Wrath of the Unladen Swallow.

Eh.

2007-03-28T22:52:00.000+09:30

I'm going to stop blogging, at least from unladenswallow.blogspot. I found this place at a time when everyone was doing it, and while I still want to have my own domain where I can toss certain portfolios, articles of interest and opinions, I find this current site well, uninteresting.

Too many options, yet too limited, and I'm not bothered at all to keep a site unless I have something more concrete to back myself up than the constant inane writings of a 23-year-old university student.

Adieu. This is the penultimate post. The last one, if I ever plan on announcing it here, will be to link anyone who actually comes here to aforementioned new domain.

Of the spirit of cow

2007-03-15T13:31:00.000+10:30

I'm frying two eggs for lunch. Sunny-side up, as some people may call it, or just bullseye, though it doesn't look anything similar. And I'm going to eat it with bread, but there's a topping I want to add to it.

But I'm also hesitant. The topping is cheese. Six-hundred-and-twenty-grammes of Colby Australian cheese rest in the second lowest rack in the refrigerator. And I'm afraid to reach for the cheese, and use it. It is like a holy item, that can only be used in the most dire of times.

The packet tells me it's ideal for grilling, but there is no grilling in plain sight. It says it is smooth and creamy, but even as it rests in the palm of my hand, I can feel its tangible texture, cooling my fingers.

I want to use the cheese, but I'm afraid. It's like tapping into a source that I'm unsure of, even if I've seen the outcome a million times before. I tell it like it is, for though I love it, it still frightens me, and I lay awake at night thinking of my next move. Warriors will tell you the same thing, in the calm before the battle, or a husband before his night of consummation. They welcome the danger, the expected thrill, the outcome. It is fear, not of the unknown, because they know what lies ahead, but even then, the consequences are unpredictable.

I must cut the cheese, before it cuts my spirit.

The Power of Destiny

2007-01-19T14:36:00.000+10:30

Ever come across the feeling that you were here before, when you entered a room, say for example, and a vague sense of emotion sort of lingers in your mind. Then you begin to ask yourself, "Haven't I been here once before?" In some ways, it can be tied to premonition, what you might have seen in a dream, or a fleeting moment that just came and went without you grasping all the details at once. You saw whatever it was that you saw, but for that moment, your brain wasn't able to decipher it, only for it to refresh out of memory when you enter into that scenario, similar or frighteningly exact.

I'm not really talking about seeing the future, where something that doesn't make sense pops up in a dream, only for it to happen days, months or even years later. For instance, I once dreamt that I had thrown a rock at a friend of mine when we were swimming in a river as kids. Because it was a dream, I didn't pay it much heed, until I actually happened to accidentaly throw that small rock and hit my friend, about two years down the road.

I'm talking about deja vu, as is elaborated in the following passage as thus:

...the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously... experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eerieness", "strangeness", or "weirdness". The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience "genuinely happened" in the past. Déjà vu has been described as "Remembering the future."
- Wikipedia: Deja vu

Though in some sense, deja vu can be argued as a prophetic access of things, perhaps an inherent ability that humankind is able to tap into, but is only able to do so in rare occasions. But that, is an argument for another day, and though I'd very much like to bring that to discussion, my topic for the day concerns the latest production by Tony Scott, starring Denzel Washington, in the crime thriller of the same name as the feeling which I'm talking about right now.

As I was walking about in Melbourne this afternoon on various errands, I received a call from one of my friends, who then asked if I was free later tonight to watch a movie. I wasn't expecting him to suggest anything of note, until he mentioned Deja vu, because I knew he wasn't one of those types that would go for films with sad themes in them (or so I was told), such as Pursuit of Happyness, which some girls I had known had seen it over the previous weekend and were touched by the storytelling. Not that I was particularly interested anyway, as I told myself that I was going to set aside my viewing time for two movies this year: 300 and Transformers, and not really care about any other movie unless it was recommended.

When I came to meet my friend, I found out what movie we were going to watch, and it clicked back in my mind (out of memory this time) that I had seen the trailer for the very movie a few months back after watching Inside Man, and was very interested. Then I forgot all about it and went on with my life, until today that is.

While sitting down to watch this movie, I could not help but point out the similarities between this one and Man On Fire, other than being directed/produced by the same person, starring the same frontman and taking on a quicker pace than most movies, darting from one scene to the next but not without explaining the general outlook of each given scene, and leaving the nitty-gritty details to the viewer to gauge.

The movie starts off innocently enough, in the months after Katrina hit New Orleans, where a ferry begins to charter hundreds of sailors to presumably a Mardi Gras celebration. The faces of each person are clearly expressed, something which will remain a norm throughout the rest of the show, the little girl who dropped her doll into the river, to the band playing in the background as it is slowly replaced by a growing distinct car radio.

Then the unexpected happens, just as a bomb is discovered on one of the vehicles within the ferry, it goes off with one explosion and in doing so, ignites the fuel compartments of the ship, and the destruction is total, and soon bodies litter the river in massive numbers.

Enter Doug Carlin (played by Denzel), an enigmatic ATF agent who resorts to quick consideration and lateral thinking to solve the dilemma faced by the government - to apprehend the terrorist behind the crime. He discovers the body of a beautiful woman washed ashore, made to look as though she were part of the explosion, but when he takes a closer look at the details, Doug discovers that the woman's death was not tied to the ferry in any way, except to the actions of the perpetrator. He figures out that solving the murder of the woman (known as Claire) will then in turn lead him to the terrorist.

Because of his findings, he is brought by one of the FBI agents on the scene (Val Kilmer) to a machine that takes up the space of an entire warehouse, that is devoted to looking into the past by means of satellite imagery gathered from the past until the present, and through a number of other factors (of which I've forgotten), will enable people to look into the past not from a recorded point of view, but in real-time. The only catch is that they cannot rewind or fast forward what they'd be watching if they felt that they missed a point, and would have to be forced to go along the full of it, a four-day-and-six-hour view into the past. As George Carlin would say in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, the clock in San Dimas is always ticking.

Which is where Doug comes in, as he points to the scientists where they should look, and they focus on the day-to-day activities of Claire's life, and how she is tied to the terrorist. However, the machine tends to show more than just the past, as Doug confirms that it is also a link to the past (by means of a little experiment involving a laser light, which sends out a blackout to the entire city), to which it can be changed to suit the present, though always at a great cost: Who would know what the future might bring if even a small part of the past was changed?

Even so, nothing can seem to change the fact that the disaster will happen even with the intervention from the future. Even after they have apprehended the terrorist, Doug comes to rethink the concept of catching criminals after they have done their wrong, a subject he has faced all his life, to the possibility of preventing the crime from ever happening.

Deja Vu is graced by dynamic characters who seek to solve the crime behind the terrorist attack in a manner that would be deemed in other movies as science-fiction, though the machine is never seen as a conduit to the cyberpunk genre, but more to the criminal thriller sense. The cinematography is interesting, as the camera shifts from one character to the next, focusing on Doug as he hunts the killer, and then to the people in the past, who feel as though they are being watched.

Deja Vu also shares a common theme with Man on Fire, sacrifice. Where one man seeks to change the world, and by doing so, gives up himself in order to see it through, even at the expense to his own life, on several occasions. It also sees evil portrayed by individuals who are misguided in their ways, and would do anything to prove their point, even if it means the deaths of hundreds of innocents.

All in all, I left the cinema feeling very satisfied, and I would like to recommend this movie to anyone else in the mood for a good Friday evening.

Peace. I'm off.

Music and Me

2007-01-18T01:21:00.000+10:30

Let me tell you a little something about myself.

I told someone tonight that: "My mind was born in the 80s, my spirit formed in the 70s, and my soul created in the 60s. The body formed with the power of Van Halen, in the year 1984, with the song of the same name."

I forgot to mention, shaped in the 90s, to find new meaning in the 00s. But so is the power of music, is it not? From Creedence Clearwater Revival to Queen, from Judas Priest to Pearl Jam, from Smashing Pumpkins to Blind Guardian, I'd say that my music taste varies from age to age, but in the end, I enjoy them all.

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.

A Botched Brew

2007-01-14T00:21:00.000+10:30

I doubt that nothing sickens me more than the smell of mold, you know, the rotting essence that covers sandwiches after you forget to eat them and happen to store them in an otherwise-forgotten compartment in your backpack, which took place one fine day after a football session in my last year as a secondary school student. I opened my bag to look for a place to store my sweat-soaked T-shirt, and came across the packed sandwich that I had packed away, three weeks ago.

It was stored in a loaf packet, you know, the types where a whole commercially-cut loaf comes with, and despite it being zipped away without me knowing about it for that many days, there was enough bacteria to invade the former goodness of the intended meal and transform it into The Smell That Should Not Be. I only had to open the top a little bit before my sense of smell was overpowered by a waft that emanated from the greenish-brown wave that swept across the bread, and perhaps the ham as well.

Being the responsible person that I was, I kept my nose in the other direction as I reached the classroom window, the first floor of the school building, and tossed the offending material out onto the grass next to the likely-mosquito-infested drains that were commonplace in Malaysia at the time, and if I'm not wrong, still is at the moment. If I were to dump it into the open wastepaper-basket that sat in the corner of the classroom, it would stink up the area in no time at all and perhaps result in a disrupted afternoon class session.

Perhaps I shouldn't have thrown it out the window after all, but I remember gagging and coming close to throwing up there and then that I simply chose the quickest means of disposing. The problem was solved, and I doubt I had encountered any more episodes that concerned massive amounts of mold, particularly those that resulted from my own negligence.

Until now, where a certain odd smell began to permeate my room space, slightly pungent and not that overwhelming, at least yet, but enough to cause some form of nostril annoyance.

It came from the wardrobe, the built-in-robe that was part of my medium-sized room, from under the beer keg that I had left alone for a few weeks since Decemberish, with the thought that if I were to let the brew stand and ferment on its own, it would produce the proper range of alcohol and taste that I was hoping for.

Yes, I homebrew, or at least, I'm trying to. A thirty-litre keg with twenty-three-litres of water, mixed with perhaps a kilogram worth of malt, another kg of glucose and yeast. I added a bit more yeast when I thought I didn't put in enough because my previous brew came out tasting not much stronger than orange cordial.

Then I found out on Friday afternoon that the tap at the bottom of the keg was not sealed tight, or at least tight enough not to allow a few drops to come out one by one and stain the carpet below. I suspect it was the yeast from the brew that caused the mold to form from the leak to the carpet 'stalks' so quickly. As soon as I lifted the keg, a sightless cloud that stinked of alcoholic puke swept itself at my face, and I gagged before running out of the room.

Enjoy the next picture at your own risk, or scroll down to the next paragraph. I feel that I knew what the Stinkymeat scientists were smelling when they experimented with the process of decomposition.

It was at this point that I held my nose and walked back into my room, lifted the keg to my bathroom and proceeded to empty the contents of the failed alcoholic mixture into a bucket, and from there into the adjacent toilet bowl.

For one, as it flowed from the tap to the bucket, it smelt like beer, what with all the foam and all, but I dared not taste it, a thought which was enforced by this following picture, noticing the leak itself, though it wasn't as much a leak as it was a case of not-so-tight-capping. Next time I'll just use a wrench to seal it.

As I had never encountered cleaning mold from a carpet before, I proceeded with all manner of experimentation in order to remove the smell from the atmosphere of my room. With the cleaning supplies that came with the homebrewing kit, was a 500-gram bag of sodium metasulphite powder, which I had used to sterilize my beer keg, and out of curiousity, sprinkled some onto my toilet bowl and after a single flush, it seemed to clear the hole of any brownish residue. So I then sprinkled a bit of that over the molded area on my carpet, and then I poured hot boiling water out of the notion that hot water pretty much clears everything in terms of dirty dishes.

Of course, I tried to rid the mold with some toilet paper, but that brought me too close to the scene of the crime, and I almost puked there and then. The smell of shit and piss I can take, as I had grown used to it in a sense, walking through badly-maintained streets on many occasions, but not this, which caused me to retreat in a very hasty manner.

The hot water and sodium metasulphite only sought to make the smell worse, even more pungent than it was before. I was hoping that the powder would at least kill the organisms that infested that area of the carpet, so with a shirt wrapped around my nose and with bated breath, I sprinkled washing powder, well, if I couldn't clean it totally, at least I could make it smell nicer. I scrubbed the spot with a brush, and after some minutes, it only served to make the mold spread out more, and while a bit of the smell was gone, it still remained.

Even after I sprayed some Febreeze on the carpet, reducing the stench by loads. But the main part still smelled, so I covered it with some newspapers and placed a phonebook atop, in some sense that it could have suppressed the waft more than it would have without.

It worked to an extent, as I opened the doors and windows to let the smell dissipate, and even as I type this, some hours later, I can still smell the mold-sodiummetasulphite-washingpowder-fabriccleaner mix, and it's not really helping me to breathe easier than I'd like. I probably would have to sleep on the couch in the living room as I did last night. Again. Just to get away from the smell of it all.

So does anyone have any pointers on how to remove mold from a carpet? I have considered cutting out the piece of carpet, or even burning it. But anything really, so long as my nasal functions can operate regularly again.

Currently listening to: Twilightning - The Delirium Veil

The Internet and the Nightmare

2006-12-28T04:27:00.000+10:30

When I discovered my passion for writing in the first years of my college life, back Van Halen -in 2002, with a diploma in Information Tech underway, I was able to pen down on average a thousand words per day, regardless of the medium. As I had just only left high school for a few months, I was still in the stage of relying on pen and paper, and the computer at home served no other purpose than to entertain and to supply porn.

It's been four years now, and I've recently graduated from a Bachelor of Information Tech, a far cry from the total computer newbie that I was less than half-a-decade ago. I'm more savvy in a sense than before, more versed in the skills of computery stuff, as I would tell most people, just how lawyers would tell me that they're proficient at lawyery stuff. Because to each his own, and everybody is their own layman.

But back to the course of writing, starting out with a ballpoint pen in my hand and a piece of paper in front of me. Ideas would form in my head and they would transmit all the way down to the fingers that worked the instrument, the words just spilling out from either the dark end of nowhere where Lovecraft resides, or the far-reaching skies of Tolkiendom. My work was amateurish, laughable when it came to expressing true emotion and thoroughly unrealistic, if I were to look back on it today, fueled by the musical inspiration known as Van Halen.

It started off with sci-fi, where I had registered for an online text-based MMO called Taenaria Derivia Zallus Kitara (TDZK for you acronym-lovers out there), and ultimately joining an alliance which went by the name of the Integrated Guardian Fleet (IGF, if you wish to reminisce). It was a fair bunch of fellows, drafted from all corners of the Internet-verse, a world that I was unfamiliar with, perhaps because I spent 90 percent of my surfing before that discovering names like Sung Hi Lee, Jenna Jameson, Anna Nicole Smith, and oh, you get the idea.

To think there was actually a world that had existed wonders such as MUDDs, Vulgusfilter, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Unix, as well as all manner of exploiting browser bugs (for which I will be thankful to Nemu for starting this spark-thing inside). The Internet was actually used for something else other than porn! The very thought of it was incredible, and I perhaps felt the wonders of the Internet, just how most people should have felt when they touched a keyboard for the first time in their lives. Something like sex. Well, no, not like sex, but in the knowledge sense of things, well, maybe a little like sex.

It turned out that quite a majority of the members of the IGF belonged to an online writing guild known as the Illuminati, and to say the least, their sense of humour was bizarre, yet not altogether a turnoff. They revelled in pieceing together words from their rather strange minds and churned those thoughts into paper, or as in this case, the screen. Cyberpunk shot out from the ground where they walked, the same way daisies and sunflowers would when the ancient gods of nature would walk the earth. Their style was personable yet it often told of destinies propelling through the universe, changing the world around them forever.

And so I joined the Illuminati a short while after I joined the IGF, making acquaintances and friends along the way, all the while coming with my millenial-number of words per week, comparing myself to the likes of other writers who had years/months before them. My writing improved heaps as I picked up the abandoned childhood pastime of reading, gaining knowledge through fiction, non-fiction, articles and the like. You can say I was fully motivated at this point, and I strove to rise to perfection, even if I really wasn't that good at what I did, but I enjoyed it.

