graceshu sends postcards! ;)

graceshu_png_f.jpg
Scanned image of the postcard – front.

I just got another postcard from graceshu
[pixelphobia.net] today. πŸ™‚ This was sent from Penang. She’s actually
back but post tends to have a greater latency than people travelling.
Anyway, I just got back from work – last one to leave, it’s quite
creepy actually to turn off all the lights. Heh. Anyway, I’ll post
again later and reply all the comments. I won’t be sleeping tonight coz
I have to go early tomorrow to sort out this last bit of ASP code. I
have to go to work on Saturday too. Oh well…

graceshu_png_b.jpg
Scanned image of the postcard – back.

Dopaminergics = Sleep is for the weak!
Gabaminergics = Hey, it’s 5:30 pm already! πŸ™‚

Hmm…is there such a word as “gabaminergic”?

Thanks ryuu!

ryuu_donate.jpg

I just got your mail with the note and the RM 50 donation passed to
me at my workstation. It’s very much appreciated indeed! πŸ™‚ It would
help with the bandwidth excess charges that’s for sure. ryuu is the
second person ever to donate to sixthseal.com. I didn’t think anyone
actually would but he did. Thanks a lot buddy! πŸ™‚

Anyway, my workload is still very heavy so I’ll have to reply the
comments when I get back home tonight (which would be late), sorry
people, I don’t mean to neglect the feedback, but I have a project due
tomorrow.

[Edit: Link removed upon request.]

New “About me” page

about_me_new.jpg

The long due update for the “About me” page has finally been done
today. I’ve not changed it since my Monash University days and I took
some time out to write some new stuff in there to reflect my current
status. Like all “About me” pages, it might seem a little
self-indulgant, so don’t read it unless you don’t mind “About me”
pages. πŸ™‚

Read it here [sixthseal.com] or at the persistant sidebar.

I have to go out now, later people!

The Weblog Review – The Imdateless.Com Website

Original review done for The Weblog Review:
The Weblog Review [theweblogreview.com].

dateless.jpg

The Imdateless.Com Website

The first thing I thought when I saw ImDateless.com is that it’s one of those match
making sites. The banner ad on the bottom of the splash page IS from a match making
site and I was wondering how this got into The Weblog Review. The site’s splash
page uses Flash, but there is an option for a non Flash entry page. I clicked on the
Flash intro and the animation reminded me of the Star Wars intro and while it’s not
as professionally animated as some Flash animations, it has a nice charm to it. It is
entertaining, if you have Flash, I suggest you watch the animation.

When I entered into the main page, I still thought it was a dating site, but
reading on shows that it is indeed a weblog, recounting experiences of this 24 year
old part time Retail Manager and university undergraduate student. The blog is in
the news section and it makes interesting reading, if you’re into personal blogs. I
find his writing easy to read since he somewhat writes in the same style as me and
he structures his paragraphs well.

Even though this is a fairly new site, it has a lot of content from his writings. I
found that the most interesting aspect of this site. He writes about a lot of things,
from his travel diaries to religion. I particularly enjoyed reading his trips around
Europe. He writes a day by day recount of his experience traveling and that is a
major attraction of this site if you like traveling stories.

Design wise, the site navigation is a little unusual, but the Expand All and
Collapse All dynamic navigational change does help in this aspect. However, I
found the sidebar too cluttered when it’s expanded. I also found the Membership and
Shopping pages to be distracting, although I can understand the need for it, since I
pay a lot for excess bandwidth fees as well. The site’s design isn’t exactly the best
out there, but that’s not the point – the content more than makes up for this.

Back to the content, a whois lookup revealed that the domain was registered on
the 12th of August 2003 and his blog begins on the same day! Even though it seems
like there is a scant 2+ months of entries, don’t let that dissuade you from visiting –
he has a lot of other writings to occupy you for many hours. He says he is a
“ubiquitous storyteller” – and I agree, his stories would entertain you.

I’m wondering what the hell this site is doing on my computer screen though. πŸ˜‰

P/S – Read the 4th October 2003 entry if you didn’t get that one.

This site was reviewed on 2003-10-23 by sixthseal.
They felt this site belonged in the Entertainment category.
sixthseal felt that The Imdateless.Com Websit deserved a rating of 4.0

Link to site: The Imdateless.Com Website [imdateless.com].

Link to original review: The Imdateless.Com Website [theweblogreview.com].

Hello November!

lrtnov03.jpg

I’ve done some minor tweaking on the site to optimize it. Stats
analysis found out that the CSS sixthseal.com is pulling is
ridiculously bloated, so I removed unnecessary functions from it. There
are other aesthetic changes eg trimming the rather long blog list and
adding several blogs into the “More blogs!” that I read but never got
around to adding them. Anyway, the front page links works this way – if
I’ve linked and read you since a long time ago, the link will still be
on the front page. New blogs that I’ve just started reading recently
are added into the expanded list.

