Commute in writing

It's ironic, when you try to commute some information across, u'd try to make it as detailed as possible without missing any points with the hopes that clarity is attained.

What are the results of such communications especially when it comes to writing?

Miscommunication!

Yes u read me right. Be it in a form of an email, blog entry, hard copy, when the sentences span more than 1 line, people tend to turn into a fregin' frog n starts to leap about from sentences to sentences thus at times missing out some crucial info.

An example came up early this afternoon when a friend msg'd over MSN asking "you got a Canon?". He was refering to this blog entry.

This happens everywhere, a personal email, at work, letters, books, where ever there is text.

Because of this attitude, we are more prone to pilot errors in everything we do. When it comes to work, I hope those that spend the attention to read this take heed on how serious this can be and the vast implications.

Read my friend, line for line, even if there are many lines, for within and between the lines, there is information, waiting for attention.

Here I am doing it again, many lines to loose attention, but note how the facts below grab your attention.

Facts that remain:
1. Images speak a thousand words
2. Keep them short and precise and if possible in point form
3. Don't be shy to characterize(bold, underline, highlight, italic, font color/size/type) important points
4. Persistent formatting

Dinner with ol' friends

Ain't college days sweet? Was renting a room at SS2 with a great bunch of house mates. We'd have joy rides in the middle of the night to some distant mamak once in a while, stay up late drinking some booze, sharing stories, cracking hideous jokes, the works! At one point of time there were 15 of us in the double story house! U could imagine it was hard for anyone of us to be alone ;-). Good ol' days they were. Oh ya, tht was like 7 years back.

Lee Mei was here on a holiday, she's now in Sandakan, Sabah with her boyfriend and so happened Lee Ping was in town for some kinda training as well, she's in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah right now. So I was thinking, perfect~ let's gather some of the others still in town for a meetup!

Oh well, I managed to get 2 of em, the rest were not available on such short notice (< 24 hours). I was surrounded by ladies!

Outlet: Bakerzin, Bangsar Village
Location: Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur
1st row - Lee Ping, Mok
2dn row - Lona, Lee Mei

My origins

Whilst we're tied up with our busy schedule, whilst we're trying to build our nest, whilst we're adapting.. we often loose ourselves.. do we loose our origins when we move on to another place?

I was born and bred in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. I left KK at the young age of 17 to pursue my studies. I'm 28 now. 11 years I've been in Kuala Lumpur. It has been 3 years since I paid KK a visit. Up till a few mins ago I was stricken by memories of KK, my hometown. They came flooding back, family, school days, friends, girls, the mischievous activities I got up to, the scrumptious food, everything. Like a pile of bricks came tumbling down on me. Gawd dammit it must be the gloomy weather!

I then downloaded Google Earth and started to make my way from the town.. back home..

Boy, even when you know the place well, it ain't exactly the same viewing it from the top!

The house I grew up in, the very place I started crawling till the time adulthood grabbed my innocense. Hey I now know the latitude and longtitude ;-)

Where I waited for the bus, the gravel path we took seemed to have broaden haha! Boy I had to walk that far to get to the bus stop? Amazing when you're left with few choices. Don't think I'd walk that distance now.



Good ol' KK, an option for retirement.. back to your roots, some say..

How I was greeted this morning

It was at the break of dawn.. I was taking a ciggie.. just before work started.. when 2 birds.. landed abt 3 meters from me.. both the same species.. one of em' bald!!! For crying out loud, the whole head until neck was grey, featherless!!!

We commonly see these birds here in Malaysia, they're about 5 - 7 inches tall, yellow beak, yellow patches on each side of the "eyes", chirps a lot in the mornings. I failed to find a foto online, alas I didn't know the name to search for.

Nature's wonders..

Updates (2007-05-12). With Tiban's comment I was able to find the foto. Thx dude!

Now Imagine it being bald till the neck hehe ;-)

Fwd: Ironic but facts

At times some forwarded mails are just worth saving.

Men:
1. All men are extremely busy.
2. Although they are so busy, they still have time for women.
3. Although they have time for women, they don't really care for them.
4. Although they don't really care for them, they always have onearound.
5. Although they always have one around them, they always try their luck with others.
6. Although they try their luck with others, they get really pissedoff if the woman leaves them.
7. Although the woman leaves them they still don't learn from theirmistakes and still try their luck with others.

