Read In Red

Review of my new toy, the Sony Cybershot TX-10

2011-11-27T18:30:00.001+08:00

Released in Malaysia: Sometime in mid-2011 (I think)
Price: RM1299 (now on discount at Sony stores for RM999!)
Specs: In the name of efficient use of blog post space, you may refer to the specs here
Disclaimer: This is not a paid review, the camera is my own and I will certainly not be liable for any problems you may have with the Sony Cybershot TX-10 if you bought it based on anything I write in this post and it turns out not the way you hoped. Just making sure we have a common understanding here. Now on to the review!

So my trusty old Ricoh camera 's on/off button has been failing on me, the video mode no longer records sound and it did not help that it took a nasty fall in the hands of a friend (which is why people must always put the camera strap around their hands especially when handling cameras that don't belong to them), so last week I decided get myself a new camera. I do like taking some arty farty photos on occasion and also wanting a hardier camera than my previous one which had problems of water entering it and screwing up the video sound recorder. So my specs for my dream compact camera were simple: high optical zoom (around 10x), able to take good macro shots, able to take good shots under low lighting, waterproof and reasonably priced.

The TX-10 unfortunately didn't meet the specs for high optical zoom (only 4x) but it had other cool features that got my interest. It also has some specs and features which seem to be most awesome but for me personally are unnecessary and has limitations. For example:

1) 16.8 megapixels: I think is ridiculously high as it would take much massive space on a hard disk, so I set most of my photos to 10MP. Of course this would be good if you want shots to make into large prints. No score for this feature coz' it really depends on the individual whether you like high MPs or not.

2) 3D still image: The camera has 3 modes for taking 3D images - 3D Still image, 3D Sweep Panorama and Sweep Multi angle. For the first two modes, you can only see the 3D effect on a 3D TV, but not on the camera, computer or print. Which makes it useless to me coz' I don't have a 3D TV, and I doubt even if I did, I would hardly take the time to hook up my camera to the TV just to ogle at some 3D pics. This probaly would be significantly cooler if you had a digital photo frame. The Sweep Angle mode effect, on the other hand, can only be viewed on the camera by tilting it left to right. Which is cool for all of two seconds, but since it's not viewable on computer or print, it's also kinda useless.

3) AVCHD Full HD movie recording: You need a special HDMI cable that can connect to the camera and to your HD tv in order to see recorded movies in HD. Currently I don't have one, so can't test it out and that to me makes it a cool but useless feature, especially since apparently you don't get the HD effect once the video is burned onto a DVD or other media (only plays in HD from the camera).

Nevertheless, there is plenty of good stuff about the camera which I love. I went on a trip to Sabah last week with a colleague, where I got to visit Mount Kinabalu, Poring Hot Spring and do some snorkelling at Manukan Island, so I had a good chance to test some of the many features and see what it was capable of, and I was quite happy with results although there are a few things about the TX-10 that could be improved. Here are some of the features and capabilities of the Sony Cybershot TX-10 which I think are pretty awesome, including my score for the feature out of 10 (the sample shots here are unedited except for size):

1) Touchscreen (6 out of 10): Just coz' everyone loves touchscreen stuff these days. The touchscreen menu is quite user friendly and easy to understand. However, the score is a bit low coz' I have some problems with the sensitivity of the screen. Sometimes on start up, the touchscreen takes a while to be able to detect my touch, and also on playback, I can scroll through photos by swiping my finger across the screen, but it also sometimes does not detect my touch properly and ends up zooming in on the photo where I touch it. Obviously, this can be quite annoying, although the touchscreen is still cool. I just hope the sensitivity doesn't deteriorate over time, but anyhow the camera has a one year warranty and I bought an additional 2 year warranty for RM90, so I can go bug the camera shop people to fix it when my touchscreen starts acting up on me and not pay a dime.
When underwater, the touchscreen totally cannot function, so I have to set the camera to whichever mode I want beforehand (usually Underwater mode) and then when I'm in the water, I can only on and off the camera, zoom in and out, press the shutter, record movies and view playback. Changing mode or adjusting white balance is not possible. I did try the camera while snorkelling, with some nice results (see below), but I have not tried taking it diving yet (need a casing for that), so I have no idea how good underwater mode will be under the changing lighting conditions when diving.

2) Intelligent Auto mode (8 out of 10): This is the default mode and quite useful because in this mode, it automatically detects what kind of photo is being taken and changes mode accordingly. For example, a landscape shot will result in the camera adjusting to landscape mode, and when I move the camera up close to an object for a macro shot, it change to macro mode. That is pretty cool coz' I don't have to change modes all the time. However, the camera sometimes detects the wrong mode (like a few times, close up shots were mistakenly detected as landscape shots).

3) 25mm wide angle lens (10 out of 10): This is one seriously wide angle lens. It's wide enough that I can take camwhoring shots without it being so blatantly obvious that I'm camwhoring, as in my face doesn't look like it's extremely up to close to the camera, as shown below.

4) Sweep Panorama (9 out of 10): Gone are the days where I had to take time to stitch photos together with a program to make a panorama. Sony cameras are on up on most other camera brands with this feature, which is made extra cool because not only can I shoot panoramas from left to right or right to left, like below:

I can also change direction of the panorama from top to bottom or bottom to top, resulting in cool shots like this:

And combining camwhoring AND panorama shots is just super cool. ^_^

Some panorama of straight lined objects may however come out looking a bit weird though, as seen below (the platform was perfectly straight in real life), and that's where it lost one point from me. I'm sorry, Sony, it's still a great feature though!

FYI, there is also an underwater panorama mode, but I did not test this because the site I snorkelled at had poor visibility, and most of the corals were quite dead, i.e. not colourful, and since I can't change camera modes when in the water, I decided to skip on testing this feature out.

5) Macro shots (9 out of 10): I was very very happy with the TX-10's ability to take macro shots. It can focus up to 1cm distance and that means I can take pretty nice shots of pretty flowers up close:

The one above was taken indoors in a shaded area, whereas the one below was taken outdoors. In my opinion, the colours came out beautifully under the lighting conditions.

The reason for loss of one point is the macro shots as still not as detailed as I would like, but for a pocket-sized camera like the TX-10, the shots are still awesome.

4) Optical and digital zoom (8 out of 10): The camera has a small optical zoom range of 4x (unfortunately there is no underwater camera that has an optical zoom above 5x), but under the Settings menu, there is an option to select Smart Digital Zoom of 5.1x or Precision Digital Zoom of 16x. The Smart zoom makes little difference, so I opt for Precision Zoom. I took the following photo without any zoom while I was soaking my feet in a tub at Poring Hot Springs. The area in the little red box is what I zoomed into with Precision zoom for my next shot.

The picture quality after zooming in such a distance on 16x digital zoom is pretty good, although it has a little water-coloury effect. And words on the signboard can be read although in real life, I could not read it where I was sitting. For me, the quality may not be of print quality but it's good enough to serve the purpose of capturing a clear zoomed up shot.

5) Low-lighting shots (10 out of 10): The TX-10 performs SUPERBLY under low lighting. The camera has a Twilight mode (if you're using a tripod) and a Handhedl Twilight mode. Shots below were taken at night on the latter mode, and the camera did a great job of picking up and enhancing whatever light there was, especially on the photo below of the boats and hotel because in real life, it was NOT as bright as it looks in the photo.

6) Background Defocus (6 out of 10): One of the reasons I was lured in to buy this was the Background Defocus feature, which makes the subject of the photo clear while the background is defocused. This effect is usually only achievable on DLSRs, although it can also be achieved on most compact cameras when taking macro shots, as seen in my shots of the flowers. So to be able to take shots that are not so close up and defocus the background sounded like a pretty cool feature for a compact camera.

Unfortunately, this feature was a little disappointing for me because the recommended distance from the subject of focus is only 30cm (which is about the distance of a camwhore shot) but when I try to use this mode, more than 50% of the time, the defocus effect does not work and the background is still in focus. If I take a self-shot, with arm fully extended further than 30cm from me, the defocus effect does not work. So I have to move the camera closer to me. Which makes the wide-angle screen really really helpful for making sure my face does not take up more space on the photo than I want it to. Out of about 15 times that I took variations of the shot above, only 3 came out defocused. Maybe the distance wasn't right, but if it's going to take that many times to get a nice shot, it's annoying.

7) Underwater mode (9 out of 10 - tentative): I say tentative for the score because I am itching to get an underwater casing for this camera and test it out when diving to see how the lighting affects the photos. But from what I saw when snorkelling, the camera took shots that were better than expected. The camera did pretty well focusing underwater, with only a few slightly blurry shots, and those were usually for the fish moving really fast. But I took many pics of moving fish that came out really well in focus with no flash whatsoever, and the colours were nice considering the visibility was a bit poor. Some sample shots below (be reminded that these are completely unedited from the camera).

8) Shockproof and freezeproof (no score): At least, this is what Sony says about the camera. I didn't give a score because I didn't test these features and I am not about to throw my camera around or put it in the freezer coz' it's MY camera and I don't want to end up killing it before it's time. But these are of course really cool features as well coz' I no longer have no be so worried about drops except for unsightly scratches, and I can use the camera in cold countries without it freezing over... which was another problem I had with old cameras. So if these features work like they should, I say, double thumbs up for the TX-10!

On a final note, here are some things that could be improved about the camera:
1) The camera battery must be inside the camera to be charged. It would obviously have been nicer if the battery could be charged outside the camera so I could continue using the camera with a spare battery while charging the other one.

2) Battery life is ok but not great. According to the battery specs, it can be used for about 250 shots. During my snorkelling day trip, I took about that amount of photos, and also playbacked photos in between before the battery knocked out. So on a typical vacationing day, expect your battery to last you about one day before knocking out. I bought a spare one as back up and it cost RM180 or something like that.

3) Photos come out too orangey under incandescent light. I guess that's the downside of a camera that does too good a job of capturing colours well. There is a mode to adjust the white balance under incandescent light, but it still turns out bit too orangey for my liking.

4) No options to change colour of photos to black and white or sepia or other filter effects. Not that I actually used such effects, but if you are one of those who do, this might be a bit disappointing although it can be easily rectified with a good photo editor.

5) IT DOESN'T COME IN RED! Yeah, you lose big marks from me on this aspect, Sony. Blek.

CONCLUSION: Pretty awesome cool looking compact camera producing pretty good photos with few minor flaws, although I could do without paying for some supposedly awesome features that I'm hardly ever going to use. I give it an overall 9 out of 10. ^_^

P.S.: You folks at Sony, if you're reading this and would be so kind to send me an underwater casing for the TX-10, I'll be most happy to review that during my next dive trip. As long as I get to keep the casing. *GRIN*

Flash Mob Dance Event at Klang Parade

2011-11-06T16:56:00.001+08:00

So this week was pretty interesting as just one week ago I got a buzz from my ex-dance instructor at my fitness centre, Ms. Meei, asking me if I wanted to join a flash mob dance thingy at Klang Parade. And since I love dancing, I like to think I'm reasonably good at it (though certainly not good enough to go professional coz' no one in their right mind would pay me to dance for them) and being part of flash mob sounded like a fun idea, I couldn't pass up the chance. It was a purely volunteer thing, so everyone else who took part were simply students from my instructors gym dance classes, who are just like me... amateurs who can't really dance that well but like to think that we can and are gutsy enough to get up in public and show what we sort-of can do in front of innocent bystanders... I mean, shoppers. XD

My first practice started on Tuesday (that's four days before the date of the event), and I had practices on Wednesday and Thursday to learn up three songs, out of five that were performed yesterday. Our songs were:

1) Mizz Nina ft. Colby O' Donis - What You Waiting For

2) Britney Spears - Hold It Against Me

3) LMFAO - Sexy and I Know It

4) Shakira - Waka Waka (Bellydance performance)

5) Mizz Nina ft. Flo Rida - Take Over

I was in dance 1, 3 and 5, the most challenging one being the LMFAO song, coz' from start to finish almost all the steps are different except for one part which is repeated. The dance steps to the Mizz Nina songs were easier and we repeat them 3 or four time through the song, so supposedly they were 'easier' song. The funny thing was I ended up remembering all the steps for the LMFAO song, but I messed up some steps on the first song, and I think everyone messed up on the last song. Well, I did mention we aren't professionals. :P

So I have photos of our dance performance taken by my wonderful mum, but unfortunately no videos, firstly because she doesn't know how to use my camera, and secondly because the sound recorder on my camera no longer works so my vids comes out with no sound. Hence I didn not bother trying to get her to take videos, and I'm not sure if anyone else did (I'm just gonna google for the next few days and see what pops up on the internet. :P). Anyhow, since I messed up on two of the songs, I'm only interested in the seeing my LMFAO performance! XD

Here I am in the car on the way to the event (the bling cap was borrowed from a friend, and thanks to him for that!).

A couple of group pics before our dance started...

Somehow my niece got in this pic.

Getting into our first Mizz Nina dance... (where I have omitted the photos showing me doing something else from the others, i.e. where I screwed up. :P)

Followed by the dance to the Britney Spears song 'Hold It Against Me':

Ms. Meei doing her thang!!

Me and my 'crew' of 3 other girls doing the LMFAO dance. This was the starting formation:

The song involved quite a bit of jumping around...

And for the infamous 'wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle', our step was to point at the crowd, and well, WIGGLE.

Some of my funny poses in the next few pics. :P

The three of us looking like we're about to kung fu the girl in fushcia pink! But we're actually moving into our final formation. XD

And voila, our final pose! And I actually look pretty cool in this pic, and since it's very rare for me to look cool in anything, I LIKE I LIKE I LIKE!

Next time was the Waka Waka song, where the other ladies did their belly dancing, and I got another break.

And our final performance to Mizz Mina's Take Over, where all of us had to wear an orange shirt (courtesy of our sponser, Anna Brahmin, who does nice southern Indian food... and I'm saying this coz' after our show we went to their place and got free food. :) But I don't know the address of the place. Sorry I'm a terrible food blogger, I know).

Thanks for watching!

P.S.: Since I can't get the actual performance videos, here's the vid for our practice of the LMFAO song, where there were only three of us at the time (I posted one of the vids for the Mizz Nina dance in my previous post):

Sharing the stage with Ms. Momo Meei

2011-11-03T13:55:00.002+08:00

Meei is my ex gym dance instructor who is also a competition dancer, won a bunch of awards and she is a crazy freakin' dang awesome dancer (search for her Youtube if thy wish).

Long story short, she roped me in for a mini flash mob thingy this weekend at Klang Parade (3pm onwards) and all I can say is... I hope I don't screw up!!

So here's a sneak preview of us getting jiggy with it. ^_^ The actual performance will end up on her blog, so waiting for that. Weeee!

US vacation - crazy lots of photos

2011-09-04T18:58:00.001+08:00

Hi all! This is another long overdue post from me, coz' I should have posted this like 2 months ago when I was on holiday in the USA... but I have not been in my blogging mood for a while. But also because I took way too many photos while I was there, so the thought of posting them all up on Blogger was daunting... until I recently learned that Blogger has upgraded their photo uploader so I can actually post WAY more than 5 photos at a time now. Whew! Not so daunting anymore!

Um, yes, so I was in the USA for two and a half weeks in July (half a week spent mostly on flying halfway around the world). I took China Southern Airlines for about RM4200 return flight (it was summer time so a bit more pricey than usual) with a relatively short transit of 2-3 hours in Guangzhou to and fro. The flight was ok except that the flight attendants all kept speaking to me in Mandarin and I had to give the sheepish grin and say "I no speaka the Mandarin. Sollee!". Other than that, there was also the encounter with a US immigration officer with a bit of an attitude, coz' I didn't give him my customs card (only my immigration card since in most other normal countries I visit, the immigration officer checks the immigration card only and the customs people check the customs card) and I also filled in my immigration card a bit wrong (put 'Buffalo' under 'state' when it should have been 'New York'). So this immigration officer rolls his eyes when I apologize, with the look on his face like I'm some kind of moron, although he probably should have been a bit nicer considering the fact that I AM coming halfway from around the world, maybe not that familiar with the geography of his country, and also as a tourist am about to spend the next couple of weeks contributing to his country's failing economy, which by the way also contributed to the failing economy of the rest of world.

Sorry, I just needed to let that bit of steam off and hope any US Immigration Officers reading this get the message and not have such an attitude problem coz' I heard it's quite common among you guys. Lol.