Fast forward to today. I find it hard to come up with an idea, the concept of some writing block always in front of me, and to even type down a few words that would amount to something, an engaging storyline, a scene with captivating characters, anything worth reading, seems just so hard to do. I would amount this sense of constant failure to losing the circle of writers that I have once been ordained into. Not that they've kicked me out or anything, but just that each and every one of the members seemed to fade away into oblivion or some equivalent, with real life looming over their foreheads. Responsibilities and obligations, I suspect are one and the same, and they affect us all, including myself, and somehow along the way, they just seem to sap out the life from under us and pull us away from what it is that we were meant to be.

It's just that I kind of felt destiny at my fingertips, once. Now I feel bored.

Currently listening to: Twisted Sister - O Come All ye Faithful

I think I got my inspiration back. =D

Born on Earth to Die For All

2006-12-25T11:35:00.000+10:30

It's a rainy Christmas here in Melbourne. Some summer this turned out to be, cold and stuff. The barbie's waiting, gotta run!

Bye Bye Pictures

2006-12-20T15:36:00.000+10:30

If you've been looking through my earlier posts, you might have noticed that some of the photos are gone, which would mean that the web space that I've been leeching off for the past two years has finally been taken down. My thanks to JJ for letting me throw some of my stuff over there until now, so it's up to me to look for my own domain from now on. Perhaps my own server, if I could afford to leave it on everyday, for months on end.

It's a good machine, I'll wager, but it's no mainframe, baby.

Currently listening to: Elvenking - Pagan Purity

Making the world a little more complicated

2006-12-06T14:03:00.000+10:30

Some of the stuff that you find on YouTube isn't bad at all.

Rasa Malaysia

2006-11-30T03:17:00.000+10:30

Check this site out. I reckon I'm going to try some of these recipes real soon. A great change from the constant pasta that I have.

Toying with Design

2006-11-27T13:47:00.000+10:30

Nemu just told me last night that the site looks a little plain. I felt about the same way, though my working behind the current site design is that I would want to concentrate more on content, rather than on presentation, though he does have a point. I'll accept any future criticisms on display and whatnot.

Oh, and the previous testing post with lorem ipsum text innit? Just implementing a reference text. Should I make it italic?

Currently listening to: Slay Radio (Internet Radio ftw)

Just testing

2006-11-27T13:35:00.000+10:30

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean quam nunc, suscipit sed, ullamcorper id, condimentum in, nulla. Nulla turpis. Nam orci ligula, scelerisque quis, hendrerit at, consectetuer sed, leo. Sed adipiscing felis vitae nisi. Morbi sagittis. Suspendisse potenti. Donec a metus. Suspendisse ante metus, sodales at, feugiat eleifend, dapibus et, sem. Proin dolor. Nulla commodo varius mauris. Fusce convallis, nunc sed tincidunt porttitor, tellus augue rhoncus arcu, quis aliquet ipsum quam at dui. Suspendisse potenti. Maecenas mi arcu, placerat a, suscipit at, lacinia sit amet, ligula. Morbi tristique cursus lorem. Aenean ut elit et purus gravida viverra. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Suspendisse ut lacus. Aliquam a eros.

Quisque sed turpis. In nec velit. Phasellus pretium urna ut sem. Aenean ut dolor nec magna iaculis ullamcorper. Morbi velit enim, porta in, posuere id, bibendum vel, arcu. Cras sit amet tellus. Quisque rutrum. Duis a magna. Mauris nonummy. Maecenas sollicitudin suscipit lectus. Suspendisse id diam. Aenean orci nunc, placerat non, blandit ac, mattis in, nibh. Vestibulum aliquet lacinia neque. Nunc lacinia magna a nulla. Nulla commodo pharetra justo. Quisque porttitor augue eu lectus. Nunc viverra orci adipiscing enim. Cras eleifend magna et quam.

Sed posuere, dolor non imperdiet dignissim, arcu tortor varius leo, nec tempus quam odio eu ipsum. Sed congue volutpat risus. Sed urna enim, ultrices ac, viverra quis, aliquam lacinia, tellus. Aliquam ac augue. Sed semper est vel sapien. Proin gravida nibh eget erat. Etiam gravida ipsum eget enim. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam risus. In velit urna, sollicitudin ac, imperdiet quis, pellentesque id, dui. Pellentesque congue purus in neque.

Donec sit amet augue vitae lacus convallis blandit. Vivamus placerat felis id est. Proin sodales consequat magna. Duis non mauris. Praesent neque eros, mollis vel, mattis eget, dapibus sed, lacus. Phasellus volutpat dui ut neque. Morbi est velit, varius id, hendrerit imperdiet, imperdiet sit amet, odio. Ut tristique, nibh at suscipit luctus, velit urna fringilla justo, dignissim malesuada elit lorem a nisi. Aliquam pellentesque tincidunt purus. Morbi mi dolor, eleifend non, tincidunt quis, dignissim consectetuer, sapien. Donec erat. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec ligula augue, ultricies vitae, rhoncus ac, rutrum ac, turpis. In gravida eleifend nisl. Praesent placerat, libero ac tempus eleifend, erat quam varius tellus, ac gravida tellus nulla ac dolor. Duis a lectus a elit mattis sodales. Sed ac libero nec velit tristique fringilla.

Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos. Mauris porta pede sollicitudin nunc. Mauris venenatis purus id orci. Maecenas vehicula tempor dolor. Donec eu sapien ut diam interdum mollis. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos. Fusce rhoncus dolor eget tortor. Sed nonummy convallis nulla. Nam dui.

I Hunger

2006-11-26T13:33:00.000+10:30

I just recently had to dispose of 800 grams worth of prawns from my refrigerator. Why? I feel that I may have kept it too long, more than a few days, two days more than I had kept the yearling beef that I had procured from the wet market.

I was disturbed (actually, am, since this event occured not more than a few minutes ago) by what I did, but I had no choice, as I wouldn't risk myself to eating meat/seafood that I looks and smells funny. Experience tells me that to smell first before tasting. If it's off to your nose, chances are that it'll also be off to your tongue. I learnt this the hard way, having made hot chocolate out of spoiled milk one too many times.

Disturbed over a small thing, why are you, you might ask. Well for one, I was raised from childhood never to waste anything on my plate, so long as the food was cooked properly and all that, and perhaps my thinking was also reinforced by the images on the television of the hunger in Somalia (circa Black Hawk Down, not the movie, but the real event). To make sure that I was nourished without having to waste, as my parents never believed in waste, and because of that, neither do I. Because wasted food also constitutes wasted finances.

The end result? Ten dollars, 800 grams of prawns wasted. And I'm going to have to have bread for lunch, because I'm out of meat. And cheese. Next time I'll just put it in the freezer.

Currently listening to: Three Days Grace - Pain (Internet Radio)

Not That Intrigued

2006-11-23T00:41:00.000+10:30

I'm going to have to agree with this statement. It's occured to me that while I spent time with my friends in high school, I would be the one left out whenever it came to any discussion of the English Premier League. The Liverpool fans would jump up and say how Manchester United sucked, how the Man-U fans said vice versa, what the Arsenal fans thought, and all the while everybody would take potshots at Chelsea or Blackburn.

And the thing was, that I loved to play football (soccer, for you Aussies and Americans), and still do, playing with my friends every weekend, or whenever we could. Whether it was in the indoor futsal courts of Malaysia to the fields in Australia, I always make sure that I sweat my worth and have my fun. And make every moment worthwhile, stealing balls, tackling, scoring and whatnot.

Yet, I cannot bring it within me to support an European team, wear an affiliated jersey and well, get into the mood that so many of my peers emulate. Yeah well, I would admit that I would look into the play of the game itself, how the players score, their footwork and et cetera, but to follow closely behind the player itself, what club they're playing in at the moment, what position they are at the moment, heck, even remembering their names is something that I could never bring myself to do. I find myself more detached from the subject as well, a man going shoe shopping with his significant other.

I get excited by a lot of things, but not by a bunch of rich guys playing. Oh, and don't bring up the analogy of music bands playing on stage. It's just not the same.

First Impressions of EVE Online

2006-11-19T19:42:00.000+10:30

EVE Online first came to my attention about a year or two ago, when I had read the comments of some fellow gamers from TDZK talking about it. That, and I had seen it proliferate around the Internet, here and there in many areas, on discussion boards, articles and the like. At the time, I had not invested myself in a non-textual MMORPG, as I did not really have the means and my local connection made me doubt about getting many an online-based game.

So, for the moment, I had to contend with the cybercafes that were spread out in all parts of Petaling Jaya, and thankfully, my friends and I preferred to play games that did not revolve exclusively around Warcraft III and Counter-Strike.

Then about a month ago, one of my friends, Nemu mentioned that he currently invested his gaming time in EVE Online. I asked him what was so good about this title that he was willing to borrow a friend's credit card to subscribe for the game. He told me that it was something akin to a better-looking Freelancer with the elements of a much more complicated TDZK. Then he showed me a few screenshots, and I was intrigued. He sent along the activation code for the trial, and after a week or two of procrastination, I went along and registered two days ago.

And I was just blown away. I for one, had been a fan of anything related to the fantasy genre, attracted to titles such as the Warcraft series, Battle for Middle Earth, and literature revolving around the likes of Terry Brooks, Richard A. Knaak, Robert Jordan and so on. Sci-fi greats such as Stephen Baxter and Frank Herbert piqued my interest here and there, but not enough to attain my attention for more than what I would have to call a phase.

Perhaps it is the concept behind fantasy, that authors of the genre are more likely to enforce empathy and the human (or nonhuman) feeling amongst their characters, whereas sci-fi would generally concentrate around jargon and technobabble (excuse my French, sci-fi fans), or just huge amounts of infodump. If you're a fan of physics, you'd be in luck.

But anyways, back on to EVE Online. First impressions? Something like Freelancer, though you're not as free with the throttle/controls as you would in a flight simulator. Something like X3, in the sense that you exist as a tiny speck in a massive, boundless universe, and you are responsible for whatever glory you wish to aspire to. Something like TDZK, where you know you're not alone, and that there are others, just like you, engaging in an environment where trade and war rule.

Elements of all combined, I therefore find myself drawn, and would very much like to continue with my character. Though this would mean that I would have to give up World of Warcraft. Not a problem, if you ask me. I've had enough of the grinding routine anyway.

Here's some screenshots:

Tutorials.

Flight of the Jointed Pipe (my ship's name).

The beauty of warp, shifting through the fabric of space and time.

Currently listening to: Sonata Arctica - Gravenimage

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2)

2006-11-11T00:12:00.000+10:30

Just click on this link and read the plot outline.

I'd pay to watch this film. Any day, brother.

Of Pens and Snowstorms

2006-11-08T01:41:00.001+10:30

I've always been fascinated by the Blizzard creation that is the Warcraft Universe. The first PC game I had owned on a CD was Warcraft II, and though I had cheated for the most of it, just to see how things turned out for the orcs or the humans (or just clicking on the critters nine times for the fun of it). It seemed to take on a side that was both serious and truly amusing, and it appealed to me, as it set the footing for which I would charge my inspiration in my later years.

I also read nothing more than the manual for the game, a small book that probably wasn't larger than 60 pages, but every bit of it captured my attention. From the incredible storyline to the impressive artwork by Chris Metzen and Samwise Didier.

Then I came across Warcraft III a little over 6 years later, and as soon as I got my hands on the manual, I also read through it avidly, wholly interested in the history of the world of Warcraft after conclusion to Beyond the Dark Portal, where the last heroes of the Alliance sacrificed their lives to ensure that the rest of the world was not affected by the cataclysmic aftermath of Draenor.

Imagine my surprise to learn that the orcs had been subdued to prison camps, their spirit sapped. The Human Alliance strained after the long years of war, and the emergence of new races that added to the Chaos of the world. Yet they were not assailed by a great war that was raged between two races (them and orcs), but that of the driving force behind all that was evil, and that was the Burning Legion.

I was further intrigued to know that the orcs were more trustworthy than the humans, honored in their ways, when they weren't under the corrupting influence of bloodlust. And the appearance of the last Guardian of Tirisfal to Thrall, which set about one of my main inspirations in a good lot of the fiction that I have written.

Though oddly, I find myself more fascinated with the myth and legend that is behind the universe of Warcraft. I delved into the Internet, searching for every bit of chart, map, pictures, information. It was a thirst for knowledge, even as I discovered games that may have been released (Warcraft Adventures anyone?), and books on the characters of the games, that were previously only regarded as mere pawns to be used in satisfying the virtual desires of obtaining victories over each other. No, these characters were no longer just made out of 1's and 0's, if you look at it from a very pedantic computery way. They began to take on personality, expressions of imagination by authors.

And it was not just a game anymore. It became a fantasy universe, much like Tolkien's and perhaps Robert Jordan's. The events surrouding the history of the world of Warcraft ranged from sad to victorious, and at most times, the price was dearly paid. From a fan, as well as a writer's point of view, it was a bonus, to be able to emphatize with fictional characters as they went about events that were larger than them, from the small things that they were.

Funny though, how I am more interested with the way things turn out in the story, than I would if I would let's say, play the game. A friend of mine commented that I knew a good lot of WoW even though I had not touched the game (at the time), and she had been doing so for more than a year. Even now, as I walk my various warriors and whatnot through the world, in an attempt to fuel to the inspiration that I would use for my expressions.

How did I come up with such an idea? , you might ask. To be truthful, I had picked up a title I had long seen on shelves, though I didn't have the courage to start to read, as how I am with every book that I come across. I am loathe to turn the pages at first, but as soon as I become engrossed, I neglect everything else. The Well of Eternity (WarCraft: War of the Ancients, Book 1), by Richard A. Knaak.

Though I consider myself largely inspired by the works of Robert Jordan and sometimes Terry Brooks, Richard A. Knaak has not disappointed, especially with the first one that I picked up on him - Day of the Dragon. Like most respectable authors, he creates a buildup so that the last major events can take place in the end, mostly in the form of a massive battle. I followed closely the exploits of the maverick mage Rhonin and his enigmatic master, Krasus, and was interested to see how they would fare in a world different, yet not too far from their own.

I would have two more books to go through before I would be done with what is called the War of the Ancients Trilogy, but I can already say that I'm going to have to raid my local bookstore for the next two titles.

Currently listening to : Howard Shore - Helm's Deep (The Two Towers Soundtrack). I really adds to the imagination, listening to LOTR OST.

The Chinese don't like this number

2006-11-04T17:35:00.000+10:30

4 things many don't know:
-I like girls with big eyes. The kind that you can swim in. You know what I mean.
-I write fiction. And quite seriously too.
-I had a string of half-girlfriends, yet I never had a real one.
-I also drink more tea than I do beer. Like 5 to 7 cups a day.

4 movies I could watch over and over:
- Band of Brothers (Not exactly a movie, but eh)
- Lawrence of Arabia (favourite all-time for me)
- Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail (best comedy. Ever.)

4 places where I've lived:
Chur, Switzerland
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
Melaka, Malaysia
Melbourne, Australia

4 TV shows I love:
- The X-Files
- The Simpsons
- Sliders
- Battlestar Galactica

4 places i've been for vacation:
-Sydney, Australia
-Oregon, U.S.A
-Sungai Golok, Thailand
-Ravensburg, Deutschland

4 of my favourite food:
from my previous meme...
- Curry/Indian food. Extra points if you serve it atop banana leaf.
- Swiss Chocolate. :P
- Steak, done medium rare.
- Most types of pasta, considering that I grew up on the stuff.

4 places i would rather be:
- Switzerland. Most beautiful country on the face of this earth.
- Jungles of Malaysia. There's just something about the jungle that hints towards nostalgia, and the untouched beauty of a lost era.
- Petaling Jaya. Been home for a long, long time.
- Uh, Coruscant?

4 favourite songs:
U2 - Where the Streets Have No Name (greatest song of all time)
Queensryche - Eyes of A Stranger
Blind Guardian - Mirror Mirror
Soundgarden - Spoonman

4 others I wanna tag:
4 people whom I will tag, not randomly though:
- Brodie
- Patrick Teoh
- Nick
- Iris

What Must Be

2006-11-02T02:13:00.000+10:30

6But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
7For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord.

