funds for a test motherboard. wait, i already have one. grrr but i don’t want to go through the trouble of reinstalling windows again. might as well get a proper mobo and do it once and for all.

and i’m already eyeing one on lowyat.net.

anyway, this 7800 GS is pretty neat. lets me play BF2 alright with every setting set to High, altho there are a few jerks here and there. can’t be helped, since i’m playing at 1600×1200. only problem is the fan noise. when it’s at full speed it’s really really noisy. trying to find a way to tweak the thresholds.

wooo hooo. i just picked up my BFG 7800 GS video card from dinster. no more shall i have to endure a bad aim due to black panoramic strips blocking my view in BF2. no longer shall i have to rest my eyes so soon due to the shimmering text and flying bits of texture in WoW.

will this make me happy? i sure hope so. 🙂 it’s not economical to buy any more AGP upgrades, but i wanna maximize this computer before being forced to upgrade to PCI-Express.

ladies and gentlemen, game on.

it’s been two days since my KB trip, and i’ve managed to finish two artemis fowl books. i had my sister pick up Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception while she was out doing errands today. in the meantime, i stayed home in solitary comfort, enjoying my off-in-lieu with Into The Blue with Jessica Alba and the original Dune. i started on the book sometime in the afternoon, and it was a very easy read.

gives me pleasure to know that there’ll be a 5th book coming out. something else to look forward to besides the last part of Paolini’s Inheritance, the last 3 parts of Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom, and the last 2 parts of Funke’s ‘Inkstuff’. still, i’m drooling mostly for Inheritance, since the story is quite epic, and i like epic stories. like Nix’s Old Kingdom trilogy. wish he’d get right back on the sequel to Creature in the Case.

oh, and i have like a dozen volumes of Celestial Zone to cover as well. thanks cuzzies. 🙂

anyway, will be picking up my new 7800 GS tomorrow. then i’ll be back on wow, and the rest of my funds dedicated to my honda’s engine transplant.

the next morning was a working saturday. sucks, but true. it was supposed to be a gotong-royong day to clean up our work areas and follow the 5S methodology. i tried, i really did, but i think i wiped at the first S. strangely enough, the person who announced the cleanup was on leave. 😛 well, at least that morning i managed to clear up my itinerary with chief medical officer (CMO)’s PA. i was to go to Kota Bharu that evening for a briefing on Sunday. Sunday! could you believe that? i’ll definitely kill someone if they won’t let me take a replacement day off. metaphorically of course.

anyway, she gave me an open ticket for the return flight. i was oblivious to the trouble that might’ve put me in, but fortunately i didn’t have to go through any… misfortune.

mom and sis were out when i got home from work. luckily they got back in time to send me off to KL Sentral. in the meantime, i got meself some lil’bro-prepared instant noodles and watched Fearless with bad subtitles. and since my mom dropped her phone again that day, we decided to give her the new 6230i we’ve kept in hiding since Friday. playing with it makes me want to get one too. 😛

it was quiet on the ERL. it was quiet in the boarding area. it was quiet on the plane. nice stewardesses though. mmm. most of my interaction with people was only through eye contact and head gestures. i managed to slip into MPH the night before to pick up a threebie of Artemis Fowl, Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident, and Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code for the upcoming roadtrips. i had the first two with me. CMO was on the same flight, but in business class. must be nice to be management.

we took a cab to our hotel, a dingy one at the outskirts of the city called New Pacific. the exterior looked nice, but it was painted in rather dark colors. the room was also a terrible disappointment compared to Sheraton. the bathroom vent could ‘outnoise’ a jet turbine; there’s a strange stain on its floor. the room itself is alright i guess. garbed in very classy, shiny but dark colors again. reminded me of a room in a big old mansion. a haunted one.

i didn’t sleep well that night. at least i finished reading my first book.

the briefing on the following day went as per normal. got picked up from the hotel to the local headquarters. parking looked like a bitch; honestly, i’ve never seen cars quadruple parked in random directions like that. not even in the visitor parking level of Menara TM. well, that was just the cars in the building. the parking scenario in the public areas were.. somewhat better. except for the schools of taxis and kereta sewas waiting for passengers.