Anyway, I spent the first week travelling around the west coast of the US with my brother and sis-in-law, who live in Buffalo, New York (that's on the east coast), before we flew to Cleveland, and then drove back to my bro and sis-in-law's place at Buffalo. Our was as follows:

One day in Los Angeles, visited Hollywood walk -->

Next day drove rental car to Las Vegas (watch the Beatles cirque du soleil show) -->

Next day drove to Grand Canyon, stopped by Calico Ghost Town and Hoover Dam along the way -->

Spend two nights at Grand Canyon -->

Travelled back to Los Angeles, and visited the Getty Centre (Art Museum) and Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum -->

Next day flew to Cleveland, visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (but didn't actually go in) -->

Next day spend the whole day at Cedar Point, the Roller Coaster Capital of the World!!! -->

Next day drove back to Buffalo, New York to my brother's place -->

Next one week was chilling at bro's place, visited Niagara Falls, watched Harry Potter 7 at a drive-through theatre and watched episodes of '1000 ways to die' on Netflix

So now that you have the runthrough, here are photos!

Day 1: Hollywood, Los Angeles

Me and bro and sis-in-law eating chicken and waffles, which I find a fascinating combination.

We saw Optimus Prime, we did!

The famous Sunset Boulevard, which are featured in a number of famous songs.

And this is to show we were on Hollywood road.

Hanging out at some shopping complex in Hollywood.

Can't see it in this pic, but the famous Hollywood sign is somewhere on the hill behind us.

There you go!

Some famous characters you might recognize.

The Kodak Theatre, where American Idols are born!

At Hollywoodland, a cute little souvenir shop where we bought an oscar for our parents. The award was for 'Best Parents', obviously!

Some famous Hollywood stars!

And at the famous Graumann's Chinese theatre.

Some dogs all decked out for a day in Hollywood. Yo, yo dawg!

Hey, that's King Kong!

Day 2: Calico Ghost Town and Las Vegas

We took a nice long road trip and found this quaint little cowboy ghost town along the way, so we stopped by to check it out.

After that, we were in Las Vegas, baby! Check out the neat hotels.

I especially love New York City (it's a freakin' hotel!)

Caesar's Palace...

The Venetian Hotel, which we went into and saw lots of nice artwork.

Then at night we went for the Beatles Cirque du Soleil show, which is a circus plus dance performance made according to Beatles music, which was pretty cool although I couldn't take photos of the show itself. Only of stuff outside the show.

We also visited a big Coca-cola store in Las Vegas the next day and took pic with the Coca-cola bear. I didn't know there WAS a Coca-cola bear! Anyway, the original pic had a green background, and I just edited it to add in a fake ice cave coz' that's what the photographers did and wanted to charge us USD25 for it. Nyeh nyeh, I did it for FREE. Eat that!

There was a huge M&Ms store at Las Vegas too.

I have never seen so many M&Ms in my life!!!

Then visited MGM Grand Hotel, and bought a mug for our dad. Coz' our dad likes lions. So we got him a mug with lions.

I tried to look like a lion.

And there were real lions there too! Who apparently don't eat people!

We also tried our hand at gambling, but really sucked at it.

My brother is really happy coz' he won 0.02 cents. Later on I was even more happy coz' I won 0.20 cents. That's ten times more than my brother, yo!

Day 3: Hoover Dam

So after Las Vegas, we continued on with our roadtrip to Grand Canyon, and stopped by Hoover Dam. Which they apparently rebuild really fast after Megatron smashed his way outta there and told the world that "I am Megatron", which I thought was a pretty funny first thing to say after you were sleeping under a big dam for a few years.

I have no idea WTF my bro was doing...

Day 4 and 5: Grand Canyon

Hey, we finally made it to the big GC!

Still don't know WTF my brother is doing..

Oh, we saw some deer!

That's not a deer...

On the second day, we woke up super early to catch the sunrise over Grand Canyon. Awesome stuff.

Good grief!

Later on, after the sun was fully well and risen, we were off on a long 6 mile hike down and up Bright Angel trail.

Bro looked a bit tired...

A cute little citizen of Grand Canyon.

Just a little warning sign 3 miles down!

The squirrels were cute and really not afraid of people. In fact, they were not ashamed to ask for food, and I wasn't supposed to, but I accidentally fed them. Yeah, it was an accident. The food fell from my hand to their mouths.

Ignore this photo!

Day 6: The Getty Centre Art Museum and Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium
Two museums in one day, one refined and another....not so much!

Not sure WTF we were doing...

My bro getting a drink...

And after the Getty Centre, I dragged my bro and sis-in-law to the horrifyingly horrible Ripley's Believe or Not Odditorium.

...where we saw, among other things, a nice replica of Bumblebee (not too horrifying yet)...

...replica of a man who survived cooking himself in a furnace...

...a man made of buttons!...

...Genuine shrunken heads :S...

...musical instruments made of signboards....

....errr....THAT....

....a Malaysian beef bone dragon boat?...

...the King of Pop's face made of nothing but candy!....

... and my personal favourite weirdness of all time... mini basketball players and audience made of dead SOLDIER ANTS! Seriously, the guy who did this, way too much free time.

Day 7: Cedar Point, Cleveland

Ah, Cedar Point. This was the highlight of my entire trip for me, coz' I remember when I was a little girl visiting Knottsberry Farm (another theme park with my parents and brother) and I was too young to go on the big-@$$ roller coasters, I could only watch wistfully from below while my bro and mum would scream their heads off on the crazy coasters.

Cedar Point was my moment of redemption. The day of reckoning. My chance to finally prove that I was truly, finally... an ADULT.

Yes, screaming my head off at every ride was compulsory. Here are some vids just so you have a taste of the fun.

Day... something (didn't keep track): Niagara Falls

So after we were back at Buffalo, New York and had a few days to chill, we headed out for a day trip to Niagara Falls.

We did the Maid of the Mist boat ride, which went right into the middle of the falls. And we got ponchos so we wouldn't get soaked.

My camera still got a bit soaked. :P

Then we did a Cave of the Winds walk, which was walking on a platform right under the falls. And that was awesome too. Especially Hurricane Deck, which was when we were directly under and it felt pretty much like a hurricane hitting us! We got different ponchos for this.

And this is kinda what we looked liked after we got out...

And that's the rundown of my trip to the US. Hoped you liked. :)

The Obedient Wives Club - My unusual two cents worth

2011-06-08T23:43:00.007+08:00

So there are a bunch of Muslim women in Malaysia who are happy members of the now infamous 'Obedient Wives Club' (OWC) - a club that teaches married women that the secret to a blissful marriage is to obey her husband and ensure he is sexually satisfied. They tout this as the best method to curb socials ills such as divorce and prostitution. The club's vice president has been quoted to say that wives must go beyond the traditional roles as good cooks or good mothers and learn to "obey, serve and entertain" their husbands to prevent them from straying or misbehaving. Indirectly, "disobedient wives are the cause for upheaval in this world" because men are not happy at home and their minds and souls are disturbed, she said. Apparently she also mentioned that wives should serve their husbands better than first-class prostitudes.

Not unexpectedly, women's groups everywhere are up in arms about this, saying the idea that women have to always obey their husbands is degrading to women. And especially degrading is the suggestion that wives have to be whores to their husbands to keep the marriage intact.

However, I'm not about to add to that chorus of up-in-arms women coz' I have a somewhat unusual point of view. Actually, two unsual points of view:

1) For one thing, I somewhat (not totally) agree with the club's teaching that wives should obey their husband and please them in bed (hear me out before throwing eggs at me)

2) For another thing, I think the whole idea of this club is much more degrading to men than it is to women.

On my first point, I'm not a Muslim, but I am Christian, so to my non-Christian friends, kindly excuse me while I spout a bit of Bible-spouting as there is a similar teaching in Ephesians 5 that pretty much says that women should submit to (i.e. obey) their husbands:

"Ephesians 5:22-24: Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything."

However, that's not all. Men, please pay attention:

"Ephesians 5:25: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies"

Now the words "...love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her..." is no small feat. Christians believe that Christ gave up his own life for the church (and actually, for pretty much everyone else). So in essence, the Bible is saying that husbands are to love their wives enough that they are willing to die for them. And if a husband is truly able to love his wife so much that he is willing to die for her, then it also means that whatever a he says or does is for the benefit of the wife he loves so much. So even if the wife doesn't agree with what he says or does, she should still submit to him because he's acting out of love for his wife (it's pretty much like how a mother or father would want their children to obey them for the very same reason). It's not that being a submissive wife is degrading, but if a husband does what he is SUPPOSED to be doing (which is loving his wife to bits, and not bossing her around like a servant because she's 'supposed' to obey him all the time), and the wife obeys him in return, then that would most likely be a very good and harmonious marriage.

So I do think it's true that being a submissive wife is part of the secret of a great marriage. The other part is that the husband must also play HIS part by NOT taking advantage of his wife, NOT picking on her or abusing her because he thinks he's the boss, NOT cheating on her with other women, etc, etc, but INSTEAD the husband is to treat his wife like the most precious thing on the planet and be willing to protect and love her at whatever the cost. In fact, the husbands of the women who join the OWC should return the favour and start their own club. The "Extremely Loving Hubbies Club". Or the "Be Willing to Die for Your Obedient Wives Club". You get the idea.

Regarding my second point on why the OWC is more degrading to men than women, look at it this way. The women in the club, NOT their husbands, are the ones making the active effort to keep their marriages secure and happy. The women are being proactive, the men have taken the backseat and some are just like "Yeah, we so support this club!" (obviously, they would). And WHY are the women resorting to having to start this whole OWC? Because if the women don't keep their hubbies happy in bed, apparently the men will pretty much automatically feel unsatisfied and driven to find other women to satisfy their sexual needs. It doesn't matter if the wife is a good mother, takes care of the kids well, takes care of the household chores, feeds the cats, pays the bills, washes the car, etc, etc,.... if she's doesn't behave like a naughty sex kitten in bed, that man is going to stray.

In essence, it's pretty much saying that the men have so LITTLE or NO character whatsoever that they are so willing to jeopardize their marriage just to get humped... irregardless of how fantastic his wife is in every other aspect of life.

Now I'm pretty sure that there are men (or I should call them turds) out there who actually are like that. But I also believe there are a great number of men of character who are reasonably more responsible than that. Men of character that understand that the modern woman has to juggle many hats - being a wife and mother, taking care of the house, in addition to having to work and bring in income... and that adding in the role of having to play naughty sex kitten to a horny hubby can be quite taxing for the modern woman. Men of character who will stay by their wives even if she can't always sexually satisfy him. In fact, such as man of character would be the proactive one and MAKE THE EFFORT to satisfy HIS wife. Take her out to a nice candlelit restaurant, write her cheesy love letters, get her roses or teddy bears, give generous helpings of kisses and cuddles after work, or do whatever it is that gives her a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. When a women has spent 8 hours at work, has to come back to deal with bratty kids, cook dinner, do the laundry, and whatever whatever whatever, I do think, she would REALLY appreciate it if her husband took time out to romance her instead. And trust me, when she's treated well in that department, I think the sex kitten will definitely come out to play more often.

So guys (in particular the Muslim guys), why support the formation of a club that is pretty much saying that you have no character when it comes to maintaining your marriage? Isn't it oh-so degrading that all these women think you guys are so hopeless that the WOMEN have to do all the work to keep a marriage intact and the MEN just sit back and 'goyang kaki'? If you're a REAL man (as opposed to a namby pamby man) don't just think about satisfying your sex drive. Think about how you can TAKE THE LEAD in your marriage, making the effort to make it work and NOT having to rely on the woman to do everything to make YOU happy all the time.

In short, while I personally don't think there is anything wrong with choosing to be submissive to your husbands out of love, there is really something wrong with a women if she thinks that the woman is SOLELY responsible for keeping the marriage intact, as was implied by the club's VP saying that "disobedient wives are the cause for upheaval in this world". There are two people in a marriage, not just the wife. It takes two hands to clap, therefore both husband AND wife need to make the effort to keep the marriage strong. It's good that a woman is submissive to her husband, BUT more importantly, the husband has to man up, be of respectable character, protect his wife and family and basically be someone who is worthy of being submissive to.

There you go, my unsual two cents worth. Feel free to debate. :)

I'm licensed... to dive ^_^

2011-06-01T00:18:00.015+08:00

And that was my photographic evidence to prove it! :P

In continuation of my last post, my weekend at Perhentian Island came and went, did 4 dives without a hitch and am now a certified open water diver! Which means I can officially dive down to up to 18m... which I found is actually not as deep as I would have liked, and so I'm very much looking forward to continue on with doing my advanced diver course after which I can dive up to 40m, and also do go into shipwrecks or caverns (which I can't do now coz' I'm not trained on how to deal with the associated hazards of being in enclosed areas underwater, and that's where bad accidents happen :P) as well as learn other adventurous diving skills. But that will come later, once I amass a bit more wealth to afford it and find the time to do it too. :)

But basically I'm a diver a now and hyped about it, so that's just about the most important thing I have to say on this post.

Getting to the island is part of the fun. I was on the same flight with two others in my diving group, and so we took the same boat to Perhentian, which was half an hour of really choppy boat ride. So choppy that taking photos was a bit of a challenge. But at least only my camera strap went flying and not my camera itself.

Hang on tight to this crazy boat!

At least we got there in one piece and this place was to be my residence for the next 3 days and 2 nights.

Almost immediately after arriving in late morning, I got together with the rest of my group (all of whom I met during this course itself, and they're all a pretty fun bunch). A group of 3 had arrived earlier in the morning and already had gone with another instructor to start their first of 4 dives. So I ganged up with another 3 of the later group, and we started our first dive in the afternoon.

We wannabe divers met our friendly island diving instructor, Mat Yie, who would be guiding us over the next few days to apply the basic skills we had learned during our pool dives to the big ocean, and making sure none of us drowned in the process. Thankfully, he succeeded. At least in making sure no one drowned.

Oh yeah, if you're thinking my wetsuit looks a little weird, it's coz' I was wearing a full body swimsuit under my rental short sleeved suit (called a Shorty). It bought the swimsuit the week before as I thought it would be handy as extra protection against accidental cuts or scraps underwater (corals are nastily sharp buggers), plus it's easier to slide a wetsuit on with a swimsuit under than without. And it also helps to reduce sun exposure and getting more tanned on uncovered areas than covered parts, which results in your colleagues giving you weird looks the following week. So functional-wise the full body swimsuit under the wetsuit thing worked great. Style-wise, I think I looked kinda weird. I was almost considering buying the top of my swimsuit in another colour instead of black too. Luckily I had the good sense not to do that. Still, for future dives, I'm now lusting for a cooler looking full-body wetsuit. They're a bit more of a pain in the butt to put on compared to a shorty, but they really look much cooler. I have the camwhoring pics to prove it. Taken from a dive shop in Summit with a changing room that doubled as a meeting room (hence the whiteboard and office chairs).

I haven't bought it, was just checking out wetsuits, and of course I will fall for anything with red on it coz' RED IS COOL.

So anyway, back to the island dives, all our dives went well. For me, I was totally comfortable in the water and my diving gear, with no big complications, although some of the others had a bit of problem with equalizing their ear pressure when going underwater, and some also couldn't get used to clearing their diving mask underwater (we need to do this if water gets into our mask or it gets fogged up and we allow water in to clear it). Only problem I had was that after some time of breathing though my mouth underwater, my nose tends to get clogged with mucuous, and although I don't need to breathe through my nose, it feels uncomfortable and gives me a slight gagging feeling. Hopefully that problem won't happen in future dives, but anyhow, I could still manage underwater.

Since I was busy learning to keep myself alive underwater, I couldn't take any photos of what we saw (learning underwater photography is in the plan. One day. When I can afford the big ass camera). And even though we didn't dive to any particular amazingly beautiful corals (most of the ones we saw were quite bleached, which is sad), we still saw quite a few cool marine creatures that I would never be able to see while snorkelling. Here are some of the fishes and other creature we saw during our four dives (photos stolen off the internet):

1) Sharksucker: A very streamlined fish about 25 - 30 cm long and likes to glide along the bodies of sharks and other fish to clean whatever little marine bugs are off them. And they did the same job for us 'dirty' divers too. One of them came right up to my flipper and as I held up my foot to watch it, it glided up and down my flipper, cleaning it up and looking like it was dancing on my flipper. I couldn't help laughing coz' it was so dang cute. Of course, laughing underwater just means extra bubbles released and some weird sounds of 'glub glub glub' coming through my regulator. Even more cute it was when we continued to swim and I watched the little bugger continue to glide over and nibble away at the legs of my fellow diver.