"1 Peter 1:6-7"

I lied when I said once that I did not consider myself a religious man. Nothing could be further from the truth, for in reality, I actually am a deeply religious person. Not like the zealots who scream trivialties that you must follow so that you might become a good enough person to enter Heaven. Quite the opposite however, though that does not mean that I do not take my God and my beliefs seriously. I do, and I have for a very long time.

For a while, I was discouraged in secret, as I had been exposed to the ugly side of humanity more than once, though most of it was not directed at me, but rather at a close friend, who seemed to take the brunt of everything bad in his life. He tried to make the best of what he could through whatever struggle that came his way, and noticed that those that he once called brother or elder, turned their backs on him, and left him by the side, as they would go on to think themselves worthy of His attention.

Naturally, my friend was discouraged, for these were not strangers that gave him a hard time. No, these were people that he had known for years and years, people that he had come to know through the body of Christ that is the church that I was going to for a while. He was deemed an outcast by some, and sneered at by others. And I was reminded by a verse in Matthew somewhere that went along the lines of this:

"What you did for these people, you did for Me. What you did not do for these people, you did not do for Me."

Yet, my friend did not give up on life just yet. He fought on, and is still fighting today, his every effort to better the church that we grew up in together rebuffed by leaders who pushed him away, until he took off and left, and went to serve elsewhere. Still, he got a call from God some time back, and he was told not to give up on the church that we grew up in, for the Almighty still had a plan for that place.

At the time, I was discouraged as well, because until then I did not think that men that worshipped the same God under the same house could turn on their brothers and sisters for the littlest of reasons, or for the smallest amounts of power. I thought that those things only existed in broken homes, war-torn countries, ancient history or even in the hearts of misguided men who led millions to the slaughter because they did not like the colour of another man's skin. Surely not in the church, where men and women were taught to love and care for one another in a platonic way, of course.

I was wrong, and as a result, I began to lose hope in a certain branch of mankind -those that practice politics within a church. I began to doubt, and doubted for a very long time until I came to Melbourne and settled down within Planetshakers. It was they that were not afraid to offend, so long as it was the truth and that it was from God. They were optimistic in their actions and rightly so, for they involved themselves in God's will for a dying world, wasting away with petty things, searching for the answer when it was right in front of them. An answer so simple to understand, yet so difficult to grasp. And my faith in God and man was restored.

Yet, I could not help but feel down when the men and women of God of my previous church disheartened the other members of the congregation (not just my friend, many others too). I was discouraged again, and saddened that brother would turn against brother, as if it were the beginnings of Armageddon, though in much, much smaller doses, and less open, sometimes behind a facade of a smiling face.

And week after week after that, I have lived a life of a Sunday Christian, who comes to church to praise God, feel happy and socialize, then forget everything that was said for the rest of the week until I come back. I lost sight of things, and thought it was best to put my priorities above His will. Funny how things don't work out when He is not in your plans, or your thoughts, or how things don't feel right when He is not there.

Then I had a chat with one of my other friends, who after a long discussion, told me, hinted me towards what I was feeling, that I should just forgive and pray. Forgive and pray!? I was slightly annoyed at the idea. How could I forgive man when those in power and in control did nothing, or did not use their power responsibly? Or like the quote goes, "Evil flourishes only when good men do nothing." Prayer? Believe and hope that all things will become happy and shiny and whatever? Foolish notions! We must act upon what we believe in, lest it become just mere empty words. Why do we sit by and do nothing, and believe that circumstances will come out for the better? Frivolous!

Though, there is one gift, an awareness that I believe the Supreme Creator has given to me as I grew older. I was a questioner in all things, even that of my own actions. I think deeply of many things, and through experience I choose my words carefully, even when I care not sometimes and just let loose because I want to feel comfortable. Sometimes. I knew that as I was talking to my other friend, that I had not been without blame too. I was lax in my ways. I had not kept my devotion with him, and had concerned all affairs to be with me. I refrained from reading the Scripture that He gave to us, and alienated myself from the ways of a follower of Christ. I did not even make an effort to better myself from my harmful idiosyncrasies.

And there I saw myself, a man who thought he could change the circumstances around him, when at the moment, I knew what I was turning into. A bitter, cynical pessimist, who saw only the ugly side of people, who hoped too much for himself, and one who stopped listening to the sometimes small voice of God. Had I really kept myself away from his will? I began to see it so, for God knows that I am not a thoughtless person.

I began to read a small booklet called the "Pocket Encourager for Young Adults", and flipped through to the part where it talked about discouragement. And I found much of the words within to be synonymous with the way my life was running. It is not a battle of fists that I fight, but one of the mind, body and soul, and I did not know that I ignoring Him. Such a fool I was!

Therefore, I will believe, hope and pray. And then, and only then, I will act. For though prayer without action is useless, action without prayer is even worse. For if God can forgive my fellow man, then so can I.

Brewing Process

2006-10-29T23:47:00.000+10:30

My hands hurt. Ow.

Not from wanking, but from manually shredding half a kilogram of ginger. And then hand-squeezing two lemons.

Currently listening to: Men Without Hats - Safety Dance

Don't you just love the 80s? In a love-hate way, of course.

Uh huh.

2006-10-29T15:06:00.000+10:30

As a child, I learnt that you can't have everything. You can't have all the toys, or the icecream that you could scoop out from vats at your disposal. Sometimes I watched from afar as two of some of the joys of my preteen age -a swimming pool and an ice cream bar next to each other, the funny thing- were unaccessible to me.

Sometimes I saw my friends get better presents than me on a hot, Christmas day, comparing their gifts with each other, whilst I would keep to myself, bringing up different topics. I secretly blamed my parents, for not getting me what I wished for. I found the seemingly third-rate items gift-wrapped not to my liking, and I was disappointed on occasion.

Sometimes, I would get whipped, spanked, whacked, rapped on the head, belted, caned and all other forms of physical punishment short of being abused. I felt sad, and cried more than once, not because of the pain that I received. That was merely secondary. It was the concept of having it dished to me, the act of it coming to me, like how prophets of doom fear the Armageddon, only that I would receive it. My father's (and on some occasion, my mother) anger struck fear into my heart more than anything else, so much so that when he asked me once what it was that I feared the most. Out of fear (as I had just been beaten a little while before), I responded that I feared death, because I feared getting beaten for the wrong answer.

It is of no secret that I am a creature that longs for attention of others, which is perhaps why I repeat my phrases every once in a while to attain a response from others, lest they ignore me and think nothing of me. As many others, I crave attention, yet I have the longing of being a loner, one who remains in the shadows, yet is not far from the minds of others. To be far away in solitude, I sometimes seek, yet to be in the centre of the crowd, mingling and so forth.

Just random thoughts.

Currently listening to: Loreena McKennit - Cymbeline

Bye Bye Photograph

2006-10-29T09:03:00.000+10:30

In a day or two, a good number of the pictures that were on this blog will not be seen, thus perfecting the Art of Not Being Seen.

First off, the site http://unladenswallow.elerians.com, where I happen to have hosted a good number of my work, pictures and whatnot is now being taken down. The reason? It's not my domain, originally belonging to one of my friends who used it to some end, though not very much, so he decided not to pay for the fees this year. Still, he was gracious enough to come and tell me about, and I then went along and FTPed everything in one fell swoop.

With elerians, I could only get PHP, though there were some MySql capabilities. Even so, my friend did not seem to know how to work it, to much avail. Not that he cared anyway, as he was probably using it as I did. Just for the sake of uploading files. Though I would very much want my own site, free of annoying ads or the top bar that you see here on Blogger sites.

So as a disclaimer, a good load of the pictures that I have posted on this site will not be seen. Sorry about that. However, when I get my own domain, I won't see a need for this site, though of course, I will have bandwidth and space to worry about, but that's another story.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (1)

2006-10-11T00:53:00.000+09:30

If MJ were dead, he'd be rolling in his grave. This is just, uh, I'm at a loss for words here.

A bit of this

2006-10-05T03:43:00.000+09:30

Well, here I am, cooped up in my room for the past few days, or should I say at least until the middle of the next fortnight to come? It's not something I've come to enjoy doing, sitting in front of the damn computer screen, just typing away, think and hit the books in order to attain good grades. To think I would have never done something like this had I still remained in Malaysia, because I know that I did slack off more often than not, therefore bringing about a bit of well, badness to my score, so as soon as I entered uni in a foreign land, I decided to put in all my effort to buck up and whatever.

But as much as I'd like to admit, I'm not a computer genius, not one of those types who has been coding since he was ten years of age, starting off at BASIC and making his own compilers and all that as how they would have done so in the good ol' days. I for one, have started into this a little less than four years ago, being immersed into the basics that is programming in a patronizing wanker's institution (APIIT, as some of you might know), and thus I was given skills, but not without being made to understand what they were there for, and it was only in my second last year that I began to understand what the heck all those things were for, and how relevant the course materials were to my line of well, work and stuff.

And then somewhere along the way I discovered to date a talent which I knew had always been there, but never harnessed until somewhere in the middle of the first year of my studies: Writing. In all types, really, whether it was raising my thoughts such as these or in the way of fiction (I have them somewhere on the Net, will show upon request), poetry of the odd flavour and so on and so forth.

However, for the next few weeks, I'll be more than a little busy, therefore I won't be having enough time for other people, let alone myself, since I'm doing so much just to make sure that I try my best, because the first two years of my tertiary life, I have spent in having as much fun as possible. A fool I was, as I will be in many things, but in this I am less one than I was before.

But so is the beginning to things to come, no?

Currently listening to: Doro & Udo - Dancing with an Angel

By the way, the story behind the music video above is the result of searching far and wide for videos of the 80s metal queen Doro Pesch. Funny that though I would consider myself to be the prominent 80s rocker amongst all my peers, I have never heard of Doro Pesch until a friend of mine gave me a few songs with her in it, when she was still in Warlock. Something of a Lita Ford type, except she doesn't sing about love, fucking and sex so much, and sticks to the fantasy scale of things.

When I first heard Doro and her siren-like voice, I thought awesome! Why have I not heard of her before? Which was when I turned to seeking what she looked like, via Google and other means of medium, in this case being YouTube. After some searching, I came up with a few hits, and then this very odd-sounding love duet between her and Udo Dirkschneider, the lead vocalist of Accept.

Those of you familiar with Accept would recall his cackling tone (the same friend who gave me the Doro songs thought Udo had one of those old grandmother types that would be better suited for a Wicked Witch of the West sort). Some would say it's horrible, or just funny, though I would think that Udo has a unique way of expressing himself, that sounds pretty good for some of his metal tunes.

But definitely not something that I would have liked to hear in Dancing With an Angel. I mean, he gives the first impression of a respectable, middle-aged soloist, with his clean haircut and demure facial expression. At least until he opens his mouth, and then out comes the voice. Not the words, but the way they sound. Not something you'd want to be giving to a potential girlfriend, if you want to keep her, that is. My jaw dropped when he started singing, and I laughed.

If they wanted to keep it all German, should they have asked Klaus Meine (Scorpions) perhaps? He certainly has the voice for the mellow stuff.

I also made a comment to one of my other friends and told her that this is what Pastor Sam Evans might have become if she had cruised into the rock scene instead of singing praises to God. Your thoughts?

Slight Audiophile

2006-10-02T00:37:00.000+09:30

I currently own these headphones.

I got them about less than half a year ago from a sale at EB Games, at the same time I had broken a very similar set that had belonged to one of my friends (it got run over by a car, I'm not kidding). So I set off to buy two pairs, fifty dollars for the both of them, and for a time, I was satisfied. However, after that short while, I began to feel a sense of discomfort. Unlike some headphones which I had familiarized myself with the year before, such as in the vicinity of true sound-applicable environments (church sound, for example?), where the headphones would fit around the whole of your ears snugly, or did not press upon them as if to disallow any escaping sound waves.

This PowerWave one, wasn't comfortable for extended periods of time, as they would press on the head, and leave behind a slightly pressed feeling, if you know what I mean. And as of such, my housemates have been complaining to me about the volume that I allow for my speakers to rise to, though I doubt it could be high enough to travel beyond the doors. No thanks to the thin, plaster walls that separate my room from theirs.

So these past few weeks (or should I say months?), I either turn my speakers down really low, or just put the PowerWave over my head and feel it trying to push on the head again. Though, I would want to get new headphones, such as those nifty-looking Grado SR-60s that I've seen get really good reviews on some sites, or those that Shure make (even if I could find Shure phones, I would never fork out the cash required for one such item). Unfortunately, whereabouts I live don't really cater to any brands other than Sony, Phillips and Sennheiser, the brands for the masses.

Well, one has to make do with what he has for now.

On another note, out of the bands that contribute to the power metal scene in my playlists, I'm beginning to think that Blind Guardian tops all the others, in terms of listenability and the true dedication to metal, or something like that. There will be an opinion on this genre in posts to come.

Currently listening to: Blind Guardian - Punishment Divine

Thinking Computers

2006-09-27T03:16:00.000+09:30

You know, I've been a computer science student for the past four years, and for the first two years of my studies, I have looked upon my courses as if though they were the bane of my college life. The prospect of not understanding the science behind every action, and the consequence of not really giving a damn to when it really mattered. And thus, I wasted those years on trying to have as much fun as I possibly could in an institution that harboured mostly on looking professional rather than being professional. Patronizing us like the wankers they were, me and my friends began to lose interest and question ourselves why we were in this field in the first place.

That is, until I changed to come to university about last year, where I learned to sacrifice fun and time for a daily routine of hitting the books with an interest to learn for the first time since I learned how to multiply. Numbers, not people. ;)

I was cast alone in an environment that I was unfamiliar with, friends far away and few inbetween, as I set off to the daunting task of making new friends and acquaintances. But yet, I could not help but feel that my time here in university has been well-spent as I have come to grips with the joy of attaining knowledge, no matter how useless it may seem at times. Which is why I wish that I had better lecturers/teachers in the past that made more of an effort to motivate us, and to educate us, rather than being a so hard-arsed on getting people to listen to them as they spoke on things that were redundant. Useful perhaps, but in a medium so boring, so annoying, that even sitting there without a thought in your mind was hard enough to do.

Then I wonder, the lecturers then knew us face-to-face, our names and our characteristics, and for those who proved themselves to be good educators rather than teaching machines became friends, if not acquaintances. Not so with university, where I don't really think lecturers would give a damn about the well-being of a student, but rather to impart knowledge as they would see fit. After all, are we not jars to be filled?

Funny how it is that for the first time, I've actually begun to understand the scenes that work behind the machine. The code that pieces the abode that is the Lawnmower Man's. Understanding the reasons why and how. And for this, I'm grateful.

Currently listening to: Delirious - King or Cripple

Something to Talk About

2006-09-22T16:28:00.000+09:30

Weather is slightly overcast in Melbourne today, which is something I've grown to like over the years when I was in Malaysia. I don't really like it all too sunny, or rains that come in monsoon sort of size. Overcast is a bit uncertain, and you never know when it's going to rain or when it's just going to break with a bit of sunshine, though usually it ends with the former.

So there I was on my way back home in a tram, so I pushed down the window and leaned my arms on the window ledge, just to feel the cool, unpredictable wind crash against my face and sway my hair a little bit. A nice feeling, and a lot better than any air-conditioning, if you know what I mean.

And as we came up to a tram stop at a cross junction, one dude listening on his headphones looked up at me and started to grin, and laugh a bit. I thought he was perhaps talking to someone by means of those hand-free sets, but he took both phones out of his ears and asked me this:

"What's happening, mate?"
"Nothing much. Just chillin'," I replied, and returned the grin. If we had stayed longer, I would have made some comment about the weather or something, but then the tram started to move forward.
"See you later, mate."
"See you later, man."

A short conversation between two random guys on the street, which happens quite a lot, even if the settings change. Like the street acrobat I met on the tram, or the man carrying palm stalks for his big vase in the elevator. It's what I like about Melbourne, and Australia as a whole, that you won't find over in Malaysia, unless you are somewhat acquainted with the people or perhaps of the same skin color, or something like that.

I think I'm beginning to really appreciate Australia, this being my second year here.

