s h o r t & s i m p l e

Just a short update today, I have added in a couple of images such as the one above this post as well as added in a link to support the cause of having proper pathways for disabled people who uses wheelchairs in buildings. I also added in a Liverpool logo so that I can actually try to brainwash some of you in to supporting Liverpool, the greatest team in Europe.

The huge gap is still irritating the hell out of me but it seems to be a Firefox symptom. Well for all of you Internet Explorer users, you won't see the gap. For others, heh, I have no idea how to fix it.

Oh yeah, my desk at work has been invaded by ants! Well its partially my fault that they started crawling all the way to my empty container which used to contain watermelons which I ate for lunch. Spent a good 10minutes trying to wipe them away. Any more disturbances from them and I will be forced to use my soldering irons!

Burn ants, burn!!

Where is my vein?

That was what ran through my mind as the doctor probed my arm with a needle. He then carried on and checked my other arm and start hitting it before coming back to my right arm and started another check. After many failed attempts (much to my dismay), he finally settled on getting my blood sample from a vein located near my wrist. Conclusion? My wrist hurts. So much for a painless annual medical check up at the Salam Medical Center in Shah Alam.

So in about a week I managed to learn how to play two new card games, Bang! and Citadel. Not too bad, plenty of strategy to use and no dices or pieces to move. Actually, I can't wait to try out Puerto Rico.

Me and my colleagues managed to catch Initial D last night at 1 Utama. The show? Honestly I will give it a 8/10 and I have watched the anime up until now which is Stage 4:Episode 14. The story was slightly twisted compared to the original anime series while the entire movie was a compressed version of Stage 1 and Stage 2. The acting was perfect for Takumi's role but the person who shined the most were Itsuki and Bunta Fujiwara. Both actors played those roles extremely well but ironically those two characters were the ones whose storyline and background were twisted to suit the movie. Anyhow, if you are a fan of cars, watch the show. Its good fun and you will definitely laugh a lot.

Monday Mornings!

Its a beautiful Monday today although marred by a series of incidences but God is good all the time because as I look back and reflect, things could have been much much worse. Is it too early for me to actually say that I won't be facing the usual Monday blues faced by other individuals other than myself? Or is it too optimistic of me? Well it doesn't matter about me because I know that God is always constant.

I learned a lot over the past 3 days at the HeartCore Youthcamp in Port Dickson. Its unlike any other youth camp I have attended and the sessions were just top notch. Everything was so practical and relevant. So many things to do and so many changes to make, that is how I would sum up my weekend.

Again I go back to my original phrase and title, No more Monday blues. Why is that? Is it because I love my job that I would wake up every morning without a single complaint about lack of sleep? Or is it because I get to eat great food (being extremely sarcastic) or getting to drive about 30km to work in the morning? No, the real reason lies somewhere out of work. It lies in my heart and myself. Not my attitude or thinking or character but something much more important. It all lies in my faith.

Lets not forget the days between Sundays.

Ministry starts on Monday!

Bug

Ok there seems to be a bug in the coding for this page. If you check the post below, there seems to be a huge space separating that post and the one previously posted. I am trying to figure it out but the codes seem to be in order. I wonder if this is one of those unsolved mysteries.

Update #2:

Arrgh I am going crazy trying to figure out this stupid problem. Makes me want to tear out my own hair!

Update #1:

Looks like the space has gone from the previous post but now there is a large gap on this post. Sigh, what is going on?

On my way to the beach!

Just went to http://www.one.org to sign the declaration to help eliminate poverty around the world. This is a little snippet they will send to you once you sign up at their webpage.

Thank you for taking action withONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History. Your voice DOES make a difference!

But there is still more you can do to help get the word out:

Please help us tell your friends and family about The ONE Campaign and how they too can lend their voice to help beat global AIDS and poverty.

Tell them to sign the declaration now at ONE.org. ONE by ONE, we can make the difference.

So why not just head over there and fill in a very short and simple form that will only take you less than a minute. Why not just help prevent poverty around the world?

Will be heading down to Port Dickson tonight for the weekend to attend the CYZ Youth Camp. Can't wait to attend the sessions. Hope there isn't any traffic congestions on the way to Port Dickson. Actually I am more worried about finding the place. I remember very vaguely about the Methodist Centre in PD. All I know is that it is not directly next to a beach or something like that. Really confused now thanks to going to different camp sites in PD.

Bah, I am going to get lost...

Soya no tofu?

Hey I got a new look! What do you think?

After reading this bit of news at CNN, I am going to stop taking soya drinks and eating any sort of tofu!