2) Swimmer cleaner shrimp: These are also pretty tiny buggers. We found them inhabiting a crevice in a coral, and my dive instructor, seeing that I was somewhat able to control my buoyancy (very important skill in diving, to ensure we can control when we move up or down in the water without accidentally crashing into corals below), invited me to put my hand on the surface of a rock near where the shrimp were moving around. After a while, they were crawling on my hands, apparently trying to to clean it off (which is why they're called cleaner shrimp), but I couldn't feel anything. It was still cool having little shrimp walking on me.

3) Boxer cleaner shrimp: Much bigger than the swimmer cleaner shrimp and a lot prettier too. We didn't touch these though, just saw them.

4) Razorfish: These little fish swim with their head facing down and tail pointing up and it just looks really funny, like they're super drunk or something.

5) Spiny devilfish: A fugly little fish that is camouflaged to look like the sandy bottom. And I was wondering if it's actually a fish coz' I never saw it swim, but it was actually crawling along the bottom with manny little legs. It was weird.

6) Short-tailed pipefish: A close relative of the horsefish, and the one we saw was male coz' apparently it was pregnant, but it was so thin I couldn't really tell. :P

7) Reef cuttlefish: It's really tiny, only about 8cm long. But apparently it can change its colour to match its background, but all the time I was watching it, it didn't change colour. Or maybe I missed it. :(

8) Zebra lionfish: We saw this one hiding in a coral, and it was really purty!

And the cutest little fish of them all...

9) Yellow boxfish: Yes, it a fish shaped like a box. And also really small. It made me wanna grab it and snuggle it coz' it's just too damn cute for words.

We also saw two hawkbill turtles (one was happily munching away at a coral while we divers were watching it and it wasn't bothered with us at all), a couple of pufferfish, and some tenggiri, plus all the other fishies I would normally see while snorkelling. The thing we didn't see while diving were sharks, even though we dived at a place called Shark Point, which as the name suggests, has a shark population. I was a bit disappointed with that. But that disppointment was resolved later on, and will be explained later on.

After completion of our four dives, on the last night we were there, our diving instructor gave us a crash course on Chapter 6 of our diving manual. Officially our diving manual has only 5 chapters. Unofficially, every diver has to learn Chapter 6. And we didn't know what the heck he was talking about until the night itself.

It turned out to be a 'mandatory' stunt to be carried out by all newly certified divers, involving wearing a snorkel (with the lens taped up so you can't see through it) and attempting to drink a can of beer through a snorkel in one breath (note that you can't breathe through your nose when wearing a snorkel).

I think the snorkel made my eyes look bigger, don't you?

It was crazy, we cheered each other on, I wish I had video but I didn't (dumb camera of mine was out of batteryyyy! These pics are from my diving buddies), and all of us got through our can of beer in one snorkelled breath. Which officially officially meant we were divers. Yay!

After that we were treated to a cool fire dance by one of the lovely female dive instructors, who will appear here as a fiery blur swinging her two fire-on-a-chain whatchamacallit thingies around.

And AFTER that, another one of the instructors ambushed us with an unexpected magic card trick, which turned out to be even more unexpected awesome. Worthy of his own magic show on tv, I would say. :)

All in all, it makes me think being a dive instructor is such job for them to have time for this stuff. So that's it. Mummy, I wanna be a dive instructor when I grow up.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I was a little peeved at not being able to see sharks on my first few dives. However, since we could only dive up to the 2nd day (this is to prevent ear pressure complications that may arise from flying on the 3rd day), I had some free time on the 3rd day to chill on the island and decided to do my usually crazy thing, which is go snorkelling off the beach. By myself. Even though it's nowhere near and potentially dangerous as diving alone, it's also usually not a good idea to snorkel alone lest something happens to me out there and there's no one around to help me. But as I mentioned earlier, we didn't get to see sharks, and Shark Point was quite close to the beach. And so crazy me had to go shark hunting just to satisfy myself. I had actually seen a pretty big shark off the beach at Redang before, and just for those readers who think I have a death wish, sharks in Malaysia are quite safe compared to say, sharks in Australia like Great White sharks which can and have killed people. Malaysian sharks are much less psycho with people, coz' they're smaller and probably are more scared of people than we are of them (and they should be! Just think of how many of these buggers get killed for Chinese wedding dinner soup!).

Anyway, long story short, after shorkelling off the beach for about 40 mins, and I was far enough way from the shore than no one would hear or see me if I was in trouble, I saw what I was looking for. A lovely black-tipped shark... and bigger than ones I'd seen before at Redang which were babies. This one was at least 1.3 m long... definitely not and long as I am tall. But big enough to be cool, and I was saying to myself "Yessss!!!!". Followed it around for a while before it swam away, but then a few minutes later, while I was chasing after a big Parrotfish, I saw TWO big sized black tipped sharks swimming together. Weeee!! And these guys seemed a little curious of me coz' instead of swimming straight off, as I swam towards them, they swam in a big circle around me... kinda like they were watching this slow-poke creature with bright coloured flippers to check me out. But then they swam off too. But I was already happy at that point. Sharks were observed. Mission accomplished and after that I headed back to the beach. Still funny that I saw them snorkelling instead of diving, which is why I guess snorkelling still has its plus points (no need to worry about running out of air, for one thing!)

Still, I'm hyped to I finally got myself certified as a diver and can't wait to see what other awesome possum stuff I'll at my next dive trip. And meet more cool fellow divers and entertaining dive instructors. And learn underwater photography. I foresee this becoming an obsession. Hyuk hyuk.

Diver down! Yeaarrgh!

I'm diving in!

2011-05-22T23:50:00.006+08:00

Finally got some time to blog, although I'm a bit half dead now coz' I've had less than 5 hours of sleep the past couple of days and if I don't get to bed by midnight (which is technically in 10 minutes), I will be a total zombie at work tomorrow.

But I just wanna post coz' I'm excited and I'm excited coz' by next weekend I am going to be a PADI certified open water scuba diver! YESsSSSss!!!

I've been wanting to do my scuba diving course since forever, but the normal price for a course is RM1600, which is a bit pricey (not including having to buy or rent dive gear, both of which is also pricey). Being a lover of the deep blue sea who enjoys a good snorkelling sessions every now and, I kept having people tell me that once I've tried scuba diving, snorkelling is just crap. I've seen quite a bit of stuff snorkelling too...black tipped sharks, a manta ray, huge turtles, moray eels, huge fugly looking fish which I'm not even sure what they're called.... and yet people always say that I get to see way cooler stuff when scuba diving (which I'm sure is no exaggeration).

So one day, I'm thinking that it would be great if Groupon could offer a discount on scuba diving. I've already gotten do some pretty cool stuff at discounted prices from this site (such as motorised water sports at Puchong, and next month I'll be doing paintball. After which I think I will take a nice long break from crazy fun Groupon activities for a while). The site has a page for subscribers to give suggestions and feedback, so I wrote them and suggested to post up a discount deal for scuba diving.

Lo and behold, the wonderful people at Groupon answered my wish, and a few weeks later, they had up a deal for scuba diving at Rm990, and I think I was one of the first 5 people to buy it. And the way this site works is that every discount deal requires a minimum number of buyers to become activated, and if it doesn't reach the minimum number, then those who bought don't get to use the deal and we get a refund. So the minimum number of people required for this deal was 30 poeple, and once I bought it, I kept going back to the page to see if there were enough buyers... and the number went up ssooooo slowly. But not only did it eventually get past 30 buyers, on the last day before the deal closed, the number of buyers went up to 139 people! And after talking to my dive instructor, she said even she was surprised at how the number went up so expectedly. :P So anyway, Groupon is so awesome for helping me save RM610 for my diving course. Which I can use to by my wet suit and other diving gear. :)

Of course, we scuba diving wannabes don't jump into water without prior training! All of us got a PADI instruction manual to start us off learning about the theory.

I personally love this manual coz' it's explains technical stuff in a very easy manner, even has some humour in it, and has a lot of small quizes and reviews after every chapter which really helps us to remember what we've read. It makes me wish all my school textbooks had been written like this. Would have make learning history a lot more interesting! :P

Then I spent the whole of last Tuesday (which was a holiday) doing two of my pool sessions back to back, purpose of which is to get used to the dive equipment and be trained on various specific skills we need to know when in the water. We were split into two groups of 5 and 6 people each, and each group had an instructor. And I have pictures!

Suited up and ready to rumble, but not before some shameless camwhoring :)

Here's my group's instructor (the Indian guy) giving some explanation of what we're going to do before we hit the pool.

And they had our gear all laid out for us too. The scuba cylinders were bigger than I thought they would be!

These are our BCDs (buoyancy control devices) which is the thing that helps us to sink or float in the water. Which is pretty important when diving, as you might guess.

We were taught how to attach our regulators (the thingy we breathe through when underwater) and scuba cylinder to the BCDs. And lugging around a huge oxygen tank strapped to our back it not easy too!

The regulator has quite a few tubes sticking everywhere, and if I don't strap it down properly, it just kinda all hangs out and that's not supposed to happen. In the ocean, it may drag along stuff and injure corals, and other things. Out of the water, it just looks like some weird alien dangly thing stuck to me.

Of course, all the weird alien dangly thingies are necessary for staying alive underwater. :)

So anyway, I just did my diving exam today and got 96% for it! Weee! And next weekend I'll be going to Perhentian for my ocean diving sessions, and then I get certified! Double weeee!!!

I am so ready for the ocean, baby. BRING IT!

The no carb diet

2011-05-09T01:35:00.004+08:00

I done have much time to blog these days. Between having too much work to do, visiting the gym, church stuff, I now have managed to squeeze in more activities into my schedule, thanks to Groupon, a site that offer group discounts for lots of pretty interesting activities. Which I've been wanting to blog about too, and hopefully will eventually get round to it. So I'm trying to learn how to microblog. Which is difficult coz' I like to write a lot of crap on my blog.

In my first short snippet of news, these days, or rather these nights, I'm making an effort to reduce my intake of carbohydrates at night (still enjoy my rice and noodles for lunch, and sometimes dinner if there's an occasion. ^_^). Something about how unburnt carbs get turned to fat which isn't good for someone with annoyingly low metabolic rate like me. :P So my dinner these days consists of either cooked oats, fruit, fried veges (when I feel like cooking).... and the occasional big arse piece of chicken (it's called XXL chicken for a reason) from Shihlin Snacks.

Oh, this diet is torturous

And Shaun, if you're reading this, YES, I do realize a bag of sugar does not contain carbs.

Welcome to Lotus Desaru... a.k.a CREEPYVILLE

2011-03-31T20:57:00.007+08:00

So last week I and a bunch of my colleagues were tucked away for work in the southern part of Malaysia, at a little town called Kota Tinggi. We were there to audit a client for a whole week, and as is usual with audits in far distance places, our client decides were to put us up for the week. Usually to save cost, they put us up is a little hotel where the rooms are a bit claustrophobic, unless it's a big client with money, then we get a bit of a classier hotel.

This week, we got booked into a rather interesting place, which isn't a hotel per se, but more like a family resort. The place is called Lotus Desaru.... and it's a pretty cool looking place with interesting building designed like castles.

There are at at least four huge block which almost look like apartments, on the outside AND inside (room pics coming later).

The place is also right next to the beach, and has boats, kayaks, a volleyball area by the beach, and even an indoor water theme park. All of which I didn't have time to try out coz' we were too busy WERK-ing. :(

Here's the restaurant where we have our breakfast with a nice view of the beach.

Here's the place where they keep the boats and stuff...

And the indoor water theme park. Weee!

All in all looks like a pretty neat place huh? Well, yes.... for a day trip.

But at NIGHT.... it's a whole different story altogether. The chirpy little getaway turns into practically THE creepiest place I've ever stayed in.

Here's another view of the room blocks in the daytime. The end of this road is the hotel lobby, where my room is close to, and it takes at least 5 minutes to walk down this road to the restaurant, which is behind me in this pic below.

Here's the same place at NIGHT. As you can see, the hotel management did not invest much in lighting. Imagine having to walk up the same long 5 minute path. At night. Alone.

Ok well, maybe that's not too bad. So let's go a bit closer to the rooms... to the hallways. As seen from earlier photos, there are many huge long blocks with 5 floors each, and though you can't really in the pic below, the hallways are really long.

Again, not a problem in the daytime. But this place has NOBODY there on the weekdays (people only starting coming in towards Saturday) and so at night, it was dead quiet. There were rows and rows of room with no sign of movement, and every time I came out of my room and looked down the long hallways, I'd be hoping that I didn't see something weird standing at the end of the hallway. Like girls with long black hair and bloodshot eyes in long white dresses.

Damn to every Japanese horror flick I've ever seen!

There was also the lift to the higher floors. I only used it once, since my room is on the ground floor. But the lift doors make a loud noise when they open and going up or down, you can hear the lift mechanics working away noisily. I'm sure glad I wasn't staying upstairs.

That's all STILL not too bad though. Wait til you see the rooms.

The rooms are huge and consist of two floors. Downstairs is the living room with the tv, a little fridge, a sink, toilet and desk. There are stairs leading up the bed room with two beds and of course, the bathroom. There is also a desk upstairs, which is opposite of the huge room window which span the entire height of the top and bottom floor, which huge curtains to go with it. The room has no fluorescent lights, only orange-y incandescent lights. Beneath the left curtain is the airconditioner, which blows directly up.

There are many things that are freaky about the whole room design:

1) The incandescent lights are not very bright. The room looks bright in my pics solely because of my camera flash, without it the room only has an orange glow and it's pretty dark.

2) There is one light just above the couch in the living room, but much as I tried, I COULDN'T find the light switch. And my colleague in the next room couldn't either. I never bothered to ask reception where it was, but everytime I watched tv, I pretty much sitting in a darker area than the rest of the already dimly lit room. This is the same area next to the...

3) Freakin' huge window, which faces the pathway outside. Where people could see me if they walked past and it was so dark outside as well, I had thoughts of weird things also popping outside my window and freaking me out (damn those Japanese horror flicks again!) So to ensure my privacy and prevent viewing of any strange things looking at me from outside, I had to close the freakin' huge curtains. And underneath the freakin' huge left curtain was...

4) The airconditioner, mounted to the ground near the floor. Which blows up. Directly under the curtain. Causing the curtain to blow upwards as well. Which gives the curtain a ghostly appearance. And my stupid aircond remote didn't work as well, so I couldn't adjust the temperature or speed, so it kept blowing the curtains strongly upwards and after a while the room would be freezing. Staying in a freezing cold dark room. Extremely not cool.

5) The wooden staircase. It made thuding noises with every step I took up or down. And at this I regretted ever watching the 'Paranormal Activity'. If you ever saw that movie and you remember the final scene, you'd understand why the stairway freaked me out. If you've never watched the movie, you just need to know that at the last scene involves the female protagonist being possessed by an evil spirit, walking slowly up the stairs... and the audience can only hear the footsteps... slowly and steadily coming up... and what comes next is the final freaky scene (there are alternate endings though, one ending is freakier than the others). Which I won't share here coz' that would either freak you out or spoil the movie for you. But anyhow, that made me not like the staircase in this room. I'm thinking probably not a good idea to watch Paranormal Activity 2.

6) The upstairs desk. You can't see it in the pic above, but it was behind me on the left of the room at the angle where I took the last pic of the beds. The desk had a mirror, and I used it to work on my laptop. So the beds and balcony overlooking huge freaking window would be directly behind me. And I would also get funny ideas of looking into the mirror and seeing something I shouldn't be seeing behind me, reflected in the mirror.

All in all, the only thing NOT freaky about the room was the bathroom, and that was coz' it was brightly lit. Nevertheless the room was so deathly silent, I just had to switch on music on my handphone every time I was in it just to break the silence. And yeah, I did quite a bit of praying while I was in that room too. It helped. Kind of.

Even THAT wasn't the most creepiest part for me. The thing that really got me was that I think I had my very first sort of otherworldly encounter here... although I can't say for 100% sure that what I experienced was really what I think is coz' it honestly wasn't too spooky... but it was definitely an odd experience.

On Wednesday (after we'd stayed there for about 3 nights already), we got back to the resort early when it was still daylight, and that's when me and my female colleague went to check out the indoor water park before going back to our rooms. There were some people there, but not many. Around 7.30pm, when it was already dark, I thought of heading to the restaurant pool for a swim, since dinner wasn't until 8.30pm. I usually swim at night when I'm at home anyway, at my condo's pool.

So off I went to the pool by myself... but then I thought, since the theme park pool was nearer to my room than the restaurant pool (which was all the way down that long 5-minute path), I went to the theme park pool instead. By this time, no one was there, and the pool area is as brightly lit as the rest of the place. Which means it was pretty dark, except for a few incandescent lights in the pool itself and near the buildings... but no light at the pathway directly next to the pool.

