sixthseal.com – Page 264 – Leading the wild into the ways of the man…

Big pink cupcake with yellow fringes

November 23, 2003 by HB

This is definitely the largest cupcake I’ve ever seen…used to eat
them when I was young, they were purely white then, but the colored
varieties do pop up once in a while. They all taste the same though. I
got this at Bangsar pasar malam just now. I haven’t seen one that comes
in such a big variety before and two of us couldn’t finish it. It’s
pictured next to an RM 1 coin, but it doesn’t seem to show the scale of
the big cupcake well. It’s about 3-4 times bigger than the normal sized
ones and it’s in a large plastic container base.

Anyway, when I was young, I would only eat the top parts – the four
soft chunks on the top and leave the bottom part for someone else to
eat, which usually would be my father. I did not like the crumbly and
relatively hard base – only the soft top then. Strangely though, this
variety goes against the soft top – hard base mould. The bottom of this
is softer than the top and the top chunks taste like the bottom of the
normal ones.

MDMA (and other drugs, non users) research at my alma mater

November 22, 2003 by HB

I saw this notice on Pillreports.com
[pillreports.com] today. Photo courtesy of veritas, naturally.
So…who’s going? 😉 The research is being done at my previous campus
(Caulfield). I live at halls in Clayton but my main campus is at
Caulfield (20 minutes drive), though I can take subjects in Clayton. I
know Monash Uni had CADAR but wasn’t aware of active research by the
center. Help out if you can, it would be interesting to see the results
of this study. Here’s the details from the page:

Cognitive Performance and Monitoring in Dance Drug users (Melbourne, Australia)

People who have used ecstasy for over three years required to participate in a psychological study.

Research through Monash University’s Centre for Applied Drug and
Alcohol Research (CADAR) is looking for people over 18 years old:

who have used ecstasy for over three years

who would be interested in participating in a psychological study

We are also testing people who have used ecstasy for less time than
this, people who have used no drugs at all, and people who have used
other drugs (e.g. speed, cannabis etc) but no ecstasy.

Participation will involve around 3-4 hours of your time, and is
open to those able to make it to Monash University, Caulfield.
Participants will be reimbursed for out of pocket expenses.

If you are interested in participating in this research, please
email me at gillinder.bedi@med.monash.edu.au or call on 9903 1149.

Berbuka Puasa Bersama Kami di Nipah

November 20, 2003 by HB

XM and Zenith had the company buka puasa today at Nipah. They really
do have an impressive amount of dishes – I couldn’t try every single
one, I would be amazed if anyone out there can. However, I didn’t eat
for two (or three?) days before and had two packets of Indomie last
night with multivites, first meal after some days without solid food,
so yeah, I nearly threw up when I had three dishes today. I would have
too, if I wasn’t on the LRT trying to catch the last bus back home from
Bangsar and by the time I got home, stomach bloat factor has become
less of an issue.

Anyway, I just got home so I’ll post up the photos of the array of
food they have tomorrow, since I’m about to fall asleep right now. I
did sleep last night, but not as much as I wanted to, and I have to
wake up at 6:30 am tomorrow. Check back tomorrow night if you want to
see photos of the interesting platters of food Equatorial’s Nipah
Coffeeshop (no, not that kind – unfortunately, we don’t have those in
Malaysia). My favorite photo is the “Ulam ulam tempatan” section, very
nice. Stay tuned!

Oh, and if you don’t want to squint, here’s what the text in the promo above reads:

Delight in traditional “kampung” specialities, popular hawker
favourites, superb delicacies from various states and an unbelievable
array of desserts from our renowned “buka puasa” buffet – enough to
please even the most discerning diner.

Available nightly throught the month of Ramadhan from 6:30 pm to 10:30 pm.

Priced at RM 68.00+ per adult and RM 35.00+ per child.

For reservations please call 2161 7777 extn. 8555

I should be on their payroll for transcribing that. 😉

Defaced and no screenshot…woe!

November 20, 2003 by HB

This site was “hacked” (er…defaced would be the correct term) by
some script kiddies sometime during 3 pm to 5 pm (GMT +8) today. They
just replaced index.html with another file, and I took a screenshot but
before pasting it, I was looking at the source, saw a URL and copied
that (losing what was on the “clipboard” previously – the screenshot)
and now I don’t have anything to post up.