Of course you can't really believe everything you read or any sort of preliminary results. Why do I say that? What about us Asians who eat plenty of soy products and tofu as our diet? Look at Japan where soy sauce is rampant and tofu is eaten like there is no tomorrow, can't really say that there is a fertility problem there.

Anyhow, there is a quote from a professor from the University of Sheffield, yay! Thats my old alma matter. Hooray for Sheffield Uni!

Oh man...

Came upon this bit of news on the web. Now am I really that scary?

"Mark Leo, 42, a well-respected father and state Power Authority worker, has been charged with beating his neighbor to death on May 20."

You can read the full news bit here.

In Spite Of?

One of life’s biggest challenges for me is consistency. Not just in my personal life but in everything that I undertake. Sometimes things may distract me or events may just suddenly swallow up my time. In time I begin to clearly understand what consistency is about and who its enemies are. Namely, laziness and procrastinate. As an engineer, I try to be professional as possible especially in my work. I have to work systematically, each measurement must be consistent with the ones before. Therefore how does one maintain this sense of consistency throughout one’s entire life? The answer is obviously simple, God. The only one who has been consistent since the beginning.

Over the past two days I had band practice for the upcoming youth camp which will be held in Port Dickson over the weekend. Both practice sessions were good but I know I have a lot to improve on my timing and strumming as well as being more sensitive to the rest of the band as well as the Holy Spirit. Peter shared with us about what it meant to worship, the key words were, “in spite of”. In spite of everything, all the troubles that bogs us down in life, can we truly say that we thank God and worship Him? Or do we complain, wail and sulk each and every time trouble comes knocking on our doors?

In spite of all the things happening in our lives, good or bad, complicated or difficult, God truly deserves all praise and worship. Living a life that is right in God eyes, the actions that we do, the feelings that we portray, all these we show and do in spite of all the troubles we face or difficulties we need to overcome. This I believe is what true worship is.

"God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John
4:24 NIV)

From hugs to sandwiches

After visiting this particular site and reading through it's contents, I just don't know how to react. Should I laugh, should I feel sorry or should I just leave a compassionate note. The ever doubting side of me will think that it's just rubbish and some of the people there just post to have fun but lets think of it this way, its a way for people to just throw out their frustrations, expose every skeleton in their closet and just let it out of their minds to feel that moment of relief knowing that your identity is kept secret. Which then leads me to believe that some of them are actually hoaxes made by people who have plenty of time.

But I really do feel the pain some of them go through, I really do...

Thanks to Dinghy, I have made it a personal target to eat a sandwich like this.

Oh glorious food...

After being pointed out by my boss that I am overweight, it seems that I have to step up my weight loss efforts. So I went to the gym on Monday night and sad to say that all of the cardio machines (threadmills, cycling machines, etc..etc..) were out of order. Either that or they were being checked or undergoing maintenance. So there goes my cardio work out but tucked away in a little area are the row machines, which were totally unaffected and fully operational. Minutes go by and I was already working up a sweat, once I completed rowing 1.5km in about 7 minutes, I decided that I shall add rowing into my exercise regime and try to hit 1.5km in about 6 minutes.

Food-wise I had to cut down on my favourite breakfast food such as fried noodles or nasi lemak or roti canai. So much for a great Malaysian breakfast every morning. Now I am stuck with buns or fruits but the mini mart sells really horrible fruits. Yesterday I bought two honeydews and much to my dismay, one of them was already bad. Sigh, I have such a bad impression on their fruits. Today I bought some Jacob crackers and munched on a couple of them. I think I shall eat more of those, they taste exceptional especially when dipped in hot tea or coffee.

On Sunday I had a CYZ camp committee meeting and Uncle See Lok gave us a taste of what’s to come during the camp and I must say that it is extremely interesting and I believe that the camp is not going to be like any other camp. I have extremely high expectations for the camp, I am going to go with a receiving heart.

Weekend bomb

Well in true honesty the weekend wasn't a bomb. I played tennis on Saturday morning for the first time in like almost 4 months and prior to that, 12 years. My form was extremely horrible and my racket weighs a tonne. What more could you ask from me? At least I don't hit the ball completely out of the court though hehe.

Sunway Pyramid was completely jam packed with the parking lots closing at about 3pm. The crowds were never ending and the place looked so lively and crammed. With Pyramid 2 set to open in 2007, I just can't wait to see how it will turn out. 1 Utama on the other hand seems much quieter and lonely especially the new wing. But wait, once the new GSC cinema opens I can expect to see more people frequenting the new wing.