I left my clothes, towel and other stuff at a chair nearest to the pool before diving in. Swam around for about 20 minutes, no problem, before I came out. No problems during my swim, although I think I heard the trees next to the pool rustling a lot at one point... but I figured it was the wind.

Once I got out, still wet and unable to see clearly since I wasn't wearing my glasses, and about to grab my glasses and other stuff from the chair, that's when it happened.

I heard a women's voice, pretty close to me, just slightly to my right, and definitely not more than a few metres away. The voice said in Malay "Ada air tak?" (translated, it could mean "Do you have any water?" or "Is there any water?") . I quickly put on my glasses, looked around for whoever spoke to me... and didn't see a SOUL.

After that I coolly walked back to my room and fortunately didn't experience anything else for the night.

It doesn't sound too freaky, I know, but like I said, it was odd. The next day, I went back to the same spot and took these two photos. The red circle shows the chair where I put my stuff and I was standing just behind it when I heard the voice. The blue X shows the approximate area where I'm sure the voice came from. It sounded like whoever spoke was standing on the pathway.

So definitely the fact that I didn't see anyone was freaky. Even though it was kinda dark, I'm sure if there was a lady there , just opposite the chairs, talking to me, I would have seen her once I put on my glasses. But no one. Then I thought it could have been a lady speaking from one of the rooms.... but judging from the distance of the rooms to the pool, I'm sure it couldn't have been coz' the rooms were far.

It was also odd because if the lady was speaking to ME, it would have been a very strange question to ask me, a total stranger. If she was asking me if there was any water, that would just be a stupid question to ask, since I just came out of a pool where there is plenty of water. If she was asking me if I had any (drinking) water, that would be an odd question to ask a total stranger.

The other possibility was that the woman wasn't speaking to me, but to someone else. BUT I didn't hear any other voice after that. And I didn't hear HER voice after that either... and I didn't respond since I didn't see anyone.

On the less creepy side, the voice sounded normal, not creepy. And I didn't feel any chills at the time. So it was weird, but not downright freaky-ish.

Still, it was a good reason not to go swimming again for the rest of the nights. It didn't help that later during dinner, when I asked another male colleague how he found the rooms, he also said he had some strange experiences. Such as noises like an animal scurrying on the roof... although he's staying on the ground floor with 4 floors above him so that doesn't quite make sense. And his room window seemed to be loose and hitting against the frames, which probably was due to the strong wind. But that doesn't make it any less scary. He also said he had a bit of a nightmare on the first night he slept there.... where he dreamt of a woman carrying a baby. And the baby had no nose. Hmm.....Fortunately my other colleagues had no creepy experiences there, although they also found the room a bit scary.

So that's my take on this place. If you're looking for a holiday in a resort that's fun during the day and creepy at night, Lotus Desaru is the place to be. ^_^

The lolanimal collections

2011-03-13T19:59:00.007+08:00

For those who didn't know, my little condo is practically a mini petting zoo. Animals my family has or have had in my condo include:

1) A psychotic shih tzu. It's one mean little mutt that growls or tries to bite whenever anyone tries to pick it up/ touch her butt/ touch her paws/take her snack away. But she loves it when I scratch her neck and belly, so she's still somewhat normal.

2) An asian box turtle. I found it wandering on the roadside near my home one day and decided to keep it (although at first I wanted to sell it :P). Its daily routine consists of me taking it out and putting it in a tub of water to drink, eat and poop. After which is crawls into a box and can stay in there hours til I take it out for drinking/feeding/pooping time again. I named it Melon coz' it looks like half a melon.

3) A family of gerbils (african rats). Kept these guys for almost 6 years now, had a whole big family of them at one point (over 12 of them) and I had a name for each of them. Then separated the males and female until slowly one by one died and now I have only one female left so I'm wondering whether to let her breed again and drive my mum crazy (she doesn't likes gerbils) or wait until my last gerbil dies a lonely and miserable death.

4) Some birds. The number of birds changes frequently. Initially we had a dove, coz' apparently my dad went to a friend's wedding where they released 2 doves, and one proceeded to land on his head. Or something like that. Anyway, he took it home and fed it til it was stronger, but it was nice quiet dove that would happily on my hand. But eventually his friend asked to release it coz' it's a bad omen for the marriage to keep the dove caged up. So then my dad had a birdcage with no bird, so he bought a two budgerigers. Then one went missing (escaped the cage), so he replaced it. Then that one died, so he replaced it again. And got a couple more. Then he let go of two coz' my mum was apparently complaining that they were too chirpy. So currently the number stand at two. For now.

5) Some goldfish. These belong to my dad. I don't particularly care for them, although the funny thing is one of the buggers coz' its fins damaged and now it can only wobble around at the bottom of the aquarium and we have to help it feed or else it'll starve to death. It's been like that for a few months now, so we've been doing a good job of keeping the disabled goldfish alive.

So every now and then I take photos of the petting zoo. And every now and then I get a few funny ones. So I've been wanting to do this for a while and finally got round to it.

You've heard of lolcat. You may have heard of loldawg. I now introduce to you.... lolturtle, lolgerbil and lolbird. I pass on lolgoldfish though.

(Photos are in no particular order other than what I consider to be progressively most lamest to what I hope is somewhat reasonably funny)

The raptors are coming! The raptors are coming!

2011-03-07T20:51:00.000+08:00

Raptor Watch is coming this weekend!!!

Not that that means anything really significant to most people, but for nature lovers and bird watchers in Malaysia, this event should at least cause a bleep in their radar if not get them all raring and excited to go for it.

Eerr, what the heck is a raptor, you ask? Well, if you're a fan of Jurassic Park, you might think they look something like this:

In which case you'd right now be running around ecstatically in your room screaming that dinosaurs are alive, only to be sorely disappointed when you read further to find out that the raptors we are referring look a bit more like these:

Raptor Watch is an annual event to celebrate the return of raptors, i.e. migratory birds of prey on their journey back to their breeding grounds in the northern hemisphere. Apologies to the dinosaur fans, it's not quite as cool, but still an interesting event nonetheless.

The celebration goes on for two days this coming 12 & 13 March at PHB Ilham Resort and Port Dickson, although of course, the birds fly for as long as they need to and don't just pop up on those two days. The resort has a field where visitors can easily view the raptors flying by, and due to the wind currents in that area, they tend to circle around a bit before flying off. Hence you can see quite a number of raptors grouped together at the same time, as from the ground, they'd look something like this:

Here's a video demonstration if that just looked like a badly photoshopped photo of weird shaped dots to you:

And if you're wondering how many birds fly by our shores annually to say "Howdy!" before continuing on their flight, apparently it comes up to the number shown by our not-so-lovely model below.

Though from what I read on the website this year, the number so far sighted has gone up to a whopping 70,000. Man, I don't wanna be a birder having to count those fellas flying by.

The Malaysian Nature Society will be having booths and activities going on at the resort to keep people somewhat busy. Although I was there last year and personally felt the booths were a bit of bore... took me an hour or so to browse through them, and couldn't do much as I was by myself since I couldn't drag anyone with me and being the adventurous one I am, I just do whatever it is I wanna do without giving a rat's rear end if anyone is there with me. I stayed for both days too, which means I bunked by myself at a nearby resort and was enjoying a nice time of solitude and hoping a centipede wouldn't visit my room in the middle of the night and sting me to death.

Errr, anyway, other activities going on included Fun Challenge game (which I also couldn't take part in coz' I didn't have a partner!), which this year is replaced by an Amazing Race game. And there are also talks by various conservationists about...errr..... conserving nature and that kind of stuff. There is also a lighthouse near the resort, where people could walk up to and get a slightly closer view of the raptors flying above.

View of the beach from the lighthouse. Ain't too shabby.

The appeal of the event for me wasn't so much the booths and activities or even the bird watching, but just being able to get away from it all and be with nature.... which I guess I can do any time of the year, but the raptor watching event just makes it a bit more interesting. So while people could pay for guides to go on beach walks and forest hikes, this lone ranger went solo, just coz' I like going at my own pace and indulging in taking photos (bugs, animal, plants, scenery, myself, you name it, I snapped it). Here are some pics of my solo romp through the jungle, and what I saw along the way.

Some interesting plants...

A weird looking bug.

A big golden and blank ant-like thing.

Aww, ain't monkey cute?

I almost got lost in the jungle. Seriously, it was close to getting dark, and I wasn't sure which path to take. Fortunately there were other people around who were regular hikers and directed me to the right path. Whew!

After that bit of a scare, I took a walk on the beach next and said hi to the resident little crabs.

I took my umbrella along with me too to help make sure I didn't turn into overdone toast under the sun. It made for a nice artsy fartsy shot too.

There were mangroves growing along the beach , and they made some pretty good poser shots.

Just so you know, I was supposed to blog about my trip last year but held it off so long that now since Raptor Watch 2011 is happening soon, I thought now's a good time as ever to post that long overdue post. So yay that I finally got it done! I'm thinking of going for RW this year so I can hold on to another procrastinated post for another year. :P

Thank you for visiting. Please come again! Kaw kaw!

Cracked up by the chiropracter

2011-03-04T00:05:00.013+08:00

It started last Sunday at church. I was on for worship, singing backup and played guitar, which is is something I haven't done for quite a while. Everything was fine until the end of service just after we played our last song and I was going to pack up my guitar....

My neck started to hurt.

Well, it wasn't too bad at the time. It was just a bit uncomfortable enough that later I made a special request to some of the church kids to give me a massage... of course, only the ones who kinda know how to work those fingers.

(It doesn't count as child labour if they smile >:) )

The kid massage was kinda nice, but didn't quite do the trick. The mild neck sprain lasted the next one day, and then on Monday night, after going to the gym and I had just got home and happily meddling with my computer... WHAMO! The horrible sharp pain in my neck and shoulders hit me like a rock. It was so bad, I couldn't turn or tilt my head without feeling any pain, and even leaning back to lie on the bed was painful as my neck muscles couldn't support my own head! Even sitting at my computer chair was uncomfortable... it felt like the pressure from by buttbone was pressing up on my neck too! That night I couldn't sleep well as I couldn't turn over to lie on my side... I could only lie on my back, which becomes uncomfortable after a while. And the next morning when I had to get up for work, I couldn't prop myself up directly coz' of the excruciating pain... and I was lying on my bed for a while wondering how the heck was I gonna drag myself out of bed to office.

Somehow or another I did manage to drag myself out of bed. It involved me turning over on my side reeaaalllly slowly like a little slug rolling over, then propping myself up from the side while using one hand to support my head. And the whole day at office, I could hardly move my head without feeling some form of pain, so bad that I was afraid of driving coz' I couldn't turn my head properly and that has high potential of causing an accident if I drove!

Thankfully, later in the afternoon when I got some reprieve. But that night was Rock Band night, where I hang out with some guys to play this most awesome game (although I'm still not sure if I suck more at playing real guitar or Rock Band fake guitar... :S ), and at the time, I didn't think having a little fake guitar strapped around my neck for prolonged periods would be detrimental to my current condition... after all, it wasn't half as heavy as my real guitar. And for the first hour or so, I felt ok... but after a while I could feel a lot of pressure on my left shoulder... and that's when I swapped the fake guitar for fake drums, which was less pressurizing on the shoulders.

But what was done was done. The pain got really bad after that, and the next day I was suffering quite a bit at the office. It was only when I scrutinized myself in the mirror, that I realized this:

As you can see, the black line was added for reference and my shoulders were totally not level! One was higher up than the other even though I was standing straight, and that meant one thing. It was definitely a lot more than just a neck sprain caused by my guitar playing. I was out of alignment and I needed fine tuning! ~:O

I decided the best thing was to visit a chiropractor who would get me back into shape. Problem was that I'd never been to one before in my life and had no idea where the good ones were. But then a colleague of mine then recommended a chiropractor whom he had visited a few times, and swore that this guy was really good. Goes by the name of Dr. Chong, and his chiropractic 'clinic' or whatever you call it is based at Jln 2/115A, Taman Ruyung Pagar, Jalan Kuchai Lama and named Sano / Ita Spinalcare.

So I called to make an appointment for 10.15am the next day. So the next morning, I hopped into the car and moseyed along to the place. Here's what it looks like on the outside.

Would you like some seafood with that chipractice treatment?

We do tuition as well!

I didn't take any pics of the inside though, coz' that would just have been weird. But the place looked pretty ok... no weird smells or strange paraphelia as one might expect of these Chinese medicinal-like places. A lady greeted me who turned out to be the doctor's wife and there were some other ladies there who I thought were customers but I realized they were just her friends. I was there at 9.45 am, half an hour earlier than my appointment, and expected to wait. But the doc was available, so I got to go in right away. And he was quite a nice guy... made me feel quite comfy right away and the door to his room was kept open all the time (so in case he tried anything funny on me, I could always scream bloody murder and run out the door... unless the ladies out there were accomplices, then I would just be screwed).

Anyway, there was a chiropractic table, which in case you're wondering, looks something like this:

Except this guy's table was brown, look a bit cheaper and the part in front where you can face down on was made up of two big knobs wrapped with paper towels. Which come to think of it, was quite an ingenious idea, coz' once he's done with one customer, all he needs to do to clean that part is just remove a sheet or two of the paper towels. Voila, fresh and clean for the next customer to put his/her face on it!

So anyway, he gets me to lie down, checks my spine and shoulders and legs and in all of 5 seconds, is able to tell me that my spine is (as I expected) out of alignment. That is causing my left leg to be shorter than my right leg by an inch or so. Didn't quite expect that, but I was experiencing a slight pain at the back of my left knee, so it kinda made sense. He told me this was an accumulated result of prolonged bad sitting posture.

So once the problem was diagnosed, he proceeded to work his magic. First thing he did while I was lying facedown was use some little instrument to 'hammer' against my skin along my spine and shoulders, which apparently was supposed to activate my nerves. I never actually saw what he was using (since I was facedown) but it made a loud popping sound every time he did. And now that I looked it up, I believe it was something like this.

Fascinating. Then came the fun part of 'cracking' my bones back into position. He got me to lie on my back, first worked on my arms, twisting it a bit, and he told me my left shoulder muscles were very tense, which was true coz' that's where it hurt the most. After a little yanking of the arm and pulling the fingers, he did the same thing on the right arm.

Then he went to work on the spine, which was quite interesting. First, he got me to cross one arm over my body and turn my legs the opposite direction, then he pressed on top of me and I could really hear my spine cracking! Did the same the thing on the other side. And then he put a big envelope of papers on top of my chest and got me to hug it, and then put a sheet of facial tissue to cover my face. I was wondering what on earth that was all about, til he leaned in, wrapped his arms around my whole body and 'cracked' the spine o' mine again. And my whole chest and face was up against his body, so yes, it was just to make sure that later I didn't accuse him of sexual harassment. Or die of having to breathe in his body odour.

Next was the neck. And this was the damn scary part. Still lying on my back, he sit behind my head and was holding my chin in his left hand, the top part of my head in the other, and twisting it around gently and saying "Just relax ah...".

But seriously, when a guy is in the perfect position to snap your neck and kill you, it's quite hard to be relaxed. So much as I tried to relax, I was still a bit tense and in those few seconds when he was still twisting my head around gently, my mind was racing with thoughts of whether I would end up in a coma for the rest of my life.

"Pr-aack!"

I tell you, hearing your neck crack is probably one of the scariest sounds you'll ever hear in your life. And now I know where the 'prac' in chiropractor comes from. But once he was done, I was like "Yay! It wasn't painful and I'm not dead!".

That was only the first round though. He did it two more times, one in the opposite direction, and I still was tense each time, but I'm still alive to tell the tale.

After that, it was a simple massage and he gave me a little hot pack treatment on the area of my spine and shoulders. Then have me a cute little bottle of Pain-free massage oil (I think it's supposed to take away the pain). All in all, he took half an hour to work on me, which cost me RM100 for the spine cracking treatment and another RM68 for the massage oil. Which is a bit pricier compared to others, from what I hear, but considering a lousy chiropractor can very well put you into a coma, I think it was well worth the price.

My shoulders were still lopsided after that treatment, I figured because my left shoulder muscles were still very tense. But after one day, when my muscles began to relax, I checked myself in the mirror and found I was back in proper alignment.