we finished early, so there was sometime for me to go around shopping for thingies. Kelantan is famous for keropok and textiles, so there’s no point looking at anything else. well, maybe there are other things, but i didn’t care for them just yet. the locals pointed out some nearby pasars for the better shops. i just headed to one which had both items on sale. first, selendangs for mom, tudungs for cuzzies (guess where the bus money went, girls. :P), then keropok for whoever. a little more than what i’d usually spend, but the fabric and weave designs here are just fantastic. i just bought the mid range, and those looked really nice enough.

the CMO was a Kelantanese himself, so he opted to go home for a bit, leaving me alone to do my shopping. i guess that’s how i got ripped off by the taxi guy driving me back to the airport. charged me slightly less than airport taxi rates for a ride in a beat up merc without air conditioning. should’ve checked the rates with the CMO before hotel check-in.

check-in counters closed. continued reading second book. flight delayed. finished second book.

stewardesses not so cute this time. except for the head stewardess which i only caught a glimpse of on the way out.

it was around 10.30 when i finally set foot at home. both my mom and sis went out to pick me up from KL Sentral, which was nice of em. 😀 gave me to play with my mom’s new phone even further. can’t go wrong with “hips don’t lie” as a ringtone.

and when i stepped into my room, i was surprised with a brand new IKEA chair for my compy. it’s awesome, and big enough to even shadow my 24″ monitor. Merv and i will need to compare notes now. thanks you guys 😀

now, on to the third book!

the week after my cuzzie visit, my schedule at work became more packed than ever. i was in Bangi conducting a system training class whole day Tuesday, and i only found out that evening that i need to go outstation sporadically for the next coupla days.

and i had to be in Penang on friday.

having discussed the schedule with my assistant Amin, we decided that both of us should be there for the first session of this ‘roadshow’. me being the presenter, and him being the apprentice. due to the short notice, we had very little time to prepare the mini manuals needed for the stuff we were going to demonstrate, and we barely finished before embarking on our drive up Thursday afternoon. Amin drove of course :); his perdana v6 was in better shape than any of my cars.

it rained quite a bit throughout the drive. the mood was dreary, but we managed to counter the effect by talking about a lotta things. guy stuff mostly. colleagues should be treated as friends, even if they’re your subordinates. since i’m not good at scolding people, this would be a better alternative.

when we reached the island, it took a bit to get our bearings right. i had to step up my role as navigator since Amin needed to pay full attention to the mad Penang drivers. after some turns here and there, we finally reached our destination: The Sheraton. working with my company does have some perks. 😛 we were each settled into separate Deluxe Rooms. needless to say, it was very very nice.

that night we took flight to Batu Ferringhi (not sure i spelled that right) to grab some DVDs for our other colleagues. well, actually Amin did. i just tagged along. then we went back to town to sate our hunger with Line Clear’s nasi kandar, located near The Oriental hotel. it was gewd.. very gewd. i rarely eat nasi kandar, but this one was just mind blowing. loved the fried chicken.

after dinner, we just went back to our rooms and chilled. i had my copy of Inkheart, which my cuzzies recommended, to read in bed. the story is a bit too slow for me, so i could only read 2-3 chapters at a time before i’m unable to resist the urge to close my eyes. slow, but good. finished it the next day before we left for home.

i was also tempted to call Fiena, an old college mate who now lives in Penang. i think. but there wasn’t much time for me to go out and meet people, so there wasn’t any point in doing so. next time perhaps.

in the morning we were up bright and early for our session. it was supposed to be in the afternoon, but we managed to squeeze in our material before lunch and was able to leave for home early. even so, it was dark when we got back to KL, with the heavy rain pounding at us all the way south. still, there was enough time to meet up with Merv for dinner at Chili’s. his treat. thanks Merv. 🙂

whee. me dear singapore cuzzies came to visit last weekend. i like spending time with them; somehow all the stress from work just disappears. they went shopping for the entire weekend (including monday), and it was a little tiring, but i don’t mind. good company will always bring out the joy in anything. 🙂 and i got a nice new shirt and mirrormask, which i’ve yet to watch just yet.

i knew you girls would pull something like that in the last minute. 😛

anyways, it’s amazing how women can shop so much. and i’ve yet to be exposed to the hardcore shoppers. :O

so, after they left for home, Merv called and we had tong shui in SS2. Vivien’s in town too. i forgot to mention, she’s his wife. 🙂

in the following days to come, i managed to cover some movies i’ve downloaded. The Island was nice. storyline was a little weak, but the cool chase scenes and Scarlet Johannsen (atsui!) saved the day! Doom was fun to watch. a little mindless havoc never hurt anyone. 🙂 the first-person perspective scene was nostalgic, altho the actual game is more fast paced. 😛 Hitch was a great movie. Eva Mendez! 😀

now i’ve Ong Bak, and a little bit of Bewitched left.