Anyway, if anyone has a screenshot, I would appreciate it if you
would mail it to me, coz I rectified the issue (it takes all of 1
minute once you notice it) before I realized that I haven’t pasted the
screenshot into Photoshop. Alternatively, if anyone knows of any
“website defacement sites” where those l33t h4ck3rz post up images of
sites they have “hacked”, that would be appreciated as well, would love
to have that screenshot.

Anyway, if you’re the perpetrators behind this, please “hack” me
again ok? I would love to have a screenshot. Plus, I didn’t even
remember your group’s name or any of it’s members, and what’s the point
of what you do if there’s no memory of it? I promise I’ll post a
screenshot up and give you more publicity or something. 😉

Well, I’ll be off to the company “Berbuka Puasa Bersama Kami di Nipah” later. I’m hungry already.

Buah Kurma giveaway @ KLCC LRT station

November 20, 2003 by HB

Free packaged dried dates.

The staff at the KLCC LRT station were giving out nicely packaged
buah kurma (preserved/dried dates) at the monthly ticket entrance as I
got off from work yesterday. It was relatively early – around 6 pm when
this happened. They had boxes of it and I tried taking photos, but it
was the after office hours rush, so I couldn’t get a shot of the
personnel handing them out – someone is bound to walk into the frame
due to the volume of commuters.

Kurma photo – close up.

Anyway, here’s a closer look at the dates in the container. It
tastes good, dry and yet slightly moist in the middle. There is a
surprisingly high fructose content too, a little too cloyingly sweet,
but it’s great to eat when you’ve been without food for a while. It
seems to be one of the more common things people eat right after buka
puasa.

Which reminds me, there is a company buka puasa at Hotel Equatorial’s Nipah CoffeeShop later at 6:30 pm.

pengsan.com and VPS/VDS hosting

November 19, 2003 by HB

Before we go to pengsan.com (there’s nothing there anyway) here’s a
photo that you don’t see everyday. Another san, I mean sun – The Sun –
a daily newspaper provided free in racks like this. For the life of me,
I’ve never seen the racks filled…everytime I see these, it’s empty.
However today was going to be different. I knew it was going to be. I
had inklings. I came in at a little past 7 am and walked into Wisma Antarabangsa…

This is the rack at the entrance and lo and behold it was partially
full! Granted, it was only partially full, but for someone who’s only
seen it empty, it was a sight to behold. I stood there for a few
minutes, admiring the beauty and decided to document it by taking a
photo. The Sun! A rack partially full! Will wonders never
cease? Soon after I took the photo, a woman walked in and grabbed a
stack of the papers and walked out…such ephemeral beauty…I’m glad I
took a photo of the rack, even though it was only partially full. 😉

Anyway, after a lot of research, I’ve decided to go for a VPS/VDS
(Virtual Private/Dedicated Server) solution for my hosting needs. I got
a decent custom package – US$ 17.50 per month for 1 GB disk space, 30
GB transfer, 64 MB RAM, 1 static IP and root access. Additional excess
bandwidth is US$ 1 per GB and the same price goes for storage. Which
brings us back to pengsan.com – I registered that this morning (no
don’t check, it won’t progate until 24-48 hours and there’s nothing
there anyway) to test the VDS with.

I didn’t have to, since there is after all a static IP assigned, but
I figured it would be fun to get. sixthseal.com is biblical in nature,
castitas.com goes into Latin and now pengsan.com, local! 🙂 I don’t
know what I’m going to do with that domain yet, but currently, I’m
going to use it to test the server with and store images for the time
being, and I’m looking to move castitas.com soon (it’s MUCH smaller
than sixthseal.com and thus more forgiving if I fuck up) and if all
goes well, sixthseal.com will be hosted at this new server.

Anyway, a VDS (or VPS) is basically a quasi dedicated server…it’s
not like shared hosting where everyone shares the system resources, OS
and everything. VPS/VDS solutions are more secure and for all intents
and purposes, it’s a dedicated server, minus the cost of one. 😉 The
custom package I wanted is bare bones – nothing installed except Debian
(a Linux distro). I chose that over Red Hat due to size considerations
and I have experience with apt get. Er…in uni labs anyway.