BEFORE AFTER

And now I can turn and tilt my head like normal. So yay, I survived my first visit to the chiropracter, and glad to say I am no longer out of alignment. And I've now swapped the chairs at my office so hopefully the posture improves and I don't need to visit him on a regular basis. ^_^

The PEE car

2011-03-03T00:58:00.003+08:00

Just when I thought the WTF car is the funniest car license plate number one could get, I see this gem on the road:

Even funnier was my mum in the car with me at the time really needed to use the loo at the time, and when I mentioned the word above, she practically gave me the look of death. :P

The Good Samaritan dilemma

2011-02-21T00:44:00.003+08:00

Last week while driving to church, I saw this guy by the side of the road.

An Indian guy who seemed to be poor and homeless, as I can think of little other reason why he would be sleeping on the grassy curb by the roadside.

As I continued to drive by, I felt bad for the guy and I wanted to help him by giving him something to eat, at least. But if I were to go back and buy him food, I'd be late to church. And I realized I was I was in the Good Samaritan dilemma.

For those not familiar with the story, this is the parable of the Good Samaritan as told by Jesus in Luke 10:30-37:

Jesus answered, "A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, 'Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.' Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?"

He said, "He who showed mercy on him."

Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

The priest and the Levite were the 'religious' and supposed good people of that day, but they walked right pass the guy who was half dead and in dire need of help. Along comes a Samaritan guy, and in those days, the Samaritans were despised by the Jews just coz' they were a 'mixed' race (bunch of racists!). And the guy who got beaten up, was probably a Jew. But the Samaritan helped him anyway.

So I was thinking, if I had driven right on to church without helping the guy, I would have been just like the hypocritical priest or Levite. And I was like "Dang, this is gonna bug for the rest of the day if I don't do something".

So I turned the car around, went to the nearest Mamak restaurant, bought a nice pack of food, including rice, chicken, mutton and an egg, which came up to RM8.20. Drove back to where the guy was still sleeping on the curb, and went over to him with the pack of food.

I was a bit worried on whether he would try to do something funny like attack me and try to steal my handbag (which I had left in my car, just in case). So I woke him up, and put the food next to him, saying it was for him but kept a bit of a distance away, getting ready to run if I had to. It's unfortunate that the level of crime these days results in people like myself developing such a sense of wariness, even over a homeless guy.

Anyway, the first thing he did was ask (not in a rough manner though) whether I had any water for him, which I didn't. Then he asked if there was chicken in the pack, and I said yes. Only then did he say thank you to me, and opened the pack as I went back to my car. It was from there that I took these pics.

He was still lyging down and eating by the side of the road!

Well, at least he looked like he was enjoying himself.

Anyway, I left after that, wondering where the guy would get his next meal, or wondering if he's actually homeless in the first place or just a bum wandering around pretending to be homeless but actually has a nice place somewhere. Such crazy things do happen in this world! But at least the guy didn't ask me for money... that would have been way too obvious. After all, some of us do dout the sincerity of people who come to our tables at restaurants during meal time, begging for donations for one cause or another. But I guess all I could do was assume the guy was actually homeless, and I did a small thing to help him out.

I guess for the rest of us who have a good home, nice clothes, choice of good food everyday, etc,etc.... it's a reminder to be thankful for what we have and not complain about silly little things in life that really are quite insignificant compared to having no place to go or food to eat. :)

If Chun Li celebrated Chap Goh Meh....

2011-02-18T02:02:00.006+08:00

Today was the last day of the Lunar New Year celebrations (which means all of you who have been holding on to your ang pow stash until day 15 can start counting your moolah, and give your ang pow packets to meeeee please!), and also the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's Day, Chap Goh Meh. And if you have no idea what this day is all about, this site explains it like so:

Chap Goh Mei being regarded as the Chinese Valentine's Day, also brings forth lots of fun and gaiety. It is well-known that Chap Goh Mei is a night of courtship and has since been the forerunner in promoting match-making. On this night, many young ladies would make their way to the temples, dressed in their best, with hope of finding prospective suitors. One of the fun activities that take place on this auspicious night includes the throwing of oranges into the sea by these young maidens. It is without a doubt, the most popular and colorful moment in the history of Chap Goh Mei. It is believed that by throwing tangerines into the sea, these young girls would find themselves a good husband. For many, the act of throwing tangerines into the sea also signifies that these women are available for marriage. It is also said that if someone else who sees the floating tangerine in the water and picked it up, that generally means that the single who threw it would be able to find a good spouse.

You might be even more surprised to learn this tradition didn't come from China, but started in our own little humble Penang island!

Of course, these days in KL, I doubt very few lovely young maidens bother with the whole idea of throwing of tangerine oranges into the river... simply coz' KL rivers are so full of pollution and other crap, no man in his right mind would pick up anything floating along in there.

So in light of that dilemma, I had a fun idea of how to update and simplify the good old CNY tradition.

Ladies, if you fancy a guy and he doesn't know it, just grab an orange and chuck the thing at his head.

By golly, if that doesn't get his attention, nothing else will.

Just be glad that the tradition doesn't involve throwing watermelons. Happy Chap Goh Meh, everyone!

Belated Valentine's Day musings from boyfriend job applications to Rock Band weddings

2011-02-16T00:36:00.005+08:00

It's been 3 weeks since I posted my boyfriend vacancy ad, and since the application deadline on Valentine's Day is over (happy belated V-Day to everyone, by the way), I have received a grand total of...

*drumroll please....*

ZERO applications!!!

Ah well, I supposed it's not much of a surprise, since my job requirements included "Must not be stupid, boring or annoying", which disqualifies at least 50% of the male population, the rest of which probably already taken, are too old for me or are my wonderful male friends who read my blog (just so you don't give me the look of death next time you see me 0:-) )

So now if you are a guy actually interested in me for God knows what reason, you have to go through the normal long and boring process of courting and sending hints that I may or may not interpret to mean anything, instead of the simplified job application method. Bleh. It get's old after a while.

Since we're on the topic, it might surprise most to learn that unlike the average female that dreamed about her perfect fairytale wedding since she was a young girl, I actually have never REALLY thought about what I want for my wedding. However, there are some thing I would really love to do for my wedding, if by some miracle I am able to con(vince) a guy to marry me, which are:

1) During the tedious pre-wedding photography sessions, in between dressing up in all those super traditional Chinese costumes and prancing around in some garden somewhere, I want the make-up lady to make up me and my hubby-to-be too look really old. As in like septuagenarian old. Complete with grey hair and thick glasses. Then we take a portrait photo looking like old foggies, and that will be the main photo in our living room as a daily reminder to both of us that THAT is the goal... to be together til' we're old foggies (unless we die first of course, but having a cremation urns with our faces on it as a wedding portrait isn't quite as romantic).

2) The song I want to be played during our wedding march down the aisle - "You" by Kutless. It's a Christian song, but it could pass as a mushy love song if played on regular radio, it's got great lyrics, and I love the fact that it's done by a band that normally does loud, headbanging type rocker songs. I did mention that my guy should appreciate rock music. :P

3) Option of either a funny wedding dance, although this is quite overdone, if you just search for "funny wedding dance" on Youtube!), OR... since I have friends who I play Rock Band with on a regular basis, they can be provide my wedding music, such as follows.

Yeah, no surprise why I'm still single. *yeurk!*

The Awesome Ang Pow Packet Collection (^_^)

2011-02-04T18:17:00.015+08:00

Ah... ang pows. Those little red packets filled with money and given away during Chinese New Year traditionally from those who are married to those who are not. Which makes CNY much more enjoyable for those who are single, such as yours truly... although considering I'm already a working adult and almost hitting my 30's, it does get a bit weirder every year that goes by that I'm still getting 'ang pows', especially coming from friends my age who are already married (I haven't gotten from married couples younger than me... and I don't think I would really want to though technically I still can).

For me, however, the fun of receiving ang pows isn't just in the money (I actually give ang pows to my two kid nieces, and the amount I give is enough that the money I still make a net loss after deducting the amount of money from ang pows given to me!). I collect ang pow packets (I only keep one of each design) and have been doing so for quite a few years now. It's pretty much the only thing I actively collect, coz' the for one thing, ang pow packets come in all sort of interesting and nice designs, for another thing, most ang pow packets are in the most awesome colour of RED, and for another other thing, ang pow packets are usually free, so I save a heckuva lot of money compared to if I made a hobby of collecting superhero toys or other expensive whatnot. Except when I actually buy sets of ang pow packets from those Chinese prayer shops just for the sole purpose of adding these to my collection. I only buy sets that have differently designed individual packets, and those are usually much nicer than the free ones.

Anyway, after years of diligently hoarding the little red packets given to me, buying some from the shop, getting stashes from my friends, and even snitching ang pows from shops using them as decorations (it technically doesn't count as shoplifting since they would get thrown away after CNY is over anyway :P), my collection of ang pow packets, all of which have different designs, has swelled to a nice amount number of 580! Woo hoo!

And I still expect to get more this, especially from my wonderful friends who see me regularly and happen to be reading this post. Hint. Hint. Double hint.

I'm also a bit OCD in that it was very important to store my stash in such a manner that is neat and orderly and allows easy perusal of my collection by visitors. Therefore my prescibed method was sticking each packet into a clear sheet and arranging them in folders, such as follows.

Looks like a lot of work? You betcha! I already have TWO folders that are full, so I need to get myself a new one for next year. :)

It gets even MORE OCD in that I love arranging my ang pows according to 'themes'. Yeah, so all those packets with pictures of mandarin oranges go together, all those with pictures of chinese fans go together, etc, etc...you get the idea. So my ang pow design 'themes' include flowers (these are the most common ones... especially ang pows with cherry blossom designs), mandarin oranges (I even arrange then according to designs with pairs of oranges, and oranges in baskets :P), koi fish, gold or money, chinese fans, chinese lanterns, the Chinese God of Prosperity, and the animal of that lunar year. And then there are the ones which don't fit in any 'theme' and just drive me kinda crazy trying to figure out where to put them, and eventually they all just went under a big theme of 'whatever'.

Oh yes, I just had to show off the fruits of my ang pow collecting labour here. Here are some of the coolest ones I have. The one below is my favourite design, coz' I like the way the red and yellow blends into each other (same for the second pic below, for the packet on the left), and it has gold font, and the pic is just cute. :)

The two below are also the really nice ones, and made it on the cover of one of my ang pow folders.

Here are some from my 'mandarin oranges' collection (all those with pair of oranges).

The koi fish ang pows! Note the coolness of the similar way in which fish on ang pows are designed, although these are all from different companies. You might as well write 'geek' all over my forehead now. :P

GOLD koi fish!

Ah, these are some from the super huge collection of ang pows with flower designs. As I said, the cherry blossoms are really common.

And here are some flower designs arranged according to colour (am I freaking you out with my OCD tendancies yet?)

I REALLY like this set coz' it's a similar design among all three, but again, all three were made by different companies.

Packets with chinese lions.

And chinese lanterns.
Fireworks...

And chinese fans. The fan for the ang pow packets on the top right is actually glued onto the packet, so it adds texture. And the design for the one below (where the top part of the fan forms the flap of the packet), that is really cool.

This is a set with the same common chinese word. I can't read Chinese for nuts, but I believe this word says 'prosperity'. Correct me if I'm wrong!

Same theme, but all same size packets. All of the ones below were made by Public Bank, except for the one on the bottom right. I'm not sure, but I think Public Bank came out with a new design every year and I just happened to get quite a few of them.

Another couple of sets with chinese words. I have no idea what the words are though! :P

The typical Chinese boy and girl design.

Same theme here, but different look of the boy and girl, and all these are from Drinho.

Ooh, the next couple of sets are all those made by the same company, with different but similar ang pow designs. I totally LOVE getting sets of ang pows like these! Right now I have the set from Proton....

As well as from M&M's.
I dunno how many companies have done these kind of ang pows (unique designs for each packet in one set), but I would surely appreciate anyone who gets these and pass the whole set to me. Hint. Hint. Double Hint.

The ones below are all from Ambank Group, but these aren't so much a set, as I think the different designs were produced in different years.

Mickey Mouse angpows! You get buy these easily from the shops, but the free ones are more fun. :)

And then there are the angpows with designs of the animal represneting that lunar year. I have angpows with designs of most of the animals, but the ones I really like is this set for the year of the chicken, from UOB bank...

And these tiger design ang pows, from all different companies. The designs are unique in that the tiger forms a chinese word in the top two.

For this year, I only have TWO rabbit themed ang pows. And I would love to have more. Hint. Hint. Double Hint.

Alrighty, enough of my soliciting for more ang pows from my poor readers. Hope you enjoyed it and Gong Xi Fa Chai to everyone again!

Happy & Blessed Chinese New Year!

2011-02-03T00:25:00.005+08:00

Wishing all my family, friends, readers and blog visitors and happy, prosperous and most awesome Chinese New Year 2011!

Excuse me for my self-indulgence in cute poses and bad Photoshopping in the name of this auspicious occassion. Amazingly, there's nothing red in this pic! ^_^

Oh yes, since it's the year of the rabbit, my pet 'rabbit' wish you a happy chinese new year as well.

Well, I couldnt' find a real rabbit, so it was either this or Photoshop bunny ears on the fella, which probably wouldn't have been much of an improvement. *grin*

Top Eight Reasons Why Self-Photography is Awesome

2011-01-29T00:50:00.008+08:00

I almost hate to admit it, but at risk of sounding self-absorbed and vain, and I decided it's time to come out of the closet and reveal one of my favourite and so-far, kind of well-kept secrets.

I like taking photos of myself.

I would almost use the term 'camwhore' on myself...but after reading Wikipedia's definition of the term as "...an individual who performs sexual services on the Internet with webcam software in exchange for money, goods, or attention..." or "...individuals who post pictures or videos of themselves on the Internet to gain attention...", as well as some of Urban Dictionary's definitions, including "Girls who are amateurs at posing slutty and seductive... " I realized that my idea of a camwhore (a person who likes taking pictures of herself/himself) is rather mild compared to the actual definitions. I don't do slutty pics or try to make money of my own pics...

I'm just of those people who have more or less mastered the art of taking multiple pics of myself when I think I'm better looking than usual... either using a tripod and the camera's timer, or through the more challenging method of single handedly aiming the camera at myself at the right angle. This usually results in many failed photos where I end up looking more like disproportionate whale than anything else... but after many round of shots, eventually I do get some nice ones (and thank God for digital cameras which allow me to delete all the lousy pics easily). For the most part, I store my 'photo shoot' collections hidden away in the deep abyss of my computer's hard drive, and I've limited the sharing of my best self-taken pics to my friends on Facebook.

So I'm not a full-blown camwhore yet! Yay! I would guess I am simply the much milder version of the camwhorer... i.e. the self-photographer.

Now most people would consider a love of taking pictures of oneself as a sign of self-absorption or lameness. Especially when you starting snapping away at yourself in public, with everyone else looking at you in a bemused manner. To a certain extent, I would agree that the frequency of self-photography one partakes in is a pretty good indicator of a person's level of vanity, but I don't think all people who like taking pics of themselves are definitely self-absorbed, and for some, it is simply a indicator of a healthy level of confidence and liking to look good. Besides, I've also learned that the ability to takes photos of yourself can be quite an art which offers a numbers of benefits and advantages.

Therefore I present to you, my Top Eight Reasons Why Self-Photography is Awesome (because I was too lazy to come up with two more reasons to make a top ten...):

8) You have nice looking photos of yourself

Most obvious reason of course. When other people take photos of you, they don't really care if your yawning with your mouth big enough for a fly to go in. Or that you were reacting to a friend's bug eating story resulting in your face being contorted into a retarded look. Or even if you ARE paying attention, your hair could be messy, or your shirt button accidentally popped open, or you had veggies in between your teeth. Self-photography allows you the freedom to retake your photos at any time to get the perfect shot. You'll still have to worry about getting your friends to delete that yucky pic of yours though.

7) You don't need to find someone to hold the camera

The tripod holds your camera for you, or you do it yourself. Even armed with only a cute little mini tripod (I don't have a big one), you can still be creative and stand it on a table or anything else you can find. And you don't have to worry if the random stranger you asked to take photos of you with your buddies will up and run away with your RM2000 DLSR while you're busy posing.

6)You don't need to worry about people who take really bad photos

For example, you're on a holiday, you want a nice pic of you with the full blown scenery... but the person taking photos of you either aims too high (most of body gets chopped off), zooms in too much (can see only you but not the scenery) and no matter how you describe your ideal photo to him/her, the person just can't get it right. No problem. Pull out your tripod, find a good place to stand it, set your camera on timer and snap away to the perfect shot.

