Bangsar mamak @ Jalan Telawi

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This is the mamak center at Jalan Telawi 2 in Bangsar. We ate there last night.

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Here’s a scene of the place – Medan Selera.

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We ate at Yacob Tom Yam. Great variety of fried rice.

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The large perforated thing is roti tisu (tissue). The guy said it
unfortunately deflated while walking down from the front stalls (we
were at the back). minishorts
[urban-flirt.net] has a better photo. Did I get the permalink right? I
can’t tell with IE 5. I don’t know what the other roti is, but it came
with beef liver. Note the giant watermelon juice in front of Alice.

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I had Nasi Goreng Pataya (fried rice with stuff, wrapped in fried egg).

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and went for a Giant mango juice which I couldn’t finish. Damn thing must be close to 1 liter.

Anyway, I just got back from work, I might update again later if I’m
not too tired, only had 4 hours of fitful sleep last night and woke up
at 6:15 am. Otherwise, I’ll update tomorrow during my lunch break.

The Tallest Book Tower + The Biggest Pushpins Jalur Gemilang @ Sunway Pyramid

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Those photos of the two dubious records for entry into the Malaysia
Book of Records would be posted below. I reckon veritas should try for
The Largest Amount of Benzodiazepines A Person Could Eat Without
Falling Asleep since it doesn’t seem to take much to get into the
Malaysian Book of Records. πŸ˜‰ Anyway, I just came back from mamak so
I’ll just post this and head to bed. Mamak photos will be up tomorrow.

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Anyway, this is a continuation from the previous day – we went to Kota Raya after lunch and caught a bus to Sunway Pyramid.

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There were lots of people ice skating at Pyramid Ice.

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Which made me crave ice cream for some reason…

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Baskin Robbins has this Summer Sundaes sundaes going on.

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We had the Tropical Luau and the Banana Bay. That new cheese cake
with chocolate ice cream flavor is pretty good. Anyway, the Tropical
Luau has a cake base and it’s okay, but now the Banana Bay is the way
to go. Very sinfully rich, heaps of caramel on top and it even has a
caramel base. Thick caramelly goodness. πŸ™‚

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Melaka Fest was going on at Sunway Pyramid – a tourism to Melaka
promotional festival, where there were becas going around, carrying
people and attempting to run shoppers over and performances of all
sorts.

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There were men with umbrellas.

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Prancing men with umbrellas.

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There were even women with umbrellas.

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And tea pots, no less…

Finally, there were two “records” being displayed for uh…public appreciation.

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The Tallest Book Tower in Malaysia, fashioned to look like the current tallest buildings in the world (Petronas Twin Towers).

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It was made with books from Dr. Mahathir, don’t you dare dispute the
“101% garunteed sold out!” claims the publishers make. Why, I think
this tower took more than a couple of the books to make.

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The Biggest Jalur Gemilang (Malaysia’s national flag) made with push pins.

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I thought it was straws and dared my gf to take one from the middle part. πŸ™‚

Anyway, that’s it for today, I’ll be working early tomorrow morning,
so I’m heading to bed. I’ll reply all the comments tomorrow, thanks for
the feedback! πŸ™‚

Pentazocine experience and thoughts

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Fortwin tablets (scanned) containing 25 mg pentazocine HCl each.

Guest writer veritas [sixthseal.com] reporting for duty. I’m back as promised. πŸ™‚

These are Fortwin tablets, made by Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals in India.
Unlike most pentazocine tablet formulations, Fortwin tablets do not
have Naloxone (an opiate antagonist, basically nullifies the “good”
effects of opiates). Technically, this makes it more euphoric and also
makes the tablets injectable. Fortwin tabs is the only formulation that
contains the lactate injectable form of pentazocine and is much sought after.
The Malaysian list of approved pharmaceuticals does not include pentazocine
only tablets (it only has pentazocine for injections in vials) so I was puzzled at
how my pharmacist managed to get a hold of these.

