Stylish Parasite

Gan got his new pair of glasses today and it is not at all what you would consider as "normal" glasses. He got a Parasite, a french designed frame which is really stylish and innovative.

Some models of Parasite

The innovation is on the frame's arm. Instead of the usual one which goes around your ears and hold the glasses in place, Parasite has this double arms that wrap around the upper cranium, resting just above and below the temple.

Model.. not Gan

According to its website: "The 4 points of holding prevent the frame both from horizontal and vertical movements. One never has had this feeling of ‘hardly’ wearing glasses, since one does precisely not wear them: they hold by themselves. This comfort is due to the frame’s pliant material, and to the possibility to adjust the glasses to the each bearer’s specific morphology."

Well... not true! Gan had to hold his head very still as any sudden movement would send the glasses flying.

We had dinner at this Thai restaurant and as I was enjoying my Phad Thai, Gan suddenly shouted "Sh*t!!!". When I looked up, I saw his glasses swimming in his Duck Stew Noodle. I couldn't help laughing!! He said it's so cruel to laugh... and feeling guilty, I took his new glasses to the toilet and wash them for him.

Well... style doesn't always go with functionality. For the price he paid for them (RM2K plus in total), this is certainly a blood sucking parasite!

You are not that important

With all the festivities going around, there are bound to be unhappy people. These unhappy people came from those who took offence on either how they were invited to the parties or how they were not invited at all! Taking offence is one thing, being dramatic about it is another.

There are just these people who need to be dramatic about their unhappiness and would go to any length to let known their anger. What made it worse is that they drag in "innocent" parties to the drama as well. They would go confront the host and ask why they were not invited... and why this or that person was invited instead! Aiyo...like drama minggu ini!

Although I have been in such situation and did feel a bit offended, I never made it into such a drama. Just accept it la... "YOU ARE NOT THAT IMPORTANT!!!"

Stuffed like a turkey

Went to an ex-colleague's Christmas open house just now. Come to think of it, that was either my first Christmas open house or I have not attended one for a very very very long time until I couldn't recall any.

I didn't mind that we were invited as DBKL to clear off the leftovers from her earlier session with family and relatives. Hey... food is food, you invite and I will surely come! Hahaha...

As far as I could remember, I have never tasted turkey in my life until today! I was told that turkey usually doesn't taste much due to their texture. However I found my colleague's turkey (well, she bought it from some restaurant) tasted great. I even liked the texture. Hmm.. could also be because it was a very late lunch (3pm) and I was already so damn hungry!

Carved Turkey

Ham

Mashed sweet potatoes

Salad with olive dip

I stuffed myself with so much food and now, I am feeling a bit sick. I doubt I will be eating my dinner (which I packed on my way home) anytime soon.... errghhhh.....

Anyhow may this Christmas brings the world better joy and peace...

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Speechless

I showed this picture to a colleague thinking that Axel looked so cute cuddling me.

My colleague asked "Why are you breastfeeding your dog?"

... *speechless*

Run Axel Run

A video of Axel running away with his bear bear. We often play this game for exercise... I would pretend to chase him, and he would pretend that I am the bad monster wanting to take away his bear bear.

Am I not evolving?

With Christmas just a few days away and a new year around the corner, many would start to think about what they have achieved and what they hope to achieve in the coming year. I am no different as I start to look back and see how well or how badly I have fared.

I would consider 2007 as a good year for me especially on career wise. No no.. I did not get a promotion or a big increment. Instead, I got employed again after being jobless for a few months in 2006 when I decided to quit "hell" without a backup plan.

Being jobless when you are poor is never an enjoyable thing. You keep dreading that you won't be able to get something soon and wonder what to do when your puny savings run out. Also if anything catastrophic happens to you during this period of time, you will end up in the newspaper as "the unemployed man".

So 2007 is much better as compared to 2006. At least I do not have to worry about when my next paycheck is coming... although I still have the challenge of balancing my checkbook.

Anyhow, there is always the dissatisfaction. There is this voice at the back of my head which always tell me that I am not where I should be. It whispers to me that I shouldn't STILL be struggling over financial matters. The feelings from this really bother me. I feel so underachieved!

All these feelings would put questions in my head. Am I doing something that is leading nowhere? Am I in a wrong industry? Am I lacking those qualities to be successful? Am I not "evolving"?... many many such questions remain unanswered.

I realise these questions do not get me anywhere. I need to just chill out, do the best I can and let things take care of themselves. It's better than feeling sorry for myself and doing nothing about it.

