thetadpole

2012

2011-12-31T10:24:00.002-05:00

2011 was a year of learning.

2012, I would need to:

1. Get a new job. A new challenge. A better one. Top of the list!!..

2. Travel more
- A trip in June.
- Cheap trips

3. Start something new
- Re-learn how to swim
- Cycling
- A duathlon
- Kick boxing
- A new minor business venture (Joe/Brian)

4. Improve (self development)
- god
- Negotiation/deal closing skills. conversations
- reduce teh-tarik/junkfood/fastfood intake by another 20%
- community
- technology
- books

5. Watch where ze moola is going
- Increase total yearly savings by another 10%
- Minor investments

6. Continue
- brokering – 6 units/year
- Running – 5 runs
- Friends and networks
- Rebong the 2nd coming… yeahh!!!..
- consulting – 1 RM5k job
- modeling – 3 minor jobs

In general, I would just like to be more positive, hang around with more positive people, to love more, and hate as little as possible… hehehe

diplomacy

2011-05-18T11:07:00.006-04:00

hi.

i tried to get some extra sleep by going to bed at 9pm. but that didn't work.
The roti kaya and peanut butter sandwich from the kopitiam session with 2 of my dealers and the nation's top insurance branch manager (which halted my plan to go for a jog.. again..) were not enough to fill me up until late.
so, i went out to find some mee goreng telur mata along with a cup of teh o limau panas kurang manis. and yup, now i still can not sleep because i'm too full.

anyway, yesterday my sister and her husband came over to Melaka to do some shopping and for the good food. during coffee, i was telling them about this article in The Star on diplomacy which i couldn't really recall at that point of time. so. i Googled it up again.

Towards the end of the article, a veteran diplomat shared some basic rules of conduct in diplomacy, which i find interesting.

The points (as written in the article) are as follows:

> Diplomacy is always about making friends; never say anything that is unfriendly.

> Diplomacy is about being even-handed at all times; never take sides at anytime.

> Diplomacy is about contributing towards peace; forever hold your piece if you do not have anything constructive to contribute.

> Diplomacy is about being tactful on every occasion; never be indiscreet.

> Diplomacy is about being cautious every time; never try to be clever anytime.

So, it's basically common sense, but common sense is not so common, right?

I believe that most of the things we have to go through on a daily basis should be done diplomatically;well, we all attend meetings, and do business presentations and attend discussions of some sort, and we all have bosses. You don't have to become a big-no-good-ass-kissing-bastard, all you need to do is be diplomatic, and make sure you do it with tact.

But again, in making or closing a deal, well, basically in dealing with people for whatever reason, you need to understand that not everyone is a diplomat.

the son of Alcumus

2011-04-26T00:42:00.003-04:00

So, we got this mentoring thing going on. Nope, I’m not that brilliant of a staff that I got into the scheme, it comes with the ‘job’.

Like what all good mentors do, they ask you the hard questions, make sure you stay humble, they make sure you dream big, and they’ll do their best to guide you through by giving very random answers. And as usual, they’ll ask you these questions:

I told him I’m not good at dreaming, but what the hell, for our next session; maybe I’ll just tell him this:

· Major goal for the year – Get a hold on life.

· Travel goals – Turkey, Eastern Europe

· Financial goals – get my first million by the end of the year. hahaha

· Spiritual goals – khusyuk dlm solat. To be in control…

· Mental goals – to be as sharp as his tongue… (I have no idea what a mental goal is)

· Physical goals – to get a 300 ripped body by November, to run 2 full marathons, to hit a hole in one, play in the NFL

· Social goals – Spend more time with friends. Get to know more people on a personal level. Meet more people my age. Start dating.

· Business/Career goals – Master the operations. Improve business contacts. Increase personal sales. To work like a manager. Learn about investments

· Future goals – Get a better offer. Leave the company

Yup. I hope he won’t stab me to death or terminate me on the spot.

So far, from feedbacks, people say I think too much. I need to absorb and enjoy the moment. Carpe diem. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not actually thinking at all… hehe

As you can see, I still have no idea what I want to do with my life. And I’m getting older… I need serious help…… I’ve been moving around too much, both in terms of location and division. But I’m enjoying the pressure.

Anywhere you go its all about the people and the system.

The system, this you can manipulate.

The people, most of the time are fucked up… beyond all repair…. FUBAR… at least in this company.

but then again, don't people behave in a certain way so that they can adapt to the environment, or the system... i don't know

video killed the radio star

2011-02-24T09:26:00.006-05:00

Ok, hi.

Yeah, I’ve been busy…….. and lazy.

Yup, a lot happened; my sister got married, 2 dictators got deposed, New York’s Cosa Nostras got busted, and I was transferred 3 times each time to a different position and to a different state. And it's already 2011. And Al-Fatihah, my grandfather passed away.

Anyway, I’ve just started in my new position 3 weeks ago, so it’s only wise to get to know the people I’ll be dealing with for at least the next 8 months; this time, mafias and people with money….. a lot of money. There’s a term for this whole getting to know and buying in process, it’s called ‘kam-ching’; this is the stage where first impression is key, and concepts like masking and shared-symbols are put to use.

But I digress.

So, yesterday, I met up with this 35 years old Chinese dude, a business partner of ours. An interesting fact about the guy, he was appointed to the board of directors of the company he’s running which is basically a family business when he is not family- It’s like having Don Corleone taking you in as his son, and appoints you to run the show, when your last name is Lee. And he did that when he was only 30. So, yup, he is damn good at what he is doing.

Compared to the other business owners or managers I had to meet, it was a little easier cracking this guy up, as he is exceptionally young, and I am kinda young too. Here, the shared symbol – being where we are at an early age. (usually, they’ll hire someone with at least 6-7 years of experience to do my job). So, the usually interesting ritual of having conversations with really old people got a little more exciting as we had a lot more common issues to talk about as the generation gap is not that big.

We talked about a lot of stuff. One of the things we talked about was how he did it, and the way he runs the business (I was actually trying to understand how he works so that it’d be easier to deal with him later). Along the course of the conversation, he told me something about the Chinese coin, which I find very interesting.

You see, money can’t be a more perfect symbol of wealth or prosperity. And taking the holistic meaning of prosperity, it means having enough of everything, money, health, family and happiness. And the coin shows you how to be prosperous, stay prosperous and be happy while you’re at it.

To those who have no idea which kind of coin we’re talking about, it’s the kind of coin in the picture.
Ok, so he told me that the circular shape of the outer part of the coin symbolizes the environment. And in order to move forward, we need to be flexible. Like a circle, you need to show tact, you need to know how to disguise, to not show too much of your ‘angles’, because only then you can maneuver. In matters of trend, swim with the currents as how Jefferson would say.

But then again, you need to have your principles, your values, and it must be strong and always protected. Thus, the rectangle built in the middle of the coin. While busy making your way through, it’s important to have your own point of view, your values which all judgments should be based on. In order to make the best decisions, you need to have a strong base, like the right angles of the square. It must stay the same and stay strong throughout. As what Jefferson would further comment, in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

So, yup, do it like a Chinese coin I would say. You have to do what you got to do, but when the time comes when you need to choose, decide wisely. And in this line of work, you need to be on your toes at all times - money and girls come easy as they say, and its kinda true. It’s either you blend in and dissolve, or you’ll make it through and stand up tall at the end of the journey.

He didn’t look like a pain in the a** like he is known to be, but then again, he is a born salesman. I won’t trust him that easily. Hmmmmmmmm……..

Just in case you’re wondering, I’m blogging because I don’t have a tv to watch...... yup...

kapal terbang kertas

2009-11-07T23:01:00.002-05:00

It should be about time it gets cold in WL, late fall, or autumn if you’d prefer to call it that. I like fall and winter, a little bit of spring, but not too much of summer.

Ahhh, we owned the wolverines in their own sweet big house, but I missed the game.

Let’s talk about sleeping. Why is sleeping not listed as a hobby? Anyway, there’s this one semester during my Purdue days when sleeping was done only 4 days of the whole week. Understandably, I was struggling both to jack up my grades so the sponsor continues paying the tuition (after F-ing up the grades the semester prior) and the courses I took that semester were actually architected to torture. (It was also the semester where it hits me that sports coaches and athletes aren’t the only masochists I’ve had the privilege to work with).

Anyways, back to the sleeping part, well, not really the sleeping part, but the waking up part. Imagine that you went to bed at 430 am last early morning, you wake up at 7. And you stayed up late last night not to watch random youtube videos, but to finish up assignments that were specifically designed and tuned so that they are impossible to finish; something better than proving convoluted theorems or equations, something of that order. Then, u drag that heavy messed up head of yours into the bathroom for an early morning shower; you turn the lights on which would at the same time trigger the radio who an electrical engineering student has installed and integrated into the bathroom’s wiring system. Then, this random radio station situated within a certain radius away from the bathroom decided to transmit this song called Paper Planes sang by the daughter of some prominent Sri Lankan political activist.

So, now to the important part; imagine the significant virtual banging that the little woodman is making merrily in your head after that long night losing your head off on some divine problem, now topped up by this somewhat confusing low beat I-don’t-know-what-genre kind of song from the radio, with every trickle of warm water from the slightly yellowish shower-head adding to a more physical kind of banging motion into the equation….. You’ll find yourself venturing into another world. Everything pitch black, the only things visible were glowing little planet like objects, orbiting around a non-physical energy, even Pluto was there as far as I can remember. The whole body turns numb, you feel like you’re flying on thin air, elevated. It just makes you high; high in the bong sense of the word. You should try it sometime.

I imagine that it was nearly the same kind of high I get during fitness tests; when you’re trying to catch up with the rest of the team, and you just happen to be the weakest. The differences are that the fitness test kind of high lasts only for a few seconds and it hits you while you’re struggling to get enough air to survive, while the high because of this simultaneous banging in and to the head could last a whole 3 minutes in a relaxed environment. I don’t know if that getting high without the help of pills was nice, but it was definitely cool. And imagine going through that kind of messed up situation at least 5 times in the duration of a month.

Anyways, I don’t think I’ll be enjoying getting high anytime soon, because in the past 2 months, on average, I go to bed, (well, not necessarily a proper bed, but anywhere good enough to land my messed up head on) and black out at 10 pm on an average weekday. How twisted is that? Though on a smaller marginal benefit, I still enjoy the sleeping part, but the idea of having nothing to do after work is really annoying.

We were told to come up with this 10-year personal plan. Now I need to fit in people into it. Anyone interested, just let me know. Hehhh

Ahhhh… I’m going to Harvard Business School, or Harvard Law maybe? Hmmmm… maybe I should go beg someone for a million bucks. Then I can take some friends to explore nice places in a pimped up hot air balloon.

I got a non-HBR book this month. Hoyeahhh!!!...

Kembali bermain hoki, dan harap-harap tak hujan minggu ini, mahu bermain bola sepak bersama geng buruh kasar.

as nervous as the stock markets

2009-08-23T12:57:00.008-04:00

33 steps, 9.58 seconds, woww… You can nearly smell the rubber burning, watching him run. He could beat a cheetah on steroids any time of the day.

Sprinting is something I’m not good at. I lack the red muscles my coach said, or in layman’s term, I was just not born for it. And other than sprinting and music, I’ve discovered a couple of other things that just won’t suit me this past couple of weeks. Sales, and P*D kind of jobs are out of the question. So, a good thing, there’s a shorter list to choose from.

Anyways, I just got back from a surprisingly interesting 2-days-and-1-night assessment center. So, they are offering [XXXXXXXXXX] in the bag. It’s an okay deal I guess, coming from a non-oil-&-gas and a non-multinational-semicon corporation, and a good enough offer for a job I didn’t apply for. But it’s a managerial position; something engineering management related, but I don’t know how much engineering stuff will be involved. Should I take it? They need an answer in 24 hours.

By the way, the 3 hours drive to and from the program wasn’t really a pleasant one. It was raining rhinos on one stretch, and elephants on the next, and a combo of both with hints of capybaras on the following ones. It was like driving with your eyes tied up with a piece of black cloth, and having your attention threshold further reduced by a whole class of kids from kindergarten banging up drums and empty pails to the beat of an African Shaman dance, and the bottlenecks created by the road-upgrading activities along the way weren’t of much help either. There were at least 4 big collisions, and a total of 5 cars ended up in the ditch in the 2 different days.