Anyway, he told me that these were supposed to be cleared out ages
ago, but the expiry date was still valid (expires next year) and he
only had 8 tablets of 25 mg pentazocine hydrocloride each, so he just
left it in the stock room. These are from India, the tablets have
“FORTWIN” imprinted on the front and “RANBAXY” on the back. There is a
single score running down the back of the tablets and they appear to be
off-white, with blue specks.

Well, since he only has 8 of them left, he sold it to me for RM 0.80
each, instead of the list price of RM 1.50. I just happened to stumble
across these while looking around my friend’s stock room for
recreational offerings from The Wonderful World of Pharmaceuticals.
I’ve heard of pentazocine before as one of the lesser known opiate
agonists (or opioids to be more accurate) and I’ve read of DXM type
disassociative effects dominating the opiate type effects at higher
doses. An aside for new readers, I have a friend who owns a pharmacy,
so I do not need prescriptions for prescription drugs.

ranbaxy.jpg
Fortwin by Ranbaxy tablets photo.

Anyway, since the 8 tablets total only 200 mg, I could not
experiement with the 300 mg and 400 mg doses quoted as necessary for
producing DXM type reactions, so my experience was with pentazocine as
an opiate agonist. I took 200 mg on an empty stomach and potentiated it
(as I assumed all opiates can be potentiated) with benzodiazepines – 3
mg alprazolam and 20 mg diazepam. I am sufficiently experienced with
benzodiazepines (very sadly so) so I could differentiate the effects. I
wrote this:

it’s like codeine but qualitatively “dreamier”, more “smacky”,
and stronger than an equal dose, i’ll say comparable to 350 – 400 mg
codeine.
stuck to bed
late histamine release – 3 h?
“heavy” feeling more than codeine
it makes a buzzing sound when on and no buzzing sound when off

Well, many hours later (after the opiate effects were tapering off)
I found it very hard to go to sleep. I took some more benzos (50 mg
diazepam) but sleep was unattainable even after 3 hours. I had rather
strange “thought loops” and very minor “flanging” as I lay there with
my eyes closed…almost like a 3rd plateau DXM trip, although obviously
with much, much less intensity. Whether this is possible with just 200
mg of pentazocine or not is questionable, and I could not obtain any
more pentazocine only (without naloxone) tablets to repeat the
experiement, so take the DXM part as just an aside.

Anyway, I did not know the exact time I fell asleep, but it was
about T+ 10 or more. Oh, and by the way, I’m benzodiazepine tolerant so
the diazepam wouldn’t have helped much. Well, Fortwin (pentazocine
hydrocloride) tablets seems to be a fun compound – I mean the Ranbaxy
manufactured ones without any nasty opiate antagonists. It’s a little
different from codeine and dihydrocodeine, pentazocine has its own
strange character, but it’s not comparable with the higher end opiates
like oxycodone or heroin if you’re wondering.

I do not know the LD50 values for pentazocine, but 200 mg (verified)
doses does not kill if that helps. πŸ˜‰ It’s funny, this pentazocine –
it’s classified as a benzomorphan (what an interesting name) or
benzazocine. The US formulation of Talwin contains naloxone if I’m not
mistaken, but if you find this Ranbaxy Fortwin tablets, give them a
test drive*, it’s certainly something different and interesting. πŸ™‚ I
would love to hear if anyone has experience with 300-400 mg doses and
noticed effects consistant with dextromethorphan.

*This only applies to existing recreational drug users who are
willing to experiment. sixthseal.com does not promote drug use –
illicit or otherwise and does not condone such activities to people who
are not already aquainted with or part of the diverted pharmaceuticals
or illicit substance use scene.