5) You don't waste the photographer's time

In same scenario as above, imagine your bad photographer has already taken a few pics of you, but you're not happy with the result. If you're shameless, you'd ask the fella to take more photos even though he or she is ready to run off somewhere else. But if you're the type (like me) who does respect other people's time and lack of interest in ensuring you look hot in your pics, you'd let the fella off to go do his thing and proceed to snap pics of yourself in your own sweet time. As such, you don't result in photographer rage, such as follows.

4)You can take some cool pics that wouldn't be as cool if taken any other way

Especially useful if you're into extreme sports. Imagine the coolness of taking a profile pic of yourself while falling 10,000 feet from an airplace with the land below as your backdrop! Ok, that might be a bit extreme (although I'm sure someone would have done something equally as crazy before), but just as a real life example of a cool self pic, here's one I took on a roller coaster at Genting Highlands with my friends behind me.

Yes, I took a risk of having my camera drop into the ground and smash into a gazillion pieces...but the risk was worth it just coz' of this pic. :)

3) You can take quick photos with celebrities!

I once read about this guy in Hollywood who, everytime he met a celebrity, would ask to take a photo of him with them. But knowing that the celebs have little time to waste on waiting for him to pass his camera on to someone else to take the photo, this guy would just stand next to the celeb, hold the camera facing them at the right angle and snapy a quick photo... all in less than 5 seconds which was not enough time for most celebs to get over their amazement at the efficiency of this dude.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photographic evidence or even a URL link to demonstrated this coolness coz' my Googling failed to produce the desired results. But I assure you, it's a true story!

2) You can make cool projects like Noah Kalina

And I hear you say, who?? Noah Kalina is a guy who took a photo of himself every day for 6 years from 2000 to 2006 and compiled it all into a 5 minute and 46 seconds video, as shown below:

The video made him famous. Famous enough that even more famous people wanted to take photos with him, as seen here. And famous enough that it seems to have spawned a massive number of copycat videos. Just search for "takes photos every day" on Youtube, and there a long list of people doing the same thing.

Speaking of fame, that leads me to the top reason why self-photography is cool

1) You can become famous!

In addition to Noah Kalina, yours truly can also personally attest to the potential of self-photography in resulting in a certain level of fame, even if it's only for 15 minutes. Although in my case, my 'fame' is nothing more than getting my mug on the face of my company magazine, which distributed to all of my company's almost 500 offices around the world (for the purpose of self-protection, I warped the wordings on the mag cover and my company name. I still like to keep a low profile when it comes to my work. :P).

How I managed to get on my company's mag cover was pretty funny. The mag reporters wanted to do a story on the work I do (which is outdoor work and quite unique in my company), and they needed photos for the article. So my boss took me out to the field and we got a guy take a whole bunch of pics of us pretending to do stuff in the field. Then along the way, I used my own camera and my cute little mini tripod, stood it on the ground so the camera was facing up at me, and I knelt down at an angle where the camera could take me and the backdrop of the trees. My boss initially said not to take such a pic coz' it wouldn't be nice. But I thought it made a cool looking pic, and sent it in together with the other pics anyway.

It turned out the magazine people loved it! So much that they said it would make a great mag cover, and I had to take more photos to get a better one. So I did a 2nd shoot, with a colleague's DLSR (he was taking the photos this time), and one of those pics became the mag cover while my initial first pic with my own dingy point and shoot camera went in the mag accompanying the article on my area of work. And none of the other pics we took went into the mag. :P

So there you go, my case of the awesome-ness of self-photography has been made. Go out there and start practicing, you all! ^_^

CMB Berhad: ONE Job Vacancy for Position of Boyfriend

2011-01-22T22:45:00.008+08:00

Valentine's Day is coming up in 3 weeks! Well, normally I wouldn't get so excited about it considering the slight problem that I don't have a boyfriend and I believe Valentine's Day is an overcommercialized celebration just so the florists can sell you flowers that are going to die anyway (The romance in having to throw wilting roses in the trash is quite lost on me). But after many millennia of being single, many a patheticly failed attempt to snag a guy who just might be able to put up with my nonsense, and in the meantime observing the ups and downs of couples I know, I've recently had an epiphany.

The epiphany is this:

Finding a good bf or gf involves effort. Once you find a potential interesting partner, you have make the effort to find out what he or she likes, and if necessary, behave in such a way that said person will be interested in you and be willing to get in a relationship with you. And once you are in a relationship, maintaining a good relationship and making it succeed is tough work. If you don't make enough effort, the other person may eventually get sick of you, dump you and try to find someone better. In the meantime, you are left looking for another steady partner you hope you will enjoy being with for a long long time.

In other words, being in a relationship is like being in a job. With a simple replacement of a few key words from above, you will see what I mean.

Finding a good job involves effort. Once you find a potential interesting company, you have make the effort to find out what the job requirements are, and if necessary, behave in such a way that the recruiter will be interested in you and be willing to hire you. And once you are in the company, maintaining a good status in the company and succeeding in your career is tough work. If you don't make enough effort, the company boss may eventually get sick of you, fire you and try to find someone better. In the meantime, you are left looking for another steady job you hope you will enjoy doing for a long long time.

So since I've become a bit bored of the conventional methods of trying to snag a guy, during which time my requirements for a man have actually become higher, and yet my older female friends still nudge me every now and then asking when I'm going to get a boyfriend, I decided to try a more creative approach.

Guys, you now have to apply to become my boyfriend. Details of job application are as below:

Job Vacancy: Boyfriend (1 Position)

Job Description:
A challenging and (hopefully) rewarding position in which the successful candidate is required to take on multiple roles including, but not limited to, the following:

1) CEO (Chief Entertainment Officer) - To conduct regular conversations with Carol (preferably the kind which are either amusing and intellectually stimulating), accompany Carol for meals, movies, events and other miscellaneous occasions, and provide other forms of entertainment for Carol which may range from challenging each other to getting high scores on Angry Birds to tandem diving off a plane in Brisbane (you should know how to work a parachute, of course)

2) CAO (Chief Affectionate Officer) - To be available for cuddles and smooches on a regular basis, able to provide verbal consolation when Carol is angry and bitching about whatever. Willingness to be named after types of food i.e. honey bun (but if you work out a lot, you have the option of being nicknamed Carol hunky piece of man-meat)

3) CFO (Chief Financial Officer) - To give Carol money in time of urgent need, such as for necessary procurement of that cute pair of shoes. Credit cards also acceptable. Preferably to complete Carol's annual tax return forms (including all tax deductibles). Ability to decipher the meaning of Carol's annual banking/insurance statements is an added advantage coz' those things are a bitch.

Job Requirements:
- Ideally a Christian. Fresh converts may apply. Exceptions may be given for applicants with lots of money and smokin’ good looks

- Ability to converse, write and have meaningful conversations in English which do not revolve solely around cars, iPhones or football
- Healthy, wacky, occasionally weird, but not too perverted sense of humour
- Must not be stupid, boring or annoying
- Appreciation of loud rock music and animals (such as dogs, turtles and gerbils)

Benefits:
- Successful candidates shall immediately assume the position of partner, with opportunities of being promoted to husband within 3 to 5 years (depending on the size of the engagement ring)
- Financially rewarding as Carol actually does not like shopping that much (and all the guys go WOO HOOO!!!)

- Carol does not experience monthly PMS or cramps (so the only time you should avoid her is when YOU piss her off)

- Carol usually does not lookt too shabby, as evident below

However, on a bad day, she may look something like this.

Closing date for applications: 7 February 2011

Shortlisted candidates shall be notified by email, with a follow-up interview by Carol. The successful candidate gets to take Carol on a date on 14 February 2011 to place of his choice. And it better be good!! ^_^

Another round of Idolatry!

2011-01-19T00:34:00.000+08:00

The FB thread above was how hyped I was last season for good ol' American Idol (click on the screenshot to read it in all it's glory). I thought it would be a fun way to kick off the new season! Plus 13 'likes' was the highest amount of 'likes' I've ever gotten on a single Facebook status update. I just had to show it off somehow (Yup, I know, I just made myself worthy of being posted on Lamebook.com. )

And good grief, American Idol is into it's 10th season already! With no more Simon Cowell, no more Paula Abdul and for some reason, Kara Diguardi is out too. Now we're left with the dawg, Randy Jackson and the new judges, Jennifer Lopez and Steve Tyler (whom I still wonder how that gave birth to the super hot Liz Tyler. Hmm.. strange world we live in).

Of course, all the ads claim this to be the best season EVERRRRR. But I'm sure the critics/haters/Vote-for-the-Worsters will be pouncing on anything and everything that can and will go wrong this season.

Here's hoping that the new season will actually still be somewhat interesting... that some people as fun or even more fun than Adam Lambert will audition...

Red Dot's gotten into the mood already, it seems.

Mum's Dangerous Birthday & Operation: Personalized Prezzie

2011-01-18T22:57:00.001+08:00

It was my mum's birthday recently, and it was no ordinary birthday... it was her 60th birthday! And her birthday is on new year's day too! So naturally we had to have a partyyy....

But not before I sprung my secret weapon on her.

The personalized birthday gift. >:)

Well, my mum made my life a bit easier by planning her own birthday party (so I didn't have to do it) and she's been into line dancing for ages so of course she decided to do a line dance party with all her buddies, and the theme of the party was "Jocelyn is Dangerous at 60". Jocelyn would be her name, of course. I was given the task of emailing and facebooking all her friends to tell them the details of the party. And was so busy doing all that, that to be honest, I kinda forgot about getting my mum a cool present, worthy of her 60th birthday.

That was until 2 days before her birthday, then I was like "CRAP! I don't have a present!!!"

Hence operation think-of-awesome-gift-I-can-get-in-2-days was underway. And the first thing that popped to mind was the personalized gift... and I thought it would be cool to make her a blouse with her party theme on it.... and maybe a cool pic of herself looking...errr... dangerous. But I didn't HAVE any pics of her looking particularly dangerous (although she's dangerous when she's pissed at me, but obviously I wouldn't have any pic of her then!).

This is when I took advantage of the fact that I run my mum's email and Facebook account. Went onto her FB, checked through all tagged photos of her (mostly by her line dancing buddies, when she's at parties at all), and found the PERFECT photo of her. Then I used Cool Text Graphics Generator to make print out the 'slogan' for her shirt, put everything together and voila, here was the result!

Woo hoo! But that wasn't it. I had to then get someone to print the dang thing on a blouse... and I also had to get a blouse. So I made some calls, and decided on this cute little stall I'd seen before at Sunway Pyramid called Personalize It Creation (LG Floor, in front of Nichii boutique), and they told me they could only print on a pure white cotton blouse. Got it.

So off I went blouse hunting at Giant, and decided on a white spaghetti strap top instead. But when I got to the stall at Pyramid, they told me they couldn't print on that coz' the material as stretchable and that would ruin the design.

Dangnabbit!

So I had to go hunting for ANOTHER white blouse... and this time found a non-stretchable but reasonably cute looking one. The stall guy approved, I gave him my design, and half an hour later... the shirt was done!

But still not done enough for me! Coz' I knew my mum likes 'bling' on her clothes, I then went off to buy a bunch of red sequins to sew on her shirt. Which really wasn't a great idea coz' I'm terrible at sewing, and I'm sad to say some of the sequins fell off later. :( But the bling still made the blouse cooler looking.

The night before my mum's birthday, I was up until 4-freakin'-AM sewing those things on (this was on new year's eve too!), and when I was done, I put it on a hanger and hung it up on the bathroom mirror using one of those nifty suction cup hanger thingies, coz' I knew my mum would go there first thing in the morning.

Then I knocked out for the night.

Around 9am on mum's birthday, she comes into my room with a big grin on her face and quite ecstatic about my prezzie. Even though I was still groggy at the time, I had a big sleepy grin on my face too!

Operation: Personalized Prezzie was a big success! And I have my mum's Facebook thread to prove it!

Again, another benefit of being in charge of the mum's Facebook account. Lol.

My brother's family came over after that, and we had a cute family photo shoot... these are with my niece. :)

And here are some pics of my mum's line dance / birthday party at Kampungku Restaurant (near Holiday Villa) where the bunch of them always go for line dance parties. If everything looks a bit very the red, it's because her party theme is RED. Goes with the all idea of being 'dangerous' and I certainly supported the cause. ^_^

At one point, I did attempt to dance to one of the songs... and considering I'd never learned the steps before, I think I did a valiant effort. Too bad I don't have a video to prove it. But I did make a valiant effort! Just try to ignore the look of blurness on my face...

Oh yes, the birthday cake pics are mandatory! It was a homemade cake ordered by my sister-in-law. It was good stuff!

My mum also has some really goofy friends...:P

Makes me hope I'll be that crazy still when I turn 60. ^_^

And for those of you who have no idea what line dancing is, here are couple of pics of my mum and her buddies strutting their stuff. The first song being the party theme song 'Dangerous!', and the second vid was the last song they did.... cute little dance to a song called 'Comic Strip'

Happy Birthday Mumster!

The revamped blog and my pet Red Dot

2011-01-16T19:46:00.004+08:00

As part of year 2011 resolution to revive this dying blog, I have stuck to my scout's honour (which I actually don't have since I was never a scout) and given my blog a bit of a revamp! Not too much of a revamp though, I just added more pics of my collection of lovely red stuff in my blog background, and I also totally changed the header (I realized the previous one was just really yucks).

The most interesting bit is the introduction of my pet dot. Yes, I have a pet dot. I called it Red Dot. Actually it's a red squishy toy with a smiley face. And I've had it for quite a while now coz' it was given to me as a birthday present by a friend (Thanks, Su Ann!) a few years back... and decided it would be fun to let it have a run of my red blog. So basically you'll see Red Dot quite a bit in my future posts from now on. ^_^

Here's hoping that I will stick to my resolution! Aiks!

Taking on another 365 days. Grr!

2011-01-14T12:48:00.002+08:00

We're halfway into the first month of 2011, and apologies for the lateness, but HaPpY NeW YeAR!!!

I actually don't believe in resolutions, but after thinking about it for a while, I thought that there are a couplf things I wanna do, so why not?

1) I'm gonna try and revive this almost dying blog. I've said it many times, I know. But there's so many things I did want to blog about last year and was just bitten by the lazy bug. So I have many long overdue stuff to blog about, like my TWO trips to Bangkok, this Raptor Watch thing I went to in Port Dickson, another amazing Ipoh trip with some buddies... and when I'm feeling a bit creative I need to give my blog background and layout a bit of a revamping. I still hope one day I'll get this blog interesting enough that I can con Nuffnang.com to pay me money for advertising space. Muahaha. Ha.

2) I resolve to start my diet tomorrow. That shall apply every day for the rest of the year.

Well, there you, I have a list of resolutions, as paltry as it is, and some might say no.2 doesn't really count.

Bubbling up my hair with Liese

2010-12-19T01:40:00.005+08:00

Hi all, I'm back again to pay some attention to my poor neglected red blog! I have many photos of fun stuff that I want to blog about and just too lazy to get round to it. Apologies!

First in line for a long overdue post, my experiment with the cool latest form of hair dye from Japan, Liese Bubble Hair Colour. The way it claims to work is that the hair dye becomes sort of like a foam in your hair, and that helps to make it easier to evenly distribute in the hair to dye. Being a big fan of red, as you all know, I bought the colour that was closest to red as I could find, which had the funky name, Cassis Berry.

And here's all the stuff that came in the box. Mostly the same as normal hair dye except that the applicator comes with a nozzle that turns the liquid dye into foam when you press it. Neat-O. I still had to wear gloves and all though, since the stuff will still stain my hands.

So I prepared the mixture as instructed and took my time to foam up my hair. And the cool part is that there was ABSOLUTELY no dripping. In fact, the foam made my hair so stiff, I had quite a bit of fun making some new hairstyles for myself. This would be my Adam Lambert impression.

And this would be my version of the Jessie from Pokemen (would've been better if my hair was a tad bit longer, maybe)

And this is....err.... just a really stoopid hairstyle.

And at the end of all that, the results were as follows:

Unfortunately didn't quite turn out as red as I hoped it would. In fact, my hair looked kind of not much different from before.

Oh well, at least the experience was fun although the outcome was disappointing. :P

Poor bitch

2010-09-20T00:21:00.000+08:00

Some time ago, while at the office, I heard a couple of dogs making quite a din outside my office. My curious colleagues and I peeped out the window and saw this:

A male and female dog mating with each other actually got stuck! And the female was so obviously in pain and making a din. Sometimes she could stand up, but other times she was lying on the floor looking absolutely miserable, all the time stuck to her male mate... She was trying to 'detach' herself from the male for at least 15 minutes, after which they ran off somewhere and I'm not sure what happened after that. The whole time, the male dog was looking pretty relaxed...