Hmmmm…. I’ve been spending too much time on the road, and have been sleeping on hotel beds and floors for too many nights. I think I need to keep track of my carbon footprint; but hey, as they say it, as long as if it’s lower than Al Gore’s than its low enough.

I was just about to ask the guys if they wanted to go for a hike yesterday, but we might have already started fasting. We climbed Gunung Nuang the other day. It was a good hike. Just next time, maybe we should try going on a slower pace, take breakfast before the hike, and leave the fried chicken at home.

It’s my first Ramadan here in Malaysia after 4 years. Everyone was home yesterday except for number 3 who we’re assuming is really enjoying his summer fasting experience somewhere in a hot city in Deutschland, gorging down roasted lamb for iftar.

To those celebrating your Ramadan in West Lala or anywhere else on the other side of the globe, enjoy the long summer days… haha.. And to those celebrating across the ocean, but nearer to home, jangan sedih-sedih… hehhh..
So, selamat berpuasa dan beramal. I’m leaving you guys with this American Ramadan speech.

I am Sam just finished showing on TV…….Dakota Fanning is just woww.

And can anyone just tell me, what the hell does an engineer actually do?

we are all part of the same compost heap

2009-07-14T02:32:00.004-04:00

Errrr…. Hi??.....

It has been a while. I mean it’s been long enough for me to be able to reduce a combo of roti-canai-and-teh-tarik-kurang-manis or nasik-lemak-telur-mata-with-kopi-O into packs of ‘biasa boss’ or ‘biasa kak’ and get the precise info across to the receiving end at roughly 90% of the time. Well, there’s a lot of getting-used-to to do after 3 long years.

You haven’t seen and experienced Malaysia until you’ve found the best (though not necessarily the most decent) roti canai, nasik lemak and tarik kurang manis stall for breakfast in town, until you’ve driven up and down the PLUS highway, until you’ve watched a live superleague football fixture, until you’ve experienced KL traffic and THE Malaysian drivers, until you’ve gone balik kampung and went mengail ikan puyu, until you’ve eaten the king of fruits and his sweet maids and hairy knights and dukes and whatever, until you’ve gone chill out with friends at a waterfall, until you’ve enjoyed some good live music and poetry, until you’ve gone strolling aimlessly at a pasar malam and at one of those super-huge-malaysian-malls, until you’ve enjoyed watching and playing some good hockey and futsal, until you’ve done your wuduk at one of the big Jawa-style kolah, until you’ve gotten yourself a silly parking ticket, until you’ve enjoyed the one thing you can’t find in the states- cempedak goreng for tea, and until you’ve joined a convoy complete with police escorts.

If only we Malaysians can translate the kiasu-ness we show on the roads to the other productive stuff we do…….

Well, a lot have changed in 3 years. 3 years is all it takes for someone to have a change in interest from being passionate about his small banana plantation to giving his undivided attention to his longan and mata-kucing trees, and to see once acres of vast yellowish paddy fields transformed into a jungle of mature enough sawit plantation. Thankfully, at least reuniting and getting along with the family after the 3 years was not really that awkward.

Let’s see…. nothing much has happened since the emotional moment at which the jumbo’s rear wheels first touched the sizzling KLIA tarmac…. I’m still jobless and useless…. haha

The first 2 weeks, I couldn’t stop sweating. And there’s nothing poyo about it. Our body is this one complex and intelligent system which has this ability to adapt to changes, and these adjustments take time. And this whole adapting to the temperature of the surrounding is termed the comfort zone in ergonomics. If you’ve been fortunate enough to visit a 4-season region or you’ve been working in a plant producing these smart thermo-sets, there’s a near 75% chance that you can find a ‘comfort zone’ point printed on the device placed in between the HI and LO, but usually placed slightly closer to the HI point. And just so you get the idea, the comfort zone, which is actually a range of temperature, changes according to the season… blablabla… So, yeah, go attend an ergonomics class.

Hmmmm…. And now I think I get the idea of the importance of money, other than the fact that the stewardess in the business class cabin is always much sweeter. I can’t even join my football or soccer or hockey teams for matches regularly because I’m broke. Ok, I wrote my way off to some RM76.12 the last 4 weeks in the courtesy of Sue, and I get some extra cash from the skim-bantuan-penganggur-muda, but the toll alone costs nearly RM80 for a return trip to KL. So, actually, there’s a lot you can’t do without money….
Hmmm…so, this is how it is to live under the poverty level. haishhhh….. Why is it that people are more interested to pay for a game of footie in a small square, rather than playing in one of the public fields, outdoors for free? Friggin pop-culture….

And since the chances of getting the Louisville job is getting slimmer, if I really want to have a shot in the middle class, I think I should start attending job interviews, and to do that, I need to first update my resume.
hmmmmm…. maybe tomorrow....hehhh…. The middle class is a tad too saturated don’t you think? We should all then find spouses from the higher line of order so there shall be evident mobility!!!...

imagine waking up to this every single morning~..... (yellowstone, summer '08)

Kena pergi panjat gunung!!!!!!....
And go have tea with the married poet (-_-)….. again…..

Fun fact:
Out of the 6 receptionists in the 6 offices I went to, 3 are named Su, and 4 out of the 6 are from ipoh.

pomp and circumstance

2009-05-20T08:18:00.009-04:00

Last week, another proud Purdue astronaut went on a spacewalk to fix the great old Hubble, and Mark Polansky and David Wolf will be tweeting in orbit next week. And this past weekend, while Giggsy and the guys were wrapping up the race for the title, some 1300 proud boiler engineers launched over Mr. Markov’s arc to move on to the next state after an approximately short 5.1 years of sojourn time here in WL. Symbolic ceremonies are always hassle packed, but I think I like this one, so, maybe I should go to a few more. I was not planning on going at first, but my mom insisted. I think my mom didn’t go to her commencement ceremony when she got her degree, and I doubt that my dad went to any of his, except for his PhD maybe.

shitty iPhone camera

Sorry I don’t have much pictures to show because everybody else were busy with their families, I didn’t hire a professional because I have no money, and because of the recent swine flu hit, everybody seemed to prefer to keep their distance. Heck, we were even told not to shake hands on stage, just a simple hat tap was allowed. Man, this pig flu is annoying. And i should've really gone with the flops and shorts instead.

Anyways, it sure feels good to get this part of life done with. Honestly, I never thought I was going to make it this far. Talking about going to a tough program, this is where your best hasn’t been and never will be good enough (unless you’re one of those geniuses who gets a 90% when the class average is 35%); I got my first C the first semester my freshman year, and the first D the first semester my sophomore year. 2 of my first matsaleh friends switched to management school the second semester our freshmen year and a couple of our Malaysian friends got kicked out of school a couple of semesters in. So, to say that the past 4 years have been fun wouldn’t be that accurate, but it was really humbling (well, there’s nothing more humbling than having your 1st semester GPA telling you “You’re not really that smart enough to be here Mr.!!!!” right in your face). But Alhamdulillah, I’m just happy I managed to get through this.

Ok, this is the bell tower. It is a very well known fact that it is very hard to get out of here on time with the paper, that they have this legend. There’s a seal under the bell tower, and it is said to be cursed, and any student who walks across the seal will not graduate in four years. So, it is practical enough to see these engineering nerds take the longer path (walking around the tower), instead of the shortest one (walking under and through it), because the practice is much more feasible. By the way, I think I can ask for something very expensive from my dad since I manage to graduate before turning 22, it’s just this thing we had when I was younger.

As for the ceremony itself, I think everyone enjoyed the speeches and the music. Everything was simply fantastic. But I can’t help myself from thinking on how penat it is to put on a smile like that through all the whole 4 sessions in all the 3 days, madam president, you’re the best!!!!

So, now what? I should go seek for the self, seek for some enlightenment. Maybe I should pack up some Tolstoy’s and see what I might find in Alaska. Or I should go see the Dalai Lama and see what this orang-biasa has to say. Or I should join a Pondok school, and get that part of the self filled in a bit. Or maybe you people can donate me some money, so I can go on a 1 month trip across Europe. Or maybe, I should just stop thinking………

Ahhhh… it feels good to wake up and having to think of nothing (for a while at least, carpe diem as the imam and Robin Williams would say). By the way, thank you to those who came in the morning in place of the family, haha…. And thanks for the presents (people get colognes for graduation? And I’m still trying to figure out how to get this one humongous chocolate block down my stomach)

And as for the farewell parties, you just can’t beat the feast, Mick, a guy I knew from football, threw out; we were served with 2 whole roasted lambs Saudi style, just like the one Anthony Bourdain had, it was awesome. And Japanese with the Koreans was great, and the one in Cactus was OK I guess, but I left early.

We should go fishing.

Durden T., BSIE

-bum in training-

"A kid? I smoke, I snort. I've killed and robbed. I'm a man. "

2009-05-02T13:38:00.008-04:00

Let’s start out with a riddle;

“Which creature in the morning goes on four legs, at mid-day on two, and in the evening upon three, and the more legs it has, the weaker it be?”

Read on for the answer.

Anyway, let’s talk Greek. So, it’s amazing on how one very uncommon word can pop up and be discussed one too many times in a span of a month.

A couple of weeks ago, professor J, my sociology professor, invited me over for some second hand smoke; I was passing this bench under the tree where he will sit everyday without fail, summer or winter, sun or snow, for his nicotine and caffeine fix, when he called me over to join him. I think the majority of his students like him; lecturing in 501 jeans and crewneck t-shirt, Freud jokes, and most importantly, he knows how to teach. I was in his class 2 summers ago, the only 'foreigner' and the only engineering major in the class, and the only one who scored above 94% in all the exams (no wonder these people from the other side of campus hate us so much, haha); so, that was how we first got acquainted.

Anyways, we talked quite a bit about everything, from how he still doesn’t get how soccer is the world’s most famous sport, and why baseball isn’t, to his ebony general physician girlfriend from Chicago, to Eastern people’s mentality, to what I think I will be doing after school. So, we jumped about everything for about half an hour, with him dominating most of the conversation with the different theories and quotes from about everyone famous enough.

Then we came to ‘peripeteia’. It started when he was telling me on how easier it’s going to be for someone like me who has no particular passion for about anything. At least he said, I won’t be wasting my time thinking of the things I want to do, but instead, I could just go on with the flow, and discover. But, analyzing is still important, because we don’t want to come to a point in which Aristotle calls a tragedy. So, from there on, he was giving me literature, drama and film lessons, from Hamlet to Oedipus Rex.

(A quick disclaimer, I’ve never really studied the story, so, the facts might not be quite right.)

So, King Oedipus’s story is about this king who was adopted by another royal family from another state, after he was abandoned in a field as an infant instead of being killed as suggested by the oracle his father consulted. Then, once he grew older, he went to see the Delphic oracle, and he was told that he was destined to mate his own mother and kill his own sire. So, desperate to escape his foretold fate, he ran away, not knowing that the king and queen of the state were only his adopted parents.

While on the road, he got in a quarrel with this man on who has the right of passage on a one lane road, which ended in Oedipus killing the man, unaware of the fact that the man he killed is actually his real father. Thus, the first part of the prophecy was fulfilled. And he went on with his journey and entered the city of Thebes.

And before he could enter the city, he was stopped by the smoking hot Sphinx, who guarded the entrance to the city. The Sphinx, known for her riddles, told Oedipus the riddle mentioned earlier. And being a bright king, he managed to solve it; man was the answer, he crawls as a child, walks on 2 legs when old enough, and some will need the assistance of a walking stick at an older age (maybe there weren’t any wheelchairs yet back then, so, the Sphinx left the wheel part out). The Sphinx, so distraught to find someone smarter than she was, killed herself by jumping off the cliff, marking the day on which the zoomorphic species got extinct.