XM Expanded Media (Malaysia)

gflunch.jpg

Yes, I’m off the unemployment line. :p I will be with XM Malaysia
starting tomorrow. I got a call from HR while I was having lunch with
my gf and her room mates. Anyway, the job means I’ll be engaged from
8:30 am – 5:30 pm (at least). This would probably not affect the
frequency of the posts if anyone who’s aquainted with the KL public
transport system could be so kind as to tell me the easiest way to get
from Medan Damansara (Jalan Setiabistari) to Jalan Sultan Ismail (at
Hotel Mutiara). πŸ™‚

The KL Monorail is not in service yet, or else I know there’s a
station very near the office building. Anyway, I’ll be taking a taxi in
the next few days to get to and from my work place, but it would be
nice to use a cheaper form of transportation considering I’m being
offered RM 1,500 per month. Well, I don’t even know what this road
connects to, but nevermind that, LRTs and buses would come later, going
to catch a cab these few days. I don’t have a car in KL.

Anyway, the photos of The Tallest Book Tower in Malaysia and The
Largest Jalur Gemilang made with push pins in Malaysia would be up
either later tonight or tomorrow, I gotta sleep earlier since I
probably would need to wake up at 7 am or something coz I don’t know
how far the office is from here. Now who’s up to enter the Malaysian
Book of Records? We could make the largest Jalur Gemilang with
er…Panadol tablets or something.

[Edit: Updated with photo and explainatory text, accidentally pressed Publish without uploading photo.]

St John’s Cathedral and CU There Cafe @ Petaling Street area

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It’s Sunday today and this is the first time in recent memory that
I’ve been to church. Granted, my eyes glazed over sometime during the
middle of mass, but anyway…:) I moved out of the hotel early this
morning and put my stuff at my gf’s place and now I’m updating at
Richard’s room. I’m bunking with him until the room vacancy at my gf’s
house opens up at the start of next month, about 7 odd days more.
Anyway, the mass was held at St. John Cathedral, somewhere around the
Kota Raya area as far as I could ascertain.

cucount.jpg

Well, I was with my gf, her brother (Richard) and her brother’s gf
(Alice). Mass was followed by lunch at CU There, somewhere near
Petaling Street. It was air conditioned and the interior and ambience
is interesting to say the least.

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There is a wall filled with scribbles of love messages from couples
and the rest of the real estate is covered by posters of artists of all
sorts. There’s also a music area:

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and the toilets are covered with jokes…

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I had the prawn steak (RM 7) because I was really interested in how they could come out with a prawn steak. This is the dish:

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Recombined prawn steak…that’s recombined prawn meat patties, my
friend. A steak produces expectations of a single piece of cut meat. πŸ˜‰

Anyway, here’s a photo of us:

cuall.jpg

From left: Louisa (my gf), Richard (my gf’s brother and my room mate
for the next week), Alice (my gf’s brother’s gf) and Huai Bin (me).

Later, we went to Sunway Pyramid, where there was dance performances
and two highly doubious Malaysian Book of Records entries. I got
pictures of everything, but those would be up tomorrow because I’m very
tired, as can be seen by my terse sentences. πŸ™‚ I’ll turn in early
tonight and wake up tomorrow for a whole new effort in sending out
resumes. Later.

sunwprev.jpg
This will be up tomorrow.

Oh yeah, just watched on Edisi Siasat about the Africans (Nigerians?
Afica is a continent…the reporters are no better than the people
saying Asians (a diverse classification which spans from India through
Hong Kong and down to Indonesia) is the source of trouble in a lot of
Caucasian countries) who started a bit of trouble at Jalan Alor at the
hawker food center…I’m not sure when that happened but me and my
digicam missed it. πŸ™ Not that there’s anything newsworthy unless shots
were fired, but still, it would make a good update. I won’t go into the
racial vilification and distrust this produces, I’m against that of
course (the expose ends with “Be carefull of people of African
descent”), but sixthseal.com is just about personal stuff, drugs (by
veritas) and news that I happen to witness. :p

One last thing, sorry about the photos being dark…I didn’t realize
it on my monitor (with big ass gamma), only realized it here. Will take
that into consideration in the future. Here at sixthseal.com, we always
aim to please. or something. πŸ˜‰ Nevermind me, I’m too relaxed right now.

Petaling street (Jalan Petaling): Walking around with a digicam

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Jalan Petaling – there are stores selling all sorts of stuff from imitation watches to t-shirts.