Currently listening to: Mahavishnu Orchestra - A Lotus on Irish Streams

Tribal Talk

2006-09-18T22:34:00.000+09:30

I came down to Melbourne from Malaysia a little less than two years ago, and I was a little tense, considering that until then, I never really stayed away from home for extended periods of time. And I was also a little lonely since I was the only one from my class back in college to actually choose the university that I'm going to right now. I got by pretty alright, when I look back on things, though sometimes I wished I could have been more permitted to enjoy the atmosphere of a foreign land. Sometimes that was brought about by the continuous horde of paperwork on my shoulders, and sometimes out of the hesitation of the heart, but nothing more so than the lack of friends.

Where back in Malaysia I would enjoy the camaraderie of my comrades, going out on almost a daily basis to seek the nearest drinking hole and just fraternize. Of course, it was never limited to mamak stalls, as we also included Ramly burger stands, Chinese restaurants and the like. Food was cheap, and the chatting topics aplenty. Here in Melbourne, I didn't gain companionship until a while later, as is with most other places that one would come into for the first time.

Now, at the time, I deemed to make myself seem like a friendly person, and I would bring up small talk with the random fellow on the street, if the occasion called for it, of course. And one particular incident I remember for today was when I walked into an Indian grocery store to grab some curry powder. One Indian man (northern Indian, I presume, by the color of his skin) was behind the counter, and when I went up to pay him, I asked him an innocent question.

"How long you been here?"

He looked at me on a slightly peculiar angle, as if he tried to fathom what it was that I was trying to ask of him. He answered: "Fifteen years."

Fifteen years, a long time, I replied or something of the sort, paid the man and walked out of the store.

On another occasion, I was in Brodie's car and we were talking about some random stuff until I brought up the subject of the poor Vietnamese bugger that was going to be executed in Singapore under drug charges.

Brodie looked at me and told me that the fellow was an Australian, and not a Vietnamese, as he had been raised in an Aussie background for like, all of his life. He was not a Vietnamese, but an Australian. If you want to be really pedantic about it, you could have called him an Australian by Vietnamese descent, and that the only thing connecting him with that bit of land in Indochina was his name, his blood perhaps, and nothing more.

Now this got me thinking a bit. In Malaysia, the Malays, Chinese, Indians and whoever don't really refer to themselves as Malaysians, but rather by their race, which was what got Brodie talking when he learned of how things were in the fatherland (my fatherland, heheh). I don't suppose I could have blamed him for thinking that way, seeing as that despite having gained our independence from the British colonials for 49 years (43 for Sabah and Sarawak), we still maintain this racial profiling that has been a product of the ancient ways of settling who gets to do what.

If you don't know what I'm talking about here, I'll intro you a bit. Back when European colonists decided to come on over to Asia -slaughtering a few natives in the process, as they always do- and take control of things, there was a bit of a industry going on in Malaya, so the British saw that, and took good advantage of it.

In order to support this industry, they brought over Indians and Chinese from you-know-where to work in the mines, plantations and whatnot, and for a time, everything was peachy. Until the Second World War came about, Japanese came over, killed a few Chinese and made things difficult for everyone. Then the Emergency came around by the local commies, and after less than two decades of fighting, we gained our independence.

At the time, the leaders of the country noted that there was quite a substantial amount of Chinese and Indian immigrants that had now called Malaysia home. These people had grown used to the Malayan way, and to simply send them back home to their ancestral countries would have been a bit of a disaster, so everyone who was there at the time became citizens of the new country.

If you've ever taken a school exam in Malaysia, you'd have seen that there was a field that you needed to fill in, and that was called Race. And in various parts of our society, especially when it comes to government administration, the public are referred to each other not as Malaysians, but rather by our races, so instead of calling ourselves Malaysians, we'd call ourselves Chinese-Malaysians, Indian-Malaysians and so on, though the Malays would just be called the Malays because to call them Malay-Malaysians would be a little bit much.

Me being here, I have come to know anyone who is more or less local here as an Aussie, even if they're not visibly Caucasian. If they can be seen as Aussies, then why not we, Malaysians in our own country not look at ourselves and say we are Malaysians, instead of Chinese, Indians or whatever? Can we truly call ourselves Chinese, being so far removed from mainland China? Or be called Indians, and then be expected to say which village you were from (which is what my Indian-Malaysian friends say about the true Indians).

This is not to say that we should lie about what or who we are, because if I was of Chinese descent, I would still maintain a bit of the heritage of my forefathers, and also keep a little bit of the money-minded idiosyncrasy. But when I'm asked to what I am, should I not answer that I'm a Malaysian? Or when I see someone on TV, I would not look at the person by the color of his skin and just keep on watching simply because the racial profiling did not enter my mind?

So when I see another Malaysian on the streets of Melbourne, I would simply call that person a Malaysian, and not a Malay or a Chinese or an Indian, because that is what we are, and have every right to be.

An Argument

2006-09-16T17:31:00.000+09:30

For the past few days, I've been up and about watching Japanese anime, and in particular, Bleach, a story about soul warriors who fight evil spirits, demons and whatnot. It's an interesting piece of work at first, but I can't help but but shake the feeling that it's just another series that takes on the path that Naruto embraces.

And just what do I mean when I say that? For those of you who're not really acquainted with Naruto, it revolves around a certain fellow in his early teens who has cursed to safeguard although he does not know, and is in some ways a tool for him to bolster his strength in times of trouble, when the curse would be bolstered into a form of a gift.

The protagonist of the story, a young lad by the name of Uzumaki Naruto has a personality that leads him to see the good in bad, the strong in the weak, even in the most inconvienient of times. Once-enemies and arch-rivals would be turned into comrades by his ability to strengthen everyone by his ever-present will power, never quitting even in the face of death, be they man or some odd-coloured demon.

Fair enough, but it can get a little more than annoying after the first few times. When one character will go into a fight or recollection mode, there will be times when the annoying flashbacks, or the unnecessary gloating that takes place between both parties of good and evil, and is not excluded to the revealing of combat secrets, when what everyone should be doing at the moment is winning the battle.

After all, doesn't time pass by when we flashback in real life? When we look back to our past experiences, as we sit back and contemplate, the seconds on the clock tick by, and they move on faster than how we feel when we breathe, apparently, if you can gauge my meaning. Which is more than a little annoying for the Naruto series. For every fight, there is some semblance of a flashback, and there are millions of these flashbacks, I kid you not. Heck, if they want to go even further, there might even be a flashback of a flashback, where the previous us in that particular flashback would have been thinking of a another flashback.

Confused? I really just skip the points until it takes me to the parts where they really matter, where people actually trade blows, instead of the little thoughts inbetween.

Granted, Bleach (which doesn't live up to the name, unless they're all about cleaning up evil) doesn't go to the same level as Naruto does in terms of annoyances, but it's taking on a similar pattern.

There are of course flashbacks, characters gloating, corny music at the wrong times (Transformers - The Movie, anyone?), secrets that should be kept secret instead of being revealed at also the wrong times (is that a Japanese thing?), and of course, the usual over-confident, always-"I'm okay!", sometimes boisterous characters.

Even the main character looks like Naruto, even though he's considerably less girlish, though they're both just as unnecessarily reckless. Also, they keep their secret weapons from being used until the very last moment, even in a duel against the most powerful of adversaries, either because they want to have their fun in a battle, or because they're waiting for THE MOMENT so they can just look good.

Fucking posers. I'm not sure if Terry Pratchett coined this up, but real warriors really just want to get on with it and just finish the damn thing. Just like how Sherif Ali from Lawrence of Arabia once said, no Arab loves the desert. Only mad Englishmen love the desert.

I guess it's the mad Englishmen in us all, to produce fantasies where characters are of no doubt larger than life. And I'm not talking about powers or magic and all that kind of stuff, but just that after a while, everything turns to a powerplay scenario.

On top of that, most anime characters seem to be larger than life, with too much pride, too much emo, and just about full of decisions that induce plot devices instead of just seizing the moment.

Well, come to think of it, if they did all the right things at the right time, animes would be really short instead of the elongated periods for each one. Well, not really, as every story is made to depict the experiences of characters as they go through sometimes life-threatening situations, or just life, no matter how risky it may seem.

But sometimes, you can't help but wonder if a story can do without all the unnecessary poser/power material, unless you have good reason to be doing so. Or perhaps such a way is justified, as the beginnings are mere comparisons to reality. As one grows in physical and mental size, shouldn't an art be allowed to do the same, whatever the medium?

So how can we gauge if a story is growing as it was meant to grow, or forcefully made to increase readership? Or does the term writer's block (let's not exclude all creators of art in this) fit in, where filler is thrown in if one cannot seem to back up the oncoming needs with proper material?

Which brings me to ask, instead of having countless episodes of semi-watchable/readable stuff, can we not concentrate on having a smaller numbers of quality output? Quality versus quantity, the ongoing argument in the world of the arts.

And to go back to Bleach, or Naruto, are they really better than the much-shorter-running series of Samurai Champloo? As an aspiring writer, I believe not. Is it not better to be remembered for a few good things, than a multitude of half-hearted whathcamacallits?

Not to say that producing a lot of stuff is a bad thing, as some people are talented enough to cope with, but we should never lose sight of the end result.

Sights of Malaysia (2)

2006-09-10T00:01:00.000+09:30

I do believe that some of these are long overdue. I blame my laziness.
The following were taken by my handphone at the time, so the pics may not be too clear, or wonderful to behold, but as they say, a picture tells a thousand words.

There was this one time where my mate Larson, had trouble with his Proton Tiara, which I thought he should have gotten rid of, but as he said, it was his first car, and made a comparison to a first wife or first girlfriend.

I proceeded to tell him, "Yeah, you fucked up your first wife alright."

"Fuck you!" he replied, which was when we broke down on the highway, but this particular picture below was when the reverse gear could not function right, so we ended up servicing the car with cloth, a bit of duct tape and miscellaneous stuff you usually find under your car carpets. For a couple of hours into the morning. Heck, I even had a nap in that very parking lot, holding the torch up. Larson's on the left, and Richard's the other chap.

One of the best Indian mixed rice shops in Petaling Jaya (in Uptown). I would take six (small) pieces of fried chicken, two servings of vegetables, dahl the whole plate, have a dopple of acar on the side, and I get charged for about 5 Ringgit. Its no surprise that this lady's shop has lines of people queuing up to grab her food during lunch.

One plate of Maggi Goreng, in a mamak somewhere in PJ New Town.

The mamak in PJ New Town.

I tried to capture the atmosphere in one part of Petaling Jaya, sometime in December, when the monsoon season covered most of the peninsula. I have called Melbourne miserable as in windy, wet and cold, but in Malaysia, where you have close to summer temperatures on a near daily basis, the rains that come are a heck lot stronger, more dense and all in all, refreshing. They provide for a good night's rest without the need for air-conditioning, the droplets carried by the winds.

And sometimes you can just stand outside and let the rain come down and touch your lips, your face, and think back to a distant age, where the world was already old, but the memory of Malaysia beginning to form. Grey skies illuminated in some areas by the reaching structures of the Twin Towers and the KL Tower. The lights across a growing city, a nation in its youth.

I get a little romantic when it comes to rain in my country.

And it is at times like these where Teh Tarik tastes best.

No other hamburger in the world can top Ramly Burger. I mean, how many burger stands actually serve deer burgers? This truck, by the way, is one of the ways burgers can be brought to the masses, and they're usually found outside 7-Elevens.

One part of PJ, SS2, specifically.

I'm not sure what you call this, is it Tairu, or something of the sort? Diluted fresh yoghurt, mixed with parsley, some chilli padi, and various different herbs. Some people I know call it a Rasam of sorts, when they couldn't come up with a name for it.

Currently listening to: Ensiferum - Token of Time

(not my usual fare, I know, but I heard it off YouTube, and it has an okay tune to it, even if I don't like the vocals)

Of the Flesh of Trees

2006-08-31T21:37:00.000+09:30

Living with two females can sometimes not be the easiest thing to be with, and do excuse the male shallowness of it all when I say they're harder to deal with when the both of them are not sights for sore eyes. If they were, at least their idiosyncracies would be a little bit more palatable.

Ah well, when I came home yesterday with a packet of toilet paper, about eighteen rolls for six dollars, the Home Brand type. The cheap kind, but still worthy enough to clean your arse of rectum paste. I appeared at the door of the managing tenant (Skinny Panda), after I had noticed the lack of toilet serviettes, and told her, "Hey look, I bought the toilet paper!"

She promptly said, "No."
"What?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
"I don't use this toilet paper."
"What's wrong with this one?"
"I don't want to use this, you can use it."

And with that I said: "So what, your ass is too precious, is it?" Word for word, and since my sarcasm hit her brick wall, the reply came back as a yes. So, here I was with eighteen rolls of toilet paper. Not that I wasn't going to use it (considering that I don't buy tissue paper boxes), but that I wonder why anyone would turn down toilet paper.

Or am I supposed to be more sensitive and think about those buttcheeks that might end up getting scratched? As if there wasn't enough child-friendly stuff anyway.

Currently listening to: Kutless - All Alone

One Hundred!

2006-08-25T01:08:00.000+09:30

I found myself wondering what was it like, the difference between Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur? For those of you who don't know, the experience can be relived simply by:

1) Take a shower.
2) Turn on the air-con, put it to medium.
3) Take one of those industrial electric fans that you sometimes see in banana leaf restauarants, and put it in your direction.

Which was the weather today in Melbourne. Miserable, windy and wet.

On another note, when I was playing BF42, this Austrian (not a typo) kept bugging me by asking if I thought if Donkey Kong was sexy. In German. I swear, there's something funny with the water up in Europe.

Random Thoughts, eh?

2006-08-21T01:57:00.000+09:30

I thought about something this afternoon, a concept that I had given thought to for quite a while. Humankind is the source of all problems happening on this earth, not excluding war, pollution, sin, yada yada, and somewhere along the list comes the term nuclear war.

And nuclear weapons are no doubt a problem created by said mankind, but what matter way to end a problem with a problem itself? A minus multiplied by a minus would result in a plus, so mankind when affected by the instantaneous effects of nuclear war, so long as EVERYBODY dies, and not a single community, or a lost wanderer is left for the scraps of humanity to pick off, the problem is thus solved. Everybody dies, and there are no problems. No inconveniences, annoyances, taxes and whatnot.

Just sweet, blissful ignorance from the ghosts of a past age, ready to be picked at by archeological aliens who come by and check out the doomed history of the human race.

But then, really, even with the prospect of nuclear war, there will be people surviving. No matter how much the earth is ravaged, since it has survived meteor showers, earthquakes, tsunamis and whatnot -which can be much more devastating than mushroom clouds- and thus, so will humanity, though they will be in much smaller numbers than before.

Face it. Mankind is pretty much more resilient than cockroaches, and some scientists I read once about when I was a lot younger predicted that the little buggers would live on for millions of years. We however, can live either for the next twenty minutes, or rule the universe against the Xeelee (Stephen Baxter reference) for eons to come. Cockroaches are predictable. Mankind isn't.

Isn't that what makes us far more interesting than cockroaches can ever be? Live for the moment, the future, or the one that has just gone by, I swear, nothing else I know can perform such a feat.

And sometimes I tend to wonder why the Supreme Creator in his all-infinite wisdom decided to create us out of the soil from whence we had come from. I came up with the idea a long time back, and added to it a bit this afternoon.

He created us because He was lonely, and wanted some company. Plus, I think He thinks us adorable and all that, trying to act in charge of our surroundings.

Ah well.

Currently listening to: Luca Turilli - Rider of the Astral Fire

Noise Levels

2006-08-16T21:13:00.000+09:30

So here I was, about to write a review on The Sentinel when I got a knock on my door from my housemate. But before I expand into that, let me talk about my housemates first.

Housemate A, which I will call Skinny Panda is as what you would call her on first sight, even if you weren't in the descriptive mood. She is a bit of a nervous wreck, and is a bit of an isolationist, garnered from the fact that she being a Hongkie, and having spent three years here in Australia, still can't engage in a worthy English conversation. Has problems with me cooking at seven in morning and tries to pull off a nagging demeanor based on small, petty things. Gets annoyed when I don't cave into demands. Also has problems with me singing at night.

Housemate B, has been in the country for a few months, and speaks surprisingly better English than the first, brings back a boyfriend every once in a while. Plumpish, and perhaps just a little pretty if you were to look at her from a certain angle. Once gave me condescending attitude about my hair (its quite long), though I let it slide, and thinks I should respect her because she's older. I shall call her Smirnoff Girl, based on the bottles she keeps in the fridge.