Women:
1. The most important thing for a woman is financial security.
2. Although this is so important, they still go out and buy expensiveclothes and stuff.
3. Although they always buy expensive clothes, they never havesomething to wear.
4. Although they never have something to wear, they always dress beautifully.
5. Although they always dress beautifully, their clothes are alwaysjust "an old rag".
6. Although their clothes are always "just an old rag", they stillexpect you to compliment them.
7. Although they expect you to compliment them, when you do, theydon't believe you.


Somehow I don't think I should post the portion on men.

The powder of Assumptions!

Just yesterday I attended a session with the topic "The Power of Assumption". It was a fun exercise. This clip, simply emphasizes on the very nature of assumptions!

Cheese! (rats alert)

Howdy mates!

Join me for a cuppa?

How do we pamper ourselves? Each of us do it differently. Hopefully it's a healthy kinda pampering of course ;-). One of mine would be enjoying a cuppa at a cafe. Well it don't really matter if it's designer or just a plain local cafe, as long as the place is comffy. There's a meaning when we say pamper yes?

At times I do ponder. Rather than paying premium for a cup of coffee which I know for sure is a fraction of the price, what could I do with the amt. saved shall I opt to forgo this part of what we term as 'lifestyle'? Will I put it to better use?

If we speak of lifestyle, what is it? Sometimes it seems like a fraction of deceitful imagination.

Oh well, I choose to live a life. At least I think it's life.

Ismail's Nasi Briyani

Almost every mamak shop here in Malaysia has Nasi Briyani for sale. However not all are nice. This is one tht I'd recommend. Ismail's @ Taman Tun Dr. Ismail, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It's located at the same block as Domino's Pizza.

From bottom up;
Nasi Briyani
Kambing (Mutton)
Ayam Goreng (Fried Chicken)

Peter's Jawa Mee @ Sri Sentosa, Bukit Mertajam, Penang, Malaysia.

How is it like being a citizen of a multi-cultural country? Simply put? It's being in one place, with the best of a few worlds! We're blessed with food from various ethnics, literally spoilt brats we are when it comes to food!

Each time I visit my gramps up in Bukit Mertajam (Penang), I never fail to pay this fella a visit. Oh well there were times when I was there during the 1st few days of Chinese New Year and our friend was on a break

Jawa Mee, the best I've tried in Malaysia. I've not the slightest idea how to describe the taste. Definitely for everyone as it's not spicy.

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Canon Powershot a640

Vilves got her new camera from the previous PC fair at a very good price I must say. She was soooo nice to let me hv my paws on it. I was like a lil' kid playing with a new toy, just tht this time it ain't mine at all.

Since getting my 1st dSLR, photography has some what changed, instead or looking at "canggih-ness" of a camera, I tend to look at the quality it spits out. For consumer cameras, we'd need to be fair when looking at one.

Canon a640, is it a consumer or prosumer camera? It has full manual control and of coz the presets as well. Video recording and Macros! It's rather compact, something that can fit nicely into a handbag(regular sized). It uses AA size batteries! What does this mean? The batteries won't go outdated! There's no problem looking for batteries while on the road and hey hey.. u'r not a slave in relying on Canon for the batteries ;-).

I dived into the camera and started playing with Macro mode. A feature which I so miss. And the LCD, oh so sweet, everything u did, everything u adjusted, ohh it was live display!

Ah hah~ There was this fly struggling for dear life. Yes there's a fly in the office. Well instead of saving it (like I would do so) I decided to place it's last minutes on earth into digital format.

100% crop at 1024x768 - Resized to 400x300



Ok enuf talk about the camera, Canon ain't paying me for a writeup.

The Royal Affair with Milk Tea

Why can't I sleep till 6pm? Why am I usually up at 3pm? Tht's only 6 hours sleep! I WAN MORE! It'll b purrrfect u c, I get into bed at 8:30-9am, get a good 9 hours sleep and wake at 6pm!

Oh yeh, this is right after a night shift (11pm - 7am).

