Fast food? Nah, we got mamak!

With the recent hype of people talking about banning fast food commercials on television, one would think that this only happens in western countries because obesity rates are ever increasing. I guess it is always easy to blame food companies for supplying food saturated in pure fat and providing it to a market which loves it.

This goes the same for our own country, Malaysia. We notice that children nowadays (myself included) are gaining weight rapidly and becoming out of shape. As usual, we do what we do best and point fingers at the suppliers, fast food chains. Why? Because we think that burgers and fries are a lot unhealthier compared to our wonderful local food.

I want to know is that why are we comparing ourselves with these western countries and following them equally in terms with the so called ban on fast food advertisements? I guess it is easy to not brainwash our kids with fast food adverts but it totally defeats that purpose when we bring them to our own local style of fast food, yes I am talking about our local food and delicacies.

What is the use of staying away from burgers, fries and soft drinks when we feed our children with so called healthier food such as "nasi lemak" (rice fats - direct translation), "mee goreng" (fried noodles) and drink "teh tarik" (pulled tea) which contains 50% condensed milk. Wow, I feel so much healthier instead! At least McDonald's are beginning to take health a little more seriously and putting nutritional facts into their menus. I don't see many products in our super markets showing nutritional facts though.

Image Source

As much as I love to eat, I really believe that the solution does not come by just banning advertisements but the an active drive to promote a healthier lifestyle. To be frank, this issue is never easy when we are just so used to our wonderful Malaysian food that staying away from it is far from easy. The key is discipline, eat within our means and not overeat. Indulging ourselves once in a while is ok but lets not make it a habit.

Image Source

Well this coming from an overweight guy, I guess it is time to put my words into practice!

Crap! Literally!

Did I ever mention that I was sort of like training for the upcoming 10km run? Well if I haven't, I managed to run just about 10km yesterday at an alarming pace, 1 hour 40 minutes. Talk about super slow and of course the rain didn't help one bit and stopping at every junction waiting for traffic to pass really did slowed my momentum down.

So I thought why not run through the village, near the seaside and you even get to enjoy the sea breeze to boot. Ok, I chose a path which I liked, near my house but it still involved running all the way to Mahkota Parade and Dataran Pahlawan and through A-Famosa, most of the route would be sectioned to walking paths with a couple of traffic sections.

Happily running along the route I chose at my own slow pace (really slow!), a bird decides to give me his ang pow!

All I can say is, "You stupid %$#^@&! bird!!!". The best response I got was from my aunty, "Wah, you are so lucky!". Hrm, statistically speaking yeah, but having crap bombarded on me, I would think otherwise!

I guess I would rather be sitting at home eating some lai chee, yum!

Updates:
Look at this link which my friend had on his MSN.
http://stuff.co.nz/3968583a4560.html

Happy Chinese New Year

The one thing I miss in Malacca is an internet connection, so here I am sitting again in Starbucks using their free Wi-Fi connection and linking my very being back to the virtual world. But of course there are other reasons why I chose to sit at Starbucks for a couple of hours, one is to be able to read through some emails and another is to chat with some of my friends online as well as do a little bit of planning work.

Hopefully by the time I am done, the sun would have set down at a good level so I can walk to the beach and take more photos. I am planning on setting a photo blog but once everything is finalized, I would send out the link at this site.

This Chinese New year is a little difficult for me, well, for one thing I am trying to lose weight and the other thing is that I have access to so much food, too many goodies lying about and I can't savour them. Talk about superb willpower. Secondly it is my first time ever in my entire life that I jogged in Malacca, and do I ever regret not doing it earlier. The scenery and view is wonderful and I definitely love it because I ran twice on the first two days I got here. Although I did it in a rather slow time (75 mins for 8km), I did enjoy my run except for that little incident where a stupid bird decided to bombard me with his feces.

Alright, time to start going under the sun, have a great and wonderful Chinese New Year!

I've been tagged!

Ok after reading My GooGurl's blog, it seems that I have been tagged. So here are 6 weird things about me.