The emails for myself and veritas has also been removed to avoid the
site appearing to be too “spammy” too Googlebot. The email links are in
the About pages anyway, which I need to update since it’s way out of
date. The PoTD won’t show up in archive view mode too and neither will
the “Notable Posts”, unless they’re navigated to from a post marked
notable. I’ve rotated the sticky posts somewhat too, there are too
many. BTW, the notable posts are supposed to be the better posts in
sixthseal.com so that was why the decision was made to make it sticky.
It’s still spammy but I’m aiming for SERPs rather than PR anyway.

I’ve also added a copyright notice on every page, it wasn’t clear in
the blog before. There’s also a bit of SEO work done, thanks to Steph
[unadorned.org] of dandruff, a fellow Sarawakian (born there anyway)
who actually replied my email about how she managed to get a PageRank
7. πŸ™‚

Update:
Here’s some stats that might be of interest:

October 2003
Unique visits per day: 1397 (average) 2134 (max)

Top 3 referrers: Yahoo, Google, Erowid

#1 search string: kehidupan seorang pramugara yang terlampau (1042)
Permutations of the above accounts for half of the Top 20 keywords, with the other half being drug related search strings.

Countries:
Unresolved (37%)
Network (18%)
US Commercial (17%)
Australia (9%)
Malaysia (3%)
Singapore (3%)
US Educational (2%)
Canada (2%)
UK (2%)
Japan (1%)
Other (6%)
This is more balanced than previous stats (when I was in Melbourne) where Australian visitors dominates at around 40%.

Bandwidth used:
sixthseal.com – 12 GB
castitas.com – 9 GB

My excess bandwidth bill:
sixthseal.com – 12 GB – 5 GB = 7 GB
castitas.com – 9 GB – 5 GB = 4 GB
Total = 11 GB excess @ US$ 5 per GB
Amount = US$ 55 or RM 209

RM 209 is more than 1/7 of my monthly paycheck. Help! :p

Miscellaneous stuff

lrtoct03.jpg

Goodbye October 2003. This is the 31st of October, the last day of
October, Halloween and the day Dr. Mahathir steps down as the Prime
Minister of Malaysia.

1. Dr. M is stepping down. I don’t talk about politics much due to
paranoia, but people who know me in real life know that I’m a staunch
supporter of Dr. Mahathir. He’s not afraid to speak his mind and he
doesn’t give in to Western influence. He’s someone who has BALLS for
the lack of a better term.

In contrast, I particularly dislike people like PM Goh Chok Tong of
Singapore. To put things crudely, he kisses every Caucasian and
Japanese ass that heads his way. I wonder if he wishes he was born
Caucasian sometimes.

Now Dr. M on the other hand, he’s not afraid of voicing his opinions
about the many infringements of the US and Australia against Asia. I’m
not going to go through everything because I don’t want to be seen as a
hardliner, but I’m sorry to see Mahathir go. Let’s hope that Datuk Seri
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will continue Dr. M’s legacy.

We’re a sovereign country and we’re not going to take any shit from Bush, Howard or anyone other than our own people.

2. Google Dance. Yes, Google just did its thing recently.
sixthseal.com is still a PR 5 due to “spammy” site design (namely, the
persistent sidebar). I had hoped for a PR 6 this time. However, my
SERPs are still holding strong and I’ve captured certain keywords I’m
proud of. Heavy pimpage of castitas.com has also raised that site to a
PR 4, as I expected. Did you know that there’s a link to castitas.com
on every page of this site? πŸ˜‰ I was expecting a PageRank of 1 less
than sixthseal.com and yeah, I got it. πŸ™‚

3. Boo. It’s Halloween. I’ll update again later.

How I climbed the St John Cathedral bell tower and other short stories

Getting up close and personal with Mary Fatima.

st_john_tower.jpg

There is a mysterious upper level at St John’s Cathedral. I wasn’t
aware of it until a warden told us that there are more seats upstairs.

st_john_upper.jpg

Sure enough, there it was – an outcropping overlooking the ground level.

st_john_ladder.jpg

I was attracted to this ladder on both sides of the level.

ladder_climb.jpg

I peered up and it seemed to be the ladder for the bell towers.
Curiosity impelled me to brave the bird poo stained ladders and climb
to the top of the right one. The ladder goes up to a level overlooking
the book store. One of the attendants heard my less than subtle ascent,
peered up questioningly and frowned in my general direction.

bell_tower_journey.jpg

However, I was not to be dissuaded from my quest to the bell platform, so I scaled the next ladder, and then the next.

bell_tower_platform.jpg

Soon, I reached the last ladder leading up to the bell, which seems
to be sitting on top of a wooden support. I climbed up the last ladder
to present to you…

bell_tower_view.jpg

A view from the top. Wait ah, the bell photo is coming up. You can
actually fall into the book store if you wanted too, just keep right
while falling down and you’ll drop right through the top of the book
store. You might break a couple of bones and possibly injure something
other than books.

st_john_church_bell.jpg

Here is the ancient looking church bell. I suspect it’s not used
anymore due to the impressive layer of bird droppings on the stair
steps and railings. There is an inscription on the bell itself:

st_john_bell.jpg

The bell is called Mary Fatima.

