Personalized note from Grace in the mail!

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Grace Chong
[xanga.com] was snail mailing out personalized notes to send out and I
emailed her my address. πŸ™‚ She is born in Sibu but is living in the
states now. Anyway, I got her mail today when I got back from the
annual Deepavali dinner (pics and post up tomorrow) , so it takes about
8 days to get from US -> Malaysia.

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Thanks Grace! Not many people would take the effort to snail mail out personalized notes. πŸ™‚ I really liked it.

1.5k – My second paycheck!

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I received my second paycheck today, much earlier than usual due to
the Deepavali holidays. I get RM 1,500 per month, the RM 1,790.32 from
last month was pro-rated from the month before. BTW, while we’re on
this topic, I’ll like to take this opportunity to say that I hate Mayling [blogspot.com] and I hate Wena [mum-mum.info] even more. πŸ˜‰

Anyway, XM Malaysia is having our annual Deepavali get together
tonight at 7 pm (which is about an hour from now). It’s at The Taj at
Crown Princess and Zenith Media would also be joining us. There will be
free beer so I may or may not update later tonight, but photos would be
up either tonite or tomorrow. πŸ™‚

Janet, Wai Hing, VJ, TK Birthday @ XM Malaysia

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“Happy Birthday to Janet Lee Wai Hing VJ. TK.” is the inscription on the cake.

The Secret Recipe cake pictured above was presented at 4:30 pm just
now at the office to celebrate the birthdays of XM Malaysia family
members Janet Lee, Wai Hing, Vijay and Tek Khoon. In true XM style,
everyone gathered around the lounge.

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L-R: Wai Hing, TK, VJ, Janet.

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This is Janet blowing the candles out.

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Secret Recipe chocolate cake (with some kind of nut that I couldn’t identify) plus ice cream. Mmm…

Anyway, if anyone doesn’t know yet, all the photos I take in XM is
in Simon -> Drop -> (event name) in full resolution,
non-watermarked and without a text overlay.

BOMBA REDenergy drink

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BOMBA RED energy.

I found this interesting looking drink at 7 Eleven. It’s in a glass
bottle shaped like a hand granade, complete with the pull off cap
looking like the priming pin in a grenade. The bottle costs RM 3.50 for
250 ml and it’s marketed as an “energy drink”.

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Open your mind.

Unless my math is screwed up (and I’ve always stated that this is
very possible), the bomb shaped glass bottle contains a paltry 37.5 mg
of caffeine. The label states that the total caffeine content is 150
mg/l and the bottle is 250 ml. The product is made in Austria.

bomba_label.jpg
Bomba RED label.

The speel on the label also says that it’s a “Carbonated energy
drink with taurine, caffeine and guarana.” and has a warning stating
“Pasteurized. Not recommended for children, diabetics and persons
sensitive to caffeine.”. I’m interested to know why a non-dairy based
drink need to be pasteurized.

bomba_drink.jpg
Photo of BOMBA RED energy – different angle.

Anyway, back to the taste of Bomba Energy Red, it tasted like
raspberries. It’s quite sweet, refreshing and tastes better than other
energy drinks. I can’t really vouch for the “energy” behind these
“energy drinks” though…I don’t mean to sound like a “chemical snob”,
but I’m just used to stimulants that are stronger than what caffeine
offers.

However, the eye catching packaging and the novel hand grenade
design glass bottle would make this an interesting purchase. The
attention to detail is attractive, it even has those squarish tiles
covering the surface of the bottle. I would say it’s worth the RM 3.50
price just for the nice presentation.

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The empty Bomba bomb shaped glass botle.

Lyn’s birthday

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The birthday cake

Lyn is one of my housemates, she lives upstairs at the master
bedroom with 3 other girls. Here’s a bit of a background about the
place I live in. Basically the configuration of our house is:
I live at the only room downstairs.
There is a girl from China studying at HELP Institute living on the
first bedroom upstairs. Her bf comes and stays over some days, but both
of them are away every weekend.
The second bedroom is taken by a couple who keeps to themselves and is
seldom seen outside their bedroom, but is friendly enough.
The master bedroom is taken by 4 girls who’re all from Sibu and I know
them from MPI, the college I went to for some odd months before going
to Melbourne.

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Shim Lyn

Anyway, Lyn is having her birthday today (again, it’s technically
yesterday, I can’t sleep even after taking my prescription from my
taper doctor like a good boy) and the others decided to have dinner
together. I was recuperating *cough* and only woke up at 4 pm and went
to Pusat Bandar Damansara to pick up some fried chicken while someone
got a cake and the others cooked.

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Blowing out the candles…

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Cake cutting

There is this tradition where the person having the birthday has to
eat “chang shou mien” – basically “long life noodles” or just a really
long and sticky version of rice vermicelli. It’s usually eaten with
chicken soup and boiled eggs. There you have it, another one of my more
personal entries. Happy birthday Lyn!

