8 Things About Me - I've been tagged

If you noticed in my previous post, Gracey has tagged me with a title called, "8 Things About Me". Well there are rules to it and I would have to tag 8 other people, etc, etc, I've decided just to write 8 things about myself and tag the other people next time.

• I've recently found a passion in photography but am seriously trying not let my over addictive impulsive nature to control me and buy so many equipment such as a new camera body, lenses and other items. I need to learn how to master with what I have at the moment first before buying more stuff. Favourite subjects are nature/landscapes and street photography.
  
• I'm currently lost between wanting to upgrade my old PC or getting a MacBook or MacBook Pro altogether. I know that I would only use a computer to watch movies and TV series as well as practice my post processing with Photoshop and Lightroom.
  
• I just renewed my bet with Seng to see if I can lose weight till I reach 77kg by next year January 2008.
• I've just signed up to run for the Mizuno Wave Run (10km) in September, and I need to submit my form for the Subang Jaya 10km run at the end of August (26th).
• I love to eat "char siew & siew yuk" rice at the chicken rice shop in Sri Kembangan.
• I play the guitar once in a while now depending on how much time I have. I have quite a number of guitars at home but my favourite one would be my acoustic guitar.
  
• I am a rather techy kind of guy, not too detailed on programming stuff and web based stuff but more on a higher level scale.
  
• I love to drink coffee, mainly from Starbucks. My favourite coffee from Starbucks would either be the Banana Frappuccino on a hot day or a nice hot Mocha Latte on a cold day.
  

Well now you know a little bit more about me.

When the Thought of Fear Grips You!

Sometimes we have a fixed image or mindset which send forth a feeling of fear. For example, when we think of prison or a nightmare which we may have, this thought causes us to fear things and this feeling of fear can grip a person and cause intense emotional stress. So how do we overcome it?

Let this video below do the teaching for you!


With this in mind, we don't have to fear anything!

Fun at the Rainforest World Music Festival 2007?

From my past two posts it is rather obvious that I was at the Rainforest World Music Festival 2007 held at the Cultural Village in Sarawak, which is about a 30 minute drive from Kuching.

The crowd was mad!

Of course as expected, I am sure there will be plenty of people blogging about it but here is another person's account of the festival. Me and my friends took a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching Sarawak aboard our trusty low cost carrier airlines, Air Asia. The flight was on time and thank God it wasn't delayed.

By the time we touched down in Kuching, we took a cab straight to our Inn where we quickly dumped our stuff and headed out to a nearby "makan" area to grab some supper. We ended up eating by the waterfront which was pretty cooling but of course, the food wasn't that superb.

Everyone was hungry!

The food was rather interesting because they served something called "Nasi Lemak Goreng" which I thought was some concoction thought up by one of my friend back in PJ.

But enough about food, let's get back to the Rainforest Music Festival. Arriving at 11am at the Cultural Village (yes, our good friend Andrew thought that the workshops started at 9.00am), I was extremely surprised to see the place entirely empty!

No crowd at all?

People were setting things up around the place, and it was pretty clear that we were there too early! On the bright side, this allowed us to actually tour around the cultural village itself to take a look at the traditional homes and enjoy the peace and quietness.

Well after 10 minutes of doing so, I got a little bored with that and was feeling quite tired from all the walking and heat. It isn't too fun walking about lugging a huge bag filled with mineral water and my camera.

How Ulu was this?

The workshops only started at 2.00pm and there was plenty of time to kill. By the time the workshops started, I decided to attend the one which was located in a super packed theater with minimal air conditioning which made the entire place so stuffy that I nodded off a couple of times.

Guitar workshop

The only workshop I enjoyed was about guitars and stringed instruments, well, they were mainly guitars there. It was truly refreshing to see the various styles and music from different cultures, it really broadened my view of how the guitar is played in different continents!

Now when you decide to go to a event way too early, this is what you find, an empty stage.

After a couple more hours, more people start to arrive at the place.
And of course, by the time the concert starts, the place is extremely packed!

Till the next post, more pictures and stories to come!

Related posts:
- Kuching, Sarawak - Part 2
- Kuching, Sarawak

Check out the entire photo collection here.

Kuching, Sarawak - Part 2

I've finally gotten around to converting one set of photos from my point and shoot camera and uploading it to Picasa Web albums as well. Well, its not much but I plan to convert the photos I took with my Nikon D40 later tonight to JPEG form.

Kuching, Sarawak

I finally managed to edit a couple of photos which I took over the last weekend when I was in Kuching to attend the 10th Annual Rain Forest Music Festival. Work has been extremely tiring and busy for me so trying to find the time to edit these photos while working on a super slow PC (it takes about 5-10minutes to edit one photo due to the slow loading times) has not been easy.

This shot was taken at the Kuching Waterfront during the day time on my final day in Kuching.


Another shot taken at the Waterfront during the day time on my final day in Kuching. I waited for the boat to come in a little closer before I took the shot. Man, do they travel slowly on water.

Took a picture of this flower outside the Inn where we stayed on Green Hill Road. The beauty of the flower cannot be compared to the "beauty" of the surrounding area. For those who are from Sarawak and is familiar with that area would know what I mean.

A shot of Hilton during the afternoon after visiting the Chinese Museum. I thought it was a pretty good shot and I was wondering if I could sell it to Hilton. Nah, they probably got more interesting pictures of the hotel to use.