This is a time when you can safely say, what a poor f***ing bitch!

Makan-makan at Moe de Cafe

2010-09-14T23:50:00.001+08:00

Gosh, I'm posting so much about food, this could almost be a food blog. And I wonder why I'm putting on weight. Duh.

So in my last post I wanted to talk about my visit to Moe De Cafe at Sunway Giza with some buddies. And I also mentioned that this cafe is having a Month of Maids theme where all the waitresses wear maid costumes. Well, I kidded you not, here's the pic to prove it!

They come in cute fluffy slippers too! The girl in pink was our waitress, and she wasn't too happy about me taking a pic of her (I guess they must get a lot of people taking pics of them. Heh!). But she was still nice about it.

The cafe sells quite a lot of food, both local and western, at pretty reasonable prices. I ordered a bowl of ramen noodles with seafood, which came at RM12.90 for a big bowl, and it tasted pretty good. Came with some nice big juicy prawns, a mussel, and some squid.

Damien, ie. the Damester, ordered a plate of cheese baked rice with beef, which was also pretty good, and looks like so.

Sonia and Meag Yean order cheese baked rice with chicken wings, which looks like the above except there are chicken wings and not beef. Go figure. The one with beef cost RM13.90, while the one with chicken was only RM12.90. Not too bad for cheese baked rice. Another buddy, Chee Yim, ordered a bento box. Which looked like this.

I'm not a big fan of bento boxes, but this looked pretty ok. I didn't manage to get her opinion of it though. I also ordered some fried soft-shelled crabs as a snack. These cost RM10.90 and tasted quite yummy.

Drinks were pretty good as well. The cafe is having a promotion where all drinks are 50% off for the whole month, so a drink like the following red bean yam drink which usually costs RM6 (or something like that) came at half price).

I ordered a cool looking blue ocean, which comes with vanilla ice cream.
The Damester ordered something else at first, but was told it wasn't available so he ordered the same thing as me. Then the naughty guy started playing with his food.

We both liked our blue ocean!

Oh yeah, they had a cute ash tray in the shape of a robot kitty cat. That was cute too. :)

So I have no gripes about the food or service, however, some things I and my buddies didn't like was that the menu font was red against a black background, and the lighting at the place was dim, which made the menu so difficult to read. At least it had pictures. Another gripe is that most of the drinks listed in the menu were not available at least 3 or 4 pages worth of drinks! Like WAT duh.... And apparently certain drinks become unavailable after 9pm . According to the waitress this is because the drinks run out at the time, but we suspect it's more likely coz' they want to sell beer after 9pm.

Another weird thing is that the first table we sat at, the seats were too low and too cushy that we sank into the seats, and we knew this would be it too uncomfortable to eat. So we moved to another table with hard chairs, and this was fine. They seriously need to look into changing those green seats.

But otherwise, I thought the place was ok. Maybe the food was not spectacular, but good enough for the price. Hope I get more chances to try the other restaurants at Sunway Giza... all in due time, com-padres !

A day at Sunway Giza

2010-09-11T23:01:00.005+08:00

Actually the post title should be ANOTHER day at Sunway Giza (located at Kota Damansara), coz' last week I went there with some friends, Sonia and Meng Yean. Just that I was so amazed at how different this shopping complex was compared to the many other shopping complexes I've been to, that I couldn't get enough of it the first time round. So yesterday I kinda dragged a few more buddies with me to Sunway Giza again, for a better hang out time.

The design of this place is fascinating! Like most shopping places have shops on different floors that are connected, but at Sunway Giza, the shops on the higher floors are not connected.... but you have to go up to each shop with separate stairways (some have lifts). That sounds kinda weird, I know, but there aren't as many shops here as there is at a normal shopping complex, and most of the shops here are totally new and different from normal places. There are quite a number of interesting restaurants, a few bars, a KTV I've seen elsewhere, and shops with various knick knacks. It's just...cool. :)

Here are a couple of panoramas of the place I took from different positions of the atrium, so you can see how it looks like overall (just click on the pics for a larger size).

A view of some of the bars and pubs in the shopping complex itself, including The Beer Factory, Bistro Bola (for footie fans?) and Movida. Movida apparently has a different naughty theme each day of the week, judging from the buntings!

Here's a view of Teo Heng KTV, which I've never seen anywhere else. Being a karaoke junkie, I'll make sure to visit this place one day when I'm up for killing people softly with some songs.

The place right under Teo Heng is Moe De Cafe, which is a cool looking cafe with reasonably priced food, and apparently they have a different theme each month coz' they had a big banner outside saying 'Month of Maids', and all the waitresses were wearing maid uniforms. Ain't that cute.

I was so intrigued by the concept, I also coerced my friends into having dinner there. Results of which I will save for next post. :)

Some other fancy smancy restaurants worth mentioning is 'Full House', which is apparently deemed a lifestyle store and cafe. I'm not too sure why, but the decor of the place looked like a garden party kind of thing, the menu not only included list of food, but also something other stuff apparently for sale. Sonia mentioned that she heard the food there is good but prices are high for small portions. I haven't tried that place yet so I have no comment. But it's looks like a fancy enough place for cool people to hang out at. :D

Another interesting looking restaurant was Uncle Prawn. I'm not quite sure what's the specialty here, but it's definitely a Chinese restaurant. And they have a dish called 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. So it's gotta be interesting. :)

There are many more interesting and new shops at Sunway Giza... this is kinda just the tip of the iceberg. Another cool thing is that the entrances for the whole place are wide open, meaning it's not totally air-conditioned inside. But the place is kept cool by giant-sized fan on the high ceiling. As shown below with my buddy Damien in the pic. That bugger is 3 storeys high, by the way (the fan, not Damien).

All in all, Sunway Giza is a pretty different place to hang out compared to other shopping complexes. Not very good for shopping per se, but nice if you like to try new things and hang out at nice bars with your friends over a drink. :)

Pizza that looks like ice cream???

2010-09-11T02:42:00.004+08:00

That's pretty much how I would describe Cone Pizza, which is being sold at this cozy little shop of the same name which I went to visit at Kota Damansara. Basically, as the name suggests, the main food served are pizzas, but not traditional flat and round pizzas, but pizzas in the shape of a cone! The crust is hard, and the cone is filled with the pizza toppings. So it's tastes pretty much like a normal pizza, but you eat it like an ice cream. Nifty concept, eh?

So the one I tried was the Hot & Spicy Chicken pizza, which on the website looks like this:

But in real life, it comes out looking like this:
The top layer is cheese, and the juicy fillings are all underneath, as shown below once the cheezy top layer went into my tummy.

As small as it looks, one cone pizza is actually quite filling. So if you have a couple of friends along, like I did, all you need is to order one cone, and maybe share a pasta if you have a big-ish appetite, plus a drink, and you're good to go. My two buddies and I order a couple more plates of pasta (one was kid's size). The pasta was not particularly special, although pretty good as well. Unfortunately I didn't bother to take photos coz' I was too amused with the cone pizza. One of these babies cost about RM9 to RM11, depending on what you order. Pasta also costs just a little more, again depending on what you order, so the prices are pretty reasonable. All in all, between the 3 of us, we paid about RM17 each for two cone pizzas, one regular pasta, one kid's size pasta, 3 drinks and a bowl of mushroom soup.

Check out the website for more yummy offerings. Definitely an interesting new thing to try. ;)

A day of persistently unflushable poop

2010-09-07T01:08:00.008+08:00

Warning, I'm about to talk about my poop. Yes, poop. It's gross stuff I tell you. So if you don't wanna know, don't read on. I'll spare you the poop pictures though. :)

My clothes have been starting to feel a bit tighter recently, which is rather annoying considering I do try to control my food and go to the gym regularly. I have a sneaky suspicion that the difficulty in getting the weight back in check is coz' of accumulated junk in my body and not undergoing any detox program, like, ever. Ok, so I went on a 3-day pure juice fast sometime last year, and that kinda helped, until my mum bugged me to start eating normal again. Which is a shame coz' I was totally on a role drinking nothing but juice for 3 days (and I didn't feel hungry!), but after the 3rd day I admit, I was having difficulty lifting weights at the gym.

So after about a year, I thought it time to start get that accumulated gunk out of my body again, perhaps in a less drastic manner. And just so happened I was chatting with my buddy Damien from church, who sells these Unicity health products (yes, you can call him up anytime. He does it full time now and sure would like to have more contacts). I've tried some of the detoxifying products from Unicity before, so I decided to give it another shot. The one's I tried before were Unicity's Nature's Tea, which has a type of tea which is supposed to "aid the body's natural ability to cleanse itself of toxins, combining efficient cleansing action as part of a weight management program", and also Paraway Plus, which are capsules and they apparently help dislodge parasites in your intestines, so they come out in the poop. The one I did not try before is Lifibre, a container of powder for mixing with water or juice or any drink, and the fibre helps to clean out your intestines of gunk. All in all, it's supposed to an effective combination for cleaning out bodily toxins.

The program is such that I take LiFibre and water plus 2 capsules of Paraway Plus in the morning (5 capsules after 10 days), and Nature's Tea seeped in hot water in the evening. So I started taking the stuff yesterday, and today my bowels were starting to move nicely. Although I also had one of those 3-in-1 coffee mixes at my office, which usually also really gets my bowels going, so I'm not sure if the effect was from the coffee or this stuff.

I do know that Damien did warn me not to seep the tea too long in the water, else it would be too strong and I would start pooping more than intended. But I had taken the stuff before and didn't have such an effect on me (perhaps my intestinal gunk is too impervious to the effects of the tea), so I didn't bother. I just seep the tea as long as I can.

So today in the office, I actually did have to use the loo a couple of times. And while it was not runny, my excretions were.... more than usual. And it was then that I realized that my office's toilet flush was really sucky.

I flushed once. Some of the poop went down but not all.

I waited a while for the toilet to refill. And while doing so I was contemplating taking a picture of my poop and posting it on Rate My Poo. Fortunately my better judgement was still in place. So I flushed again.

Some poop was STILL floating around.

So I had to wait for the thing to refill again. This time I looked at my poop a little closely, wondering if I could see any parasites wringling around on my poop, hanging on for dear life in the toilet bowl water.

Didn't see anything wriggling. Which I guess is a good thing.

Then I flushed again. And STILL there was a couple of floaters.

So while waiting for the next refill, I ran over to the next toilet and brought over a little pail to fill with water. Upon next flush, I poured the pailful of water in there to make sure everything went down. And this time it did.

This detox program is supposed to last me one month, where I take the same stuff everyday for the next 30 days. How fun is that.

Lesson of the Day: If you're going to start a detox program, make sure you have a toilet nearby with a very good flush.

Ninjas need burgers too, HAI!

2010-09-06T02:35:00.005+08:00

I've just been out and about reading other people's blogs. And reading other people's blogs have inspired me to get out these lazy fingers and start blogging again. Let's see how long this holds up, people.

Some time ago I popped by Tropicana Mall at Damansara for a dog carnival. My folks brought my pampered mutt of a shih tzu there, where she proceeded to bark at every dog that came within one meter of her. Friendly dog she is. Anyway, I'll save the pooch pics for later. I wanna ramble about a cute little food joint I visited there called Ninja Joe.

As the name does not imply, Ninja Joe sells Western food. Very limited choices of western food. Specifically pork burgers (they don't call them ham burgers here in Malaysia although technically it's the same thing ...actually it's the first time I've seen any burgers with any pork/ham in Malaysia! There's a reason for that which doesn't take much to figure out). They also sell french fries, lemonade or green tea, as well as 'shurikens' (pork fried with potatoes). And the number of pork burgers you get depends on the number of ninjas you bring along. If you are solo ninja, you buy one burger. If you are two ninjas, you get two burgers. If you are big boss, you get big burger. Observe the menu as follows.

There is also a nice ninja lady serving at the counter. Well, just a lady in a kimodo. That doesn't really count as a ninja, but at least it's Japanese-y.

Not sure what was up with the transformers pic on the wall though.

Maybe ninjas learned how to transform! :D

And here was what I ordered. A humble pork burger, lemonade and french fries.

If you're thinking that burger looks kinda small, you are CORRECT. It was dang small for RM5.50. Although I would say the pork patty was nice. But not nice enough for RM5.50. The french fries did not taste particularly special, like something you can buy at the supermarket and fry yourself at home. And the lemonade, well it was different from what other fast food joints had to offer, so that's ok.

So all in all, the food was not that great although the concept is interesting. Like what do ninjas have to do with burgers and fries? Why, absolutely nothing! That's why it's COOL.

My friend Walter was also ranting about Ninja Joe on his Gmail Buzz, so here was our buzzy conversation:

Walter - Complaining

I have a complain to make. There was this really horrible place I went last week (or so) and I was suppose to give it a review.

But..

I can't remember where it is or what happened..

Ugh..

That being said, Ninja Joe sucks. Only the patty tastes decent. Everything else is horrible (especially the shop, it looks so nice from outside).

Yes, this post is for not posting for so long. HahA!

Carol - I just went to Ninja Joe last Sunday at Tropicana Mall. Burger is small and pretty pricey, just the meat is nice, that's about it.

Walter - Hey! I have exactly the same thoughts!!

But worse. The kitchen is extremely disgusting and the person serving seems to have some sort of horrible mood yesterday

Carol - I didn't see the kitchen. How did you manage to see the kitchen?

I haven't tried to shurikens though. Are they any good?

Walter - No idea. I only had a big boss and lemonade and fries. The fries = yuck.

Carol - the fries were normal lah. I wouldn't say yuck.

Walter - well it was yuck for me. It was dry.

Carol -

tastes like something you could buy off the supermarket and fry yourself, that's all.

wouldn't mind trying the shurikens next time.

Therefore it has been doubly confirmed that the food is not that great. But I have no comment on the shurikens coz' I haven't tried them.

You have been warned, ninja-san!

Yat Kor's steaming hot sauna prawns

2010-08-24T00:15:00.004+08:00

Ok, so I haven't blogged for a while again, and today I feel like blogging about food. Just coz' I tried something interesting last weekend when I went with some my church Sunday School teachers friends for dinner at Yat Kor restaurant at USJ 1.

We tried prawns in sauna! Yes, each prawn comes individually wrapped in a cute little towel...hehe, just kidding.

Basically the guys comes bit a pot of hot water and a bunch of fresh uncooked prawns. Then he dumps the prawns on top of the steaming pot, so it looks kinda like this.

In a second, the pot start spewing out smoke like a chimney on steroids. You can't even see the guy sitting behind the pot. Did you even know he was there?

And voila, after a couple of seconds of spewing hot steam, the prawns are cooked and ready for eating!

Hmm, yummy fresh steamed prawns...

Another famous dish at Yat Kor is the Chinese version of German Pork Knuckle. Basically it's one big chunk of meat.

The other stuff we tried was mostly normal dishes, including salted egg calamari and kangkung belacan, which all tasted yummy as well.

And the good thing is the shop isn't too full of people. So go try it out one day, at least just to enjoy the prawns taking a sauna! Lol!

The WTF car

2010-07-04T23:21:00.004+08:00

I have not posted anything for 3 months. That is bad bad bad. Been busy with work and not really motivated to blog. That's kinda bad for a person who wanted to become a professional blogger. At this rate...hmm... not going to happen. I guess my problem is that I tend to be too long-winded when I write, and that makes me lazy to write.

So now I must learn to write short and sweet.

With more pictures.

Coz' everyone loves pictures.

Coz' people today have the attention span of a 5 year old.

That's an attention span of about 10 seconds.

So like I have a friend who once said he wanted to buy a car from KL sometime mid of last year, coz' that was around the time that all cars made in Wilayah Persekutuan would have the last letters 'TF' in their license plate. And being from W.P., the first letter would be 'W'.

The result would be the WTF car.

This is BMW too! The owner paid quite a mint for a WTF car...Doesn't that make you just go WTF??

New words for the English dictionary

2010-04-09T00:35:00.001+08:00

CHOCORGASM: The feeling of euphoria when eating a yummy chocolate sundae, especially after an enjoyable and de-stressing activity, such as dance class.

JOBPRESSION: The sinking feeling you get when you remember you have to get home and work on that report... particularly annoying after having a chocorgasm.

FACEBOOKRASTINATION: Wasting time on FB when you should be doing that report.

CITIBank: Customer-service Is Totally Infuriating Bank

2010-03-30T01:16:00.003+08:00

So here's the story.