With the Sphinx dead, Thebes was free from the Sphinx’s curse once and for all. Being delighted and all, they awarded Oedipus the kingship, and he married the queen, who is actually his biological mother; the second part of the prophecy, fulfilled. They should have really visited a genetic expert before getting married….

Long story short, Oedipus realized everything (who his biological parents were) when he was trying to solve the case of the murdering of Laius, his wife’s former husband, the former king of Thebes, his biological father. The whole mystery was solved when the shepherd who left Oedipus in the field as an infant who was also the sole witness of the killing of Laius by Oedipus was called to the floor.

And that very moment when Oedpius realized that the woman he was having babies with all this while was actually his biological mother, is called peripetia.

A sudden realization after a tragedy, a turning point maybe. You can always check the dictionary for a more complete and precise definition.

And the story of Hamlet, you can find that yourselves.

The next week after that small pep talk with Professor J, I was talking to my sister on the phone, when we ended up talking about peripetia. And I think you got it right, Freud called his sick idea Oedipus complex.

And last night, after some casual volleyball and basketball at the rec, I was browsing through the videos on TED for some motivation. And I found Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs. Enjoy the video. The earlier part of the talk has a little touch of Chuck-Palahniuk-reading-Guts on it. And he explains the idea of perepeteia very well.

Enough with Aristotle and the Sphinx. Why is it when we talk about passion and love, we always talk about the arts? We talk about the neurotic painter’s passion being reflected and infused in the disturbing abstract of the art he scribbled and nibbled on the piece of square canvas. How about all the doctors, engineers, math teachers and marketing people? And why do these oracles have to talk in riddles and kiasan all the time?

And at last, I’m done with the jacking up the efficiency project. The company having already saved at least $180,000 a year by having unpaid college students coming up with that kind of possible solution, with a possibility of doubling their production at 75% of the cost, memang cilake la kalau tak bagi A.

Yesterday was a special day, with the rain complementing the mood, groups of students screaming after each class session, and some were already seen giving hugs to friends, for goodbyes … it was interesting. Yesterday was the last day of class for the semester.

Cita-cita baru minggu ini......... nak jadi Chuck Yeager.

by the way, the title is a quote by Steak-and-Fries from Cidade de Deus (City of God)..... hmmmm... kena belajar hisap rokok....

X-men on Monday?

"heroin, mug's game...."

2009-04-13T01:53:00.005-04:00

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the future lately, and I don’t like doing that. Get me a desk, some money, and a pair of these, and I’m a happy man.

We lost again yesterday, 8-7. I got 2 goals and 3 assists, but I was also guilty of giving away the ball to Fred, an opponent player, which resulted into a stupid soft goal. Nevertheless, it was still a good match; we crawled back in into the game after trailing 8-3. But a lost is still a lost. Anyways, we still have intramural playoffs this week to look forward to.

And to some soccer back home. The local soccer scene just got a little more exciting; getting a story published under the headlines tab on ESPNsoccernet sure is something. Halim Napi is one mad man, and the home crowd, wow. I’m not implying that I’m giving my utmost support to hooliganism and such, but yeah, we’ve had cases of home supporters throwing stones to the visiting team’s busses and all, but putting a police vehicle on fire sure is something new. At least, I look up to these people more than those Melayu Malaysia perasan Red Army and Malaysian perasan Steve Hickmont. I have a lot of catching up to do before going back home. And the national hockey team went on to lose 3-1 to India in the Azlan Shah Cup tournament finals.

And talking about hooligans, I just finished watching the rise of the footsoldier. It is an OK movie, maybe it is just a little bit too long, and it gets a little lackluster towards the end. Anyways, I’d recommend this to anyone who is into gangster or crime films, and be warned that it is a little graphic. You can find a short description of the movie here. And the one big thing that I learnt from the film is, stay away from drugs. Maybe money is the root of all evil, but drugs is the pinnacle of it, the point where if you fall, you’ll fall the hardest.

Back on the future; I can’t really see why I need to conform to the society’s brand of a successful person. It’s not anything existentialism……… I guess. But well, let’s skip the crap.

And talking about successful people, Mr. Onitsuka and Carlton Leach have these characteristics in common; they have a gift, and they got guts. You can have all the muscle and the money, but you need to have bakat to go up the ladder. And the one big difference between them is that one planned to be successful, and the other one did it just for the thrills. So, failing to plan is a plan to fail crap is really not that true I guess. Well, planning ahead is still good though; but it is not right to generalize- that’s what my writing lecturer told me at least.

More on successful writers, I bumped into Nadim last week, and he made me read a short story entitled Guts from Palahniuk’s Haunted. Palahniuk is one sick and amazing writer. He is so good that up to 60 people have fainted listening to the story of Guts during his book readings. I didn’t faint, but I just couldn’t help myself from uttering a couple of bad words aloud throughout the excruciating few pages with the rather animated looking Nadim laughing the whole time. You guys should try it sometime, or you can find a couple of videos of him reading it on youtube. But, just be warned, unless you have a sick and twisted mind, it is going to be agonizingly disturbing.

I still haven’t decided if I’ll be running the 5k next week, so, a pair of shoes with the fancy gel has to wait. And my younger sister will be coming over to the states sometime this week. I need flight tickets….. Houston ke, Philly? And yesterday’s forum was just horrible.

Letih. Perlu pulang ke pangkal jalan.

a better loser

2009-04-06T03:27:00.008-04:00

At last, I had the chance to attend the club’s annual regional conference for the first time last week. The focus was on how modern medicine interfaces with and impacts our society and the world. Among the topics covered include Biotechnology, ethical issues regarding to genetic testing, adjusting to an aging population, the rising cost of public health, etc.

Since it’s near impossible to summarize everything here, let’s just talk about the slot which I think is the coolest. Firstly, I didn’t really plan on attending this particular parallel slot because I was afraid that I was going to offend a handful of informed people by not laughing to their clever inside jokes (I never had any biology, not even in high school, and the topic presented was ethical issues in genetic testing, in a big conference where the attendees know a little bit of everything), but I just happen to have entered the wrong room, and when I realized that, it was already too late to get out and join the other group next door. Anyhow, at the end of the day, it wasn’t really that bad, though I had to constantly google up the new terms and jargons used by both the esteemed presenter and the hyper-cool audience throughout the session.

And what I can conclude from the lecture is this- the future is just plain scary. Imagine this, the setting from the X-men series, and how the one main difference between the mutants and the rest of the human population is causing havoc around the world; just this time, no wolverine, no sexy slimy blue woman, and replace the x-gene with some other genetic traits…… Ok, that’s not a very good explanation.

Ok, anyways, we already have enough problems with racial, religious, sexual orientation, and social class discrimination, and the last thing we want is to have groups of people being discriminated because of their genes. And in this case, when we talk about discrimination, it goes beyond the social prejudice. It involves issues regarding to money, well being and protection in terms of insurance plans and some other sensitive issues including abortion, etc. As an example, with advancements in biotech, such as the availability of the pre-natal genetic testing, in the future, without the right laws and regulations, it is possible that one day, parents can choose to keep the unborn or to simply perform abortion if it doesn’t really go along with the specifications of the kind of child they want. And in the future, marriage, or love in general, will have to go beyond the psychological chemistry, with the unrestricted genetic profiling coming into play. And as we in general just don’t like to be labeled and treated differently because of certain stigmas, then, we will be forced to choose, thus the issues with selective personality and all. Anyways, the 2 examples are just a small portion of the problems that will surface without the right laws and guidelines concerning genetic testing. And as we were informed, the laws governing the issue today is lagging years behind compared to where we have arrived today.

And the other topics discussed were in fact, just as interesting. And all in all, other than the roasted vege for lunch; the 2-day conference was awesome. And I was just a little disappointed that I had to skip a couple of slots because I just had to join the team for the WC tournament last Saturday and share a portion of the humiliation of getting whipped, losing by 8 goals to 1.

It was a really big slap to our big fat pride; at least 3 guys I know and one random guy I can’t really remember who, came up to me on campus asking what the hell happened. And since the intramural game was cancelled yet again due to the storm, I was available to play for the team for our 2nd game of the indoor tourney. And since its Macheda’s day and we didn’t really want to steal his thunder, we thought that pulling an upset by winning the game was a bit inappropriate; so, our 1st ever WC win will have to wait until next week. hmmmmm…. We really need to find a way to play against guys double our size,....... and how to scramble from very small dogs when playing outdoors…… and I think I can cross ‘playing in the world cup’ out from my bucket list.

And yup, the team got ‘beet’ out, but the future is bright. I like Hansbrough, but I want MSU to win. We’ll see.

Btw, imagine this, liyana fiza (estrella) with a degree in biology from MIT, and she’s all Zidane………..

And good luck Mr. PM.

big shoulders

2009-03-23T01:33:00.014-04:00

So, spring break is finally over.

Tomorrow, the sacred boilermaker campus will be swarmed by proud insomniac Neil Armstrong and Brian Lamb wannabes yet again. With the sun shining gloriously after a long hiatus, and the basketball team advancing to the sweet 16 , there’s a lot to look forward to, other than the classes with Korean instructors.

Anyways, it was a well spent-low-productivity-level break. We learned playing mahjong Hong Kong style, played poker, had barbecue, watched basketball games and movies, went to Chicago, played soccer and football, and most importantly, we slept well.

Ok, let’s talk about the impromptu Windy City trip. First of all, Chicago is a very cool big city; the air feels cleaner and the traffic is really not that bad compared to NYC or KL. And if you’re into architecture, you should really go see Chicago (the SEARS tower et al). And what I think I like the most about the city are the cool sculptures all around the city, and the gorgeous parks down the long Lake Michigan shore-line. And just so you know how windy and cold the city is, random local people were talking about how warm and beautiful the day was, when the temperature was at 1 degree centigrade, and the wind was gushing constantly into our faces.

and i've actually upgraded to a point-and-shoot...

And talking about sculptures, at last, I had the chance to see the god bless america sculpture up close. I was excited about the sculpture because I was trapped in a conversation about the American Gothic Painting (which the sculpture was based on) with some guys some time ago, so, yeah, it was cool to see a piece of art and actually knowing something about it.

Btw, I’ve been to Chicago for at least a dozen times before, but being a lousy tourist and all, I haven’t really visited the City of Big Shoulders until recently. And i'm glad i did.

So, if you’re planning to go to the Second City for a visit, you could do the usual tourist stuff like go up the Sears Tower, go visit the Museums and the Aquarium, go to one of the beaches, visit Navy Pier, see the cool stuff in Millennium Park, go to the Planetarium, enjoy the parks, and walk and shop along Michigan Avenue. And if you have some extra cash, go see a theatre or go see the Bulls, or the Bears, or the Cubs or the White Sox play in their respective stadiums. And if you go on St. Patty’s day, you’ll have a chance to see the parade and the river dyed green.

So, yeahh… everyone will miss doing nothing.
The team will play the other Husky this Thursday, and let’s prove Obama wrong.

Wazza, I feel you man… and BTFU!!!!!

people with no other options

2009-03-09T02:24:00.006-04:00

hmmmmmm……...

It’s Monday again. So, let’s start out with something good. I came across this entry on MM’s blog. I’m not very fond of motivational writings nor am I a fan of new age affirmation, but maybe some of you would find it inspirational. And I’m putting it up because the guys on the team thought it was pretty impressive for a single straight guy to be able to recognize a certain designer’s name in a song. But to my defense, I’ve never seen any of his shoes nor have I stepped in into any of his boutiques including the online ones, and heck, the guy was born in Penang!!!!!... So, like any other Malaysians, of course I’ve heard about him from somewhere. Btw, the nice entry dedicated specially to the Monday-haters out there was written by Jimmy Choo’s son.

Enough with Monday, let’s move on to something much more thrilling…. like the economy. News has it that the unemployment rate in the US could go above a staggering 9% by year’s end. And I’m assuming that as people are losing jobs and all, green issues have lost its appeal. And heck, even Rupert Murdoch has been said to be losing his magic touch, which explains why the media has more important things to focus on.