Oh well I was scrounging around the kitchen cabs for a drink, didn't feel like hving coffee, so I had my mind on some tea. And then... I stumbled upon some lost treasure, it's probably been there for a good 1 1/2 years. The last sachet of it's kind.. Has it expired? Will I be poisoned shall I take the risk?

Oh hell it's too good to waste. This is by far the bestest of all instant milk teas I've tried! The grand champion! The ace of aces! ROYAL MILK TEA! U just gotta have some, u've gota try it, u've gotta indulge in it's smoooooooth ... erm.. wat do u call tht? smooth texture? is there such a thing for fluids? Oh well I bet u understand wat I'm trying to say here ;-)

Double headed soft toy.

These days our pets are so pampered I envy them! Recently got Yoda a squeaky soft toy from Pet Safari, Ikano. Cost less than RM10. It's a sausage dog with a head on each end haha! Best part of it, right in the center of the 'stomach' is where the 'quak quak' is. Yoda simply luvs the irritating sound it gives out. He pushes his flat face onto the stomach to achieve the euphoric melody!!!

Ice cream cake anyone?

What do you look fwd most when u give someone a gift? Of coz it's said tht we should always give and expect nothing in return. But but but.. we're normal humans! So what is it? To me, it's tht smile they give u, tht happy aura tht they emit. It's priceless.

Ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins for my princess.. Once it's out of the freezer and when the dry ice is done, boy it melts really fast in Malaysian weather!

Back alley pigeons

Back alley of my grandparents' house in Bukit Mertajam.

These pigeons are so at home here they actually wait for food!



Food's here! Come on down lil' birdies!



I was there, about a meter away from them when I took these shots, there were happily pecking away on their food, totally ignoring my presence. An itch started to form at my feet.. I simply had to.. I needed to.. I had to show them the balance.. WACHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA~ stomped my feet a couple of times..

An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth is Al Gore's movie / documentary on Global Warming.

I watched it last night and I was baffled. Lost for words. Who are the largest contributors to Global Warming? The United States of America. What are the ppl in power doing about it? Hiding it.

It ain't the kinda show u'd like to watch for a nice relaxing evening. This is one documentary tht will rattle the very seat u were warming.

My rating? What do you mean my rating? I ain't no critic. I will say this tho~ "Watch IT!"

http://www.climatecrisis.net/

What I read monthly

Tried Men's Health and the likes of it. PC Mag, HWM, T3. None of them lasted.

Filled with Photoshop tips and Photography tips, tricks & guidance from the experts. If tht doesn't tickle you, try the full page bleeds of outstanding fotos!

Mega Mug & BT Headset

My MEGA MUG! Well why would u wanna make a few trips to the coffee machine if u cud make a single trip? Make me hotttttttt... ooooo yeh~

I've been wanting a BT headset for the longest time. Just couldn't get myself to get one, it was then around RM300 for one. It's reasonable these days. Got this Jabra BT135 for RM128. Came with a in-car charger of your choice. Took me a few shots to get the light blinking on this (blinks every 3 secs when idle)

What can I say? Thank you baby! Yeh I didn't get these myself grin*. See.. I'm getting pampered left right center by mua darling.. jeles yet? evil-to-the-bone-grin*

www.pugsquad.com

Pugs are a breed second to none.

I used to run this community forum when it was in it's hey day. We had tonnes of fun, having regular meetups, exchanging of ideas, makan (eat) sessions, the works! Our busy schedules finally got the better of us and tht's when our activities came to a halt. With tht in mind, I decided to close the site ant a month back. Those were the happy days where our furkids got to socialize and pampered till they saw stars!

We had 23 gatherings, from what I recall, at tht time, by far the most gatherings recorded for any dog breed club in Malaysia! Erm.. we weren't an 'official' club.. but I suppose u know wat I mean. Our 1st gathering was in October 2003.. and the last in January 2006.

There is a thread for pugs hosted by www.puppy.com.my here.

Below are some shots from each gathering.. the memories run deep..

For the luv for our Pug(s)..

Our very 1st gathering..




We got a lil' ambitious and gave our pugs a shot at agility. I still have the poles stashed away at the balcony..

Pugsquad invades Port Dickson!!!




Pugsquad climbs up Frasers Hill!!!


Serendah was militarized by pugs!!!