1) I use a British style keyboard so the icon "@" is not obtained by pressing "Shift+2" but rather at another weird position. Reason is that I bought this keyboard while I was studying in Sheffield and it has served me well over the years.

2) I recently only developed a liking for chilli, previously I never eat my noodles or other chinese dishes with the chilli given. I used to hate eating even my "wan ton mee" with those green chillis. Only recently did I try eating some "chili padi" during lunch with my colleagues at a Thai restaurant last week.

3) I put on weight as fast as I lose weight. I lost 6kg in three weeks but I can also gain that much in 3 weeks or even more sometimes. It depends on the situation I guess.

4) I like and miss Budajovicky Budvar. It was the beer I drank when I was visiting the Czech Republic when I was in university. The beer tasted so good and it was so cheap, it was only RM2.00 per pint. Try beating that Langkawi!

5) I have more than 2000 posts in the Lowyat.net forums. Not that I am a geek or anything but I learned that the vibrance and the randomness of certain posts keep that forum alive and interesting to an active reader base of 50,000 members.

6) I liked the TV series, "Joey". It was a pity I can't seem to find it anymore. Really, it was so funny that I could just laugh non-stop to that series.

Now for all of those who read this post, you've been tagged as well. Go on ahead and try to write 6 funny things about yourself.

Honey, why are you calling me so late?

Lips of an Angel - Hinder

Lately I've been listening to this song quite a lot, well not because it reflects my life or anything but I like the way this music was composed and played. From this you can probably guess that I like rock songs with a touch of alternative and my favourite instrument would be the acoustic guitar. Austin Winkler's vocals are solid for this song and not everyone can have that sandpaper style type rocker voice.

The lyrics talk about a guy who is actually seeing someone at the moment but receives a call from his ex-girlfriend. During this call he seems to think that he misses his ex-girlfriend a lot and wishes that his current girlfriend was just like his ex. Definitely not a song you would want to sing to a girl you like currently. It will give her the wrong idea!

One more day before I head down to Malacca for the Chinese New Year holidays where I don't have an internet connection! Seems like I have to hijack the Wi-Fi connection at Starbucks at Mahkota Parade and hope I get away with it. Well thanks to that, I guess I've got more time to continue my 10km run training (quota is to run 8km) and take more photos of my surrounding areas. Its interesting because I've already lined up a couple places I intend to scout and take photos.

• Beach side near Mahkota Parade
• A-Famosa and the surrounding areas
  
• Jonker Street at night with plenty of lights
  
• My housing neighbourhood (please pray that I don't get chased by wild dogs!)
  

My main objective is to be able to bring Malacca and show it to the world and show everyone how beautiful it looks. I do hope I remember to bring my tripod back as well, the last time I brought my tripod but without one crucial part. Hopefully I can find a day where I've got the time to spare to take those photos.

To everyone out there, have a great and wonderful Chinese New Year!

Lost and confused

Over the past couple of months I have been fighting the urge to have a complete makeover. This involves redecorating my room, upgrading my computer at home as well as moving my current PC parts to my parent's PC outside and of course, losing weight! I think right now, things are about to change drastically.

I guess being in a coordinator role at work allows me to plan and think about the changes I need to make. One of my bad habits is to basically plan a lot of things in my head but never go about doing those things. So I think I need to prioritize the order of which I need to start working on.

1) Upgrading my computer

At the moment I think this has to be done at a different time, one thing is that I don't have the money ever since the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 is going for RM1155 at the moment and by going through that route, I would need a new power supply, a new PCI-E graphics card and hopefully I can use my existing DDR1 ram modules. Let's put this as the lowest priority.

Action Plan

1. Save money
2. Plan upgrade (choose components within budget)
3. Buy items
   

2) Losing Weight

Yes the most important issue and it costs much less because I think in the long run, I actually save more money instead. First things first, cutting down on my food intake means eating less rice during lunch and dinner, eating breakfast on a daily basis and not drinking any sort of soft drinks. Besides dieting, exercising regularly in the gym and playing more sports is another must. Target to reach, to lose at least 15kg by July so I can win my bet with Yee Seng.