Anyways, let’s leave that to the pros to elaborate. Let’s talk materials economy. Well, maybe you should just click on the link and just watch and listen to Annie Leonard’s cool presentation on The Story of Stuff. This project has been around for quite some time I guess. To those who haven’t seen it yet, enjoy, and to those who have, sorry I got nothing to crap about; I have my own linear system on a finite planet to worry about.

And just what on earth is going on with the country?

Just my 2 cents, I think this guy has a point. Well, my dad used to tell me a couple dozen of times on how they should’ve stopped Khir Johari (if I’m not mistaken) from pulling out jawi from the system. And whatever the resolution might be, let’s just hope that it will be in the favor of the country, the rakyat and the generations to come.

And one more thing, let’s not make ‘taking it to the streets’ a trend; because you pull up the same trick too many times, the opponent wouldn’t have to rely too much on his reflexes to make the tackle anymore, not to mention it loses its WOW factor. Mannn, we are one twisted nation. Mr./Mrs. Politicians, you can start cleaning the mess up by pulling your heads out of your arses.

And after some long depressing hours of Youtube-ing, trying to reestablish a connection to home which I haven’t been back to for quite a while, jumbled in the middle of the long list of videos of FRUs and tear gas shots, new legendary tree stories, samseng-like raids in the parliament compound, and some local soccer talk, I found this.

So, have a great week everyone……

March Madness is coming…..

bulan 2.0

2009-01-30T01:36:00.007-05:00

Being here, at the cradle of astronauts, I’ve had the privilege to see the first man who walked on the moon from 20 yards out, and meet a couple of other ‘real’ astronauts along the way, including Mark Polansky and a couple of his friends.

And quite recently, the geek club had the opportunity to meet up and have a rocket-science discussion with a prominent rocket scientist and the CEO cum the president of an aerospace company. They were here to talk about the company and how they are progressing with the lunar x-prize competition. You can look it up here.

And yup, there’s a Malaysian team competing too. And what is more exciting is, is the fact that the team is based in Semanggol, which is just about a 30 minute drive away from boring PB. A launch pad in PB then?.. ..lol. I’m guessing that they’re looking at going as a payload on someone else’s rocket.

Anyway, before you people start hating and throwing bad words at the company for wasting money on this random competition, keep on reading. Firstly, by now, you should already notice that the competition is for privately-funded companies only, so, there shouldn’t be much problem with wasting the rakyat’s money and all.

But then, you might not be naïve enough to not think that the government might be funding it anyways. So, to the next point, as I was informed, the $20 million is really not the main catch as most of the teams are looking at working on a $100 million cost. It is more of a chance to make a statement and to build reputation and credibility; it’s more of a long-term investment. Though the solar panels on the moon don’t sound that realistic and all, there is more beyond the prize money I guess. But again, if you have the money, and you got the management part right, then, you’re probably on the right track. As we were told, it is more of a project management thing than it is rocket science.
And google’s catch? I heard that they are going to put a webcam on the moon. I don’t know.

Anyhow, I had an interview with the company the next day, which I did pretty badly in. They won’t be hiring me anyway because they have investments in some defense related stuff. And since they won’t allow internationals to join the US based teams because of some safety and top secret technology regulations and all, to the rest of the teams out there who are interested in having an additional leech on the team, do leave me a message. I have a couple of possible proposals we can work on; probably adopting Robert Full’s work on the rover maybe?

Keyser Soze dah jatuh nombor 2
Back to the job hunting part, given the so-so economic condition right now, the job hunting game has just got a little tougher. A couple of my friends just got informed that they’ve lost the positions they were guaranteed to fit in after graduation. These people have been taking every summer job possible for at least 2 years in every imaginable big corporation around, so you can just imagine how hard it is going to be for people like me who has no prior industrial experience and with not a very sturdy academic standing. I get invited to interviews and all, and I even went on to the more advanced 3rd and 4th round interviews, but in the end, my visa just won’t allow me to go further. But the most frustrating part is that they only tell you that they won’t be hiring after the 3rd or the 4th stages, but, what the hell, it’s never a bad thing to give it a shot right? But there goes my dream car….. ahah

Anyways, it’s a good thing that I’m here, and am in this department. Because our FYP, as most of you would call it, are the coolest kinds of FYPs available in the whole wide world. Because we’re a different breed of engineers, we don’t do much stuff like inventing underwater walking robots or frequency converters or such. So, we need to go out and take projects from cool companies who offer benefits such as sponsored private jet rides for site visits, travelling allowances etc, and act as consultants. Initially, my group was assigned to the coolest project available this semester, involving the biggest semiconductor company in the world and a prestigious medical school nearby in making improvements on a new system. However, we were assigned to take on another project at the very last minute. So, there goes the golden ink on my resume.

Anyhow, the new project isn’t really that bad. I haven’t heard of the company before either, but it turns out that it is the biggest player in the wireless device supply chain business. And I hope that everything’s going to go on smoothly. And better, at least the other 2 members in the team have got some pretty decent industrial experience on their backs. So, if I get lost along the way, leeching is still an option. ahah.

So, sebelum subuh esok, I’m off to Indy, 630 in the freaking morning.

I'm doing science and I'm still alive

2009-01-13T01:10:00.011-05:00

In 17 days 919 Palestinians were killed by Israel including 284 children & 100 women, while 4260 others were injured

anyway, remember primary school language classes, when we had to write essays on ‘my most humiliating experience’ or ‘pengalaman yang tidak boleh dilupakan sepanjang hidupku’? Everyone or at least those not adventurous enough would write about their first day at school, wetting their pants because they were too terrified to ask the evil teacher to go out to the loo, or better, how they cried like a baby under the wooden desk when the dad had to leave?

btw, I didn’t make up the crying under the desk part, but let’s keep that for another day shall we. Man, I can’t stop laughing, sorry eh…. hahaha.. And I still can’t stop laughing.

And because we were not trained to be adventurous, and the one example that the teacher gave is supposed to be the best one, I had to write down some lame lies every time we had to write something about the aforementioned topic. Though it was a good way to learn fiction, it was still pretty lame.

But I digress…..

Anyways, I was just trying to enlighten you that I didn’t cry at all on my first day of school. Ahah…. I did look back the instant my dad left, right after dropping me at my desk, when all the other parents waited for their kids outside the class. But I didn’t shed a single tear.
Because the class teacher thought I was so brave, and anarchism was yet to be integrated into my dictionary, I was appointed the ‘penolong ketua kelas’. Farhan was the class rep, only because he was the biggest and the tallest kid in class, and because Mrs. Chew, our class teacher knew his dad, Mr. Wilson Yeo. But no hard feelings, we went on to be best friends up until today.
But thinking back on it, I think I didn’t cry because I didn’t know we should or we were expected to cry on our first day at school. And I didn’t know that parents were expected to wait for us outside the classroom the whole first day of school. But I’m glad I didn’t know. hehh…..

And today was the first day of school all over again; supposedly the last first day of school for some of us. I’ll probably be staying for the summer, I don’t know yet. Anyways, back to today, it went pretty well I guess, except for one of the classes. I think the professor is a psycho, I don’t know. And I’m in a modeling class again, mathematical modeling to be exact... ahah... lame gile…..

I've experiments to run, there is research to be done… (lagu rockband smlm)

And to some soccer, most of the ‘liga competitive malam jumaat’ guys are back in snowy WL. So, we had a game just now, but we had to stop early because the roller-hockey guys wanted to play on the court we’re sharing with them. And just so you know, every time the two groups come at the same time, tension will flare, but thank god, tonight, only bad language was used, and no punches were thrown. I’ll be writing to the paper tomorrow. But I had to stop playing early anyway; I pulled a muscle in my right thigh. And AJ, the guy I’ve been playing with for at least a year now, actually lives opposite my apartment. hampehh….

Anyways, welcome back to school. Let’s hope Friday will come by in a flash.

bye-bye coach Dungy.

yang lapar dan sakit kena sepak.

*terdelete entry sebelum ni.

flossing

2008-12-20T06:58:00.005-05:00

So, other than the other penniless international students who can’t afford to get a ticket home for christmas, and those less fortunate to have an exam on the last Saturday of the semester, the rest of the population has gone balik kampung. WL is nearly empty.

anyways, just so you people know that I’m still alive, let’s get something posted. And yup, like miss aphrodite, say if I die, I don’t want anyone to leave any comments or leave anything on the shoutbox. And I’m fine btw; I don’t think I’m having any suicidal thoughts at the moment. Don’t worry.

hmmmmmm………… OK.
so, feynman is a genius; he is so smart that he uses his brain to charm the ladies. When he was younger, he likes to read the encyclopedia, and he uses the little cool stuff he knows to get to the girls.

But I digress.

anyways, if you’re a knowledge junkie, or if you think that the Feynman way may help you with the opposite sex, this site may interest you. TED. So, basically, it used to be an exclusive club for the very cool people. But thanks to the WWW, now, everyone can enjoy the pleasure of getting their fix of some cool new knowledge of the pineapple express grade. So, through personal experience, I have to say that I didn’t have much luck with the girls, but for the ego and for the ‘feel good’ purposes, this site is surely one of the best. So, do check it out.
But just don’t come running to me tomorrow and start talking like you really know the shit. There’s a very big difference in ‘being informed of something’ and ‘really knowing something’.
Sorry about that, but I just get annoyed when people go all gung-ho with the little new thing they just read out of somewhere, and start making some stupid and simplistic conclusions and arguments that just doesn’t make sense sometimes.
But to the rest of you nice rational people, still, just check it out.

And still to the knowledge junkies out there, or if you’re just someone who is just tired of reading about gay rights, Obama, China, terrorism, bailout issues and India, Mental Floss might be the magazine for you. It’s a fun read, loaded with cool facts and trivia, with a little Freakonomics touch on it. I picked one up a couple of weeks ago, and I literally read every single page in it, cover to cover. So, anyone has any idea where to find free magazine subscription deals?

And yup, since I’ve been fondly ‘collecting’ books instead of actually reading them, anyone kind enough with extra pocket money, I won’t feel bad to find this in the mailbox. hehhh….

adoiii... mane nak pegi cuti ni? We went Bear Grills in Yellowstone last summer. Maybe I should try doing it Samantha Brown’s or Anthony Bourdain’s or Andrew Zimmermen’s way this winter. Leceh betul ramai-ramai ni. Maybe I should take a plane to the Amazons.

-yang pancit main rockband2-

going postal

2008-11-27T20:03:00.017-05:00

It was a tough week. It was TOUGH, tough. Everyone was going postal. Everyone was angry, and stressed out, and disappointed and just simply uptight. And multiply those negative moods and emotions with the depressingly still, cold early winter weather; you can just feel the grimness in the air once you set your eyes on the first brown-brick building on campus. It’s very close towards the last day of the semester, crunch time; which means minimal sleep, no weekends, 12 hours in the lab, and 3 hours at home a day kind of week. Heck, everything is due on the same day.

So, what better way to get rid of all the foul emotions? Go hook up with some crazy people.
Here, we have this cool tradition called the Breakfast Club. People dress up in Halloween costumes and get drunk as early as 7 in the morning on game days.
And what better Saturday to at last cross that one out from the ‘25 before you graduate to do list’ than on the last game day of the season, on your last rivalry game as a student here. BTW, I don’t drink, and the slightest smell of liquor makes me sick.
Anyways, I didn’t have a costume, so I went along with a couple of ‘light-drinker’ mates dressed up as King Cantonna. We met up with some friends at one of the bars on the strip I had some coke, left 15 minutes later, and went straight home, back to bed before waking up later in the morning for the game. Sleeping time don't come easy these days...

And heck, it was one of the best games ever. We got them right in the face. What better thing to do after a hellish week than to scream your hearts out for your team on a cold depressing Saturday afternoon along with 68000 other spectators and see the other team get a beating?

The game, it should rank somewhere up there, probably tied for the top spot with the game against Michigan some weeks ago, in my personal all time most memorable Ross-Ade games. It is probably the best clash between two sub-.5 teams ever. The energy was amazing, though more free hugs were given out during the Michigan game I guess.