Both are from Hong Kong. Both are at least five years older. Neither prove to have the feel for intelligent/witty conversation, a major turn-off for me. Both have a volume problem with me, no matter how soft my music tends to be. Neither are, from a shallow man's-POV, hot enough to be tolerated.

Perhaps I'm not the easiest housemate in the world, considering my need to talk funny sometimes, or the long hair, or the fact that I don't put back the dishes once in a while. But I say nothing when they give me attitude because they happen to be half-a-decade older than me, or dump my clothes on my toiletries, or when they think that I should help them with whatever computer problem when all they have to do is read the manual and then they're all set.

That, and I have been having a very annoying rash these past few days, so when I told Smirnoff Girl to fuck off when she thought I should lower my volume (not even at quarter volume, currently so low that I have to strain to listen), well, I'm annoyed. And I want to listen to some good music to forget things.

I don't ask for much you know.

Currently listening to: Soundgarden - 4th of July

Those Indie Guys are Crazy

2006-08-16T10:16:00.000+09:30

Random clickeys on YouTube spawn awesome results.

He looks eerily similar to a guy I know as VJ.

Against All Odds

2006-08-11T08:00:00.000+09:30

Some weeks ago, I watched Dog Soldiers, after doing some self-research on a movie I came to know as The Descent, a horror title that I skipped to watch Memoirs of a Geisha instead, ending up snickering at Chinese actors speaking English and portraying Japanese.

Dog Soldiers, starring Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo (no, seriously!) is a great film from a horror point of view, in this day and age where producers would tend to happen upon cheap special effects, buckets of red paint and mindless plots. Where most slashfest movie characters are often told as running scared, Dog Soldiers has a bunch of men running from a certain and inevitable end, frightened, but come to terms with the problem and deal with it. Violently.

So you have a group of army chaps armed to the teeth, holed up in a spot against a pack of evil monsties, yet they cannot seem to take down the enemy as normally expected. However, my point here is not to talk about a movie, but parts within the movie that seem quite inspiring.

The first part of the movie concerns one fellow called Spoon, who has to go one-on-one with the werewolf that walks into the kitchen, and as Wikipedia puts it, the man puts up a stiff upper lip, and goes absolutely fucking nuts. Not in the sense that he goes all scared and shits himself in the pants, but he fights back. Hard. He screams all the way, swings kicks and punches, and flings everything that he can get his hands on at his adversary, and is close to beating the werewolf to death with a frying pan before another werewolf comes in and grabs Spoon by the neck. Just before the fellow is ripped to shreds, he looks the monster in the eye and says, "I hope I give you the shits, you fucking wimp," and literally spits in the face of death.

The second part involves our two favourite legionnaries smashing their way from room to room all across the second floor, breaking through walls, furniture and floors in a desperate attempt for survival. Not as heroic as the first, but still worth a mention as they have to break through their obstacles with the little they have, and still make it out alive. Pullo looks upon the remains of Spoon and mentions a reference to the Matrix that I didn't get until a couple of days back. =P

Now my emphasis is here: these few brave souls are up against all odds, and though only one out of everyone makes it out alive (two actually, but anyways), they put up a good show as compared to what anyone else in most horror shows could possibly muster.

We are told nowadays to run from evil, that when someone comes along and decides to oppress, we should relent and comfort ourselves by saying "Oh, he has his reasons for doing so, so I'll agree that I'm in the wrong," or whatever it is that makes us feel better. We have been trained since an early age to fear those who are higher than us, that we are little children that have no clue into what we're getting into, even when we reach adulthood, to be told again by our so-called leaders to sit up, shut up and be spoon fed.

That's because the prospect of raising ourselves against a culture of greed, evil (not necessarily) and selfishness is seen as taboo, something that has no place in society. I'm not talking about disrespecting one's elders, or rebelling against a lawful, good authority, but when it comes to situations where people just tend to put us down in any way possible, should we not rise up to the occasion, kicking and screaming, and just about throwing everything we can muster, smash every obstacle in our path until we make it out on the other side? Is that not a better option than to sit by, pray and hope that everything will work out right?

From a Christian viewpoint, prayer means nothing without action. You can pray for something to happen all the time, but if you don't pick up yourself to do something about your predicament, nothing will happen. Heard the adage: God helps those who help themselves? Very true indeed, so kicking and screaming does tend to work.

Currently listening to: Nightwish - The Wayfarer

A Connection's Tale

2006-08-09T20:46:00.000+09:30

For the past four or five days, I've been shaped, connection-wise, instead of what some of you may think. Its annoying, especially for one who relies on the influx (and outflux) of bandwidth rather heavily as compared to some.

"What is shaping?" some of you might ask, since it's a fairly unheard-of concept from the motherland (Malaysia, where connections are bad enough anyhow without being shaped). Without going into too many details, some broadband plans over where I am currently have this idea of setting a limit for the amount of data you can download per month, and once you reach that threshold, your line's capability gets cut down to about ten percent.

To put it in an analogy, imagine driving your car down the highway, and the speed limit happens to be 120 km/h. You cruise along that speed until you reach a little let's say, one or two km above that particular limit, and then a cop comes over, stops your car, takes out your engine and replaces it with a steam boiler.

Therefore, you have the same car, same look, but wholly different feel. Same thing with what I'm feeling right now, as my ADSL has been cut down to the power of dial-up. Mind you, it still connects as broadband, but is no faster than a 56k. Which is quite annoying, if you have to get from one point to another.

And the thing is, my Internet provider had this sort of a policy for more than a year now, although for some reason, they implemented the policing until not more than a month ago. And at the same time, they threw in a bunch of connection problems which just made everyone else's life miserable in terms of connecting to the Internet. So, a number of users took off (including a friend of mine who was hooked up on the same service) and got on to another provider.

Thing is, I've always been somewhat of a heavy user, and spent most of my Internet time by downloading various media and reading all sorts of articles that came as an interest to my being. Now a little question remains for about eight more days until this shape thing is lifted.

Should I upgrade my service for 10 dollars more (thus granting me 15 more GB per month) or should I follow my friends and search for greener pastures?

Ah well.

Currently listening to: Sonata Arctica - Peacemaker

And again.

2006-08-08T16:38:00.000+09:30

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean accumsan tellus eu justo. Nulla facilisi. Donec sollicitudin, elit eu sollicitudin euismod, dolor risus malesuada neque, a accumsan lacus arcu quis felis. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Praesent vitae massa. Curabitur porttitor consectetuer orci. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Etiam augue ipsum, hendrerit sit amet, luctus eget, sodales vel, nisi. Fusce turpis augue, vulputate non, dictum nec, fermentum non, urna. Aliquam metus. Nam porta ornare nisi. Mauris ornare est nec mauris aliquet faucibus. Praesent et erat vel purus interdum eleifend. Proin nunc nibh, vehicula in, mollis eu, porta id, diam. Cras iaculis sapien ut libero. Suspendisse potenti. Suspendisse ligula nunc, mattis ac, pretium nec, congue dictum, mi. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nulla eget felis quis metus venenatis hendrerit.

Mauris aliquet eh what?

Oh sorry, I was just testing out my new CSS and layout. I seem to be doing that more than putting in content. Instead of the angryness of Wrath of the Unladen Swallow, its back to good ol' Nest of the Unladen Swallow, with coconuts. I'll promise to update this site more often, so it won't be just another placeholder.

Lorem ipsum. For all your general filler stuff.

Long Awaited Moment

2006-05-31T00:48:00.001+09:30

I'm free of my assignments, finally! To think they've taken such a long amount of my time, I had almost naught to do whatsoever with my personal life. Time to do some catching up.

On another note, I've changed the CSS of the site. Again. This must have been what, the fifth time since I've done a complete? It's just that I haven't been satisfied with some of my previous layouts and outlooks, and some of them were a little bit too cluttered with overhead. This one's a lot simpler, and a lot more striking than the previous versions.

Also, note that it takes on an angrier tone, now that its called the Wrath of the Unladen Swallow. Not that I'm angry or anything, even if it does provoke a little hostility.

Feel free to comment.

Currently listening to:

Nice listen, Sonata Arctica. Not as powerful as Dragonforce, but certainly more diverse and melodic.

2006-05-25T14:30:00.000+09:30

I've been feeling pretty down as of late, and a lot of things have been taking place. Things that I thought I could handle, but overwhelm me.

How do I feel? Look at my song for the day.

Currently listening to: The Who - Behind Blue Eyes

2006-05-21T12:59:00.000+09:30

I slashed my middle finger trying to open a can of baked beans this morning.

It bled quite a bit since it was a pretty deep cut.

The lesson? Cans of baked beans are fricking dangerous.

Currently listening to: Soundgarden - My Wave

Abodance!

2006-05-18T09:34:00.000+09:30

I finally got my Internet connection hooked up, and to think it's been what a couple of months since I've been able to log in from this computer of mine? A few months of moving from house to house, mooching off people's rations and sleeping off their beds has made me a little nomadic. Not that I don't mind being a temporary person, just not now since its the middle of a semester and one definitely needs a place to stay, shower and do whatever he needs to do without having to waste time looking for a place.

And that was what I was doing for the past two months. Looking for a place to stay.

When you're a student, it seems especially hard for one to apply for a place to rent, from those real estate chaps. To date, a friend and I (we were hoping to share a house/apartment) were prospecting across the market for a number of weeks, and we came across more than thirty different properties, and to make a long story short, inspected well over twenty of them, sent in our applications amounted with a lot of photocopied details and whatnot.

To no avail, it seems. It's just damn hard as a student to get things done sometimes. Apparently, real estate people tend to have this skewed viewpoint of students, and that they tend to not pay up on time, or run whenever possible. A clear cut case of one bad apple ruining the whole bunch, though I think I can attest that a lot of these guys have faced coursemates, classmates, whoever in their younger days, and thus have little trust over students.

In the end, all those applications, no matter how beautiful they looked according to the real estate companies, were rejected in the end. And on top of that, I had to call them at times to find out the status of my applications.

So determined not to live off the shoulders of another man's house, I went to the uni and checked out the notice boards for a sign of apartments to share, and lo and behold, found me a few. Looked at one, called up the landlady and asked to have a look. Inspections aplenty, furnished, reasonable pricing, I took the place on the spot.

Should have done this two months ago. Dammit.

Currently listening to: Nightwish - Nightquest

A bit alone

2006-05-04T18:48:00.000+09:30

You tend to miss home a lot when you're up to your elbows in obligations and work, and have absolutely no social life. Nobody cares, it seems sometimes.

Hell, I'm used to it, but it could get a bit better.

What the chee bai

2006-05-02T13:58:00.000+09:30

Thank God for languages that aren't platform specific.

Still a busy man with no life.

One of These Days

2006-04-11T17:33:00.000+09:30

It's been a while, yeah, since the last time I made a post, but to tell you the truth, I have found myself more busy than I would expect. To put on top of that bills that have remained yet unpaid, and the ever-present subject of rent hovering over my forehead (I'm living with a friend, currently), I'm in a position which I find more challenging that I'd like.

So full of obligation that I hardly have time to do the things that I would like to do, or go out and fraternize with women. Agh.

As of now until a said moment in time which I will announce soon, I will refrain from having a life.

I'd have a beer every now and then, but that seems to be it.

Currently listening to: Pink Floyd - [Title of my topic today]

The Significance of Today

2006-02-15T21:58:00.000+10:30

Doesn't really capture my attention, if at all. Went out for a movie with some guys and gals, and watched Keeping Mum. Good British dark humour, but that's beside the point. What did I do for Valentine's Day?

Nothing in relation to the loveness that blooms around the whole world concerning this little holiday. I'm single, and most likely will remain that way, not because no one's interested in me.

It's just that I don't care. I stopped caring for a lot of things up to now. Don't know why, but its a bit of a burden to know that you've lost some things because of your own nonchalance.

Still, its not like I don't care nonetheless. Next year's Valentine, I'd like my girlfriend-to-be to serve me chocolates and wear something revealing. Chainmail bikini? Now that would be a sight to see.

Currently listening to: 311 - Beautiful Disaster

Lost In Space

2006-02-14T20:04:00.000+10:30

Seems so, doesn't it? Welcome the new design, which I've spent a couple of hours combined, over a span of perhaps three days, and some months of contemplation. Its not as flashy as some blogs might seem to be, and it retains that simplicity so that those of you with slower connections won't feel so left out. Not that I was really considering you guys, since my pictures will most likely take up a lot of your bandwidth, and I'm not about to start a picture weblog for the sake of pleasing a few individuals.

Some observations you may make may include singling out one day's post worth, which may cause some oddities that won't otherwise be there when you're viewing a full page. On a better point-of-view, those of you who don't use Firefox can now read this without having to read one word per line.

Perhaps I should just rename this place as to the title of today, since it has that kind of feeling. Does it not? I was considering placing a picture of the Milky Way in the middle of the page, just to make it seem extra awesome or something like that, but I'm not too great in the area of making galaxies via Photoshop or Maya or whatever, nor am I about to leech stuff from the glorious Hubblesite. Now that's a place with incredible wallpaper.

I also removed the chatbox because I considered it of slight unnecessity. That's what you have these comments at the bottom of every post for. So that you can make comments.

The page is also, I would suspect, of quicker loadness, since I got rid of a goodly bit of overhead. It pays to work from scratch, if you ask me.

2006-02-07T00:59:00.000+10:30

I am stressed by matters with my uni, and have been hit by a bout of food poisoning.

Currently listening to: Kutless. Because it makes me know that despite all the disappointments and hardships in life, there is always hope from On High.

Peace.

2006-02-02T07:24:00.000+10:30

I've been in Malaysia for some months, three really, while I'm waiting for the date to arrive that I'll get back to Oz and continue me studies. And have some fun, and stuff.

But if there's one thing that's gotten me a little bit worked up in the duration of my stay, its coming back to the local Christian scene that's happening around. It's a little bit more than depressing to see once-strong people to be playing Daes Daemar (cue: Robert Jordan) in church! A church divided against itself by having its members look for positions and prestige among their own fellow brethern, and neglecting the one true mission that every follower of Christ needs to attend to.

To spread the Good News. And what are they doing? Putting down opportunities and belittling those who try to make an effort. Imagine, that this was not happening, at least not really when I was still around little more than a year before. It is as though people have lost the real thought, lost their God to replace Him with the priorities of the world. The outside plays a greater importance, it seems, the logic behind it all being that if a church was all shiny white, with a big cross and its members cloaked in respectable claddings, it would attract droves of people to give praise to the Supreme Creator.

But how often is it so? Only if the church is really growing, instead of losing its sheep one by one because some sheep are consorting, to steal the already existing feed from the others? All this while, the wolf sits away and watches, laughing while he waits for the opportune moment to attack the fattened sheep.

Alright, enough with analogies and vague generalities here. What's the deal with the local Christian scene? Why aren't people getting saved, and why is it that some churches compete with each other by stealing members? Why do the richer churches squander their money away without much of a whim, but come to stinge when the poor leaders for Christ ask for help? And you thought Chinese loan sharks were heartless.

And did not God make all man equal? Why is it that some races look at each other with disdain in their eyes? That Chinese will sit on the left and the Indians sit on the right, and both will say that is what is right and should not be disturbed, lest disagreements bellow?

More on this later. I'm a bit sleepy.

PJ, oh PJ

2006-01-26T20:13:00.000+10:30

Today I will post a few words about the city where I live, smack in the middle and abouts of the Klang Valley in Malaysia. Home to roughly half-a-million denizens, Petaling Jaya used to once be a mere suburb, akin to nextdoor Shah Alam, with a number of factories and housing areas. Not much different from most Malaysian towns, except for the fact that its grown to become one of the biggest towns in the whole country.

And now they want to call it a city. Call it what you like, I feel the most comfortable in this place, even if there's a wee bit too many cars on the roads these days.

A number of houses in PJ look like this. Rows upon rows of identical-looking houses designed by unimaginative arhitects, while the civil engineers were most likely smoking something real strong the time they were planning the road structure of the whole place. Little more on that later, so they do look different. After all, PJ is more than twenty, maybe even thirty years old, so there's been plenty of time for some chaps to change the way things see fit.