I took this last shot as I just arrived in Kuching on the first night, after flying with Air Asia from Kuala Lumpur. I can't remember why I took the shot, but oh well, here it is.

Stay tuned for more pictures to come of the Rain Forest Festival!

Malaysians and Our Manners

Every single day we hear about incidents of road rage, rude counter staff, unhelpful people and poor quality of service. We pry our noses in, give some comment and complain about the "state" we are in but in evident, are we doing anything about it or are we just going to sit back and watch our nation continue this rut while we again give our "criticism"?

Tackling the problem at its root is always the method one might approach but how sure are we really tackling it at its root or could it be another branch in disguise? Two colleagues of mine, one from the land where men wear skirts and one from a small town, said that they take the highway instead of the ever congested LDP to travel to work everyday.

Why is that? Well the reasoning that both of them gave was that, on the highway, traffic is clear, they can drive as fast as they can (within the speed limit of course) without the worry of an impending traffic jam. Because of that they felt less stressed out when they arrived at work and seem to be in a more cheerful mood.

So why isn't everyone taking the clearer route? Well as usual, the clearer and faster route comes with an expensive price to pay. The travel distance is longer and the toll charges are crazy. The normal route on the LDP would cost RM6.40 for two ways but on the highway, it costs RM10.80 and not to forget the extra petrol charges as well. Is this a money issue now?

On a day to day basis, it is quite pricey to fork out RM10.80 on toll charges a day for the usual paper pusher sitting in an office located so far away from his/her home. So, they travel through the usual traffic and hopes to get in to the office in time before their bosses starts shouting at them for being late.

The freedom to choose how we live one's life is truly ours, whether we want it to be one of that is less stressful and less complicated. People tend to show their bad sides when they are physically and mentally stressed out or worn out. The entire working culture here causes many people to endure a lot of stress causing a breed of workers who are easily getting burnt out and how do they release their stress and tensions? On the road? Who knows?

Even with the emergence of our local public transportation system, traffic jams are unavoidable. We can complain and complain wondering why buses take so long to arrive and when they do, they usually come in groups of three, but ever consider that the fact that the drivers are constantly plagued by shoddy equipment and trying to get through traffic jams while being under the pressure of keeping to schedule?

How can one stay relaxed and stress free? I think if that is the case, we live in a dream world. But what we can do is make choices for ourselves that leads us to a better life, one that is less stressful but of course that comes with a price. We got to truly ask ourselves what is it that we want out of life? Is the stress, pain and suffering worth it? Have we ever sat down and thought of that?

What is your Transformers name?

With such a huge and growing success, Transformers the movie was superb and two weeks after the official launch, cinemas remain to be packed and even GSC Gold Class tickets were fully sold out. So much for a movie which impacted the lives of those who were kids in the 80s and 90s.

Of course that is not the end of it, I've even heard of collectibles being sold at a high price on eBay with the old Optimus Prime toy going for quite a hefty sum. Well, being as broke as I can be, I would just have to resort to some freebie offering on the web with any sort of relation to the famous Transformers brand itself.

After scouring through the web (to be really frank I stumbled upon this), I found my Transformers name. Sounds interesting right? So here I go inserting names and being the cheeky little bolehland kid, I decided to try out more than just my name.

Mark = Electrostreak (Autobot)

It seems that I am destined to be a goody goody guy. But I think Electrostreak sounds weird, I wonder what are my special abilities though.

Leo = Battlebolt (Decepticon)

It seems that my family name is way cooler! I wonder if this shows my true evil nature? Haha, who knows about that.

Since GMC were the car sponsors for Transformers the movie, I wonder how would it fair with our national cars.

Proton (our wonderful national car maker) = Magnoburst (Decepticon)

Sounds just about right, driving a Proton is rather scary as it might burst into flames when you crash!

Perodua = Magnoblast (Decepticon)

Wow, a great match as Perodua has been kicking Proton around in the local car market by capturing significant market share.

The kid inside of me tempted me to type even more funny words so I decided to try with the word "butt" and the results are......

butt = Cyberquake

I guess this refers to someone whose butt is as huge as an asteroid...

If you want to have some laughs yourself, check out this link here.

Its Raining in the Forest??

Life for me has become increasingly busy and stressing at times but I am making do with all of that especially with a huge super milestone for the project I am coordinating occurring next week on the 18th of July. At the mean time, I will be trying to rush through quite a bit of work so that I can complete them before I fly off to Kuching, Sarawak tomorrow night (yes I will be attending the Sarawak Rain Forest Music Festival!!). With any luck, I can complete my work by then and ensure that I have everything ready to go forward.

I have been looking forward for this trip which we planned out since the Charge Up! Conference which I attend sometime back in March. Unfortunately my project Go-Live was then set to the 18th of July which is next week thus causing me to be a little stressed out at the moment. As they always said, work will be work but I can't help it thinking of all the issues and problems that always seem to come up at the very last moment.

On another totally unrelated matter, I won't be migrating my blog. The features found on Wordpress was rather lacking and it frustrated me quite a bit. I like to have a chat box on my blog but unfortunately it isn't available or maybe I am just too daft to set it up there. Until then, any sort of blog migration will be kept on hold.

Anyhow, I managed to finally upload the photos I took at the CYZ Leaders Retreat at MBS, you can view the photos here.

Drowning

Currently drowning with too much work. Need time to relax. Blog on hold at the moment, migration could be in progress...