So for my new year resolution, I will only go with one. COUNT MY OWN BLESSINGS. I should be happy with whatever I have now, while striving for something better. I remember a saying that goes something like this: Try to change the things that you can; but if it's not within your means, then learn to change yourself to accept them.

I will start by doing something small - to resume reading "100 Ways to Motivate Yourself" by Steve Chandler. I bought this book a year ago and have only reached chapter 31 of 100. I am not sure how much motivational books can help. I have a few in the past, none which I finished reading.

Hmm...maybe thats why!

Fish Tank Maintenance

Maintaining a simple fish tank doesn't have to take so much time and effort. For my tank, I usually do it once a week and it doesn't take me more than 30 minutes each time.

I have this covered big pail to keep the tap water for a few days before I use it for my tank. So on the maintenance day, I will take the water out and put it into a smaller clean pail which is never used with any detergent. This is to avoid any harmful residue seeping into the water.

I will add in a capful of anti-chlorine and 2 spoonful of tank conditioner salt. Apparently adding the salt (not those that you use for cooking, please!) will help to avoid some common fish diseases such as ick and fungus. I let the water sit while I go empty part of my tank.

I will turn off the filter and then using the siphon, I take out part of the tank's water with the fish wastes accumulated at the bottom of the tank.

Do not empty the whole tank as you need those beneficial bacteria to remain!! I usually will only take half of the water away.

Next I will wash the filter with running tap water before putting them back.

Then it's the time to replenish the water. I use a scoop to add in the "new" water by pouring them onto the roof of my Japanese lantern tank decoration. This is so that the gravel is not stirred up by the incoming water.

Then I turn on my filter and DONE!

Volleyball Important Tip!

This is how NOT to serve the ball... or else you will get this.

(Pictures courtesy of CS)

Asian Idol - How Disappointing!!

I stayed up late last night to catch Asian Idol live result show... only to end up having a huge disappointment with the result.

After watching how all the participants performed the night before, I was sure either Jac from Malaysia or Mau from Philippines would win. In fact, both of them had the better vocals and performances.

Jaclyn Victor & Mau Marcelo

However like what many of the judges said, Idol winners are not necessarily based on vocals or performance, but rather on the appeal of the contestant.

I guess with majority of voters being females, they tend to go for cute male contestants.. and for the 1st Asian Idol, there was only one - Hady Mirza from Singapore.

Hady Mirza

Although our very own Jaclyn Victor did not win, I am still so proud of her. She did very very well... a vocal force to be reckoned with!

Jac's performances in Asian Idol

For Once In My Life:

Gemilang:

Family Day

The company I am working for had a family day at Saujana Kuala Lumpur this weekend. All staff got to bring their immediate family to this place under the company expense.

The place is really nice. It has a large area and facilities such as the pool, gym, golf course, archery, etc for guests to relax. The rooms were okay too...although I did not spend a night as I need to go home and feed Axel (my dog).

We had activities such as volleyball game and telematch to bring us together. I have to say that they were rather effective in achieving this objective. At least I got to know some colleagues from the other division whom I never talked to before.

Pictures I have taken during these 2 days:

Oh.. and see what I got at the end of the day....
bruises from the volleyball game and body aches.

Why you should have a dialup account...

Broadband service providers in Malaysia are crap. I never once heard of anyone who is thoroughly happy with their service providers. There will definitely be frequent times when you can't connect to the internet, or the connection is crawling like a giant tortoise.

It's a very frustrating experience especially when you need to get something done over the internet urgently... such as replying a very important e-mail, transferring money via online banking, chatting with your far away sweetheart using Skype etc.

So what do you do? You call their Customer Service of course... and what do they do? Well, they will tell you to restart the modem, or restart your PC/laptop. Being desperate, you will listen to their every word and you restart and restart and restart... Still not working. Then they will say, "Oh... but your account looks okay in our system. Why don't you wait for a while and try again". So you wait and wait and wait and maybe after half a day, you get your connection back. After a while, you just give up hope on them and learn to just accept your "fate".

That is why you must always have a backup - a dialup account. Although dialup can be much slower but under these circumstances, it's better than none. Like this morning, I need to send out an important e-mail but found out that I couldn't connect via my broadband. I called the Customer Service and was told that they were having this problem for some areas since last night. I asked how long it would take and he said probably a day! Luckily I remembered my long forgotten dialup account and gave it a try. It worked perfectly.

Although dialup will not be much useful with Skype calls, Torrent downloads or YouTube videos; but for usual tasks such as e-mailing or online banking, they will be able to serve well. Talking about this, I should go topup my dialup account. Never know when I will need it.

Attack of the devil dog

ARRGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

What's lurking under my bed??