In between the rows of houses are back alleys which are usually inhabited by rotimen, nasilemak riders and screeching cats.

Typical PJ street. Especially narrow during pasar malam times, but we locals adapt easily, hence we are the most happening drivers off the face of the earth.

Random pics of the PJ skyline, at least from the LRT station.

A shoplot mamak somewhere in SS2. Mention SS2 in PJ, and everyone sure know one. And you know, every mamak has its own speciality. This one happens to have Tau Sah Naan! o.O

Doesn't taste too bad though. To be honest.

I just thought this was a nice pic to take.

56k Warning - Sights of Malaysia (1)

2006-01-03T02:04:00.000+10:30

First things first. Its been at least two days from the beginning of two thousand and six, and with no sign of a reoccurance of an Indian Ocean tsunami (at least not yet). Spent the day before and a little bit of last year absolutely not sleeping and making a nuisance of myself.

Well, not as much as I hoped I would be. Nothing illegal, assuredly. But lets move on to what's important. They say a picture paints a thousand words, true so when a picture comes with no caption to accompany it, thus killing the thinker's imagination. Much like how a movie does to an adapted screenplay/book.

So I will begin with my little trip to Melaka, down south the Malaysian peninsula. South from the capital, KL, about a hundred kilometres or so, but it still has that feeling that you're coming back to the roots of what Malaysia really is before it the current takeover of modern architecture and ideal sights. Not to say that progress is wrong, but the Old World is nice.

Heck, I love the Old World. In Malaysia's regard, where it was once called Malaya, and everything looked pre-war. The chairs of the coffeeshops were dark brownish wood, and the cockery is well.. it just has its own distinct look that you can only see in this country.

Call it a feeling, but sometimes when you stand in the shelter of the monsoon season and watch the rain pass by to hit the floor, you can see into the past of this country. Call it a hunch, but the twentieth century won't pass away easily, especially for Malaysia.

But enough of that, let's talk about the land where Parameswara made his home so many years ago. Or, you can have a look at the pictures. And then I make a few comments here and there.

Backstory? I spent a few days in Melaka in a little youth camp where I happened to take the role of somewhat-leaderish-person, though it mostly involved me having to check on people's movements after dark. What's the word? Ah, camp counselor.

One of the lots on Jonker Street. For your information, Jonker Street is what you can call a historical landmark of sorts, made to attract the tourists, much like how Bintang Walk in KL and Lygon Street back in Melbourne does.

There are two towns in Malaysia that are famous for their chicken rice. One being Ipoh and the other being Malacca. Ipoh's chicken rice is better, though it does not mean that Malacca's is not good. No, not at all.

The name of the place where a bunch of us decided to dine in. According to a senior of mine, the shop was really another branch of the very same chicken rice shop that I frequented many years before. Apparently. What caught my eye was the decor, that they were able to combine both modern aspects and prewar architecture, yet still maintain the feel of prewar originality.

It's all in the balls, my friend. Chicken rice molded into golf-ball-size.

Asam fish. Mmmmmm.

And of course, the chicken. Always the boobs I attack. Even coined a term for chicken breasts. Tittius fowlus. =P

Despite all the niceness of the place and the food, serving leong cha in paper cups kind of killed the mood. The metal container being reached for is the one with the chilli sauce. The chicken rice sambal, we call it.

Penang has cendol. And ABC. And Asam Laksa. And Char Kuey Teow. And a hecklot of good food. But back to cendol, I don't think I've ever had durian cendol before. I like cendol, and I love durian. Some people say that too much of a good thing is not good at all.

In this case, I loved it.

The entrance of the shop, taken from inside.

Durian cendol. I should have used the flash, but I didn't want to spoil the decor by flooding the atmosphere with bright light.

Chap having an imaginary smoke on a Malacca street. On a pickup truck.

Most Malaysian residential areas look like this, so no surprise. Just a random photo take.

A typical Malay kampung house. They really have some nice houses in the kampungs. The ones in the city are all shit. Mostly.

And finally some random pictures of the weather on the way back to KL. Note that it rained pretty heavily some hours later, as it is everyday here anyway.

In the mean time, Happy Birthday Terra Firma Gregory!

2005-12-27T03:07:00.000+10:30

It's been a bit of a moody Christmas. Coupled with the fact that some parts of me have wasted it away by either not really doing anything at all, or simply doing things that would have warranted me to think twice if I wasn't so brain-addled in the first place.

But in other cases, I think I have gained more than a few kilograms this month, and I blame the good food that people I know make. Especially my Mom. Though I would have taken some pictures about the food I had consumed this holiday period, I didn't really. Was too busy eating it to actually take pictures.

But meh, so so meh. Its been a moody Christmas. Until I gave The Darkness' Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End) a listen.

Man, that is a good song. Spirits-Meter increased.

Merry Christmas, every one.

Frohe Weinachten...

2005-12-25T03:08:00.000+10:30

So its Christmas already.

Funny thing. So what? I don't feel any different than it would from most other days. Its doesn't feel as though it would grant anything special, nor does it happen to be more distinct from any other day.

Its not so much the presents, or the giving of gifts (okay, they're the same thing), or the Christmas carols, or the dinners or the whatevernot. Its the feeling.

And the feeling's not there.

Its not going to be a very fun Christmas, by the feeling of it.

But anyways, even with it all, there's still one thing to remember. Happy Birthday to the Saviour. That at least, still plants a slight smile to my face.

Today no fucking mood man

2005-12-20T19:49:00.000+10:30

If I were to place a weblog entry for everything for everyday I did, I would likely bore people to death, especially myself, since I'm not catering for the needs of anyone.

But preferably something of interest, something you don't see everyday? Well, I was in the car with me Dad going up a hill through the streets of PJ this particular afternoon, and my eyes looked upon a fair amount of trees being pruned of their branches + leaves + twigs + squirrels. So happens another road where we turned into had its tall-standing denizens being given a level-1 shave (Indian barber term).

I don't say level 0 because that means deforestation.

Anyways, with men and their powersaws cutting through branches, there were also about three others standing by the truck that was gathering all the fallen hairs of the trees. Maybe four, though that one of them was more into the passive job of seeing that none of the branches would tip over the truck's top.

One of them, without his shirt was showing off to his buddies with his yo-yo.

And not just any yo-yo. The ProYo BumbleBee, back at a time where me and my school buddies were so into that fights didn't capture the same type of fun. I even had one friend who went so far as to purchase the Cold Fusion, which costed pretty much more than a few hundred dollars.

I still have one BumbleBee, the other one that I once bought having broke from an All-Around-the-World trick when the string snapped after making its fifth revolution. This second one, due to years of non-use would probably have its ball bearing and whatevernotconcerningthepartsofayoyo well, not as good as it used to be.

And this guy wasn't that all good with his yo-yo, but his other two buddies were looking at him, and paying attention. If you could do a few tricks, and had your fun, what more eh?

I think I'll fish up my old BumbleBee, and do a few tricks. No All-Around-the-World, though.

The Big Wave

2005-12-19T00:15:00.000+10:30

I checked out the front page of the New Straits Times today, even though I have yet to get over the unfamiliarity of it being shaped to fit a tabloid format rather than the broadsheet I have grown up with for the past twenty and more years of my time being. That being as it had been printed out so as a broadsheet for more possibly one hundred and fifty years.

Though the word today is not on how newspapers ought to look and present themselves, but rather the words that were printed on the headlines. It certainly caught my attention:

Tsunami
The Next Big One

Who could forget less than three hundred and sixty-five days ago when waves spread all over the Indian Ocean and swamped especially Indonesia, reports coming in all over the place that eight thousand had died, then ten thousand, fifty thousand until at last a couple of months before, the final tally being that of two hundred thousand who had succumbed to the waves, and all that in what, mere minutes?

Some places, completely devastated by the effects of the tsunami waves, who most had thought would exist only in the Pacific Ocean, notably Japan, or the States? Who both had considerable warning enough concerning natural disasters.

And then something happens in the Indian Ocean, which hasn't happened since Krakatoa blew its top and wiped off a number of towns from the face of the earth. Likewise to happen the same time last year, and already they say that the likelihood of such a recoccurence is possible.

And that the epicentre won't be by the side of Indonesia, but rather a little bit north. IF you could consider one thousand kilometres as a little, though, in the middle between Acheh, Peninsular and of course Phuket.

In short? A disaster never seen before on Malaysian shores, and that's enough to get most people shaking in their boots as it is. We shall see. I'm not going anywhere near the beach for the next few weeks, just to be on the safe side. Not that I was planning it in the first place, but its good to make some precautions first, neh?

My life

2005-12-18T01:21:00.000+10:30

Would have been more fulfilling if it wasn't for all the stupid decisions that I've made.

Anak-ku Sazali

2005-12-16T00:52:00.000+10:30

Legend has it that in the awesome country (food only) of Malaysia, that the race of Malays are especially gifted in one area. The creation of meat patties fried over a hot plate, a meat patty that does not hide the incredibly delicious filth that is fat and liver and lungs and whatnot in a burger, unlike the antics of McCapitalism. And they are about the country, reaching out their wares to the underground population as a commune, that preaches against the foul deeds of the Yankee meat invasion.

Ramly burger. Did I mention they serve deer burger? More on this later.

A Fair Exchange

2005-12-16T00:41:00.000+10:30

In exchange for freedom, I have traded wisdom.

I used my handphone to take this picture, so it doesn't look too clear. Will take another one when I get my camera back.

2005-12-03T21:40:00.000+10:30

Being sick really sucks. I was very sick once, so much so that I had to be admitted to the hospital not more than half a year ago, when the influenza virus somehow entered my system and fought against the immunities that was within. It won, and I was taken in to seven nights of an unhappy hospital stay, where I finally recovered after a month of suffering and unpleasantness.

I used to think that I was somehow invincible, that no disease could touch me so long as I ate right and did my exercizes and so on and so forth. Such is the understanding of youth, and since then (and before) I have realized that nothing is really as simple as it seems. Illness will come to you whether you like it or not, and some things you just cannot win against, it seems.

And there are times where only God can help, after all my screaming and demanding. I never take any disease afflicted on me lightly, and He definitely hears my cries.

Yet, I wonder if these are more or less a result of my works. I know that I might have angered him to a point where he feels it is time for me to look at things anew instead of the road I have chosen. A rude wake-up call, you might call it.

Or a test of some sort. I don't exactly consider myself a religious man, but I have my thoughts.

Listening to:

2005-12-03T00:57:00.000+10:30

I have a cold, cough and running nose that just won't stop unless I stuff tissue into my noses.

It really sucks to be sick. RRRRAAAAARRGARGGRARRGGGHHH!!!!!

Tickle in the Throat

2005-12-01T16:13:00.000+10:30

I've been having this rather nagging cough for the past two weeks. The first week consisted of a running nose with a constant cough, thus wetting the many tissues I used with an abundance of mucus.

The second -which is about now- happens to have a lesser frequency of the cough, but bouts are much heavier than the usual cough, to the point where I start tearing, coupled with the force to puke.

This sucks, no doubt. And there are cough mixtures about to help me with my ailment. So today, I'm going to talk about three particular mixtures that I have taken, and such is the custom for liquids, I shall rate them accordingly.

Robitussin

I had this when I had a phlegm problem in Melbourne, went up to the lady in the pharmacy and she gave me this. Downed two bottles in a week. It has a mildly sweet taste with a certain aftertaste, but its nothing really to shout about. If you're not really fussy, you can go for this.

Nin Jiom (Ubat Ibu dan Anak)

I've had friends recommend this to me. No kidding, over here in Malaysia, some shops sell Nin Jiom candy. The mixture is not as readily-tasty as the lozenges, as the taste is not as immediate as the other two in terms of taste, but it is the aftertaste that lingers. Herbal stuff, this is pretty good, and lots thicker than Robitussin.

Woods Peppermint

The phrase 'cream of the crop' comes to mind when you consume a spoonful of Woods Peppermint Syrup. Most likely because of the burning sensation whenever you downed a swig of the mixture, and the fact that it contains a little bit of alcohol. The same friends who recommended Nin Jiom cautioned me with Woods, plainly because they know the stuff is good. Addictive in a sense, its the thick blackness of the liquid and the lacing of peppermint that really gets to you. They also have candy-sizes for this particular mix.

Cough mixture connoisseur, I am.

Currently listening to:

The Mornings have come upon us like a swarm of locusts

2005-11-22T14:52:00.000+10:30

You know, I enjoy driving. I really do. Spending more than nine to ten months in a country where my driving license doesn't really mean shit to them locals, hasn't granted me an opportunity to show my skills behind the wheel. Not that I have any skills to shout about, with the exception of having spent three years on the road, legally that is.

Well, so there I was driving, doing an errand, and I make a remark to my mom. I say, how long are you going to take at the Telekom's? How many thousand years, given the great bureaucracy of the Malaysian private-public system.

She gives me this look and tells me five to ten minutes. And that I should have some faith in the local system. Its getting somewhere, she replies, though slowly. The system, not her words. And it does happen. Ten minutes is all that it takes.

Very slowly, if you live here. But then again, I have little faith.

Little faith in the way things are here, as compared to the First World Nations of the eh, World. Earth. Granted, we are a developing nation with its quirks, and already do we think we're New York (courtesy of Arrogant Worms' comments on Canada).

So how are we expected to change, if all we do is complain. If all I do is complain and sit on my ass all day and expect things to change for the better. Aside from the occasional noise I make when I sound others through the Information Superhighway. Is that what they call it? I always feel content with naming it the Big Electric Lawnmower Man Universe Thingy, as is with my fondness for bombastic titles and the like.

So it is not only necessary to have faith, but so must one act upon it. God isn't going to do everything for you, you know.

2005-11-22T14:23:00.000+10:30

Have I gotten lazier? For some reason, I seem to loathe writing as compared to what I once liked to do before.

2005-11-14T14:26:00.000+10:30

I was rifling through my stuff today, and spotted four unopened angpows from about last year or the year before that. 40 dollars in all. Yay me.

Eh

2005-11-14T04:14:00.000+10:30

Heineken, Carlsberg, Tiger. Suck.

Watered down drinks. Egh.

Test in the morning

2005-11-13T11:59:00.000+10:30

Now that I'm back home after a year in Melbourne, and I return to use TMNet once again. I'll let the test speak out for itself.

Dan Elwell's Broadband Speed Test (unregistered)
Speed Test Report 05/11/13 09:23 - Full test

Test conducted at: 13/11/2005 09:23:21
Test sequence: Full test

Please note that these results are a snapshot of this particular moment. Run the test a few times to ensure maximum accuracy. Although the test has been constructed to be highly accurate, no guarantees can be made to the level of accuracy experienced in everyday use.

Test 1: Ping times to UK servers
Ideally, you should get a result of around 300 ms (lower is better)

bbc.co.uk: 396.5 ms
vantage.myby.co.uk: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
f2s.com: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
gnu.teleglobe.net: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
The results of this test indicate no problems.

Test 2: Ping times to European servers
Ideally, you should get a result of around 300 ms (lower is better)

rediris.es: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
sunet.se: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
tu-berlin.de: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
Too many server errors occurred therefore this test is inconclusive.

Test 3: Ping times to east-coast USA servers
Ideally, you should get a result of around 350 ms (lower is better)

mirrors.ptd.net: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
cs.columbia.edu: 435 ms
dulug.duke.edu: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
rutgers.edu: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
The results of this test indicate no problems.

Test 4: Ping times to west-coast USA servers
Ideally, you should get a result of around 300 ms (lower is better)

mirrors.tds.net: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
math.utah.edu: 403 ms
mirrors.tds.net: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
cybertrails.com: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
The results of this test indicate no problems.

Test 5: Ping times to east Asia servers
Ideally, you should get a result of around 30 ms (lower is better)

apache.cdpa.nsysu.edu.tw: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
meisei-u.ac.jp: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
zentek-international.com: 209.8 ms
opensourcecommunity.ph: 164.3 ms
This result shows serious problems with your ping times, and should be investigated.

Test 6: Ping times to Australian servers
Ideally, you should get a result of around 150 ms (lower is better)

froggy.com.au: 128.7 ms
planetmirror.com: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
planetmirror.com: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
mirror.pacific.net.au: 221.5 ms
The results of this test indicate no problems.