Action Plan

1. Constant exercise
2. Eat less fatty food
3. Reduce carbohydrates
4. Reduce soft drinks
   

3) Redecorating my room

Ok, most of my stuff in my room has been around for about 10 years and they are getting really old and they are literally falling apart. I guess I would need to remove that queen size bed and put in a large single bed while totally removing that build in table and start buying some furniture from Ikea. I would definitely like 2 large book shelfs and cupboards to store all my books and junk. First action plan would be to get my room measurements and make sure that I can fit in all the new furniture before deciding to get rid of my current furniture.

Action Plan

1. Obtain room dimensions
2. Create floor plan and find out available space
   
3. Check out Ikea for some bookcases and desk designs
   
4. Clear my room and relocate stuff

Conclusion

The plan is up and can be changed in time but the next thing I need to do is set the deadlines for all of these action items. I think I am a slave to my own planning.

Weekend blitz!

I managed to have an extremely busy weekend and it was totally wonderful. Right from 12.00am Saturday morning all the way till Sunday night 11.59pm, everything was just great for me. And no, I wasn't at Blitzone or anywhere near a cybercafe.

Saturday started out the perfect way and even though I had like 4.5 hours of sleep, I woke up with a very blur look on my face, a quick rinse and steadied my way towards Sunway Lagoon to attend my project's family day. Did I mention that I was so blur? Well it proved to be apparent when I missed the Subang toll exit on the highway and continued my way to Cyberjaya only to realize that when I was about to turn off towards KLIA.

Of course after a quick (a rather large) U-turn through Shah Alam, I finally arrived at Sunway Lagoon and was greeted by the hottest and most humid weather I've ever encountered.

At this moment, Sunway Pyramid is undergoing extensive renovation and it was a long walk from the car park all the way into the lagoon itself, the sun didn't help one bit by burning me up though. And to think that I forgot to bring my sunblock.

To be honest, I went for the family day with the intention of being the photographer, hoping to capture certain moments of the wonderful event on camera and then showcase it to the rest of my colleagues. The fun part was being able to capture everyone when they were playing the tele-match games.

The atmosphere was apparent that they enjoyed themselves throughout the day. Fun filled laughter and screams filled the air as adults and children, father and son, mother and daughter participated in the games.


Then again, there were some of those who were left out of the games because they were a little too young but they didn't let the day go by without acting all cute and running around.

You can check out the entire album by click on the thumbnail on my right side bar. Till next time, cheerios!

Right on track

I finally managed to run all 6km around the lake in Cyberjaya today non-stop but at an extremely slow pace. It took me 60 minutes exactly to run 6km. I guess I am slowly reaching my target of being able to run the KL International Marathon, 10km run in under 80minutes which is the qualifying time. Next week, my target is to try to achieve that distance within 50 minutes.

Anyway aunt grace was kind enough to direct me to this song (Homesick) by Mercy Me which is very nice but unfortunately it is a funeral song or a song that was sang during a funeral. You can either hear or view the video clip at YouTube or over at aunt grace's blog. Its a nice compilation and the melody is nice, I guess that is one song you would definitely not sing to the girl you like.

Anyway here is another Mercy Me song which was a hit. I like this song very much. Enjoy!

An interesting lunch

I always look forward to having a good meal over lunch and spending that time building relationships with my colleagues. Today was something unusual for me, we went and ate vegetarian food. Basically in Cyberjaya, there isn't any decent restaurant within a 10km vicinity and we always drive outside to eat some good food whether it may be chicken rice or even at McDonald's.

Not today, we went to the wonderful lego building located right next to the Shell building and next to the plaza square where companies like Maybank, IBM and Prudential are housed. From the image above, you can see why I call it the Lego building, well everyone here calls it that.

The food court located on the 1st floor in this building is not exactly the best place to eat in Cyberjaya, there are probably better places around Cyberjaya such as the Street Mall and the recently opened Old Town Kopitiam restaurant. But there is a ray of hope within it and it shines in the form of an Indian vegetarian restaurant.