Oh no! It's Axel the devil dog!!!!

He's terrorizing poor blue hyppo!! Habislah TMNET!!

Ahhhh...blue hyppo is dead! Thank goodness I am using Maxis...

SMS Please!

It's Selangor's public holiday today, so I did not have to work. Spent the first half of my day productively - filed away my bills which were scattered around my dining table, bathed Axel (my dog) and cleaned my apartment.

After such vigorous "exercises", I got rather tired and sleepy when it came to about 3pm. So I decided to take a nap. Just as I was about to doze off, a friend called me on my mobile phone. As I wanted to continue sleeping, I rejected his call and thought of calling him only after I wake up.

He then called my home and I had to drag my tired ass to the living room to get to the phone. By the time I got to the phone, it already stopped ringing. Could see from the Caller ID that it's the same person calling. So I thought it must be something urgent.

When I called him back, apparently he's at home and bored. So I guess he must be looking for someone to chat with. However I was already pissed by then and told him off. Then I tried to resume my sleep but the slumber moment had passed. I tossed and turned but couldn't sleep anymore.... ended up still feeling tired and frustrated.

How come people never think about SMSing when they know that others may be sleeping at those hours, and especially when the matter is not urgent?

Yes I know... you may suggest for me to turn off my phone when I sleep. The thing is, what if there is indeed an emergency?

People should just learn making use of the SMS.

Serenity

Looking at fish swimming in a nice clean fish tank can actually bring serenity... well at least to me. I need to spend more time in front of my fish tank instead of in front of my TV or laptop, especially after the doctor told me that I might have hypertension. Damn!... must be that stressful week (here, here and here) I had.

Do U Believe To Ghost??

I know my command in english is nowhere near excellence and I am not in a position to judge.

However for something to be aired on national TV, don't you think they should at least check on the grammar??

Specs Hunting

As the year is drawing to its end, many would start making sure that whatever fringe benefits given by their companies are fully utilised. I am no different. My company gives us optical allowance up to a certain limit and I will usually make full use of such benefit. In my opinion, no sane four-eyed people would give this a pass.

So off I went in search for my new pair of specs in 1U. Saw a lot of patrons in this shop, Sunglass & Vision World. When there are a lot of people, it usually means the things are really good or really cheap, right? Indeed it was for this case as the shop has a lot of varieties for frames. There were also some on-going promotions of RM168 and RM198 for frames plus normal lenses.

If you wear specs and want to change to a new pair, what would you look for? I for one, would go for something different from what I am currently wearing and have previously worn. It's like what's the point of changing your specs and no one notices, right? I won't want to keep asking people "Hey, you see anything different with me?" and do the serial winking thingy to bring their attention to my specs.

So anyway, it's not easy finding something different as I have changed many pairs before. Another factor that I consider is the price too.. as I would not want to pay much more than the allowance given.

After what felt like an eternity, I finally made my choice. I chose a frame from the RM198 bundle and it's a brown coloured metal semi rimless frame, definitely different from what I have worn before. As my "power" was rather high and had become higher since last year, I had to go for multicoated, high indexed lenses so that they won't be too thick. All these came with additional charges and the total added up to RM580. I need to top up a bit as my allowance is less than that. Anyhow this is the normal price range for the specs that I can afford.

My new specs will be ready in 3 days time. Am rather excited thinking about it. Wonder how it will change this nerdy look....

Header image screwed up

I was playing around with changing my blog's header image and found something wrong. Whatever image that I uploaded as the header image would turned out either distorted or with bad resolution. Although I used back my original header image (the one which was working before), I still faced the same problem. Look at the cropped screenshots below to see what I mean.

Original image:

After uploaded to Blogger:

Initially I thought it could be the problem with my jpegs but after looking it up on Blogger Help, I realised it's a recent abnormal behavior encountered by bloggers whenever they change their header images. Check out the discussion on this here. No solution for this problem yet.

I really hated the way it looked, so I experimented with a few other image files that I have. I discovered that when the file's width is 300 pixels and below, it would display nicely. Hence a new header for my blog.. Looks okay right?

Instead

by Portia E. Calleja

Do not think of what you do not have;
Instead, appreciate what you have and can still have.

Do not think of things lost;
Instead, value what you still have and may yet find.

Do not cry over spilled milk;
Instead, rejoice in what was left.

Do not think of what you are not;
Instead, be humble with what you are and can still become.

Do not think of what others say you are;
Instead, concern yourself with what you affirm to be.

Do not think of the hours and days past;
Instead, look eagerly to times that are yet to come.