And the game was the one last one for the seniors, and more importantly, the last one for the living legend, the coach.
It didn’t snow as I hoped it would, but it was one perfect last one for everyone.

one!!!.. two!!!.. three!!!... four!!!... 1st down B***H!!

one for the record books

it was always gonna be a special day, so let's bring 3 of those today... why not?... lol

the bucket is somewhere in there

they took a beating

one for the legend

one last speech...

one last song...from the man who restored the pride back himself

where pride happens

And as football season commences, comes basketball season. The team is in the NIT preseason tip-off final game tomorrow, and everyone is looking forward to the game against the Blue Devils next week.

And yeah, next time, get VIP….

The girl reading Kierkegaard, who are you??...

leg breaking

2008-11-01T08:24:00.010-04:00

So, I was facing this big dilemma. I don’t like to choose, especially when it comes down to choosing people. If it were a staffing decision, then, a simple linear model would suffice, but this one is way beyond complicated.

But a man has to do what a man got to do. And Dawes’ and Ben Franklin’s long explanation on prudential algebra brought me down to this decision which cost me $20. I chose a Polish-born Nobel Prize winner over my favorite scientist, who also happens to be one of the coolest physicist, science idol and writer ever; Rotblat over Feynman.

And after reading one of the best composed and sincere writings by a scientist or a philosopher I’ve ever came across, I signed the pledge.

And then paid the $20 membership fee, and got my cool t-shirt and other ‘free’ stuff.

Anyways, the Student Pugwash is all about engaging students to promote the socially responsible use of science and technology, and in order to create effective social change, students must first understand the issues at stake, and then contemplate their ethical and moral responsibility to themselves and to society as a whole.

And as I can’t really get a consistent 10 hours of sleep a day and not that much soccer or football or sweat anymore this semester because of schoolwork and all, I decided to take the passenger’s seat for this particular intention, by the door in the backseat. Well, I didn’t get myself all messy with the administration stuff, but I’ve learnt some pretty cool and great new stuff from the very people who are pioneers and the crème de la crème in their respective already cool fields.
Seriously, after the short an hour or so lecture, you’ll get out feeling a little bit more intelligent, which is good to feed the deflated ego after having to do too much schoolwork and projects that make you feel dumber than a 12 year old giraffe. And some of the lectures even helped me change my stand on certain issues. Anyway, the most important lesson I’ve got so far is that, information, small or little goes a very long way. For $20 (actually the lecture series can be attended for free), now I’m a big advocate of nuclear energy, I have a pretty good idea on what to feed my wife during and even before pregnancy, how calico cats and women are the same, a new dimension on the black gold, corn and the energy issue, and I get to meet some new cool geeks.

So, yup, Feynman is still the favorite and the coolest scientist ever, but Rotblat, Einstein and a couple of their scientist friends made the better choice. Well, consistent to what Erick Erikson suggested, people in between their teen years, up to their early 20’s usually have this Identity vs. Role confusion. So, choosing what’s cool and what you’re supposed to be and do is pretty confusing at this age.

And talking about another favorite writer, I had a chance to hear a lecture and get my book signed by Mr. Tom Friedman some one month ago, the same night I saw Frank Duong at the Union, the night before he scored a touchdown out of an interception. He talked about his book which I yet to get a chance to read beyond page 34, and a couple of his personal experience which was great. And with this entire APEX thing going on, maybe the particular university back home should really look into this energy engineering technology thing, which according to Freidman, is the new ‘it’ thing, the new big tomorrow. And as I was 12th in line out of the nearly packed 6,025 capacity Elliot Hall of Music audience during the book signing, I get to have a little chat with him, but I forgot to ask him to sign his other book I brought along.
Ohh, again, if you somehow managed to find this humble blog, thanks for the book……

We went to see my classmate take the basketball court during the halloween night exhibition game last night. We were pretty good. The future is bright.

And for one last time, let's go slay some wolverine for lunch.

-the best indoor kicks yet--

-The tired, deflated, stressed, and in need of a pair of new kicks, a new graphic card and to break some legs-

Hoppípolla

2008-10-13T04:07:00.005-04:00

The House of Representatives or the UN should pass a law or some kind of an international policy stating that the purpose of school breaks should be solely for chilling out and relaxing, and the assigning of schoolwork or projects during the breaks should be made illegal unconditionally.
As a friend of mine would say, this is happening because people like ‘us’ are merely watching from the sidelines; we should have more of ‘our kind’ be directly involved in this nerdy business. And until that happens, our species will have to suffer.

Anyways, I was watching Planet Earth encore on Discovery Channel, and I remember watching the kind of documentary during school breaks when I was younger, aired on TV3, during the Alam Ria Cuti Sekolah slot, at 1130 in the morning. As far as I could remember, even back then, at that level, teachers have been violating the purpose and the spirit of school breaks.

Getting back to the documentary shows, I particularly like the series on the Great Plains, especially the savannah and the prairies and also the one on the great Nile. And the animals can be broken down into three categories, the good ones, the cool ones, and the evil ones. The good animal group includes the whales, elephants, antelopes, zebras, buffalos, caribous, rhinos, any kind of bears including the grizzlies, and the hippopotamus. On the other hand, the cool group consists of the lions, the orca, dolphins, tigers, leopards, the big horn, platypus, the silverback, white m furred mountain goats, and at times baboons and crocodiles. And the usual suspects include the great white, sometimes the seals, herring birds, Nile crocs and the ever ugly hyenas.

Besides the animals, the other most interesting part of this kind of documentary is when they fast forward the video to show how the plants bloom when seasons change. First, a lot of rain will flood the barren land, and then after the flood clears up, new greenish life would sprout out from the seeds brought in by the flood or from the ones buried in the ground the whole hot torturous summer, after that, the sprouts would grow taller and bigger, and then beautiful colorful flowers will bloom, and suddenly, in a snap,the boring barren land would turn into this beautiful lush greenish heaven where more lives in the forms of mammals and birds and reptiles will dwell in again, until the next step in the cycle repeats. But technology has made things even more fascinating. In one of the episodes of Planet Earth, this one scene, in which a great white was shooting out of the surface after snapping a seal in between it’s jaws, instead of fast-forwarding, the scence was slowed down to 40 times, because it couldn’t be seen clearly at normal speed. And not to mention that the series are all in HD.

And the nice music arrangement and the cool, macho narration are the glue or the cherry on the icing to the shows. And all credits to the producers, the tireless camera crews, the researchers and the Ah Longs.

geeks~

And I was watching travel channel just now, and indigenous nudity is the phrase of the day.

School won’t start until Wednesday, but the closest to a vacation that i could get is to move in to the apartment downstairs whose tenants went out traveling. The valve is half-way done, the Cadillac thing went pretty well, the GPS stuff is not going so well, and not to mention the lab stuff and the homework all need to be taken care of. and heck we suck in football. Basketball season starts in 2 weeks.

WIP

2008-10-06T01:08:00.006-04:00

Its freaking 130 am in the morning, and it’s funny how full the lab is still is. Everyone else is trying to decipher stupid looking codes dengan muka tertekan….wahahaha.. nasib baik esok paper accounting je. Your major is my freaking Gen-Ed….. so, shut up!!!
No doubt, reading bahasa manusia, even stupid never-heard-of jargons, is much easier than reading ridiculous high-level or high-low programming languages or some raw dull numbers.

Though I think that being Brian Cox is still much cooler than being Jason Chambers,
I’ve made up my mind….I want to be a MMA fighter when I grow up….
Or when I graduate…

I didn’t know that you could make a career out of kicking the heck out of someone else. I used to want to be a pendekar, out of watching cool Rusdi Ramli and Eman Manan pendekar dramas on TV2 & TV3. Pendekar Kundur and Keris Hitam Bersepuh Emas are the best. But since I’ve already developed a chronological sense of a time line by then, then it’ll only go against my nubile plebian logic to want to become a Pendekar. And being in the silver screen industry has never been that appealing either. If only Mrs. Chew, my standard 1 class teacher were to enlighten us students much earlier about a career in fighting, then by now, after some altercation with the parents, I’ll probably be standing besides or being kicked the hell out of myself by Fedor Emelianenko or Tito Ortiz, or Anderson Silva or Chuck Lidell or my favorite Randy Couture, or at least by now, my biceps should be as big as theirs, and am already half-way through the path of becoming the ultimate killing machine.

Let’s see what O*NET has to say about being a fighter.

Last week was quite disappointing, I did pretty well on the paper on the 2nd day of raya, but I think I failed the one on the 3rd day of raya. And we freaking embarrassed ourselves on national TV…. were you serious???? Anyways, the Colts and the reds are the stories of the week, with their impressive and entertaining comebacks in their respective football games.

Suggest me a nickname…… the asian assassin? The meat grinder?

in one piece, not in pieces.....

2008-10-01T01:30:00.002-04:00

Jon wrote this nice pantun on our mount rushmore-salam perantauan thingy.

Kajang pak malau kajang berlipat,
Kajang hamba mengkuang layu,
Raya tuan raya bertempat,
Raya hamba musafir selalu.

So, Selamat Hari Raya, Maaf Zahir dan Batin, to whomever and wherever you may be.
And have fun.

I don’t know why, but I haven’t been excited about raya for quite some time. But, no matter what, how or where, the 1st of Syawal must be celebrated.

And drive safely. My grandparents got in a car crash somewhere in Tapah sometime last week. I don’t really know about the details, because when people get sad, they don’t talk much, and when people get sad, I tend to get angry.
The grandma had to get some metal implanted into her hip or somewhere as the result of the crash, while my grandpa who was fine the first time around was again admitted to the hospital because of some problems with his lungs, but at least it was confirmed that it wasn’t caused by any internal bleeding from the crash. So, the family is going to celebrate raya rather lowly this year, at the hospital.

Last year, today, I was in NYC, celebrating raya with my sister, and that was pretty cool. Though no one came over from home to celebrate together this time around, I think the people here have made this particular first of Syawal a rather enjoyable one. They served good food, and turned this rather cold day into a warm and an enjoyable one.

jemput dtg, i'm serving famous amos cookies this raya....

Next year, makan lemang panas!!!!

Tomorrow morning and khamis, 474 and 486!!!!

Of it being a sinusoidal function…… that we have to debate…..

2008-09-19T05:22:00.006-04:00

Are you freaking kidding me? We’re going to have a debate on some useless bunch of numbers and Greek letters with an equal sign somewhere in between them?

Anyways, you’ve probably have heard of Hans Christian Handersen’s the ugly duckling or another version of it at some point of your life. I was watching this talk show the other day, and I’ve just realized that all this years, I’ve failed to grasp the very nucleus of the story, which Mr. Handersen called his autobiography, in which the ugly duckling was already a cygnet in the first place. The big egg came up rolling from nowhere ending up as the 7th or 8th egg in the mother duck’s nest. He was an outsider from the very beginning. Anyways, being different shouldn’t be that bad should it?

And more duck stuff. The game against the ducks last week was all in all very entertaining, and it’d definitely be better if we could get the win. But heck, we lost after a big lead at half time. Man, we suck!!! That’s why we should never punt on 4th and 1 from midfield. However, the home team did put on a hard fight. But Summers, missing the supposedly winning kick with 2.1 seconds left on the clock? Are you serious? We were this close from a nice win. Nevertheless, the defense was outstanding.

And, life has been interesting. It’s 4:46 in the freaking morning, and I’ve just finished keying in the ‘N1050’th line of the G&M code for the manufacturing lab. The pig drawing had too many tangents on it, so, I ended up designing something else. And still, I have 2 more undone assignments both due tomorrow morning, and I have no freaking idea on what’s going to be on the accounting quiz. Outsourcing sure sounds appealing.
Yup, busy Thursdays are the best. And there are still at least 20 more sleepless Thursday and Friday nights along the way.

And you politicians better make our miserable Thursday nights worthwhile; enough with all the trash talking. Do something. Bring in more jobs instead of chasing investors out.
One interesting fact, when the internal problems get worst, the economy gets tough. And when the going gets tough, the tough go to grad school. And I personally am already tired with all this education shit. So, yeah…..
And with the Lehman Brothers going bankrupt and AIG getting bailed out for a humongous amount of $85 billion, the current local political scene can’t be more fitting.

belanjala..