The slaves(humans) celebrating Jerome's birthday at TGIF!

The 23rd..

Testing ScribeFire plug in for Firefox

Firefox is my fav. internet browser. Takes a lot of stress out while surfing mainly because it's not as prone to viruses as Microsoft Internet Explorer is. So here I am trying out this plug in tht loads an editor within the browser and promises to post it to the blog with a click of a button. Of course I had to configure it to login to the blog first. Well if this works, it does looks like it lacks adding "tags" to the post.



1.. 2.. 3.. let's see if this appears on mua blog..

Powered by ScribeFire.

When blogging turns a tad bit sour.

I need not say more, it's written here.

Malaysian political bloggers form alliance
Group formed after personalities were demonized 'again and again'

Microsoft.. Linux..

I've been a Linux enthusiast since college days. Windows 95's blue screens of death guided me towards the Linux direction. It was RedHat 5.2 and it has been one hell of a journey since then. So much so it forms my rice bowl of today.

With the launch of Vista, something tht has taken some party to put together in about 5 years, tht is a resource guzzler but boasts beautiful user interface experience, tht would inevitably mean users of Windows XP have just abt 2 years before things start to go obsolete.

IMHO, there's one thing that forms a barrier for Linux reaching desktops by legions. Office suite. The de facto standard has formed to be Microsoft office and this gives the giant a firm grip over their users. While there are office suite alternatives such as Open Office (for Linux/Windows), they just don't do.

A noble cannot possibly say Linux sucks and Microsoft rocks. Microsoft has unlimited funds while Linux is mostly efforts of the mostly unpaid open source community. Compare both the operating systems and you'd definitely be awed.

Do we Vista-fy ourselves, or do we take these 2 years and seek alternatives?

An entertaining read. The author really did a good job on this. You could actually laugh!
Linux Desktop – Is it an Option for Normal Users?
Murmurs of revolt spread through the taverns in the Kingdom of Windows. The flashy new Vista model King William had promised the people had taken 5 years to put into production, and the price matched its splendour. During those five years, the Apple Opera Company had staged several new productions of impressive polish. The upstarts from Google were giving people free software and email services, and there were rumours that Desktop Linux was mature enough to rival Vista.

The LEAVING WINDOWS Project
As I posted here (1), last week I decided that I would NEVER upgrade to Vista as my primary operating system. I find it completely unacceptable to be subject to capricious deactivation with 3 days warning whenever Vista decides it does not like software or hardware I might install (yes, even SOFTWARE can trigger this nonsense...see (2)(3)(4)(5) ).

Linux for Beginners
Some of the greatest benefits and most confusing aspects of Linux are rooted in the fact that there's no one Linux—rather, there are many different operating systems based on the Linux kernel.

Vaio zoinked..

Finally I'm back online on my lappie. Been struggling for about 24 hours (cummulative). What happened? I killed the windows partitions on my primary sata hdd. How did tht happen? Erm.. blush*. Do I really wanna embarass myself further?

I was supposed to be gaming, instead I decided to seek some knowledge. So I booted to linux via external usb hdd and decided to configure the wireless modem. Had been wanting to do tht for ovr a mth now. I screwed the libraries up, so the easy way out would be to reinstall linux. I've been messing with linux since 2nd year of college. 8 years of so called experience got the better of me. The installation went on like a charm. Till I wanted to log back into windows did I realise the inevitable.. I zoinked the MBR of the windows hdd.

Fine, been there done tht solved it, piece of cake. This time I got a lil adventurous and tried a new 'style' of recovering the MBR. I did "dd if=/dev/zero of /dev/sda bs=512" from linux. In theory tht should work so I thought. Tht on it's own somehow, zoinked all partitions on /dev/sda which was where windows was installed.

Me heart slumped down south till it reached my groins. What flashed by:

1. Photos
2. Blog material
3. Data
4. Saved Game data, I've been playing Jade Empire for the past week
5. PHOTOS! JPEG! MRW! DNG! PSD!
6. pHoTos!
7. PhOtOs!
8. Movies! (of all sorts of coz ahem*)
9. Bookmarks, all those hours of surfing.

Steady.. I turned off me notebook and went to sleep haha! Laughter the best medicine? I would rank sleep the 2nd.