Test 7: Ping times to central Asian servers
Ideally, you should get a result of around 150 ms (lower is better)

apache.rin.ru: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
oynasana.com: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
apache.fresh.co.il: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
apache.fresh.co.il: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
Too many server errors occurred therefore this test is inconclusive.

Test 8: Download speeds from UK servers
Ideally, you should get a result of around 1024 Kb/s (higher is better)

apache.rmplc.co.uk: 59 Kb/s
This result shows serious problems with your downloads, and should be investigated.

Test 9: Download speeds from east-coast USA servers
Ideally, you should get a result of around 1024 Kb/s (higher is better)

mirrors.ccs.neu.edu: 64 Kb/s
This result shows serious problems with your downloads, and should be investigated.

Test 10: Download speeds from east-Asia servers
Ideally, you should get a result of around 1024 Kb/s (higher is better)

zentek-international.com: 343 Kb/s
This result shows serious problems with your downloads, and should be investigated.

Test 11: Upload speeds to the Speed Test Server
Ideally, you should get a result of around 384 Kb/s (higher is better)
Not conducted: You must register this software in order to perform this test.

Test 12: Packet loss en route to a UK server
Ideally, you should get a result of around 0 % (lower is better)

linx.net: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
0800dial.com: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
Too many server errors occurred therefore this test is inconclusive.

Test 13: Packet loss en route to an east-coast USA server
Ideally, you should get a result of around 0 % (lower is better)

dulug.duke.edu: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
unet.brandeis.edu: 38 %
An unacceptable level of packet loss has been detected which should be investigated.

Test 14: Packet loss en route to an east-Asian server
Ideally, you should get a result of around 0 % (lower is better)

stu.edu.tw: 42 %
apache.cdpa.nsysu.edu.tw: This test failed due to a server timeout or other error.
An unacceptable level of packet loss has been detected which should be investigated.

End of testing.

This report was collated using Dan Elwell's Broadband Speed Test. For more information or to download, please visit www.broadbandspeedtest.net.

Generated 13/11/2005 09:23:28 using test version 3.0.316 - unregistered COPY

TMNet. Gah.

Guess and figure out

2005-11-12T13:00:00.000+10:30

Okay, so they haven't stopped going to mamak. No young Malaysian adult with a right mind would do that. They just stopped going to the usual drinking hole that we would have frequented about a year ago. Not much of a loss.

Now, I'm branded as an alcoholic. Isn't that sublime?

To come and fall short

2005-11-10T03:17:00.000+10:30

I'm disappointed. A little.

My friends here have stopped going to mamak. Waaah!

In the Name of the Banner

2005-11-04T17:22:00.000+10:30

I found a name, ooh ooh!

Blue Hand and the Single Medium of Perception.

I'm going to name things this way. It sounds so much cooler.

Writings on the Wall

2005-11-03T20:30:00.000+10:30

There used to be a few posters on the walls of my rectangular-sized room, starring the Ministry of Silly Walks and Bruce Willis as Hartigan. Metallica's Ride the Lightning sits near a corner, the graffiti palm sits on the table to my left, a couple of Planetshakers posters in sporadic parts, a seventeenth-centuryesque map of a Spanish main near the bed, some stuff drawn by a friend, concept art you'd find on a graphics card -RADEON-, some intruiging bottlecaps stuck near the light and the Dancing Badger to my right.

All taken down with the exception of the graffiti palm, which isn't hanging but resting against the wall with the table for foundations.

I have yet to give it a name, being original and all, though I wonder what the artist had in mind when he drew that thing. iPalm, just sounds a bit too corny, and nerdy.

But why am I taking them all down? Well, I'm moving, of course. Away from this place where I don't have to share a kitchen and toilet(s) with a host of perhaps 17 others.

And I'm tired. So, so tired.

And then there are some

2005-11-02T10:45:00.000+10:30

There seems to be a bit of a scandal over the Net these days, and it has to do with a number of web journalists in all their worth saying what they want and how they feel like it.

Well, not everyone is saying what they want, but rather just one or two very outspoken ones that seem to spark flames with their posts. And then because these few not only have very fulfiling lives, this uses the term "Putting out flames with gasoline," simply because a lot of people are jealous and have a sense of prick pride.

Oh, and did I mention that this particular one who not only is outspoken and has a seemingly-very-fulfilling life have no prick? Whatever makes you happy calling it a Peter, dick, cock or pet dragon. A she, mind you. And there is a disturbance in the blogness of the world (or at least the Malaysian-Singaporean side), where some dislike to her happy happy life, telling her that it isn't right for her to make a daily report on how happy she is, because she reminds them so much of the unhappy lifestyles that they have.

While some of them are indeedly jealous, there are some that are unhappy with her such as this particular fellow, who recently took offense to her opinions on whether the normal should use handicapped toilets or not.

While it isn't much of my problem to highlight the situation concerning, it is interesting to note how far we have come in the Internet and the purposeness of blogging. Once, blogging was limited to HTML pages written out by very aspiring people back in the old days where Google was limited and porn was in an abundance. These days, Google has grown and so too has online porn.

Everybody these days has a blog.

Yup, nothing to it. You leave the technology and design to the webmasters, and you can set away typing whatever you feel like typing with freedom at your fingertips. Well, maybe not so anymore, but in every aspect, you have more power of expression than lets say a column in the newspaper and still have the potential to be served to more than just the local populace.

And in every form of media that has come to pass, there has always been a sort of crisis surrounding it. Or a revolution as you might say. Like the transition of monochrome televisions to full-colour, smoke signals to FM, Morse to the Internet, stone slabs to newspapers. And so has blogging come a long way, if has taken not more than a number of years to evolve.

And there are crisises, problems arising from the idea of blogging. Freedom of speech, the one reason that separates the natural world from the virtual. Now that barrier is vanishing, turning into a thin red line where governments seek to control various portions of the Internet. After all, aren't the servers located in their own country, and wouldn't they have every right to limit what should and what should not be?

And so begins the blog wars.

There are many sides to this. There is no Axis and Allies, Warriors of Light and Darkness to this, really. A sign of times that when a conflict arises, there is no such thing as the good guys versus the bad guys anymore.

You have on one side the fellows saying what they want (1), speaking the unwritten rule of the Internet: Say what you want. There are those who feel that the former should be like them (2), and say things within their boundaries, that not everything is to be said, that the Internet should apply to the conforms of society. And then you have another group (3) that seeks to speak on the politics of the real world, such as Malaysia-Today, for example (which are in my opinion, very news-worthy sites. Will speak more on this some other day). Lastly, you do have the majority of mild-mannered (4) (those who aren't involved, such as I) people who just make their way day-to-day.

And then you have the government(s) (5).

So you have Party Number One at war with Party Number Two, and vehemently so. Then you have Party Number Three engaging in an interesting guerilla war with Party Number Five, and the latter trying what they can to stifle the former. In both fronts, you have the members of Party Number Four who are really residents of neutral countries but are more than willing to become mercenaries or supporters of one of the other four parties, most likely because they believe in a cause, or are just there to toss more gasoline on the fire.

Of course you have those that are ignorant of this and seem aloof, but nobody really cares about them or writes about them because they aren't very interesting. Boring people aren't much fun.

So what is the moral of this story? Well, nothing yet. They say history is written by the victors, so we're just going to see what comes next then, eh?

The movie didn't feel complete

2005-10-25T20:25:00.000+09:30

Today is Tuesday. Thursday is my first paper. Saturday is second and last paper.

Went over to the cinema's some hours ago, all starting when VJ calls me in the midst of my revision in the library. To be frank, I wasn't really revising for the papers that I would be sitting for, but rather as one of those independent attempts to broaden my mind with more knowledge. At my own will, rather than being told to by someone higher up the academic curve.

Its no secret. I enjoy learning, provided I have the proper mindset for it, and of course, the proper time, which is actually anytime. I can pick up something that catches my eye, and drink in the information. Who said learning isn't fun?

It isn't when its forced down your throat, it isn't when its being sublimminally (did I spell that right? I'm not checking dictionary.com to write this. Meh) aired out in messages or texts over the airwaves, provided you're able to catch it. And when you do, thats when you're not going to like it, well at least sometimes. Subliminal (that's right, subliminal. I'm not backtracking now. I'm on fire, baby!) messages are fun to watch, like see how good Coke looks in the TV ads, but see how not-so-great it tastes when it goes down your throat. I don't like Coke anymore, well not really. Its just that there are some nicer drinks out there that are more worthy of my ingestion.

But anyways. When is learning not fun? Its not fun, oh I said this before, didn't I? I'm straying from the original point of view here, if there's one in the first place. So, there I was, reading into a textbook I found off the shelves, that although was part of the course that I was doing (in a non-direct, but still related sort of way), had nothing to do with the papers that are going to come this few days.

And then VJ calls me up and asks me if I want to go watch Serenity.

Now I haven't watched Serenity yet, even when it came about a month ago, and I liked the TV Series -Firefly, but I was reading into my book at the time, you know, sort of revising for my own benefits (I don't consider sitting for exams as a benefit). I said yes, and I'm coming, so we go off to the cinema just a short way's off from my uni. Almost next door, even.

But what was I doing, going to the movies, or even reading something that had nothing to do with the papers I was going to sit for? Isn't this the time where you go all-desperate mode and wrack away at your notes to cram in every bit of information so it doesn't get lost? Not that I've already done that, yeah, but the point being, some of you might ask, WHY THE HECK WEREN'T YOU DESPERATE?! RAAAAH!!!

I think I kind of passed that stage. Not to say that I've grown beyond the means. Don't think anyone will ever grow beyond the means, but its just that you feel you've prepared pretty well, and that you've done a lot of what you have done, so it doesn't seem like it really matters much. Yeah, I know I'm going to hit the books in a few minutes after I'm done with this article, and after I cook something really quick, but the fact of the matter is, I seem to exude CONFIDENCE.

Yes, I am confident. I can do anything I feel like doing right now, within my means and needs, of course, but I am confident. I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me. Funny that I feel like this, because I don't normally do.

Neither do I consider myself very religious. I just have very simple beliefs. Simple, but profound. And something tells me that what I'm feeling is God-given. 'Cause I know.

Peace. And out.

Cramming.

2005-10-24T13:52:00.000+09:30

Okay, so I've been gone a while without updating my entries, which is sort of reminiscent of the days where I had just created this page. Put in a few witty comments, and then run away like Brave Sir Robin for a month before making another appearance. Or not.

So I've been studying, a quite harder than usual. Even if I did, a number of it came to naught as I learnt that whatever assumptions one makes in his projects, however hard he would assume, despite the lack of information on the subject, just won't do if its wrong.

If its wrong. Of course, its wrong. One project where there was hardly any word on the affiliated subject, and hours of searching on the Internet and related hardcopies didn't turn up more than a few words at best.

Didn't do too well for that one, despite the notes I had and the lookings I made. Passed yeah, but its nothing to shout about. Sigh.

But anyways. In a couple of more days, my exams will be popping up. It will be a very hectic fortnight for me, having to rush around and do a lot of things on my own. Sometimes I curse the administrations of everything, especially my uni, which is quite a bit of a bitch at times.

Peace and out.

Hugo Weaving is a dirty bastard

2005-10-05T19:35:00.000+09:30

Courtesy of Kenny Sia. The mind is a dangerous thing.

Those Wacky Indians!

2005-09-30T16:15:00.000+09:30

I ought to see this movie one day. Indian movie posters crack me up all the more because they (Bollywood buggers) really were serious. Or were they?

Clint Eastwood blows up many Russians with powerful aircraft

2005-09-29T13:02:00.000+09:30

Perhaps I ought to the let them pictures speak for themselves.

And a tad explanation at that. The top image is Firefox, the bottom being that of Internet Explorer. You have the same code, but two different browsers, and since both rely on their own standards (Netscape for the first, Microsoft for the second), you'd have two completely different outputs.

Frustrating isn't it? It wouldn't so be if you were using Firefox, because it comes out just right. Maybe a little bit glitchy at the first loading, where the posts seem to overlap the title on above. Additionally, damn the Blog navbar on top that hindereth it so.

W3C's not going to hunt me down and brand me with a XHTML standard, well not yet at least. I simply don't use Internet Explorer for anything anymore, and I suggest most of you do the same, and I won't extrapolate on why Firefox is the better. There's enough of that kind of discussion going on in Slashdot for like, eh, forever. Geeks.

Its not very hard to put Firefox in your comp. Though of course, I will be fiddling with the CSS from time to time. Just to see where I've gone wrong. Or something.

Do I really need to put a title here? No I don't.

2005-09-29T00:19:00.000+09:30

Well, that's a bit better now, though the colors may look a little bit off, at least to some of you guys. I'm still deciding on what is best, in the midst of work and all. In the mean time:

Alien loves Predator. The heck?

Perambulate

2005-09-28T02:54:00.000+09:30

Just fiddling with the CSS.

It Rings! It Rings!

2005-09-27T18:23:00.000+09:30

Ring. Ring.

Two tones that reverbrated from the table to my ear, enough to jolt me from my then-current state of peace. In a land that was not bereft of dreams, though I experienced none in the latest session, since I had the unfortunance not to abide by the natural laws of sleeping the night, working into the wee hours of the morn.

The air was silent except for the ever-present sounds of traffic outside my window, cars scurrying in the essence of mice in the maze that was a metropolis. Only the occasional staccato of a tram's wheels would add to the constant noise which I had accepted as part of my psyche. Habit and the unofficial practice of embracing the world about me, taking the flows of sound as one constant stream until they would all seem like a friend, the spouse you never acknowledge but is always there, by your side.

And I was awakened by the ring of a phone on the table in front of me.

Me: "Hello?"

Cue progressive metal.

Geoff Tate:
It just takes a minute
And you feel no pain
Gotta make something of your life boy
Give me one more vein
You've come to see the doctor
Cause I'll show you the cure
I'm gonna take away the questions
Yeah I'm gonna make you sure

Naw, it didn't happen like that. As much as I like Operation Mindcrime, thats not what happened. What actually took place, heh:

Telemarketer: Hello, Mr. McDonald?

Ever since the installation of the phone line in my bedroom, a flurry of calls have made their way to my ears. If one has felt the touch of the telemarketer, you cannot help but support the campaign perpetuated by a switchblade-armed bunny rabbit in his quest to rid the world of an ill that has plagued us for so long.

I'm a pacifist at heart. At least mostly. I do not rush out and gut the nearest fellow with a bastard sword (weapon of choice) who disrupts my piece of mind. The most one would get is a rude response, or maybe more.

Now I have been called numerous times and my name referred to as Mr. McDonald, and their mission to sell me raffle tickets to make sure that charity in all her power must be upheld by champions such as us. It is our solemn duty to support the needy and break the Hun, slap the Jap and turn their cities into molten metal. Uncle Sam wants you!

Well, maybe not.

Me: Yeah?

Telemarketer: We're selling some raffle tickets for this so-and-so-rip-off-your-mother campaign, would you like to purchase a few? If you do, you'll be in the running to win so-and-so item.

The first times, they would be fobbed off with wrong number, as is the polite way inherent in every man who has ever picked up a phone. The first times have passed, and I have taken on the persona of a John Doe, or in this case, John McDonald.

Me: Yeah sure, how many can I buy?

TM: [cue number here]

Me: Hmmm, okay, I'd like to buy about lets see, 30 tickets? That's right, send them over to my place. Have you got my address right?

TM: [cue random address here]

Me: Yep, thats the one. Alright, seeya.

That's one way to handle 'em, though one can always scream one's head off and reduce the other person on the line to whimpers and tears. But who knows really? Being their line of work, would they not already be desensitized to the harsh words of the no-sayers? And that the need to feel the love for the folk who call you in the midst of important doings are nothing more than attempts to paint a better image for them operators?

Or if you're really cruel, you can talk to one for > 20 minutes, raising that person's hopes of selling something and shell out a flat refusal at the very end.

Candle

2005-09-26T13:39:00.000+09:30

I don't have very many things happening to me these days, or that I just seem to forget about them, or take a lack of pictures concerning. So sometimes I'll post pictures of albums my ear is listening to.