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There are stalls selling fruits.

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There are massage parlors.

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There are large book stores.

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There’s this strange vending machine selling water for 20 cents. I’ve
never seen it before. Very impressive and puzzling at the same time.

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There’s people selling drawings and wall scrolls.

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There’s lots of tourists.

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There’s even people sleeping semi nude on pedestrian bridges.

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Air mata kuching – a refreshing cold drink for just 80 cents a bowl.

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I had to repair my cell phone coz the speaker wasn’t working…he
quoted RM 35, I said RM 30 and he said okay. Suspect it could have been
cheaper but it’s hard to bargain with a digicam strapped around you,
you look too much like a tourist – fair game. Highly recommended
though, fixed it in 15 minutes. Later, I found out that the speaker was
not working again so I went back and he opened everything up, changed
the mike and soldered everything back free of charge. Nice guy too.

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A dumpling store at petaling street.

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I got the largest one – RM 7.50 (!) for a dumpling.

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Here’s a closer look – it has large chicken pieces (with bone intact),
mushrooms, egg yolk, nuts and even mussels! Very filling too.

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Cendol – a drink made with shredded ice and stuff.

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There was a PowerBar promotion booth beside the lifts at the hotel – bars for RM 5 and gels for RM 7.

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Hong Kee Famous Claypot Chicken Rice @ Petaling Street.

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This is claypot chicken rice for 3.

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Petaling Street – walk through.

Anyway, these are the set of photos I took around Petaling Street.
I’m sorry for not being able to answer the comments today, I have to
pack up everything, including my PC, coz I’m moving over to Richard’s
(who kindly offered to put me up for a week) early tomorrow morning. I
will update tomorrow and reply all the comments – thanks everyone, I
appreciate your feedback!

Original Okonomiyaki Hiroshima Style @ Plaza Low Yat

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I’ve eaten here the last time I was in KL and figured I would go
back and take photos of the okonomiyaki making process. The seating
arrangement allows you to sit in front of the grill and watch them make
your okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki has been described as a “Japanese pizza”.
I had the nikutama ika ebi (pork and seafood) okonomiyaki with soba
noodles (you can choose to have udon) and the spring onion topping.
That came up to RM 18. Here’s the photos of the making of my order:

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Pouring out the base

okono2.jpg
Adding shredded cabbages and sprouts

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Shaking pepper and salt

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Adding the seafood

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Layering several slices of bacon on top

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Here’s a close up of the partially made okonomiyaki

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Soba noodles fried seperately in the next grill

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The okonomiyaki pushed over in preparation of combining with the soba noodles

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Turning over the okonomiyaki

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Combining it with the soba noodles

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Compressing the whole thing

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Lifting it onto an egg (fried seperately)

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Making everything neat

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Slicing up the okonomiyaki

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Drizzling okonomiyaki sauce on top

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Generous sprinkling of spring onions

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This is the finished dish – nikutama ika ebi okonomiyaki pictured with iced rooibos tea.

Petaling Street after midnight

Right. Ethanol induced hunger prompted me to go in search for food.
I called room service but unfortunately they were closed. I went down
and asked the receptionist:

hgorecep.jpg

where I could get food at this hour. She suggested Chinatown (I
assumed that is Petaling Street). Righty-o, off I went with of the two
things known as C2H5OH/C2H6O and C15H10CIN3O3 and found myself at
Petaling Street after a 15 minute walk which I couldn’t remember. Heck,
I wonder why I’m back at the hotel, I hardly remember leaving. πŸ˜‰

pstmidpu.jpg

Petaling St. was a bit deserted towards the back as you can see in
the photo above. It seems that most shops close up at around midnight,
if you squint a bit you can see the guy pulling his cart back home to
the right of the picture.

pstfront.jpg

The front bit is still quite populated though, but I went a bit back
to see if there’s anything interesting to eat and it seems that there’s
no smaller shops so I settled for fried hor fun (something like kueh
tiaw) to go.