Ok on /dev/sda I had 2 partitions. The first was where the OS was installed with saved data of sorts. The second was where my prized photos were archieved and my downloads.

Why can't I recover the lost data? After all it was a mere partition f*ck up. Assumingly the 1st partition would be from the early sectors of the hdd till somewhere in the middle with the 2nd partition taking on from there till the end of the disc.

I then recreated a partition of 4096000 (40GB), formatted it and lef the rest of the hdd unpartitioned. Installed windows and used GetDataBack (GDB). Somehow GDB was unable to sweep unpartitioned space. So I created another partition with what was left. I did not format this new partition. Said some silent prayers and reran GDB.

Voila! GDB managed to recover all the data which was sitting on me 2nd partition! Well as of now, I've only checked the JPEGs and some installation files. In time I'll check the RAW (from my Dynax 5D) files as I'm yet to install Adobe Lightroom. Since there's some uncertainty of the quality of the recovery, I'll be leaving this partition unformatted until I've verified most of the files. If the files are more corrupt than useful, then I'd try using another recovery software.

I managed to save:

1. Photos (JPEG)
2. Movies

The accuracy of recovery softwares greatly depend on the built in algorithms. It's rumoured some fair better in mp3 recovery and so on.

Right now, I'm connected to windows update downloading the numerous amount of patches and updates. A whole 78 of em! Estimated time, 1 hour 10 mins.

Oh boy, a long and tiring journey lays ahead. Would take me hours to bring this baby back to it's former self.. with lots of lost data..

YvesSaintLaurent YSL LIP TWINS

When I first laid eyes on this product I was awed! Immediately reminded me of the Cryptex in Da Vinci Code.

This innovation is at it's best! 2 colors (satiny & gloss texture)(thus the twin naming), mirror and a brush all conveniently in 1 package! For those ladies on the move, this seems to be the perfect tiny thing to fit nicely in the handbag.

With these 2 colors/texture it is more than possible for the adventurous embrace dual tones and sweep em' men off their feet with lust colors.

Reapplying lipstick in public a no no? Ain't tht gonna be something of the past. With Lip Twins, I'd imagine ladies flaunting it! Well, if u hv it, flaunt it!

Wanna have one? Hold ya horses ppl! It'll only be available over the counters(Malaysia) in May!

Taken with kit lens 18-70mm.











Taken with Pentacon 50mm/f1.8 (M42 lens)

Age creeps on..

Those were the days when we thought of zippo lighters, rocker t-shirts, condoms, cheap hard liquor, etc as gifts to our pals.

My latest gift to a pal.

(of coz I didn't do the wrapping, my lil' princess did.)

This is what we call a gr8 sense of humour.

Proudly located in the heart of Puchong.

Shift leadless for 4 days..

These few days my shift lead Vilves has a workshop to attend, thereafter she celebrated her mom's birthday down south. Tht left us shift leadless for erm.. thurs, fri, sat.. surprisingly she turned up on sun(thank gawd) and tonight (mon) she's resting from an exerting med. checkup from the morning. So tht's 4 days... whoopie! HOLIDAY!

Tough luck dude.. she was so kind as to pass on the responsibility onto my fragile shoulders.

Managing ppl ain't anything new to me. Ppl are the most challenging and interesting part of managing making it kind of a mysterious art, an art tht is never mastered. An art tht tickles me left right center upside down inside out.

The toughest part was to manage the tickets and emails whilst dwelling into the technical details of some tickets. I couldn't sit back and just manage, I had my usual role to fulfill, which is to solve em darn tickets a.s.a.p!

Conclusion? It's tough juggling the mind from one role to another. However the fulfillment is amazing, being able to walk off from shift smiling knowing the team had did well!

Oh blimey I did it again!

What happens when u allow an important date to slip ur mind? Like a birthday of someone u luv? Or perhaps an anniversary? Simply put u'r in deep sh*t ain't u? Ok tht's done, how do u make up for what u so embarrassingly committed?

Sorry(s) won't b enuf.
Present(s) won't b enuf.
Hug(s) won't do it.
Ignoring it would even b worse.

It hurts to have done so. It's inexcusable!

So how now brown cow?