Novo Millennio Ineunte

celebration_book.jpg

The wardens passed us this booklet today. It says:

Silver Jubilee of the Pontification of His Holiness Pope John Paul II
Eucharistic Celebration
10:30 am, Sunday 26th October, 2003
St. John’s Catheral
Kuala Lumpur

There is a typo on the glossy cover, if you haven’t noticed. It says
‘Catheral’ instead of ‘Cathedral’. I kinda had my own private pursuits
(the abovementioned journey to the bell) and also zoned out a bit so I
wasn’t sure what was going on but there was this scene at the end:

eucharistic_celebration.jpg

There were “light refreshments” served after the event at an ad hoc tent erected on the lawn after mass.

refreshment_tent.jpg

They were giving away cincau drink (without cin cau jelly)/lychee drink and curry puff/a slice of cake.

tent_food.jpg

The volunteers with the tables of packet drinks and pre-wrapped food.

Anytime is Makan Time

maju_curry_house.jpg
Restoran Maju Curry House
I had Special Beriyani Majura. Today’s special is Nasi Beriyani Ayam Kampong.

special_beriyani_majura.jpg

I like how they have these boiled quail eggs in the rice. Very nice indeed.

nasi_dalca.jpg

There was a Nasi Dalca selection beside it and I took another drumstick. It looked good in the gravy. This is my plate:

beriyani_ayam.jpg

There was also a plate of sotong curry which we shared. It had large complete sotongs with everything intact.

sotong_curry.jpg

restauran_maju.jpg
Anytime is Makan Time.

The End.

Personalized note from Grace in the mail!

grace_mail.jpg

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.

grace_note.jpg

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

castitas.com is live!

castitaspromo.jpg

The domain of veritas – castitas.com is now ready for public viewing
after nearly a month since it’s inception. It is with great pride that
I announce sixthseal.com’s sister site – the award winning weblog about
drugs in Malaysia where it was voted “Blogger most likely to get raided
by the police”, “Blogger most likely to get roughed up by gangsters”
and “Best Malaysian blogger in the Drugs category” (no one else was in
contention) AT THE SAME TIME. Not to mention snagging the “You is
stupid to try this in Malaysia” and the “I give you 3 months before the
site gets shut down” special awards – I proudly present to you castitas.com – Better living through chemistry…for every problem, a chemical solution. [castitas.com]

Okay, so I made the awards up, just wanted to generate interest in the site…

Warning: The content of castitas.com is not for everyone. If
you’re offended by recreational drug use and the use of pharmaceuticals
off the prescription label, you would not enjoy what castitas.com has
to offer. If you hate drugs, you’re going to hate castitas.com. Please
exercise discretion and avoid clicking on the link if you fit the
criteria above. castitas.com is not meant for minors.

Disclaimer: I am not veritas (the author at castitas.com). The site DOES NOT
condone or “promote” drug use. It is merely a personal journal by
veritas to document his experiences with drugs. Please remember that
drug use is associated with very severe penalties in Malaysia.
sixthseal.com strongly discourages any activities which breaks the laws
in your country.

Movado fashion show @ Lot 10

movado_lineup.jpg
Movado female models lineup.

I went to Lot 10 exactly one week ago and caught the Movado fashion
parade in the afternoon. Here are the photos from the show last Sunday
(28/09/2003), I haven’t had time to post them up before today.

movado_out.jpg
The models walking out with dry ice hissing. The show begins…

movado_first.jpg
The first dry run.

guygirl.jpg
A female and male modelling the watch.

two_models.jpg
Two of the models – apparently the general consensus of the group
(minus me) found that these two were the most aesthetically pleasing in
the lineup.

best_girl.jpg
My vote went to this girl.

movado_guys.jpg
Here’s a photo of the only two male models in the lineup.

different_attire.jpg
Here’s another shot of the two female models. It looks similar to the
one above, but it’s not. The pose is the same, but the attire is
different. Look closer, I was amazed by the commendable full posture
recall and reconstruction they had. Very versatile. πŸ˜‰

movado_male.jpg
And here’s another one of the guys.

movado_models.jpg
The finale of the show – the final model lineup.

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