Yep. Good ol', good ol'.

Wallpapers are fun

2005-09-24T06:06:00.000+09:30

Morning + Kaizers Orchestra + Sonic Youth + Reading Brodie's Post + 20 to 30 mins of PaintShop Pro 5 = Creative Silliness in the form of wallpapers.

Something religious,

grain lives on forever,

please don't hurt me, George.

This post is officially silly!

You thought comics were for kids?

2005-09-23T23:40:00.000+09:30

I've seen some odd stuff, but this cracked me up at first glance.

And then there's stuff like this.

Meh. So, so meh.

Fuck titles! Titles suck!

2005-09-22T16:07:00.000+09:30

I just discovered a coupla days back that with the resources of my uni I was able to set up my own blog. And in some ways, it seems so much more customizable than blogger.com is able to provide. Should I move?

The Waftness

2005-09-20T02:32:00.000+09:30

Having your own room is good. You can fart to your heart's content and no one is going to complain about it.

I must say I really don't mind the smell of methane lasagna.

Thoughts of bastardising the Star Wars logo.

2005-09-11T20:52:00.000+09:30

Blog Wars!

And it's on the Internet too!

I'm not sure if PSP 5 is capable of what I have in mind. Heheheh.

Currently listening to:

Political prog rock. FTW.

TDZK.

2005-09-10T16:23:00.000+09:30

I miss this game.

And that is why I'm playing it again.

My Keyboard has gone to Peripheral Heaven

2005-09-08T23:14:00.000+09:30

It all started on about Mondaynight/Tuedsday morning, when I was playing a game of Starcraft over Battlenet. Now you might ask, Starcraft? Isn't that a bit old? Yeah, I must admit, I haven't played it for about 2 or 3 years, some of you even longer, and I seemed content to put down a game or two with Stormcrow and Theros. So happened I still had a spare CD-key in my possession, thanks to Akuma.

Having a drink too, a bottle of Guiness, enjoying a little bit in the wee hours of the morn when suddenly my hand thwaps the bottle and it spills a quarter of its contents over this laptop.

I cursed, as any person like me would, screaming "Oh fuck!" at the first tumble of liquid through those keys. However, it did not seem to interrupt my gaming session with Stormcrow and Theros, even if my fingertips were beginning to feel a bit sticky, smelling of the familiar malt flavour. We ended in a draw, 2 versus 1, where I was the one. First time I ever encountered a draw in Starcraft. Usually one of us gets killed in nasty, nasty ways. "Kill all the women and rape all the men," as one Viking in a show said once.

Eventually, I thought I might as well take a nap, as it was also 9am in the morning, had my breakfast and went to bed, only to awake at 4pm. Fine, turned on comp, and some of the keys were sticky, and in their own right, would not rise when I would press them. It was only after finger-hammering them would they arise from their evil pits of alcoholic maltness, and there would be this odd recoil everytime you pressed them.

Of course, I panicked, a little. If this had happened to a conventional keyboard, I would not have felt as desperate as I would have been. By nature, laptop keyboards give the aura that you're not to go touchy touchy with them, lest you screw things up, much the same ways I felt with my box about a decade or so ago.

So, I took out the I and O keys. Ironic, eh? I/O. Just when they happened to be the stickiest of all, those little squares being ejaculated upon by brown bitter liquids. But eh, I took them out, which was one of the mistakes made this past few days.

There's no trouble in prying loose the teeth of an old DOS keyboard, but to do the same with a laptop keyboard? No trouble of course, the only part is putting it back. I spent twenty minutes per key, armed with a pair of tweezers trying to fit the bleeding things in.

So Viceice I see on MSN, and I tell him of my predicament, so he suggests that I go wash my keyboard.

"But how?"
"You should see two notches under the laptop, look for them."

He should have just said screws. Phillips heads. Not so hard to say now is it, considering that we all have done Kemahiran Hidup, eh? Eh? Plus there were four.

"Alright, sorry."

Viceice shows me link to remove keyboard from laptop. Nifty.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-53172

"Soak it in a tub of water for an hour, take it out to dry and use a hair dryer on it."

I do that, except that I don't have a hair dryer. Used a heater fan and more hours of drying while I retreated to watch some TV.

Came back (which was morning anyhow, considering that I never sleep at night anymore) and made sure that the keyboard was totally dry before plugging it back in. Went to bed and did not dream about surreal nightmares involving beer on top of letters. Nah, that would have been crazy, but wholly interesting.

Woke up circa seven hours later, turned on computer only to find out that the keys aren't working right. See previous post if you don't know what I mean. Keys that have the value of comma, v, t, and so on and so forth are all corrupted beyond moralistic belief. Only the great FUCK still remain untouchable, for a good reason, and seriously, I thank God for that, even though you might not. I have my reasons.

So I call up Viceice and tell him this this this and that that that. He says, "Oh, I've done it with other laptops but not IBM laptops."

KANINA!!

I never use that phrase, even in real life. So consider this a first.

Of course, I'm not too happy with the outcome of the dried keyboard. No kidding, if everything except fuck would come out as garbled rubbish, what else would you say. It was a matter of time when the off/on button would quit working, despite my pleas of curses and twiddling with the keys.

I consider Aaron's alternative, as I have some projects to hand in next week, so of course I'm a little bit more than desperate. Wouldn't you be?

The IBM Thinkpad I use has only 2 USB ports, so I go buy a USB keyboard plus a USB hub. Thats about 60 to 70 dollars there, folks.

Now you might ask, "Why not just send your laptop to the centre? They can change stuff like this in mere minutes."

I would done that, except that the only place where it can be serviced is in Sydney, while I am in the vicinity of Melbourne. To send it to be repaired would take a couple of weeks, plus they also say that the damage by liquid was not covered under warranty. I have stuff to hand up, and the laptop of mine is essential to their completion.

Yargh indeed, but they tell me instead of having service centres, that there are dealers some miles away from where I am that I may go and make a purchase of a new keyboard if I don't intend to wait. I ask how much. They say 74 dollars.

I grumble and look out for the addresses to the locations. One ten minutes by tram, and the other possibly thirty minutes by train. Took the former, of course, and went off to purchase another keyboard.

Nice place (I mean the area around), I might admit. Just by St. Kilda beach in fact. Nice weather and good smell of the sea. Pity I didn't bring along my camera back then.

So I enter the dealer's office and say this this this and that that that. Some talkings here and there, and they seem to have the keyboard. 100 bucks, please.

WHAT? BUT IBM SAID IT WAS 74!

Sure enough, IBM didn't tell me the true price, which involved GST, sending, postage and yada yada. I wonder if I got conned, but the guy agreed to reduce it to 90 dollars, since he too was not too happy with the way the main headquarters were handling things. Apparently they had another set of keyboards which were promised to reach their premises in late July, but never made it. I sigh, pay the man and go. I had about enough, plus I really didn't have the time to send the laptop for warranty anyway.

Long story short, I come back home, set it in and now I typeth the ends to this entry.

Am not going to drink beer in front of laptop again. Thats what a TV area is for. Expensive mistake I'd say.

A Tale of Two Inputs.

2005-09-08T01:35:00.000+09:30

This is an input from the Windows On-Screen Keyboard. Precise, but so damn slow.

Now allow mye vto vtmype in a myore comyofvtorvtbale wamy,] due vto vthe facvt vthavt mymy kemyboard is novt onlmy romyallmy fucked up,] buvt ivt well,] whavt else can I samy aside fromy vthe facvt vthavt evtermy vtimye I vtouch on a kemy,] whevther ivt be vthe vt or vthe vt kemy,] ivt would comye ouvt as somyevthing I wouldn'vt wanvt?

I'my definivtelmy sure myou can read vthis. Jusvt ignore vthe exVTRA vt's and vt's,] vthough ivt myighvt be a bivt hard vto undersvtand vthe difference bevtween vthe cervtain kemys,] because vthe cervtain kemys seemy vto be svtuck. Oddlmy,] vthe levtvters f,] u,] c,] and k don'vt seemy vto be svtuck avt all,] which is a blessing fromy God,] I suppose. vthere is a reason whmy He allowed vthose parvticulkar levtvter s vto be released invto mymy kemyboard,] vthe vtalue of vthemy vthereof.I know whmy,] a vtermy good reason befcause.

myan I canvt evten vtmype a proper sevtenvtence wivthouvt backspacing or akking a line break,] because ivt wonvt levt mye. Fucking hilarious isn'vt ivt?

I acvtuallmy havte vto use vthe on screen kemyboard vto vtmype in vthe envter vtalue. vtmype in would be wrong,] buvt press woulod be bevtvter. I myake a few myisvtakes whenevter I vtmype,] being a fairlmy accomyplished wrivter wivth vthe abilivtmy vtio vtmype quicklmy wivth fivte fingers,] vthough I amy progressing wivth evtermy passing myomyenvt.

So ivt happened approxMYIAVTELMYX vtwo nighvts ago,] when I was plamying Svtarcrafvt ovter vthe BavtvtleNevt,] which somye of myou myighvt ask,] dude? ou svtill plamy Svtarcrafvt? Well,] ivt was becasue vthe person I was plamying wivth was in vthe myood,] and I had a spare D wivth mye,] so whavt vthe heck.

And vthen I had a bovtvtle of Guiness in fronvt of mye,] drinking happolmy awamy I was,] when a swing of mymy army processed vto crash vthe convt4envts of vthe bovtvtle of beer ovter mymy belovted kemyboard. I woulkd add somye phovtos here if I wasn'vt vtoo bovthered wivth vthe idea of mymy kemyboard being a bivt of a shivts.

So vthe nighvt afvter vthavt,] I vtake ouvt vthe kemyboard and givte ivt a soak like I used vto do wivth all my ovther kemyboards,] all vthose DOS kemyboards I use vto use back homye. here wasn'vt a problemy when I vtmyped wivth vthose kemyboards,] I myean vto samy vthavt I didnvt havte myuch of a problemy wvthen I vtossed vthemy and washed vthemy,] kemy for kemy. ou know whavt I'my vtalking abouvt here,] are myou? I vthink I'my confusing mymyself evten here.

So vtherefore,] I amy avt quivte a loss,] so I wash vthemy kemyboards,] bmy soaking ivt in a bivt of wavter,] and drmy ivt and all,] and plug ivt in,] vthe nexVT MYORNING ONLMYX vto find vthavt ivt doesn'vt fucking wovtrk!

Levt mye jusvt samy vthavt envter doesn'vt work,] while backspace vthinks ivt's a punmy vtersion of envter where ivt doesn'vt reallmy myake a new line unless ivts in a online vtexVTERX or somyevthing. And now evtermyvthing I do seemys vto fuck ivt self so nicelmy. I myean,] jusvt look avt vthe words I'my vtmyping ouvt righvt nbow! Ivts a wonder if myou're svtill reading vthis far! I myean,] a svtormy like vthis,] is evtern myore worse vthan spamy would havte on vthe myind,] I myean seriouslmy!

And I'my a Ivt - informyavtion vtech,] for vthose of myou vthavt somyewhavt are unsure of whavt ivt svtands for- person,] so ivts going vto be a bivt hard vto do comypouvter svtuff while I'my righvt here,] blasvting awamy wivth vthe almyivtghvtmy kemyboard. I myean,] whavt vthe bloodmy fuck?

AAAARGH!

Cripes!

2005-09-07T21:56:00.000+09:30

As soon as I get another keyboard for this bleeding laptop, its CSS time.

Like the sign says.

2005-09-07T21:44:00.000+09:30

Currently two days into the Guiness Key debacle. Agh.

What's happening today?

2005-09-06T00:07:00.000+09:30

Oh nothing really, just working on a new design for this blog. Some fumbling about with CSS is in order.

Merdeka.

2005-08-31T03:27:00.000+09:30

We may not have had our Battle of Yorktown, but heck, we've come through a lot.

Next time, I'll spend a few more minutes on PSP5. Heh. Happy Merdeka, y'all.

A song from Asia

2005-08-30T13:51:00.000+09:30

Ever get the feeling that on some days, they're just wasted?

By the end of the day, you felt that you could have achieved so much more, with the time given onto your hands. That is was part of your well-being and duty to make do of those seconds clicking away, for the sake of feeling a lot better.

So what am I saying?

A lot.

Most of the time, we just sit around and watch time pass by, like some would say killing time. However you want to murder it, you can't help but feel that the more you stick that knife into your watch, the more its going to allow those seconds to pass by.

So why wait for the moment? That moment's never going to come. Make your own.

Tetris

2005-08-23T16:06:00.000+09:30

On Unix. Who'd ever thought?

Well, I didn't. I am a newb, after all.

Oh?

2005-08-23T00:20:00.000+09:30

In order to get better at me studies, I've tried to retire from my secondary profession, at least for a while.

And then I find out, that why give up what you do best, what you love to do by letting it go? Gifts don't come easy, and I spent years to just discover what I had been good at, even if I had to work myself at it so that I could achieve.

Graaagh. Need inspiration for both sides of the coin.

Currently listening to: Judas Priest - The Green Manalishi

Symphony of Smog. Vol.1

2005-08-12T22:47:00.000+09:30

A selection of the best music that relates to the current situation in our beloved country. If it isn't your country, you are obliged to guess what the problem is.

1. Dishwalla - All She Can See (3:46)
2. Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning (4:16)
3. Billy Joel - We Didn't Start the Fire (4:50)
4. Mr. Big - Burn (6:05)
5. Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze (2:53)
6. Queen - Blurred Vision (4:41)
7. Metallica - Fade To Black (6:52)
8. Kansas - Dust in the Wind (3:26)
9. Metallica - Fight Fire With Fire (4:44)
10. Beck - The New Pollution (3:39)
11. Rocky Soundtrack - Burning Heart (3:53)
12. Dokken - Burning Like a Flame (4:47)
13. Van Halen - Fire In the Hole (5:31)
14. Scorpions - Wind Of Change (5:12)
15. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Long As I Can See The Light (3:32)
16. Bruce Springsteen - I'm On Fire (2:41)
17. Blues Traveler - Thinnest of Air (3:36)
18. Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water (5:39)
19. Motley Crue - Smokin In The Boys Room (3:28)
20. Jimi Hendrix Experience - Fire (2:40)
21. Third Eye Blind - Blinded (When I See You) (3:56)
22. Van Halen - On Fire (2:58)
23. ACDC - Shot Down in Flames (3:22)
24. Creedence Clearwater Revival - It Came Out Of The Sky (2:56)
25. Scorpions - When The Smoke Is Going Down (3:49)
26. Pink Floyd - Goodbye Blue Sky (2:48)
27. Rolling Stones - Paint It Black (3:45)
28. Dokken - Into the Fire (4:27)
29. Dishwalla - Haze (4:21)
30. Cheap Trick - The Flame (4:47)
31. Blue Oyster Cult - Fire of Unknown Origin (4:11)
32. dj bobo - shadows of the night (5:41)
33. Queen - You Take My Breath Away (4:39)
34. Foreigner - Double Vision (3:43)
35. Blue Oyster Cult - Burnin' For You (4:30)
36. Twisted Sister - The Fire Still Burns (3:33)
37. queen - Another One Bits The Dust (3:36)
38. Scorpions - Dust In The Wind (3:49)
39. Jesus Jones - I'm Burning (3:20)
40. Kenny Loggins - Danger Zone (3:31)

Pleasing to know that humanity is such an arsonist lot, eh?

Fog You!

2005-08-12T02:13:00.000+09:30

Currently listening to:

I think that pretty much sums up the situation in Malaysia right now. Its what I could find on the playlist after a friend came up with an ironic title on his music player.

Smoke on the Water. Heh.

So I haven't posted in a while. I'll try to make it a more everyday kind of thing. Not a bad place, this is.

Heh heh.

2005-06-18T11:20:00.000+09:30

I miss you guys, somewhat. Here's a group photo that never was.

About time someone came up with a group shot. ^_^

Eh-heh

2005-06-17T17:06:00.000+09:30

Just having a bit of fun with the picture maker. This next one, Nemo and Tub might recognize. For all the times listening to your radio, Nem. ;)

Portrait.

2005-06-17T16:07:00.000+09:30

Let me know if it doesn't look anything remotely like me.

Clicky on the right hand part where it says "South Park Studio" Flash.

Enjoy.