Do not think of what you failed to do;
Instead, think of those that you were able to do and can still best do.

Do not think of mistakes committed;
Instead, count the things you did right.

Do not think much of the pain you have caused;
Instead, plan for ways to make amends.

Do not think of the sufferings you now bear;
Instead, look to the comfort when relief draws near.

Do not consume yourself with thoughts of what could have been;
Instead, marvel at what has become and will become.

Do not be anxious to attain greater happiness;
Instead, content yourself with the little things which bring you bliss.

Do not aspire to fill your cup at once;
Instead, have the patience to do it little by little.

And if by chance you fail, do not fret over the empty part on top;
Instead, celebrate the space filled up.

Do not condemn nature when it is at its worst;
Instead, think of the times when it was at its best.

Do not blame luck for things you miss;
Instead, learn from things in which you have been remiss.

Nor should you curse luck or others for life's misfortunes;
Instead, accept them as part of life.

I say then, Live fully, die a little,
Learn much but question less.

Have just enough but give much more,
Be contented each time to crave much less.

Doubt less and affirm a lot,
Understand more, and be understood less.

Worry a little but hope you must,
Accept all, resist the least.

For all things happen,
In due time they must.

Rebellious

Oooo...I am so rebellious....

Heaven Knows

Wow...it's been such a long time since I listen to this song by Rick Price. It was one of my favourites during my undergrad years. I still remember the sudden rush of feelings that came over me one time when listening to this song then.

During study week, we all loved to study in the library. Everyone would go to the library early to get our favourite cubicles in which we would spend almost the whole day doing our studies.. and chatting (or rather whispering). When lunch time came, we would wait for each other at the walkway called "Penang Road" outside of the library.

So on this particular day, I got fed up with studying and came out early to wait for my other coursemates. As it was still a bit early for lunch, Penang Road was rather empty. I put on the earphones of my walkman (CD players were still very new and expensive; and mp3 players were still unheard of then) and tuned to a radio station.

Then "Heaven Knows" came on air and at the very same instance, a gush of wind blew onto my face... sending a rush of intense emotions into me. Dramatic eh? Yeah..and I still remember that till this day.

Anyhow, it's fun thinking back on those good ole days. Really miss the life and friends I have then. Things seemed so much simpler and nicer. "Heaven Knows" reminds me of them.

Don't Ask

I attended an ex-colleague's wedding dinner last weekend. For someone who has been attending so many wedding dinners before, I should have known that these dinners never start in time, right? Well, apparently I never learned. The invitation card stated 6.30pm sharp and I was there 6.30pm sharp! Ended up sitting in my table alone for 1.5 hours before my table-mates started to arrive!

As they came in, we mingled and did some catching up. By the way, I haven't met or kept in touch with these ex-colleagues for a few years already. So I really had no idea what's going on in their lives.

There was this male ex-colleague who came with the son and they were sitting in another table. We used to work together closely when I was still in that company. So I went over and did some small talk with him... mostly talking about our jobs. At a point in time, I actually thought of asking how's his family etc.. but later thought better just to focus on talking about work.

Then I went back to my table and the person next to me asked me whether I knew what happened to that guy. Her question caught me by surprise and the first thing that came to mind was probably that he was in some sort of scandal.

She told me that his family met with an automobile accident earlier this year and the wife, a child and the mother-in-law did not survive. I was dumbfounded and felt so sorry for him. Then I replayed in my mind the small talk I had with him earlier and was so relieved I did not went ahead to ask about his family. That would be a very awkward situation!

I guess it's very natural to ask about family when doing small talks. For instance when you see a friend attending a function without the spouse, the first question to ask would be "Hey, how come your spouse didn't join you?". Well, better to rethink such questions the next time especially when you did not keep in touch with them for a while. I remember another function that I attended previously and got to know about a friend's divorce. Imagine if I was to ask her about her husband.

So I learned that firstly, I shouldn't be so punctual in attending wedding dinners... and secondly never to ask family related questions unless I know for sure what's been going on. Just stick to work related questions, that should be safer.

Bloody 'Suei'

'Suei' in chinese means bad luck.. and I am bloody 'suei' last week and even till this morning.

Got a page at 3am today to support a case. 3am!! Was handling that until 6 something. Thought I better not go to sleep as I would probably not wake up until noon. Had to come to the office to do the most important thing for today... i.e. to pass over the pager to someone else! Well..also to return the support laptop la as we share this. Later when my boss gets in, I am going to ask for a day off. The stress really got to me.

I think I should get some pomelo leaves, soak them into water and bathe in them to 'buang suei' (throw away the bad luck).