Bad things happen

Somehow, I found myself have split personality when dealing with personal life and dealing with work. Is this a right thing or not?

In my personal life, when bad things happen, the first thing I'll do is to find a quick and good solution. No matter at what cost. To find a solution does not mean to find out the cause of the problem, it is to fix the problem as soon as possible. I don't care how did the problem occurs sometimes. I would never blame anyone or anything unless I'm really really frustrated and no other way to go.

In my work life, when bad things happen, I find that the first thing I'll do is to find out who and what's causing the problem. Sometimes I just want dig out whatever hidden beneath and see how did the problem occurs. Come to think of it, sometimes only incompetent people or people lacking a proper attitude would cause problems to happen, if it's not possible to find out the incompetent people in the organization, sooner or later the organization will rot to its roots. I was busy digging out who did the wrong specification in Jordan until my colleague reminds me that finding solution is more important. Then I just woke up.

Oh well.

Fleeced a little

This morning I took a taxi from the Hotel to the client's office. The normal meter should start at 0.15 but his meter is starting at 0.25. Hopefully it reaches the client place within the cost of 1 JD. Usually they won't give change if it's less than 1 JD, I mean, most taxi drivers here don't carry change.

Yesterday the taxi driver is really nice. I only have 5 JDs but he gave me back change, and all the change he has. I don't know how to read the coins, gee, so I just accepted them.

Just now when I was on my way back, I managed to get hold of a taxi when I'm already walking halfway there. But he doesn't use meter, so I told him that he MUST use meter, but he insisted on not using it and saying that it's spoiled. So I tell him 2 JDs is the max I can give him and he says I'm a kind man. Gee.

Should have negotiated lower.

Got fleeced!

Argh! I was charged 4 bucks by the taxi driver! Usually it is only 1 buck. But, I failed to notice his taxi was without meter, and I was too lazy to get down halfway to flag another taxi because I waited for 15 minutes and there weren't a single taxi around.

When I was here for the first time in my life, I gave the taxi driver 8 bucks while actually it was under 1 buck because I did not know how to interpret the meter.

Oh well. Life's like that.

Pushing the time to go faster.

Life's here

The sunrise happens at 4:30 am everyday. But the sunset is about at the same time.

Seems like they have a day longer than the night.

Financially independent

Inflation has been going up steadily over the past few years now, with the recent fuel price hike in M'sia, I just got news from the bank that, to be considered as financially independent, at someone around my age, we would need to have a minimum deposit with the bank of MYR 3 million without any outstanding debts, loan, and that is not even considering any fixed assets or liquid assets that we might own. Up MYR 1.5 million from 2 years ago.

Anything less than that, we are considered to have a very high risk of getting a financial burden later in life. And by the statistics accumulated by them so far, 30% of Malaysians around my age already have an accumulated net worth of 500k.

This has also taken into calculation of the instability of Malaysian politics and economic factor as well.

Cheers!

Hulk

Hey, I didn't know their skin can be so hard, even bullets cannot pierce through. That's a bit too much, don't you think?

Funny that they should mix Iron Man character together with Incredible Hulk, so does it mean that next episode they should team up together and fight off the villains?

The movie is so-so and it is too predictable. We are in not for the plot, but for the action!

I want James Bond! When's the next episode?

Anyway, another one more week and one of my colleagues will be flying back already. I hope we can still cope without him.

When you are short of funds

You would have no desires but worries.

Simply deciding between cup noodles or tiger biscuit is just so difficult.

Have to drive slower than usual.

Start looking for other means to get more fund..

Work work

Work + work = last minute work

Work + bonus = happy work

Work + commission = fake work

0 - work = unemployed

Evolution of PCs

The first PC I got was way back to 1990, where it was a 80286 PC without any HDD, that we need to insert a 5 inch floppy to boot and to run any program. RAM was really expensive then, probably 200 bucks for 1 MB stick.

Then we bought a 80386 PC with 1MB RAM, which was one of the fastest and most economical around (Not to compare with Pentium 66 Mhz then). Pentium was the speed demon (and the price cost an arm too). The 80386 came with a 20MB HDD, which is really conveninet to be able to run and store things in it. Everything is in DOS flavor. dir/w is the most common command. Plug and play is unheard of.