A particular blog about a Singaporean girl was published in the Sunday star which caused quite a ruckus amongst the online community. So much that it actually reached Malaysian soil. Anyhow I will not put the link up to the website due to its "contents".

Saturday night was pretty interesting as I had my first company annual dinner at the Sunway Convention centre. The place was packed out and the food wasn't too bad. And no, I did not pig out. The wait was on the other hand quite rude and obnoxious. Before our table could finish the food on the table, he would take the tray away without asking anyone wasting good food on it. Entertainment wise was pretty ok, the emcee was superbly hilarious that everyone now has a new catch phrase which he uses the whole entire night, "meletup!".

In a nutshell, the weekend was da bomb as I managed to spend it with some special people on Sunday and the sermon preached by Ps Foo was so real and great. It really grabs a person by the heart and yanks on it.

Good Friday!

Friday always seems to be the busiest day at work. The very thought of being able to escape the confinements of the factory to feast on what I call decent food ponders on my mind from the very beginning of the day. It is the only day whereby my tongue can actually taste something else besides oily fried food and of course most importantly, pork. As usual I would head out with my colleagues to Sri Muda to feast on some good old coffee shop food such as the usual chicken rice, noodles, and others. Friday after Friday, I come to notice the slight price increase in food compared to other eating places such as the NTS coffeeshop located opposite to the one we usually eat at charges about 10 cents more on drinks. While "chap fan" or how should we say economy rice is supposedly the cheapest among the others, it has now become on of the most expensive. Not too economical I would say, and I do agree that the change in name to "Mixed Rice" really does serve its purpose.

Most of my Friday nights are tied up with cell group and once every month, congregation. My cell is a truly fun bunch, I got a mixed-up group of crazy college kids who loves nothing more but chit chat at the mamak. On the other hand, they have a great heart for God and they are willing to do almost anything.

To sleep early on a Friday night is usually the case for me since I have to wake up early for my mandarin class the next morning. Can't really say that I am progressing fast on my mandarin, need to allocate more time for personal reading and practice but I am rather excited about the tennis session tomorrow morning with my colleagues. I would really love to see how my tennis strokes are holding up as well as maybe try to stroke my over-inflated male ego as I "try" to win a game or two. Lets hope my nighttime Diablo session doesn't interfere with my so-called "form".

"The roof, the roof is on fire....."

After spending almost an entire year staying at university student accommodations, I have grown accustomed to waking up at the wee hours in the morning thanks to the blaring fire alarm located on the wall in my small private room. The sound would drown about anything, oh I can still hear the ringing in my ears. The cause? Students who cook bacon without leaving some sort of window or door opened. The victims? Everyone else in the building and of course the firemen who had to rush all the way to my humble flats. I think my worst experience was when I had exams the next morning and the fire alarm rang at about 3am.

Anyway before straying away from the main point, I had my first fire drill here at work. Well in true honesty I didn't know it was a drill. All I heard was a loud voice shouting over the PA system saying that there was an uncontrollable fire. Only did I know this was a drill when we were gathering at the car park and my colleague pointed out to me that there were auditors there. Oh the shame, oh the shame. It was a good experience though, but it did get me thinking that how lucky I was that it wasn't a real fire.

I also started reading a novel containing short stories by Jeffrey Archer. That I have to thank my darling for lending me the book and preventing me from sleeping early. How thankful I am to you haha :P (not being so extremely sarcastic).

Jam? Strawberry, blueberry or traffic?

Everyday while I drive to work and back from work, I pass through the same route everyday. I pay the same amount of toll everyday, which is about RM4.20 both ways. Sometimes I take a shortcut that saves me RM0.50 but wastes about 20 minutes of my time due to long waits in front of the traffic light. Now if only I could just teleport directly straight to work, no hassles, no jam and no travelling expenses, well almost nothing. I bet the whole irony of it is that maybe the teleporter needs anti-matter to run or something like that. But look at it this way, we made the world smaller by allowing everyone easy access to almost anywhere in the world.

Well airline companies will go bust and Boeing and Airbus will probably be banding together. Oil and gas companies will go bust as well and this will definitely cause a worldwide turmoil. That is why this has to be only kept for me to use alone. I can wake up like 15mins before work and always arrive home directly after work. No more wasting precious time moving around. Then again back in the middle ages, people took about a couple of months to travel around in what we can do now in a couple of hours.

Anyhow, no matter how much I look at the jam and complain, I have to be thankful that, one, I am not working in KL where the jam is much worse. Two, I am not working in Bangkok where the jam is even crazier and finally, things could be even worse, I don't drive and have to rely on busses. So as always, I am back to square one thinking that jams are in some ways bearable. The next time you start to think about traffic jams, just remember that things could be worse.