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My MC

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MC (20th October 2003)

This is my Medical Certificate. I was not able to make it to work
today. Yeah, I’m aware that this is the not first time it happened. :p
I was not faking it, I was not feeling well. I wouldn’t spend half my
daily salary just to get an MC anyway, would rather go to work. Anyway,
I woke up feeling nauseous and throwing up (I seem to have a generosity
that compels me to make offerings to the porcelain god) and with a
migraine.

I went to see the same doctor I saw last time – Poliklinik & Surgeri Dr A. Hadi Abdullah & Rakan Rakan
[sixthseal.com] at Pusat Bandar Damansara this afternoon. I mean
yesterday afternoon, it’s past 12 am so technically this happened
yesterday. It’s the closest clinic. The doctor was not in – I was told
he went off to have a drink. I waited for a while and then got to see
the doctor and told him about my symptoms.

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Ya, saya tahu saya sakit.

I also mentioned that I usually take DF118 (30 mg dihydrocodeine
only tablets) for migraines and he said that he doesn’t carry that
because it’s a restricted drug. Funny, I get it over the counter in
Sibu. πŸ˜‰ Anyway, the doctor said he’ll give me something stronger and
my ears perked up, hoping to hear Oxycontin or something like that.

voltaren.jpg
When you said stronger, I was expecting something else…

He said he’ll give me…..Voltaren. That’s diclofenac, a NSAID
(Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug). I don’t know how his logic
goes…stronger than dihydrocodeine indeed. This is not “something
stronger”. NSAIDs does nothing for me, real migraine medications has to
have opiate agonists in it. πŸ˜‰ I’m kidding, btw, let us move on, this
was supposed to be a short post coz I’ll have to sleep early tonight.

polyvisit2.jpg
I did not take the photo through the plastic bag last time, I just
noticed that, there was a revelationary moment for a moment, but it’s
gone now, I forgot what it was.

Anyway, this time the doctor filled in the MC himself at least, gave
him my IC and he asked “Any pen kah?” to his wife cum receptionist and
out I went with an MC, a pack of diclofenac, a bill for only RM 20 as
opposed to RM 25 last time, and my IC (he took it to write the MC
remember?) inside a plastic bag.

My apologies for not being able to reply the comments today, I have
to sleep now to go to work tomorrow and I’ll reply every single one
tomorrow. Hmm…I think I’ll have a mug of milo with biscuits and then
sleep. Night people, see ya tomorrow.

I’m perfectly sober, why do you ask?

Thosai Rawa (Rava Thosai)

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Rava Thosai

This was what I had for supper just now at Restoran Ali Maju at
Pusat Bandar Damansara. I saw this sign advertising the availability of
Thosai Rawa (also known as Rava Thosai) when we walked in, so I ordered
that one since I haven’t had it before. The people there were kind, and
welcomed me into the kitchen to take photos.

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This is how Rava Thosai is made. The flour mix was poured over the
hot plate and then some onions and other stuff I can’t identify was
sprinkled on top.

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The cook with the finished Rava Thosai.

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This is what it looks like on the plate. The size of the thing is
quite impressive! It needed a larger rectangle shaped plate to
accommodate it.

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The contents of the Rava Thosai – there are two types of onions and
other stuff. It also has a hint of egg when eaten, even though I didn’t
see the cook crack an egg into the thosai at any point. The dish came
with three dips.

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Dip #1
This is my favorite one. I’m not sure what it’s called but the taste reminded me of yoghurt.

rawa_dip2.jpg

Dip#2
This is the second dip – dhal with veggies.

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Dip #3
The third one is curry.

Here’s a photo of Restoran Ali Maju:

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The two Chinese girl scam

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Zhao Shu Juen and Zhang Jie.

I don’t actually know if this is a scam, but I have a strong
suspicion it is. Anyway, I was walking to Suria KLCC after work when I
was approached by two females (photo above). I was taking photos of the
Deepavali decorations with my digicam strapped around me and I heard
them hailing me from across the street. I did not heed them as I was
trying to get a steady shot and I was standing in traffic, which is
enough multitasking for me.

Well, they came over to my side of the road and accosted me. One of
them asked if I was Malaysian, and I said yes, but I’m not from KL, I
just work here. The other one then asked if she could use my cell phone
because they just arrived in KL from China today and they somehow
didn’t bring any cash and their ATM card doesn’t work, so they’re stuck
here. They needed to use my cell phone to call their dad, who is coming
tomorrow and tell him to bring cash instead coz they said China’s ATM
cards doesn’t work here.

Anyway, I was happy to help (even though my cell phone credit is
rather low) so I let them call Beijing on the condition that they pose
for a photograph. I take a lot of street shots for my personal stock
photo collection, plus I thought this would make a good post so I
wanted to get pictures to go with it. They agreed and I let them use my
cell phone. They called a number which went 00865525xxxx (last four
digits crossed out for their privacy).

girls_phone_call.jpg
Zhang Jie phones home.