Then finally, we bought a DX2-66 and it was really fast. It comes with 4MB RAM default and preloaded with Windows 95. We reformatted it with Windows 98 and it can still run fine. Slowness is unheard of because everyone is in 486 era where Pentium is still costing a premium over it.

Then AMD and Cyrix started to roll out their own alternatives. But I'll leave that to another day.

Evolution of Internet

Way back in 1995 - 1996, where Internet in Malaysia is still in its infancy, I was one of the few lucky ones to have a 14.4k dial-up modem to TMNet's 1515. Even then I was not the first one in my hometown to have an Internet line at home, there were some other nerds who got it first before me.

Then there were no Windows messenger (MSN Messenger), no Yahoo Messenger (YM), Google is still unheard of and the most powerful search engine is powered by Inktomi, Hotbot. ICQ is still starting out (where people get 5 digits or 6 digits number when they registered), and we were the few pioneers to join mIRC and hang out in DALnet (Dragon Realm Network) servers.

Things were really slow then when I get to become a SuperOP in smtbm (Sekolah Menengah Taman Bukit Maluri) which I didn't even know where was it then. Then we created a new channel name valentine and I get to become the co-founder. At its peak, valentine channel was listed as one of the most popular in mIRC client for DALNet where anytime in the day, there will be more than 100 users concurrently online in the channel. Then followed by the channel sitiawan, and a few minor ones.

After than I registered for ICQ due to the reason that DALNet has begun to ban Malaysian IPs (because of hacks and bots). We were one of the unlucky innocent few.
ICQ is one persistent program that manage to stay with me for more than 5 years.

By 1998, most of us have jumped to 56.6k connection speed and we were playing TF (Team Fortress) on Quake then. Then it was named TFC (Team Fortress Classic). Our favourite server is Killing Fields (KF) which is based in India. I still remembered that S'pore players were able to get a ping of sub 100 ms but Malaysians are stuck with 400 ms ping, sometimes we were able to get 200 ms ping, ISDN (which is freaking expensive then), are always at 200 ms ping. Those S'poreans were able to frag us more than we could do it to them, but oh well, we had some well known snipers around which can even kill those players with 10 ms ping like those local players from India.

By 1999, I was still stucked with dial up to 1515. Streamyx started to roll out only since 2000 - 2001 in major areas, I believed. When we were in college, we were one of the first few from our area to register at TMNet branch in Titiwangsa. The first modem we get from them is the Hyundai Hase 220 which can get a max of 32kbps in Setapak. There were 4 of us who are online almost all the time but we manage to cope with only 32 kbps.

Oh well, 8 years later, here I am, with redundant streamyx line with optional maxis 3g mobile roaming with my cellphone for Internet access.

Just lazy to go year by year anymore. :P

Random events

Was caught up in the crazy queue for gas yesterday. Wasted my precious 30 minutes.

Finally I know how does fried lamb fur taste like. It is hard, like plastic, and yet crunchy, like peanuts. It has a very very mild taste which makes it usually covered by the usual lamb smell. So far I've swallowed it all the time. Sooner or later I'll have to start looking for short fur on my body.

After all, I think we should just stick to satay.

The food is seriously overpriced! 40 bucks for like 8 pieces of small beef stick. 20 bucks for 2 sticks of chicken cube which is almost tasteless. And there were really lots of breads. The prawn wasn't fresh, the lemon tea is way too sour, the parking is expensive, and the chair is so uncomfortable.

Oh well. I'll never go there again.

On my way back, the crazy queue for gas is still there, almost all the gas stations I passed by, there were many cars waiting in a line for gas.

Sooner or later we will get to see this every month because our fuel price will adapt to the global fuel price. And the paper mentioned it will be adjusted every month. Very interesting. Can I quit driving?

Festival de Cannes 2008

Face-off

I'm so glad that they can get along fine.

Nuffnang

Please let me know if it's causing too much irritation to you.

Thank you!