Not so hot anymore!

After spending days sweat at the office, I can finally feel the cool breeze of the working air conditioner. Coupled together with about hundreds of other electronic equipment turned on at the same time, having an air con just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. So I had to take preventive measures, measures that will save my insanity. How? Well I just brought my computer case fans to work and hooked it up to my DC regulator and voila, instant cooling solutions. Right now its only a 12V 80mm fan hooked up at 16V to turn faster. I have another one with a higher CFM waiting to be turned on but I am afraid that the sound it emanates might bother my other colleagues. Maybe I should hook up a bigger fan instead, lower RPM but higher CFM.

Well today is gym day and The Curve started charging for parking so I guess its Menara Axis for me today. Unless my colleagues choose Summit or Subang then I'll just follow them. Never been to the one in Summit or to the one in Subang before but this is what having a passport membership is all about. I hope they are showing something nice today while I am on the cycling machine.

Finally finished playing KOTOR 2 as well, what can I say about the ending? It sucks. Oh well, sometimes I wonder what they whole entire game is about anyway. Maybe its because I took too long to finish the game. And in the course of uninstalling the game, I accidentally deleted every other game folder in my computer as well so my computer is game free, well almost game free.

TV series season has just ended and I have to wait a couple more months before the US TV series kicks off their new season. I wonder if Nip/Tuck will be showing this season.

Monday, woohoo!

Ever wondered why Mondays are nice to sleep in and Friday nights seem to be the time you are most awake? I always wondered about the Monday blues, whether it be psycological or is it that our bodies seem to be allergic to work. One of my own dream is to actually not dread Mondays, but it seems to be what everyone wants. Everyone wants to work at a place whereby every morning, getting up is no longer a chore. But could it all be in our own mindsets. A job is only boring if we think that it is boring. Its always all up to us whether we want to make it fun and happening or rather just tearfully boring and mindless. Sometimes we look at other people and wished that we had their jobs, but the grass always seem greener on the otherside.

After all I have written above, I would like to say that Saturdays and Sundays pass by extremely fast. Before you know it, time has passed on and what you see is another reoccurance of what happened the week before, the dreaded Monday. You always seem to have too little time to do the things you want to do and when you have a task which you hate, time just seem to stand still. Everytime that happens, I just wonder if there is someone on some hill holding up a stick, not letting the sun go down.

One can just imagine the week to be a mountain, the start is always difficult for the climb is not easy. But once you slowly reach the peak, things seem easier because you see hope reaching you and once you are at the peak its all the way downhill from here. Some people see the week as an airport runway, nothing but stable flat ground throughout. Others may think its a bed of spikes, sudden sharp pains poking at you unknowingly. How then do we quantify what this is that we face until the end of our lives? Imagine if everyone felt positive and glad about what they do, there won't be any mountains nor airport runways. I tell you, its a bed of roses.

Hot, hot and hot!

Today is an exceptionally hot day. Worse still, the air conditioning in my office dieded as well. Sigh now I am sitting here after a nice KFC lunch (air conditioned, yay!) sweating like a pig (according to Sam my colleague, pigs do not sweat), waiting for my meeting to start in the nice cool studio aircon. Oh well, for once I am thankful for my uniform, its rather cooling if compared to the usual work clothes such as long sleeve shirt and tie.

Went to Bom Brazil again last night at Jalan Changkat, near Jalan Alor. Ate meat like there was no tomorrow and now I am officially sick of beef. Too much rare beef can really make you sick. The company was great, managed to catch up with some good old friends whom I haven't seen or eaten together with in a long while.

Alright, lunch hour is over. Time to head somewhere cooler, maybe I might migrate there.

Hopes and Joys

Ok, only but a few more days till 17th of June. Only then will we find out whether Liverpool gets to defend their Champions League title. So far with all the current backing they are receiving, there might be a high chance in Liverpool's favour. Other than that, its time for the transfer window to open and I am extremely curious who will Rafa Benitez bring in to the squad.

Will be having German food tomorrow night for dinner with my old housemates from Sheffield. I really wonder if I can find the restaurant that serves pork knuckles but in the event we cannot find the place, we might just settle for Bomb Brazil. Another lovely MEAT buffet to make me gain more weight instead of losing weight.

Started my low oil and fat content diet, I have to start cutting down on the oily food served in my company's canteen so its bread and fruits for me to eat. Already cut down on the teh ais and just sticking to water. Maybe I have a long way to go till 13kgs.