It’s the last day of green week.
And I got 2 tickets to Tom Friedman’s lecture and book signing tomorrow evening.

mann… da pening…

Nadal and a Platypus Walk into a Bar

2008-09-07T23:39:00.006-04:00

The school's football season kicked off yesterday, with the team chalking up a rather unconvincing win over a championship subdivision team. We won big, but it could've been bigger, and we were expecting a lot more particularly from the QB, especially when you stupidly spent the day basking under the freaking hot sun at the stadium when you're fasting.
This season is kind of special because it's the coach's last season here in WL and the last one for the seniors too. Anyways, the team will be playing #14 Oregon next week, and it better be interesting.
Anyways, I'm looking forward to October for basketball season. The team is ranked as high as #3 in the pre-season polls, and we're scheduled to play Duke this season. Btw, Duke's coach, Coach K , was the coach of the USA National Team who won the gold medal in the recent Olympics.

And the schoolwork, assignments and projects have just started to kick in as the 3rd week of school resumes. And like the midterms, once it starts kicking in, like an avalanche, it just won't stop falling onto you. But the good part is that there's only 14 more weeks of classes left. So, let the countdown begin…..

And right after the football game, we were invited to a friendly with the Indonesian team which we lost to by a goal from a penalty kick. I got an assist, and hit the post twice from long range…hehhh….
We could've won the game, really….. But we were experimenting with the newer guys, and it turned out to be horrible, just as expected. Anyhow, it was still a good start for the team.

Anyone with any good tips to keep focused? I don't think I have ADD, but I do procrastinate a lot, and I really can't keep focused on a task (schoolwork that is) for more than 5 minutes.

Hmmmm…. when I feel annoyed or angry, I feel like punching certain people right in the face, and most of the times, the same faces keep coming up. And right now, I really feel like doing just that. But for now, I really don't know if the act of punching someone in the face could help me with my level of anger or annoyance.
But being a student of science, I think I really should put the hypothesis to the test. And because doing a computer simulation is not really feasible in this case, so, I think I should just go say 'hye' to these buggers, give them the punch, and then tell them about this theory I was trying to prove. Or should I tell them about the theory first, and only then give them the punch?.... I think it doesn't matter, because them knowing or not knowing about the hypothesis is not relevant to the study….
So, I should really go punch someone now…….

mahu

Huarghhhhhhh~

juicy lamb, chicken, and seasoned rice

2008-09-01T16:26:00.002-04:00

the tok imam at the masjid told us this one story last night. he liked the story so much that he has told the same story thrice in the past 3 Ramadans.

the story goes something like this...
one day, a teacher told his/her students that they were about to go on a field trip somewhere in the mountains...
and they were told to collect some rocks along the way. but then the teacher continued, that they'll regret it either way; whether they collected as many rocks as they could, or if they didn't bring anything home at all..

so, off they go...
through simple observation, (to simplify matters, the Hawthorne effect is considered to be absent..lol), the students could be classified into 2 groups... the lazy ones who were so lazy that they didnt pickup even a pebble home because they thought that they'll regret it anyway, so, why the extra effort?
and the 2nd group, the more adventurous and rajin ones, who out of curiosity took some rocks they found along the way home...

and when they got back, to their amazement, all the rocks turned into precious stones; rubies, emeralds, diamonds... you name it.

so, it was true, as the teacher said earlier, either you did what was told or not, you'll still regret it...

in conclusion, the tok imam said that the case is relevant to the month of Ramadan.. so, we need to do our best.....

anyways, i still think that a differrent outcome can be observed if the teacher were to told the students about the not-so-precious rocks turning into rubies and emeralds in the 1st place..
or will it still be the same??...

selamat beramal, berpuasa dan berbuka.....

cool gile

lama gile xpg bazaar ramadan....

lightning does strike twice in the same place

2008-08-24T02:23:00.006-04:00

Men are not created equal. Since forever, nations, organizations and people of different ethnics have tried to prove and verify their supremacy; the Bani Israel, the Nazi, the KKK, and the ‘ketuanan melayu?’ to name a few.
Thick history books have been written on the wars, small and great, and all the struggles and confrontations the world has gone through.
Other than wars, ethnic cleansing and holocausts, sports is another way to to verify just that.
And this Olympic series is just as important as the ones during the US vs. Soviet cold war era. And to China, this series is critical not just in proving to the world on how well they can deliver as the hosting-nation, but beyond that, to cure the inferiority complex that has been institutionalized in them. Go google up the Chinese history of humiliation.
And the abacus war between the US and China shows how uptight this Olympic series is. Yahoo!, NBC and the other US broadcasting companies are using the total medal count system in determining the top rank nation, obviously so that they could appear on the top of the table, though some other countries may prefer to use the gold medal count to determine whose better. That just shows on how big of a propaganda agent the Olympics or sports itself can be.

Anyways, back to the good stuff. At last, Chong Wei won the nation’s 1st Olympic medal after a long 12 year wait. And Usain Bolt’s and Phelps' superhuman efforts were just amazing. And in the field hockey event, the theory is once again proven to be true, that the star flicker will be the one who’ll miss, as taeke taekema’s flick was saved by the German goalkeeper in the semifinal penalty-stroke shootout. I was particularly glad to be able to watch a live hockey match on tv after not being able to watch any for quite some time. And the other personal favorites, gymnastics (remember El Regina Tajuddin?), swimming, diving, basketball and wrestling are just as interesting. and yeah, my favorite runner, Jeremy Wariner only managed to score a silver. And that kick to the referee’s face was awesome!!!!! and i didn't manage to catch any of the boxing matches(US lemau, so xde slot on air)...

And just like how the wars have helped us human achieve the impossible, sports, this Olympic series in particular has proven to give that big of an impact as well. From new marketing strategies (the big swoosh vs the 3 stripes duel) and cool and awesome engineering feats and inventions (the bird’s nest, OR, security etc.), to new training regimes and better than sub-10 100 meter sprints.

The dream team will be playing Pau’s Spain in a few minutes….mengharapkn upset...
Danggg!!!…Terlepas opening ceremony…….

School opens Monday…. adoiiii

citius,altius,fortius

2008-08-07T00:21:00.003-04:00

25 hours drive away

so, we're off to our Yellowstone walkabout....
all pumped up to be awed and inspired by the wonders of God's creation....

selamat bercuti, happy birthday, selamat pengantin baru......

and did i mention the kedai runcit the other day?

will be back in 10 days.......

cheers~

huarghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-07-09T23:29:00.010-04:00

We are territorial beings. that explains why we sit in the exact same seat in a 2500 seat lecture hall, why we feel the most comfortable doing business when using the same loo, why we run on the same treadmill in the gym, and why we have the idea of ‘my home’ and ‘my room’. It’s an Evolutionary psychology thing…Darwinian maybe….
Anyways, I’ve just moved into a new apartment, approximately ten minutes walk away from the older one, and 15 minutes walk away from the one before that. So far, this is the 12th address I’ve called home. It’s nice, and I get to have the cave.
I've lived in and called 3 different continents, 9 different towns/cities and 12 different houses, home thus far.
The first one was Ipoh which I can’t remember much about. The family had an address in Taman SIlibin when I was born. But then, the whole family had to move to Sheffield. As long as I could remember, we had at least 2 different addresses during our stay in the South Yorkshire city. The first one was a brown-brick bungalow, overlooking a brown-brick fire station across the street, with a rose garden in the front lawn. Then we moved into the house with the red door on 441, St. 4th road. The landlord, a Pakistani cab driver lives next door with his wife, his son and his daughter who we siblings get into a fight with every now and then. The house was nice, and I liked the backyard the most which we shared with the landlord. In the big backyard, there was a big apple tree, which has this freaky and scary quality to it when the leaves start falling. And right behind our kitchen, there’s a cone shaped pear tree which I could still remember plucking and eating the fruit from, and near the pear tree was a traditional Pakistani clay oven where the neighbor’s wife would usually bake and teach my mom how to bake naan and capati in. Further down the backyard was a big beautiful rose garden, surrounded by red-brick layered walls which we siblings and the neighbor’s daughter and a random Pakistani boy who I can not remember would climb surreptitiously and watch the white fluffy clouds pass by. Back then, I believed that dead people cruised on the clouds.
Then we came back to Malaysia. After a couple of weeks spending the time at the kampong, at our grandparents’ in Bagan Datoh and Chenderong Balai, we moved in into a staff apartment inside the university’s vicinity in Tronoh (known as UTP today); on top of the hill, under the big water tank. Life was great back then; no school no nothing.
After my parents got things figured out, we moved to this small town, which out of all the places I’ve called home, I think I like the most, Batu Gajah. My mom was posted to teach in one of the secondary schools in the small town, and it was the only civilization close enough to my father’s campus in Tronoh, otherwise known as Timbaktu. We called it home for about 6 years. It was great. I made lifelong friends from school. The small town was nice; the people, the pasar minggu and all.
The next stop was Taiping. It’s not much of a traditionally defined home. But having wasted 5 years of my life in this one educational institution situated in the middle of the beautiful and tranquil Lake Gardens, opposite the zoo, and right on the kaki bukit of Maxwell Hill, I think I have the right to call it home. Believe me; living in filthy dormitories with people of the same age group is really something. And out of all the addresses, with the great Maxwell Hill overlooking it in the backyard, the lake gardens on the front lawn and with the sporadic eerie siamang echoes in the background, this has to be the most beautiful and the most gorgeous of them all, excluding the boy’s dorms of course.
At the same time when I was busy getting my nubile head filled in with things I don’t really want to know in Taiping, the family was busy moving in to another town in the northern part of the country, to Nibong Tebal, Penang. My parents and my eldest sister used to live here, in the same Taman, before moving to Ipoh. But this time, we only moved in temporarily, waiting for the new-bought home to finish renovation.
So, a couple of months after that, we moved in to this one boring town in the northern most part of Perak, Parit Buntar. I have nothing much to talk about it, but last time, some stupid thieves broke in into our house.
But God is merciful. Before the aridness of the city had a chance to slay my soul, I got this offer to continue my studies in Shah Alam. So, I moved in into the hostel for a brief one year. And it was a lot of fun.
Then, after the brief honeymoon in INTEC, here I am, in the crossroads of America, in the state where everything seems to be 2 years behind. I haven’t seen Malaysia for a little over 2 years now, and still another year to go.

Anyways, the gentlemen’s final game the other day was an epic. Golf, soccer and tennis; it’s a great year to be Spanish. The government should give the people the whole year off for all that. And so, next stop, Spain sweet home….

But before that, I got a big mission early tomorrow morning; to command & conquer the seat at the rear of the class back!!!!!.......

Obviously, I had too much hockey…. But a few more clubs to break, then Tiger, u better watch out…

*byk gile kerja.....

sodomy 2.0

2008-06-29T13:38:00.005-04:00

This is just awesome, first the SD, now the sodomy thing, what next?

Anyways, the host is effing funny. Maybe the time has come for Malaysia to replace AF with a new reality TV show to find Malaysia’s Wolf Blitzer. And maybe only then the guests will come prepared, and of course something that’s supposed to be serious wont look so stupidly funny.

Anyways, that’s the talk around the poor green globe; the hiking price of the black gold. The last time we stopped by at a gas station, before going fishing yesterday, the price was at $4.02/gallon and across the street at $4.10/gallon.

First of all, let’s look at the fundamental stuff, from some 101 and high school courses. First of all, I think it might be from Sains tingakatan 3 or Geography, where we learned that crude oil is a non-renewable form of energy. Secondly, the supply and demand and the ceteris paribus thing from kemahiran hidup and economics, as supply goes down, and demand goes up, the price goes up (exponentially ke?) . And it may be a good idea to read something on the Hubbert Peak Theory. Anyways, in summary, the supply is going down, while at the same time, we’re in need of it even more than ever. And believe it or not, for the first time in history, we will be going from a good fuel to one that is not so good (Kaufman).
So, like it or not, the price is still going to go up.