Here’s a photo of the shop I went too, notice the guy giving the peace sign at the digicam while I was taking photos. πŸ™‚

pstmidta.jpg

Anyway, I got the hor fun and walked back to eat and now I’m here
updating again even though I’m very sleepy. Here’s a photos of the RM 5
fried hor fun:

pshorfun.jpg

It has seafood, chicken, beef, deep fried pork bits, cabbages and a generous helping of hot chilli sauce on the side.

This is not the okonomiyaki post, that will be up much later today.
Okay, now there’s really an unbearable wave of sleepiness…off I go,
I’ll reply later today when I wake up.

Buying a computer at Low Yat Plaza

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Low Yat Plaza

The photo above has an interesting annotation to it. While I was
taking this picture, an American tourist came up to me and said hello.
He had the exact same digicam (Nikon 5700) and he introduced himself
and said he noticed me taking photos using the LCD monitor (which is
how I always take pictures). Well, he said he just wanted to give me a
bit of friendly advice – he told me he’s always used the viewfinder
(the one you have to squint through like film cameras) because that
causes less jitter.

Anyway, yeah, I did notice that I haven’t gotten the optimal holding
position and shutter release for this new digicam right, but using the
viewfinder does not cause any more stability for me, coz it’s a
question of getting to know the digicam and giving the shutter just the
right feather touch to not move the body. Better photos will come in
time, after I break it in..been taking heaps of photos these few days.
Well, anyway, I said thanks for the tip, but told him that I suspect
that using the viewfinder to take photos while standing in the middle
of the road in KL is likely to result in a trip to the hospital. πŸ˜‰ He
laughed and said “Very true”.

lyithype.jpg
All IT Hypermart @ 4th Floor Low Yat

Well, I had gotten all the price lists from the Low Yat and Sungai
Wang vendors twice – Sri Computers generally has the cheapest prices,
but All IT Hypermart has better prices for some and their service is
MUCH better than Sri Computers. It’s on the 4th floor, it might have
been cheaper to pick and shop, but Sri Computers offers competitive
prices and they give discounts. My bill came up to about RM 2700 but I
told them I’m only prepared to spend RM 2250, and after some
negotiations, they agreed to push the price down to RM 2300 and
assemble everything for me (saving me bloody fingers [sixthseal.com]) and carry everything down from Low Yat to the taxi stand at BB Plaza. πŸ™‚

My configuration is not top of the line, but it’s acceptable:

AMD Athlon XP (Barton) 2500+ CPU
ABIT NF7-M DDR400 FSB533 nForce2 based motherboard
Kingston 512MB DDR 333 RAM
Samsung 52X 24x 52x 16x CD-RW + DVD=ROM combo drive with 8 MB buffer
Maxtor Diamond Max 80 GB 7,200 RPM w/ 8MB cache
Samsung 17″ SyncMaster 763MB monitor
Appropriate casing w/ 450 watt power supply
Sony 1.44 Floppy disk drive
Temporary keyboard and mouse

I chose the Barton for something new, even with a lower rated speed
I figured I’ll give the relatively large L2 512KB cache a run. I got
the 2600+ (Thoroughbred) last time, so I’m going for a different one
this time. The nForce2 architecture motherboard was chosen for
economical reasons, this model comes with an integrated GeForce4 MX and
sound + other misc. stuff I haven’t explored. I know the nForce2 shares
system RAM though, so I got 512 MB, I may add another 512 MB in the
near future. Currently, I allocated 64 MB for the integrated GeForce4
GPU, the largest it can go is 128 MB. Unfortunately, I had to use
DDR-333 instead of DDR-400 RAM for compatibility with the integrated
graphics.

Anyway, enough about that, I just need to get headphones soon and
the Logitech Freedom Optical (the one I’ve been using up till the water damage incident
[sixthseal.com]) sometime in the near future. I love the Zero Degree
Tilt keys, I type much, much faster. My old headphones (which was
recently broken) was the A$ 330 (RM 660) Sony MDR-V700DJ, which I
bought in Melbourne. It has served me well, though it gave me a
hankering for good headphones. I don’t think I can afford that now,
considering I have non-existant income in Malaysia, but I’ll try and
get a comparable one. Enough rambling, let me tell you about how I had
make 3 round trips using a taxi to Low Yat Plaza. That’s 6 trips…and
it’s all my fault.