at the office, i’ve finally finished B13, a French action flick. it has elements of those people who like to jump and scale tall buildings.. can’t quite recall their name. anyways, it’s directed by Luc Besson, the guy behind The Fifth Element. it’s great work. 🙂 and Dany Verissimo is cute too. 😀

don’t worry, i only watch during break time or after hours when i’m waiting for things to finish running. 😛

speaking of downloading, my server’s been acting up a lot lately. somehow the power died during the weekend, then there was a power failure on tuesday. and the router’s DDNS function is starting to crap out every week again. i thought D-Link was bad, but Linksys seems to want to take their place at the bottom of the crap jar.

if i had a JTAG cable, i’d switch to DD-WRT in a heartbeat.

just watched The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, screening courtesy of Catcha. lotsa eye candy for sure, girls and cars alike. more girls than cars actually.

anyway, i parked me car at a very difficult spot to get out of. not because it was tight, but due to the heavy volume of cars leaving the parking structure. a civic had just passed behind us (merv, fish, and henry were passengers) and there was a gap for me to reverse into the queue. but what i didn’t realise was that the queue had stopped right there behind me, and i didn’t notice the guys’ oi’s before it was too late. luckily, it was a lil bump and no major harm was done.

thinking abt what got into me tonight, it was probably me assuming traffic flow would go a certain ways, or me assuming my passengers had me covered. anyhows, it was bad driving on my part. but this points out one funny characteristic abt me: when i’m alone, i will somehow or rather always keep myself on the ground and out of harm’s way. but when i’m with people, i start getting complacent, somehow subconsciously hoping others would do my thinking for me. remember the low yat parking ticket incident? 🙁

maybe it’s a part of me being easily swayed by others. a part of me that can’t stand confrontations. a part of me that is always agreeable. a part of me that will always leave me being second best at most. a part that will leave me having what i need but not what i want.

or maybe i just think too much. rarely emotional. whenever i do get angry, all the arguments would play out in my head and never out of my mouth. afraid of losing; afraid of rejection; afraid of getting hurt. afraid of getting the people close to me hurt. maybe.

well, at least one thing amusing abt this whole incident was that there were two lost girls taking camera pics of the scene of the crime.

mum turned *censored* yesterday. was going to get her a new phone, but the particular model i was looking for, the 6230i, was out of stock. well, i’ll just get it sooner or later. instead, i picked up a card from parkson sungei wang, and the sis picked up a cake.

so it’s a non-school holiday monday today, and the roads are almost as packed as it was 2 weeks earlier. luckily i still managed to get to work on time, despite being nocturnal over the weekend to finish watching gundam seed and destiny. monday’s are usually the hardest workdays, as you struggle to remember where you left off the week before. but because i’m afflicted with a ‘dreaming of work’ syndrome, it wasn’t so hard this time.

feeling under the weather tho. sigh…

gundam seed: 50/50.
gundam seed destiny: 33/50.
my name is earl s1: 19/?? awaiting download
house md s2: 5/?? on hold
WoW: on hold.

things to – buy from / do in – sydney:-

– MCE remote
– extra cutting discs?
– cheap devices?: sony t-30 / nano ipod / thinkpad X60?

– watch silent hill!
– go snowboarding?
– see the sights?

i need ideas people! 😀 and anyone wanna tag along? 😀

yeah, i’ll be going to sydney sometime july/august. my sister’s been admitted to UNSW with a scholarship to boot. 🙂 i’m so happy for her!!! at the same time, she got a silver for selangor in SUKMA. terer siot.

it’s going to be fun to get to visit another ‘western’ country. and with my sister there, i can take the opportunity to order stuff via her. 😀

anyway, i just saw a video of the demonstration held in front of klcc when petrol prices went up. those people got a free shower. 🙂 can’t blame them though: although our gas is still subsidized, our relative cost of living is still pretty high. heck, i don’t think i’ll be able to afford a house within a 50km radius of my office.

might just execute my plan to migrate. let’s brain more drain! i mean drain more brain!

gundam seed: 15/50.
my name is earl s1: 19/??
house md s2: 5/??
WoW: on hold.