Anyways, back to the issue in Malaysia. Without much arguing, the people have the right to get all frustrated and lompat parti. But maybe we’re just not hitting on the right bush. Marahkan nyamuk kelambu dibakar (betul ke)? And probably, the way the government is handling the issue is making things worse.

You can read all about it in the articles, from the blogs, the newspapers, and the chain emails which I assume that you might already have. Anyways, IMHO, I’m going have to agree that the move to cut down subsidy is good for the long run as suggested by some economists. And we’re not alone in this as countries around the world, including Indonesia and Taiwan, are bashing the subsidy. However, maybe the timing and the drastic shift are making the people angry. The policies and all should’ve been planned beforehand, and not after something has been implemented. And with the right policies and the right method and the correct timing, I think the people won’t be hitting the streets again, assuming that they’re being angry at the right thing.

And I’ve been receiving quite a few chain emails on boycotting Petronas and a few others from the other side of the story. And I think, there’s no point in boycotting the corporation, because in Malaysia, the government is the one responsible with the pricing of the fuel. And as it is a company, they have to comply with rules and regulations of the Securities Commission, GAAP (Malaysia punye name ape?) and all. And because it’s a business, of course ‘the goal’ (sila baca the goal by Goldratt) is to get money. I don’t know much about Petronas or their numbers, but it’s fair to say, that they shouldn’t be the scapegoat of this glocal issue. And another thing, by simple economy, we should use the cheaper one, and sell the pricier one for something else better like education etc. And please stop making personal attacks on groups of people you might not even know, because that’s stupid, and it’s not in any way helping.

And what’s funnier is the way the people in office are handling it. Ubah cara hidup? Really, it’s not of much help. I don’t know, but as a rakyat biasa, I would’ve expected more from my leaders, something of more concrete value, not just some mere layman talk. Anyways, thank you for the emails and blog entries from you who suggested the same; ‘kita perlu sedar’ and ‘ubah attitude’ and all, it was nice reading, but I have to say that it's kind of annoying to have your inbox full of nothing. Btw, you got to read this from Dr.Azmi Sharom, and Florida oranges aren’t that good.

So, what should we do? I don’t know. But maybe we could start producing the Proton version of FCX Clarity, or at least decrease the prices of the more fuel efficient or hybrid imported cars that we have yet to be able to produce ourselves. Or, why not get the subsidy back in action by cutting spending on white elephant projects, and start shaving it off again gradually. Anyways, the crisis is a global issue, and it’s a long term thing. The petroleum age is coming to an end. And lastly, it’s OK to be angry, but let’s curve the bullet so that it hits the right target. Wanted was kinda cool btw.

So, in conclusion, we should all move to Venezuela . Or we could get Chavez to come over and let him run office.

And the better team took home the trophy in Vienna today. It was a nice game. And FAM should consider hiring Gus Hiddink as the new national head coach.

*pinjam tajuk bro

ape khabar org jepun?

2008-06-19T12:18:00.007-04:00

This is the current line-up for the fantasy team challenge. The team was ranked at number 239 out of 375,188 teams last Thursday, but not having a chance to make transfers and substitutions on our no soccer day last Saturday, the team dropped down to number 155,967.
My personal favorites, Spain and Netherlands plus the 2 favorite underdogs Turkey and Russia made it through to the next stage though the Romanians and Swiss had to bid early goodbyes. Gus Hiddink is a magician.

So, last week, in an attempt to escape this cruel, hectic and problem ridden world of ledger books, hiking food prices, Obama, the NBA finals, stupid and crazy math equations, Euro2008, and the world’s obsession of black gold, we decided to go on a rather casual, impromptu and short camping trip in one of the state parks nearby.
In short, our endeavor to ‘bersebati dengan alam’ was great, as towards the end of the trip, we literally turned into orangutans.
The smoke from the campfire created a special kind of ambience that made the food we cooked taste a lot like the ones at the kenduri kawins at kampong. The gripping battle between man and raccoon with sporadic crazy shaman dances in between was something to remember. The 15 mile kayaking in the fast flowing creek (due to the thunderstorms a couple of nights prior that has flooded some counties nearby), which looked a lot like the Huang He river that particular day, under the torturous shining sun was great despite not having any chance of saving any drowning kid or soaking the camera to its end like last year. And the pretty unsuccessful attempt in fishing at the tasik berpuaka stuffed with loads of boarding school ghost legends and stories was still pretty relaxing and a lot of fun.
Minus toilet time and the severe sunburn, it was great. Maybe we should do it Bear Grills’ way next time. The Yellowstone National Park seems like a great and a very possible location.

So, there’s another 6 more weeks of summer school to survive. I bumped into Tammy yesterday and she treated me lunch, met some new cool soccer buddies with very sick moves, and I suddenly got this long list of party invitations to go to, and I think I saw Abbas in math class?????

Masih menyesal xtgk game turki vs. Czech. Lakers hampeh... belanja tiket pg london....????

the fox and the grapes

2008-05-30T02:07:00.007-04:00

So, Mozart wrote his first minute at five. Bill Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard when he was 20 to then become the richest man on the whole wide world. Michael Dell dropped out from U of Texas Austin at the age of 19 to then establish once the 25th-largest company in the Fortune 500 list. Anderson was only 20 when he helped United win the Champions League trophy. And Cesc Fabregas, one of the best midfielders at this time, just turned freaking 21, 25 days ago. And Novak Djovovic who turned 21 a week ago, ranked 3rd in the ATP world rankings, already has a big fat $7.5 million prize winning money in the bank. And the $16 million dollar guy, Rafael Nadal won’t turn 22 until next month.

I can’t do music. I was microns away from dropping out from school, but hardware and software don’t fit me that well. I should’ve forced my parents to send me to soccer academy when I was younger. And I’m not very good playing court games. And hockey doesn’t offer that much fortune, even more, fame. Hmmm…. Looking at it the sore loser’s way, these people are freaking prodigies. Maybe I’ll make my first million at 40, or 65 maybe.

Fortune and fame, at a young age, is lethal.
Sour grapes………..

Anyways, at least I won’t be left out when the group mates want to go celebrate like before. Hmmm… minus the nasik lemak, 2nd hand smoke, roti canai and teh tarik, God’s will, I could make it for another great profitable 46 years.

And our team should get the perennial 2nd round losers’ tag; we lost twice in the semifinals and this year in the quarterfinals, 3 years in a row. The teams competing were better and tougher compared to the ones last year. And it sucks to not be able to give a 100% on the field because of the recovering shoulder and a few knocks here and there. Being unlucky again, we could’ve made it to at least the semifinal game if the schedule weren’t altered at the last second in favor of the 2 lobbying teams. It’s just incomprehensible, we were the group champions, aren’t we supposed to have the advantage of facing the weaker team first? We lost anyways. And it sucks to be a loser.

In addition to the severe sunburn, my Michael Phelps foot exploded into the size of an Ogre’s foot. I could barely feel my right foot the first two days, and I’m having some pretty tough time tucking it into the sneakers. Ube’s decently captured photo explains how it happened. And the guy sliding for the ball, we go by the same name. How cool…..
I played bigger games with higher stakes, pace and intensity, plus the stick and a smaller, harder ball that moves up to 120 km/h with minimal protection. But I’ve never faced injuries this serious.
It’s only the freaking MWG. Tak faham….

But it was nice to see those familiar faces again.

Anyhow, losing still sucks….

red in russia

2008-05-22T12:33:00.003-04:00

glory glory~ (soccernet.com)

the man

* hoping the shoulder gets better.....

let's go play footie on the moon

2008-04-26T02:17:00.010-04:00

next time you want to talk about something, make sure you know what you're talking about. or else, just shut up.

(in the shadow of the moon)

let's go to the moon.
this one is a must see documentary.
thank you punD.

go google up the review.
who are you again? why are you questioning me supporting this team? and who are you again? why are you supporting this other team? the team doesn't even like nor need someone like you. besides, you don't even know how to kick a ball.
you see, soccer is more than just a beautiful game. Soccer clubs don't just represent geographic areas; they stand for social classes and political ideologies. so, unless you can give me an excellent reason why you're supporting this certain club, next time you're watching a game at the mapley, please sit down and sip your teh tarik quietly, and stop acting like you're Steve Hickmont or Zeljko Arkan.
we do bribing and all, but a nation ranked 170th in the world rankings certainly doesn't need nor produce any hooligans.

and i bumped into this not so suicidal word game.
go test your vocabulary, and feed someone.(click on the banner)

but before the moon, Paris might be good for a start.
Paris again eh? congratulations btw.

masih marah...

hangman

2008-04-20T00:24:00.007-04:00

I never ran a marathon before, but once ran cross-country. Long story short, this one time, I blew a chance to finish with a medal because I let the guy who finished in front of me get pass me at the last 400 meters, because I foolishly stopped running and started walking. When one of the track-volunteers started cheering me on, saying that I was still in position to win a medal, I started to work my red-muscles to sprint through the last 150 meters, but by then, it was already too late.
I managed to earn some valuable points for the team, and we were announced overall winners. But all I got were some snacks from the 3-foot tall maggi-mee hamper, and a big trophy to be shared with the whole school.
This thing with hampers and goody bags, all those turn into shit, as a friend of mine would put it. But a medal or a trophy, like some sort of a diadem, that’s forever.

Yes I learnt my lesson, but as cliché as it may sound, that is just the story of my life. It keeps on happening over and over again. I just can’t seem to get out of the loop.

And this semester is no better than the past ones. I just can’t stop myself from slowing down towards the end of the race.
Last week, I lost 5% of my final grade in this one boring course when I decided to go have a heated argument with the TA who thought that I crossed the line between discussing and duplicating someone else’s lab in which I worked on for 13 hours, and in which the professor who I consulted after the incident thought that it was really my original work. But causing a scene at the TA’s lounge wasn’t really a wise thing to do either. So, losing the 5% instead of having to write boring letters and go through other petty problematic procedures wasn’t that bad of a bargain. I think I should feel good because I tried to at least defend myself, but next time, I should keep my temper in check. But then again, there goes my A. And dude, you just made it to the top of my hate list.

More than that, not just the classes suck; our team was disqualified from the intramural tournament because one of the teammates violated the rules when he registered with another team in addition to ours. We were doing very well, thrashing our opponents by some convincing score line, and that was before yesterday of course. We were supposed to be playing in the quarter-finals game tomorrow, but then again, the story of our lives.

Anyways, there’s no other game more suicidal than the Hangman . Sudoku is so yesterday people. Let’s bring some classic back. I used to play it with my siblings on the old SONY PC when we were younger, but Digger , you’re still the best.
Some tips, the 12 most commonly used letters in the English language are e-t-a-o-i-u-n-s-h-r-d-l-u…. so, start with those, and reduce the risk of dying.

There was a small earthquake on Friday, and I thought that it was the end of days, so, I said the Syahadah and went back to sleep.

I think therefore I am eh??
Maybe I should stop thinking.
There’s nearly nothing sleep can’t cure….

All I want is my own damn TV show!!!!!

group attribution error

2008-04-07T00:24:00.007-04:00

so, i did some revision; watching Braveheart and Kingdom of Heaven for the 73rd time, because there's thermo exam tomorrow evening and a 5 page book review due the next day.
and it struck me. there were great queens behind these great on-screen-epic-heroes; among them, Lucila, Sibyla of Jurusalem, Maid Marion and princess Isabelle.
(and i'm really talking about historical epic genre movies here. facts aside, because history is written by victors anyway, aren't they?)
anyway, if there were to be any epic story to be written at this time, which queen should star in it?
a few years back, there'd be a finish line decision between lady D and queen rania of Jordan.

but i digress.

anyways, as everyone, including those who used to call bloggers monkeys and are currently still in the 1st stage of grief (denial) are setting up blogs of their own, the queen too has decided to have her own youtube-channel.
send her your stereotypes.

jack bauer calling at (0:38)

jam bumi

2008-03-29T17:51:00.005-04:00

the gold-booted mr.100

so, i got tagged by PunD and his Gundam .