As most Cyberjaya is basically an IT hub, most of the workers here come from India and most of them are vegetarian. Now if you know me well, I am a meat lover and for me to head over there for lunch is a surprise for many. Today was one such day which I went with a bunch of my colleagues and I found out that the food there was excellent. Plenty of dishes to choose from and fruits are available (yes I am still sticking to my New Year's Resolution which means fruits aplenty during meals) as well.

So if you are ever in the vicinity of Cyberjaya and you have no idea where to head out for lunch, try out this vegetarian restaurant, its located on the ground floor of the Lego building right next to the BCB-CIMB bank.

New Updates

Finally some new updates for this site. Yes I've changed the site layout a thousand times and the reason why I finally changed it again to one of the Blogger standard theme was because I was given a chance by Blogger to upgrade to their new version. Now I can update my sidebar with better ease and with more content.

Here are the new changes for this year, 2007.

1) New title and new theme

I've changed my title from "all in a nutshell" to "How Random". Why did I do this? Well mainly because I thought that things are becoming more and more complex as you grow older and as you begin to take more on responsibilities, you learn a lot of new things and life so happens to just give so much back to you in such a random way.

2) New page layout

As I mentioned above, this was to take advantage of the page customization tool which Blogger provided with their new web application.

3) Photobook links

I've just gotten a new digital camera and I would love to start sharing more pictures with everyone. I am currently in the experimental phase with a couple of photo sharing websites, namely myPhotoAlbum, Flickr and Picasa Web Albums. Personally I like Picasa Web Albums because of the easy interface for photo upload using their Picasa software (free of course).

From my side bar you would probably see links to all of the web albums there. The newer photos are located at the lower section of the sidebar though.

4) New Chat bar

I ditched the old chat box and decided to go with Chatterbox. Why did I change this? I have totally no idea, I made a mistake by totally forgetting what I used in my old template and I really couldn't find my Javascript code. Oh well at least its new but it is missing the emoticon function which Boon did point out to me.







5) 1 Year Older

Yes, I've finally turned 25 today. Another year older and this can be considered a milestone for me. After 25 years I look back and then think of what I have achieved........My mind is blank for some part of it but I guess I need to look forward to another 25 more years.

It's Friday, time to review "Blood Diamond"

The end of the week is finally here but it doesn't feel like it really is. I guess that is because yesterday was a public holiday here in KL and PJ which means I had the entire day off to spend with my friends.

So what did we do? Well I decided to catch up on some movies which I've missed and one of them was "Blood Diamond" staring Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou. What is it about this movie that made me choose it?

Well firstly there was a statement which I heard from my colleague saying that Leonardo DiCaprio deserved to get nominated for the Oscars for this but the what made me decide was when he said that the supporting actor should be the one nominated, that got me curious.

Convincing my friends that it was a good movie was no easy task. The first thing they usually ask me is, "Who is the star of the show?". And when I answer, "Er, its Leonardo DiCaprio", they just get all freaked out. I guess that telling them that this guy here is the star of a 2 hour 15 minutes movie would probably put them to sleep.

And believe me, some parts of when he was talking did make me yawn a little but it was his supporting actor that made the show interesting. When I say that he could act, I really meant it.

In fact most of the show revolved along his life and how he tried to make a difference by being what a true father should be, longing to be with his family and trying his utmost to protect his son from going to the dark side. Totally opposite of how Darth Vader ended up to be.

The movie talked about the whole issue of conflict diamonds in Africa. If you have no idea what conflict diamonds are, please read this first. But in short, it is basically diamonds that are harvested from countries to fund their civil wars. The show showed much of how life is in Africa from how villagers were killed or their hands chopped off by rebels to prevent them for voting for the government.

It is movies like this that makes us think how real situations like these are, and they are happening right now even as we go through our normal lives. Thousands of children suffer each day due to poor conditions or some even as young as 10 are thought to be rebel soldiers. In the show they mentioned that the word "Infantry" was derived from child soldiers, I guess it may be very true.

To be perfectly honest, I would rate this show 4 stars out of 5 stars. A very good movie which should not be watched by children as it may prove to be extremely traumatizing due to its violent (yet true) nature . There are plenty of action scenes as well as scenes that will touch you to your very core of your heart.