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I got everything back in the first run, but unfortunately I seem to
have forgotten all about monitor to PC power supply cables. I…er,
didn’t know what they were, so I went back to get a dedicated one.
*cough*. Then I came back to the hotel and booted up and intended to
install Windows XP Pro…but I seem to have lost the CD I brought over.
Curses. It was in my resume file and I must have dropped it while going
for the interview. A new hard disk with no OS…how troublesome…only
1 of my 4 other hard disk that I brought along has an installed OS
(others are data only) and that’s Windows Me and it hanged at the
startup screen:

menotwrk.jpg
Hooking up stuff at the hotel room

Anyway, the third trip was to Imbi Plaza to get another Windows XP
Pro CD. Oh yeah, what about that “software piracy” crackdown?
Everything seems fine at Imbi Plaza and Low Yat. Well, the last return
trip was a bit of a hassle…no one wanted to take me coz of the
traffic jam and the few that wanted to asked for a flat rate charge of
RM 15 for compensation. I know that’s common practise in KL and it was
peak traffic hour, but I didn’t want to, so I waited for one that
charges based on the meter and you know what? It came up close to the
quoted price too due to the obscene traffic jam. πŸ™‚

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Imbi Plaza

Anyway, I’m off to bed…will confirm with XM Expanded Media to see
if I got the position tomorrow. I’ll also post up many photos of
okonomiyaki, from the preparation through the cooking to the final
dish, so if you like things like that, come back tomorrow afternoon.
Well, I see from the stats that Malaysian visitors come to less than 2%
of the total so it’s appropriate to note that my local time is GMT +8.
Oh yeah, I have to pay extra bandwidth fees again this month, now that
really sucks. Someone employ me so I can afford all this.

policebbt.jpg
Traffic congestion…and police with submachine guns in the day, something I’ve only seen Sibu police carry weekend nights.

I’m sorry I can’t reply the comments today…I’m about to fall
asleep on this keyboard here at the hotel’s business center, I didn’t
get a modem so I have to update here…it’s okay, they average 35 Kbps,
not blindingly fast, but it does the job. πŸ™‚ I will reply every single
comment when I update with the okonomiyaki photos tomorrow. Thanks for
the feedback!

CyberTime @ Petaling Street

<p><img alt=”pst20aug.JPG” src=”http://www.sixthseal.com/archive/August2003/pst20aug.JPG” border=”0″ height=”263″ width=”350″></p>

<p>I’m at CyberTime at Petaling Street now…moved at around noon today and I’ve just grabbed some lunch:</p>

<p><img alt=”currymee.JPG” src=”http://www.sixthseal.com/archive/August2003/currymee.JPG” border=”0″ height=”263″ width=”350″></p>

<p>Anyway, the good thing about CyberTime is they have relatively fast
net access (400 KBps sustained) so I can upload my CF Card stuff up to
my server and free up the space so I can take more photos. πŸ™‚ I haven’t
experimented with the advanced settings yet, but I’m happy with the
image quality so far. It’s a 5 MP digicam w/ 8x optical zoom, best
thing about it is, it uses the standard (well, proprietry for all
non-Nikon owners ;)) 2CR5 rechargable Lithium Ion battery, so I have
two batteries instead of one (the other one is from my broken digicam).</p>

<p>Well…I’ve put up the procession photos from yesterday, it’s in the
post below. I’m feeling tired today due to waking up early for
breakfast, so I’ll update again tomorrow. See ya everyone.</p>

<p>P/S – Nigel, I got your SMS, sorry for not replying, the same thing
happened (lost msg after reading it)…a very serious problem I need to
isolate and retify soon. Thanks for the message. :)</p>

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