1. Pilih 5 atau 50 pautan kegemaran.
2. Tag balik 5 orang.
3. Pautan haruslah suci.
4. Maklumkan orang yang ditag.
5. Sebut nama orang yang tag kamu

lets bend the rules a little shall we? lets list them under groups; instead of listing 5 pautans,lets fit them under 5 different categories. human brains work better that way. we generalize and put labels on things we want to.

1. http://www.google.com/ig?hl=en
- this site deserves its own entry in the dictionary.
- on my personalized homepage: the weather, hangman, pacman, espn, news, how-to-of-the-day.
- i overheard some geeks talking about the stock's points hiking up yesterday...???

2. encyclopedias, journals, dictionaries
*freakonomics - its more of a blog actually, but....
* scienceline - the science version of freakonomics... i think.. anyhow, its still one of the coolest..
* thefreeonlinedictionary.com ; first of all, because its free, and not everyone writes like Hemingway, or maybe doesn't have the ability to write like him.
*urbandictionary.com ; time to turn on some youtube people, time to be current. and it helps me figure out the crude jokes the professors and the guys tell me.
*wikipedia.org - a better textbook, and because no one wants to look dumb, and stupid, and...

3.Youtube.com
- so that i can look up some new skills to show off in the friday night showdown games.
-for some laughs
-infotainment?
-music, movie trailers..
-studying.. try searching for mutually exclusive vs. independent..

4. sports
*soccernet.com, footytube.com
*espn.com
*bigtennetwork.com
*rebong- merapu

5. blogs
*you people's blogs
- because i have a life, but my life is boring. so, keep on writing people... HELP ME..
* political/propaganda blogs

-PunD and his Gundam tagged me.

-And as usual, you,you,you,you, and you just got tagged.

-earth hour babe.. tutup lampu, pergi main bola, go run some miles, JANGAN pergi lab, save some green..

*2 exams, 2 projects, a book review, 4 homeworks... ronaldo main tipu!!!

busy-april

2008-03-24T00:35:00.004-04:00

In his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus concludes.” The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Berat………..

And it’s snowing….. again…

So, the load is nearly up there, the maximum. F=mgz
And as Heraclitus said, change is constant; thus, some easy time (if I were to survive the first hike), KE= mv^2
And because perfect is a cycle, then, it’s going to be back against gravity, again.
But, just imagine me happy.

Cheers~

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Now playing: Audioslave - Doesn't Remind Me
via FoxyTunes

how lembu explains the world

2008-03-16T03:07:00.010-04:00

(utusan malaysia)

this one is from Tengku Farith's blog. Ideologies explained.

SOCIALISM:
You have 2 cows, so you
give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM:
You have 2 cows. The State
takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM:
You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM:
You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

MALAYSIAN BUMIPUTRAISM:
You have two cows, the State takes one and gives it to your bumiputra neighbour. From the milk you sell from the remaining cow you buy a bull and mulitply your herd. The State take 30% of your herd as it grows and give them to your bumiputra neigbour. Your bumiputra neighbour has a kenduri each time they receive a cow.

UMNOPUTRAISM :
The State takes 30% of your herd and parks them in Switzerland in the name of some UMNO official or close relatives, friends and sons-in-law.

MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT LINKED OR
BUMIPUTRA CORPORATION :
You have two cows. You employ mainly bumiputras to milk them. But both cows have been sent to the kenduri, so the State gives you more cows and write off the losses of the first two. After several kenduris later, you invite an American or German Corporation to turnaround the losses. The Japanese have however already taken their two original cows back home to Japan .

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM:
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States , leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.

A FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again
and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows because you're sobering up and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have 5,000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them. A

CHINA CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You worship them

A BRITISH CORPORATION:
You have two cows. Both are mad.

IRAQI CORPORATION:
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy...

so, i've uploaded a new profile photo; u can start approving my comments now, dear miss Minerva.. haha

cheers~

balling

2008-03-14T02:48:00.002-04:00

How a half eaten piece of chocolate cake would look like.

Yesterday was Kobe Bryant Blog Day. Go google it up.
Anyways, I’ve been keeping myself busy learning the proper way to play basketball at the rec center, other than religiously paying my sleep debt, the past couple of days.

And IMHO, it’s pretty much like playing indoor soccer or futsal; a lot of running back and forth the court, a lot of bursting runs, etc. And you’ll get tired more rapidly playing games like this compared to playing an 11-a-side soccer game as an example because of the amount of sprinting required with a smaller amount of recovery time in between. In addition to that, I found out that nearly every major muscle in the lower and upper body are involved in the game; shooting and rebounding as examples involve vertical jumps and a lot of arm strength, etc. So, in conclusion, I think it’s a pretty demanding game.

And I had a chance to play a 5-on-5 full court game yesterday, after playing a lot of 2-on-2 and 3-on-3 pick up games the days before. 16 points, 12 rebounds and 8 steals doesn’t sound too bad for a rookie does it? haha…
Anyhow, I still need to work on my lay-ups, and I still need to jump an extra 2 inches to be able to jam the ball.

And btw, I still think that field-hockey midfielders are the best conditioned athletes.

And suddenly it’s already Friday.….

mas que un club

2008-03-13T04:06:00.002-04:00

the aftermath

When Francisco Franco’s troops marched into Catalan, Franco made a list of the organizations he wants to see purged.
And the top 4 on the list are: the Communists, the Anarchists, the Separatists and Barcelona F.C.¹

So, being a Barca fan doesn’t sound so bad does it? In fact, it has to be the club with the most ‘moderate’ philosophy. The club embraces the spirit which explains that you could love your country and even consider it a superior group, without the desire to dominate other groups or closing yourself off to foreign impulses. And as the theory goes, patriotism and cosmopolitanism should go perfectly in concert. And it explains the Catalan club’s motto “mas que un club” which means more than a club very well.

Anyhow, considering that Guti is the favorite playmaker at the moment, and that this Franco guy sounds like a pretty cool dictator, I’ll stick to learning the Los Blancos’ hymn for the time being.

And as you can see, there’s a new general in town. It was pretty warm outside, so Kay, one of the guys from the liga kompetetif ‘Friday Night Showdown’ invited me to play with his guys. And the new Tiempo had a pretty good debut; 6 goals, 7 pannas and being outran by a 57 year-old man twice.

-yang dah bosan dan masih merempat-

(Reference: 1. how soccer explains the world)

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Now playing: AeroSmith - I Don't Want to Miss a Thing
via FoxyTunes

awards

2008-03-09T03:06:00.002-04:00

Congratulations Malaysia.
We didn’t get the gold, but 2nd and 3rd place sounds good enough for a start.

And the Heisman, Grammy and Oscars go to:
1- the people
2-The WWW
3- DSAI
4- RPK
5- TG. Nik Aziz
6- “anasir2” blog
7- Youtube

Winning is good for the soul. But it must not stop here. We’ll see what’ll happen next.
Let’s hope that the chosen ones would deliver.

For the time being, I’ll get myself busy figuring out what to do during the break.
Merempat rumah org; the tenants ditched me and went to the Florida Keys.

Thanks to those who got us updated the whole day.

-nothing beats the pleasure of wasting free time-

flying pigs

2008-03-02T02:20:00.009-05:00

reality sucks

the comic strip has nothing to do with the next part of the post.

Let’s talk elections.

first of all, I'd like to affirm my stand, my partisanship. i don't really know what i want, therefore, i don't know which party is the most suitable to represent my unknown interest. furthermore, i don't believe in the current system, and i think that we're in desperate need of a dictator... a damn good one... hahaha...

Anyways, let’s talk about the current electoral system. I think it’s a lot like the QWERTY keyboard, ‘maybe’ obsolete, ‘maybe’ not the most efficient and absolutely not the safest, but because it has been around since forever, anything better regardless of the proven efficiency or whatsoever, people will still prefer to face the risk of getting Carpal Tunnel syndrome than to learn and work on the dvorak. A change is needed.

Talking about change, I don’t think that saying this is the MTV era would be relevant anymore, maybe the Youtube era sounds more appropriate. Al Gore used to appear on MTV shows to promote his green ideas. But that was yesterday. Today, the internet is the place to sell all those propaganda, and prominent political figures have been doing so, especially the US presidential candidates, for instance, even the debates were officially posted on Youtube. And the battalions of political bloggers who sprouted out of no where just made the internet the place to spread all of that misinformation. So, maybe those people who used to monkey the bloggers should start consider making good use of the discovery of the century. And talking about the web, there’s tones of sites offering rather unbiased information or at least the story from the other side, and as we’re talking about the coming GE, this site may be relevant.

Moving to the issue on information, the people have the right to be informed, in this particular case, the right to know who should get their vote and things like that. So, given the current condition, where mainstream means controlled, biased and misleading, the people seem to be very well misinformed. And we’re talking about things like these; a, b, c.

Further on the articles, if you happen to have read Orwell’s Animal Farm, you could see how the articles work. Squealer, the pig who plays the role of a manipulator and persuader talks about the exact same things like the ones in our very own Pravda . Squealer would keep on repeating in his weekly preaches on how the animals should be thankful of what they are having today, and how they would not like to live the way when Mr. Jones was still on the farm; though life was in fact better and easier back then compared to when the pigs started to act like the humans themselves. And if you happen to have read 1984, you may have realized on how statistics could be a very useful gizmo in fooling the people despite sometimes making your arguments appear rather weak. Anyways, believe it or not, the majority is still buying all that bull crap.

And that brings us to what Dr. Azmi Sharom was saying about having an educated voting public. Quoting Mr. Bangku from Kakiblog.com,

"because only educated public would vote wisely based on real development issues rather than only on race and religious sentiments..."
Let’s keep the education part for another time shall we?

Anyways, let’s just wrap all this nonsense up. All in all, a change is needed. Let’s take what happened to the animals in Animal Farm as a lesson. Because it’s just how it works, no matter what the ideal may be, in a period of time, the pigs would start walking on 2 legs instead of 4. And who knows, in the coming epochs, they may start flying. So, before that happens, let’s do something.
And as Mr. Obama would say, yes we can… haha

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. --Edward Abbey(the desert anarchist)

another hectic week coming up. hidoppp.........

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Now playing: Pearl Jam - Last Kiss
via FoxyTunes

budak tomyam

2008-02-26T13:52:00.010-05:00

It’s been raining, then snowing, then ice, then raining again. Spring should be around the corner, I’m not sure which corner, but it’s coming, because everyone has started to fall sick; the professor, the group mates, the TA, and orang2 kat Malaysia.
So, no classes, no meetings, and hopefully the 2 exams at the end of the week are going to be canceled.

Anyways, this little girl made my day.
Some genius…

The sign-y guy always worries…
Obiknobee… obiknobee..
But don’t talk back to Darth Vader, he’ll get’cha.

I was never a fan of Star Wars, but I think I'm changing boats.

*get well soon people; there’s still tones of stuff we need to take care of.

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Now playing: Ben Harper - She's Only Happy In The Sun
via FoxyTunes

two + two = five

2008-02-25T01:00:00.006-05:00

the other day

Enchanted, Disneyland, and Sesame St are Utopia. 1990s London in V for Vendetta, Darfur, 1984, Iraq, and Palestine are dystopia and anti-utopia.

I received my copy of George Orwell’s 1984 in the mail a couple of weeks ago, and finished reading the novella in one go last night. And a bad move it was, as I’m feeling somewhat depressed at the second.

But don’t you feel sad, because those people in white and blue are playing Santa clause at the moment. And don’t you worry if you haven’t got your share, because this time, X-mas will go on for a whole jolly 2 weeks until March 8.

And suddenly it’s Monday again. And the day of the moon is a bad day to buy a car, because the cars with the most flaws are produced on Mondays and Fridays. Go ask some Toyota engineers if you don’t believe me. Talking about hangovers and getting back into the mood.

cheers~

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Now playing: Audioslave - I Am the Highway
via FoxyTunes

numero uno

2008-02-18T01:30:00.003-05:00

let's start fresh shall we?

i'm not supposed to get the entries deleted for at least another 3 months. but wth?

dapat pencerahan, though not at the magnitude of the ones buddha and newton got from under the tree. so, yeah...

so, stay tuned.

and, sis, well done, and good luck with the other school in taiping.

and happy birthday.