My father is a Citibank credit card holder, and I had a supplementary credit card under his name. I rarely used that credit card, except to pay for my membership and services from True Fitness through monthly installments. On 31st January 2010, my wallet was pick-pocketed, including my supplementary card, which I immediately got my father to contacted Citibank to cancel and they did. He then requested for a replacement card and was told that the card would be couriered to us within 7 days (most courier services take only ONE day, BUT they used Pos Laju. Go figure). Since we had recently moved house, my father informed the bank's customer service representative (CSR) of our new mailing address. The bank promptly charged RM50 for new card, and this charge appeared in his next credit card statement.

However, after waiting more than 7 days, we had not yet received the card. My father called the credit card company again, and told them the same problem. He AGAIN gave our new address, and the rep AGAIN promised the card would be sent to us within 7 days. After 7 more days, AGAIN, the card did not arrive to us. This waiting game went on for over one month and a half, in which my father called the company TWO more times to raise the same issue. Keep in mind, each time he calls, he has to listen to an automated voice telling him to press various buttons and key in various credit card information and this continues for at least 5 minutes each call before he finally gets to talk to an actual person. The fourth time he called, the CSR said that he would look into the matter PERSONALLY and ensure the card would be sent to us by 5pm that same day. This was on 19^th March 2010. The card STILL did not come. After this, I was so fed up of their empty promises, I told my father to call the company to cancel the request for a new card, and request a refund for the RM50.

Then on the 24th of March, my father received a visa statement with an extraordinarily high amount charged to us. Upon calling the bank, we found out that because my supplementary card was cancelled, the remaining monthly installments I was paying through that card for my gym services were all being charged in that one statement, and it was a large amount! This was almost TWO months after my stolen card was cancelled and AFTER we had repeatedly requested for a replacement card from the bank which we never received and ultimately decided to cancel. No one from the bank informed us that the remaining charges would be billed in one statement, and since my card was only a supplementary card, the monthly installment charges could have continued coming to my father’s card instead of mine! I then asked to speak to one of the bank managers, at which the bank CSR told me they were all ‘engaged’. Then I repeated our previous issue of not receiving the replacement card to him, and AGAIN had to give him our new mailing address (because our new address was not in their system!). The rep then informed us that I could get a new card, with the remaining installments charged monthly as normal to the new card through their easy payment scheme. I agreed to this, but also requested that the bank issue a new visa statement to my father, with the extraordinary charges removed as I was afraid he would get charged for late payments for this large amount. The CSR agreed to this.

HOWEVER, today (29 March 2010), my father checked his statement online and saw no changes made. When he contacted the bank (another 5 minutes of his life wasted listening to the automated voice), he was told that the bank management needed THREE DAYS to discuss our case and decide whether to issue a new card with the easy payment scheme to us. The reason being because for the previous two months, my father paid his credit card bill late (of course he was charged interest for the late payments!).

Because of this, I have decided I have had enough of Citibank’s extremely horrible customer service and COMPLETELY empty promises. I have no choice but to pay off the large amount Citibank charged in the latest statement (which was supposed to be charge in monthly installments), after which I told my father to cancel his credit card. Because if I wait any longer for this ‘supposed’ management meeting to complete, I am VERY certain that Citibank will charge my father interest for late payment of the extraordinary amount! I therefore wish to advise all Citibank credit card holders to CANCEL their credit card because:

1)The bank is SO QUICK to charge you for a replacement card, but does not care if you actually receive it or not.
2)Even though you have no choice but to cancel a stolen card, the bank burdens you even MORE by charging all remaining monthly installments in one lump sum. If a customer has to make many monthly payments and has an average or low salary that is sufficient only to pay for installments, imagine the heavy burden that would be!!!
3)Customers waste so much time trying to contact the bank but having to listen to an automated voice for several minutes. -_-
4)You wanna speak to their manager? You get the standard answer: They’re all engaged!!
5)The customer service representatives promise the sky and the moon but repeatedly end up delivering NOTHING. >:O

EVERY Citibank card holder should know about this problem and drop this bank straight away so they lose business and learn how to improve their customer service. Forward this to all your friends (but delete the email addresses so spammers don’t get them!).

By the way, Citibank, if any of your people are reading this, I WANT MY RM50 BACK for the card that I NEVER received.

Rojak toll ticket

2010-02-20T19:40:00.000+08:00

So one day, my dad's like sending me the airport so I could a flight off somewhere for work, and as we pass the toll booth, the guy (or girl, didn't notice) at the toll booth gives us the toll ticket. Now you would expect a freshly printed toll ticket to look... well... freshly printed. However, this is what we got.

This, my friends, it evidence that our friendly neighbourhood PLUS highway operators are up to some form of hanky panky with the toll payers' money, no doubt. Malaysia boleh! Whoop whoop!

Kopitiam Kopicats

2010-02-17T17:40:00.000+08:00

I have a theory that hidden somewhere in Malaysia, there is one secret factory or company that owns the sole rights to produce dining equipment for all the kopitiams in Malaysia. And by kopitiams, I don't mean the traditional Chinese coffee shops, but those newfangled modernized kopitiams with free wi-fi where people go in with there with their laptops so they can look cool in front of people they don't know. That includes me sometimes, but I have an excuse coz' my internet at home sux to the max. These places have different names but all look pretty much the same. Don't believe my theory? Let us view the evidence and then play a little game.

Exhibit A: Old Town Kopitiam, Taipan USJ

Exhibit B: Old TASTE Kopitiam, Taipan USJ

Exhibit C: Hainanese Kopitiam, Taman Tun Dr. Ismail

The game now is to Spot the Difference. What differences do you see? Far as I can tell, only the uniforms of the workers are the three shops differ. Other than that, everything else is the SAME.

All three shops have huge pics of food and the menu displayed above the counters.

The drinks and food counter at all shops is out in the open for everyone to see.

The chairs are the SAME!

The round tables are the SAME (Old Town has some square ones though. Whoop de doo)!

The lights are the same!!

Even the tissue boxes look the same!!!

So now I'm wondering of all these kopitiam owners are really so unoriginal, or are they trying to ride off the success of the 'original' modernized kopitiam by making it all look the same?? Which one is the original one now I also dunno, though I suspect it is Old Town. -_-

Tale of a stolen wallet

2010-02-14T15:57:00.004+08:00

Two weeks ago I had the unpleasant experience of having my wallet go missing. I was at Sunway Pyramid, hanging out with some friends and looking through some clothes to buy for CNY, and as I was waiting at the fitting room with a armful of jeans to try on, I noticed my handbag was wide open. And after a frantic check, the worst was confirmed... my good ol' yellow wallet with a silver teddy bear in front which I've had for YEARS (at least 5, I think, can't even remember), was gone. I figure I either accidentally left my handbag open and it might have fallen out, or someone just bravely unzipped it while I was busy rummaging through a pile of jeans while looking for my size, and my handbag was slung over my sholuder out of my sight. Either way, someone grabbed the opportunity and snitched my wallet, which contained about RM200, all my receipts for my work claims which also amounted to a few hundred ringgit, a 4GB thumbdrive (I got it free, but I still really liked that thumb drive), and of course, my IC, driver's license, credit card, atm card, and other miscellaneous stuff here and there.

Luckily I noticed it was gone pretty quick I guess, so I could immediately call my banks to cancel the atm card and credit card, after which I reported the incident to the Lost and Found sections of Pyramid, hoping that perhaps some kind soul would have picked it up if it had dropped, or the thief would at least just take the money and return the rest of my stuff to save me the trouble of having to apply for new cards and all that blah. I still took emergency leave the next day to apply for a new IC, but still held out hope for the rest of the week that I would somehow or another get it back... like someone would knock on my door and return it to me or dump it in my mailbox or something...but alas, no luck. Still, I am thankful that it wasn't worse. My whole handbag could have been snatched from me, or someone could've tried to rob me at knifepoint. At least I wasn't at any risk of injury, I was just a bit careless and some sneaky bugger took the opportunity.

So since I had to go through that, I thought I should do a little community service by sharing my tips on what you need to do once you find your wallet has been stolen (and the kinks you might encounter along the way, such as money hungry people who derive joy out of taking more money from you after you've already had your stuff stolen):

1) Already mentioned - call your bank(s) and have all your credit cards and atm cards cancelled right away. Else the next time you get your credit card bill, you'll probably find a lot of strange and very expensive purchases on your bill. Your atm card, they are less likely to be able to use it without knowing the pin number, however, you don't wanna take the chance. The downside, of course, it that the stoopid banks will charge you RM50 for a new credit card, and RM12 for a new atm card (for Maybank, that is). Yup, they do a fantastic job of easing your problem after you've just had your wallet stolen. Gotta love the banks.

2) Make a police report. This is so you can apply for a new IC and driver's license, of course. Very important tip is that if you report your IC as stolen (and this should be stated in the police report), you will not get fined when you apply for a new IC. HOWEVER, if you report your IC as missing or misplaced, the National Registration Dept will happily charge you RM110 for your carelessness. So you gotta be careful how you word your police report, or NRD will give you a hard time!

In my case, I wasn't too sure if it was actually stolen or my wallet dropped out, so I just reported it as I found my wallet missing from my handbag while I was shopping. It was only after I made the report at the police station when I realized my error. The next day when I had to go back to collect the receipt for my report (they also charge RM2 for that stoopid report. I don't know why I pay taxes to these people), I asked if I could amend the report. The guy I was talking to was this guy who was wearing dirty-ish polo T-shirt instead of a police uniform, looked like he hadn't brushed his teeth in ages and was fat enough that I think if he had to run after a criminal, he'd drop dead from a heart attack after running 2 minutes. And while it would be nice to think the police' motto is to serve the people, this annoying bugger's first comment when he looked at my report was I should have made the report at the Sunway police station next to Pyramid, where the incident occurred (I made it at SS17, which is slightly further away). At this point, my eyes kinda narrowed as I imagined a lots of unfriendly things I wanted to do this guy, but I just grunted in acknowledgement. Then he said I can't amend the report anymore after it's already printed, and also that the report wasn't written 'correctly' so most likely I would get fined for the missing IC. Ugh. Fortunately, the next day when I went to the NRD and explained to the guy at the NRD that my wallet was most likely stolen, he didn't give me a hard time, accepted my explanation and didn't charge a fine. *Whew! Thank God for small mercies! Plus the guy who took my photo at the NRD office was a very friendly person. So while dealing with the police was a bit of a pain, I would say I'm quite happy with the NRD. The only pain was the long wait for my turn (I had to wait about 4 to four hours after taking my number! ~:O)

3) In case there is info you want to update on your IC, such as a new address, in addition to filling out a form to request for a new IC, you also need to fill out another form for change of information on the IC, as well as have some documented evidence of the change in address or whatever other info. For me, my old IC has my old address, but I have since moved and didn't bother to change the info on it. Since I was applying for a new IC, I wanted to update my address on it, but didn't know I had to bring copies of my electricity or water bill as evidence. Fortunately again, I didn't have to run all the way back to the NRD office to give them the copies of my bills, I just faxed them the copies the next day and called them to confirm that they received it and will change my address. Good and simple. Again, another reason why I am happy with the NRD. It's not very often that I praise a government department, so you government kulis scanning my blog for potentially seditious comments, enjoy it while you can!

4) The NRD is located at Plaza Masalam at Shah Alam. The Immigration Department is located at the PKNS building, also at Shah Alam. Do not be a doofus like me and think the NRD is located at the PKNS, which is what I did and went to the wrong building. Hehe. Unfortunately, if you live outside of Selangor, I have no idea where you're supposed to go. Sorry!

I have since stopped holding out hope that my wallet will miraculously come back to me, and rather than feel crappy about it, I relish the excuse to buy a new wallet coz' my old one was REALLY old anyway. Like, I think I've had it more than 5 years at least, but probably more. So I went out hunting for a new one, and had a rather fruitless search at Summit, which leads me to tip 5) Do not go wallet hunting at Summit. Wallets there are either cheap but low quality and look ugly, or are nice and of good quality but super expensive. The only good ones I found were at this shop called Bonaco and they cost around RM150. Yikes! So I diverted my search to Sunway Pyramid (where my wallet went missing in the first place, ironically!), and found a pretty good quality wallet (apparently it's made of Korean leather, which doesn't really matter to me coz' I couldn't care less which country it's from as long as it's good quality and looks nice) and it only cost me RM62. And yes, it just HAD to be ..... red.

Ain't it purty? Buying nice new stuff always cheers a girl up.

I don't have any tips yet on applying for my other documents, coz' I need my IC to apply for everything else, and I haven't gotten my new IC yet (getting it back during my CNY leave). But yeah, hoped it helped somewhat if you ever lose your wallet, which hopefully never happens, unless you really need an excuse to buy a nice new red wallet too. :)

A CNY and V-Day wish from my tiger!

2010-02-14T15:07:00.005+08:00

Today we Chinese celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Tiger as well as Valentine's Day, and in light of this doubly special occasion, I took the liberty of ripping off someone's cute pic of a tiger carrying a heart and used Paint.net to add in my own little personalized message (as well as to remove the watermark. Gotta love a good picture editing program!).

A Testimony from Metro Tabernacle Church

2010-01-16T17:00:00.000+08:00

This is testimony from by Celia Tham, a member of Metro Tabernacle Church of which its ground floor was gutted by arson due to the recent events. I got this in an email, and I especially love the part about where their pastor was supposed to be working in the church but was saved due to the moving of the Holy Spirit. And I hope the politicians who saw how the Christians reacted to the incident were convicted to do the right thing. I have to say, God is one truly awesome dude. :D

________________________________________________________

1) The night before the church was burned their Pastor was at the church past 11pm because he wanted to check his emails. He is a very hardworking person and has a habit of wanting to complete his work as much as possible. But he is also very sensitive to the Holy Spirit. When he got to the church premise and was about to swipe the card to open the door, he had a terrible stomachache that he had never had before. He knew that the Lord was telling him to go back home and he obeyed and left the church premise. It was past midnight that the church was torched. If he had not obeyed he would have been burned alive and would not be able to live to tell this wonderful testimony. God still has work for him to do on earth. His time was not up yet.

2) The MTC had trouble moving to the new premises in Batu Caves . They had been waiting for approval from the Local Authorities and is still pending. Then they were facing financial difficulties as they needed to buy new furniture for the new premise. They had been raising funds on their own to relocate to Batu Caves but had been “stuck” due to approval permits and raising more $ to buy new furniture and equipment. So when the church was burned it was all the old stuff that they had been wanting to get rid off! And our Govt compensated them RM500K and CIMB and many other donations started to pour in. From an adversity it turned into a blessing! Our God truly provides!

3) Celia has been rejoicing in the office and shared with my MD. Today at our Management meeting, the MD said I had never seen anyone so full of joy when the church got burned down but instead she said it was a blessing.

4) Celia said the church leaders and members shook hands with Najib and they released forgiveness for whatever that has happened in the past. She said Najib felt very welcomed at the church. Hishamuddin commented that during his visit he has never seen so many smiling faces when their church had just been burned down. To God be the glory!

5) They also requested for the Batu Caves new church premise to be turned into a place of worship and not a commercial zone. The Selangor Govt is looking into it and the MB, Khalid gave his assurance that he will look into it personally.

6) The Metro Tabernacle worship service appeared in the International Herald Tribune (they were on international news) and the photo of the worshippers with their hands raised was taken in the Wisma MCA hall. My MD asked what was happening and Celia told him we were praising and worshipping God. MD didn’t know that this was how we praised and worshipped God.

7) A few years ago a visiting speaker from overseas prophesied that the MTC would be in international news. At that time the congregation thought that their Pastor would be traveling around the world to preach as he was already doing that but she said now they understood what the speaker said. I told Celia if it was the doing of man, God would not be glorified but when it is not of man, then God would be glorified like in this situation.

8) It was good to see many church leaders of other denominations coming together at the MTC worship service over the last few days, united and praying together.

9) Lastly, sometime last year Celia approached me and said that she has been praying and she was convicted in her heart to give me an invitation to ask our church/cell to partner with them in prayer with regards to the move to the new church premise in Batu Caves . They were facing a lot of spiritual warfare. I remember sharing with the cell. We didn’t know very much about them then. God is moving amongst us and we could choose to obey his call to pray or disregard and miss the excitement and blessing!

I hope the above sharing would have encouraged us all to press on and serve our Almighty God. MTC has found favour with God and so has many other churches. We must increase our faith to the next level and stay united. PRAYER is the only powerful weapon God has given to all of us. Let’s use it mightily for His Glory!