That really is a phone number from the People’s Republic of China, I
checked the country code. Anyway, after talking on the phone for a
while, she passed the phone to me and said her mom wanted to talk to
me. Her mom’s Beijing accent was really strong, I couldn’t catch half
of the words she said, but I get the gist of it – she was thanking me
for allowing her daughter to use the phone, so I said no problem. My
Digi credit went from RM 25.35 to RM 2.69 though…

Anyway, they told me that they’re medical school students from
Beijing and just arrived today without any cash. “Where are you going
to sleep then?”, I asked altruistically. “I was about to get to
that…”, one of the girls replied. “I’m sorry, but could you do us a
favor? Can you please lend us some money for a hotel tonight?”

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The two Beijing girls, photo taken without flash.

So there I was…considering if they’re scamming me or they really
are stuck in KL without money. Now, I wouldn’t mind helping out if the
situation was really what they said it was…but I only have about RM
20 in my wallet and I told them so. “Oh, we’ll just take whatever you
have…give me your number and I’ll call you tomorrow once my dad gets
here and I’ll pay you back okay? I’ll buy you lunch too.”, said one of
the girls.

“How are you going to get a hotel room for just RM 20???”, I asked.
The girls mumbled something which I couldn’t catch and then asked if I
could withdraw some money from an ATM. The audacity….I said no,
because the situation is starting to sound rather dodgy. I told them to
go to the police station nearby and they would direct them to the
Chinese embassy for help. “Oh, then it’s alright, we’ll just take the
RM 20.”, they said.

Here is where the story gets slightly more interesting. They kept on
repeating the story about coming to KL and having no money and there
were slight discrepancies in every iteration. It all sounded rather
scam like to me, but I gave them the benefit of doubt, just in case the
poor girls were telling the truth. I am quite unconvinced though due to
the lack of luggage on their behalf and the topic of how they got to
Suria KLCC from KLIA was quickly changed. One of the girls produced a
notebook (complete with a “Terima Kasih – RM 3.60” sticker on the
front) and asked me for my number so they could pay me back tomorrow.

names.jpg

I don’t read Chinese (but I speak it fluently, thank you very much) so here’s the translation from a friend:
Zhao Shu Juen
shu means elegant , related to a woman, also means ‘woman’,
juen = something like ‘good woman’

Zhang Jie
jie means clean
Zhao and Zhang are family names.

Terima Kasih indeed…I did write down my cell phone number to humor
them, plus I wanted them to write their names in it too. However, I did
not give them any money, because even if the price tag accidentally
left a ‘B’ out and it was actually RMB (The People’s Currency), I doubt
that goods in China would have a “Terima Kasih” in red above. I did not
point this out to them though, since I was still waiting for them to
write their names. Heh.

You’ll never guess what they asked next.

“Can we borrow your camera for a day and return it to you tomorrow?”

Right…

No.

“Can we call you tomorrow and you borrow us the camera for the day then?”

I didn’t even find the need to continue the conversation. I told
them to go to the police if they really need help, they would direct
them to the embassy and left.

They did not call me today. πŸ™‚

Spam in Movable Type

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There seems to be spam bots crawling indexed pages and leaving
comments with heavy keyword density and offsite links in an attempt to
drive PageRank and SERPs to their spam site. I’ve seen several these
few days in sixthseal.com, which is running MT 2.63. castitas.com is
running MT 2.64 and doesn’t seem to have that problem. However,
castitas.com isn’t ranked by Google yet, though it is indexed, as can
be seen by the high SERPs with certain keywords related to drugs. I’m
not sure if upgrading to Movable Type 2.64 would foil the spambots but
in the mean time, I’m manually deleting the spam (and the URL, leaving
just the email intact) so there’s no PR leak. πŸ˜‰ I even came up with a
haiku to insert in all deleted spams:

Spam is bad mmmkay?
Your kind is not welcome here.
Go back home spambot.

Inspired by the various racist comments directed towards ethnic minorities in Caucasian countries. πŸ˜‰

Crafty Motherfucker

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Some say he’s afflicted with schadenfreude
Others say he’s just kiasu to the extreme
but whatever he has
we’ll never know
why he feels the urge to inform your friends
“There’s something I feel responsible to tell you”
“Our mutual friend takes drugs”
(or whatever it is)

It doesn’t matter what the accusation is…
the ‘sin’ would expand to fit the lie
for the active schadenfreude does not let truth get in the way of his pleasure
The aim is just to character assassinate, to discredit, to elavate himself beside the accused
Primal behavior.
But always, a disclaimer at the end
“I’m just telling you this coz I feel sorry for you”
“Please don’t tell our friend and ruin our 10 year relationship”

Ah, the crafty motherfucker…
for he knows that discussing it with the accused would expose his lies
Counting on the receiver’s kindness to get away with it…
and every crafty motherfucker knows it works most of the time.
But not all the time
coz the smart ones would think “Why are you saying this about YOUR friend?”
and wonder…

Everyone has a crafty motherfucker in their lives
Don’t you think otherwise…
I have one
Do you have one too?

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