Thus, you manage your own account – you get root access and you can
install stuff and all that. It would be good practice, I haven’t been
around Unix/Linux for a while. Because it’s empty (except for the OS),
I’ll have to install everything myself so it won’t be up and running
immediately, but it’ll be fun and it’s a learning experience. Anyway,
once the account is setup, my first priority is to install and
configure Apache (HTTP server) and use it as an image server. I still
haven’t figured out what to do with my existing
accounts…sixthseal.com’s is expiring soon, but not that soon, so
probably will get more domains and do the funky domain dance to get
load balancing right.

I’ll get around to installing PHP and Perl modules later and set up
MySQL databases soon and the test blog will be up when that happens.
It’ll be much more versatile than shared hosting – you install what you
want and only what you want. I got one month first to test things out
and we’ll see how it goes. Thankfully this host (jvds.com) does allow
the content of castitas.com, and he’ll move me to Amsterdam if it
violates US laws, so yeah, I’ll have my own server to play around with
soon. Stay tuned…

Bread Talk – the catalyst

November 17, 2003 by HB

The catalyst? Pork floss buns and other pastries my gf’s cousin
bought and left with my gf’s brother. I’ve become selfish, ungrateful
and inconsiderate. There you go…that’s how much I’ve degenerated. It
embaresses me, especially since my gf’s bro is the opposite of that. I
was less than willing to take 15 min out of my preciously limited
personal time to go and get something someone bought for us. And he
bought it up to us. Someone knock me upside the head and call me names,
I deserve it.

I want more time. But before that I really need to work on being
less self centered…it’s shocking how I get affected by work to let it
affect my personal relationships. I really want to be a better person
in this regards. There are only so many hours in a day. It can be
extended if you want, but you’ve gotta crash one day. What did I want
to do with this “personal time” anyway? Fuck this shit man, time with
close people should be personal time too…I must not let this happen
again. This is not who I want to be, this selfish, ungrateful and self
centered person.

Fuck this shit man…

November 17, 2003 by HB

I realize that I value my personal time a lot…and as it currently
stands, I have fuck all. I was about to make the chicken rice post,
re-sized all the photos and started uploading them. It’s 9 pm and I
haven’t eaten dinner and it’s such a small matter…we needed to walk
down and get some stuff. I was a little unwilling because it takes time
and time is something I don’t have with this job…I wake up at 6:30 am
if I want to catch the bus/LRT (and I have to if I want to live on my
1.5k salary) and by the time I get back (using LRT/bus again) it’s
usually 8:30 pm earliest, and usually it gets to be much later coz even
though official working hours is 8:30 am – 5:30 pm, sometimes we need
to stay back to finish up.

Which brings us back to the personal time question again. I have
none, not during work days. Just now, as we were about to eat, my gf
started being pissed off at me coz I was (admittedly) taking my work
stress out on her, grumbling about having to sacrifice even more
personal time to go out and she walked away without eating the stuff I
tapau and well…I must have had a lot of pent up anger coz I just blew
up on her…in front of all our housemates. I started enquiring (in a
volume that wasn’t suitable) about why she didn’t want to eat blah blah
blah and yeah…

I suck, it’s all this stress and nights without sleep and anxiety
about work security and the pressure to perform faster, stronger,
better than everyone else and the realization that I hate coming home
and having to go to sleep right away to get enough sleep, that or stay
up with assistance and weeks and months pass and you wonder where the
fuck your personal time went coz you sure as hell don’t remember shit.

I should not have taken it out on her, I’m such a terrible bf…I’m going to apologize now.

Fuck this shit man..all this even after 2 mg sublingual
lorazepam…I had wanted to talk about this to her too, about whether
working in KL is what I want and whether I would be more comfortable
working in a low paying but lots of free time ie teaching in a school
but fuck it, forget it, back to the daily grind.

Well then…this is quite a personal post isn’t it? Now, I’ll sit
here and wait for the masturbatory “oh, you just haven’t gotten used to
working life” comments to come in. See! Now I’m taking it out on my
readers…

Anita Sarawak film set photos

November 16, 2003 by HB

I saw some people filming a local production at Jalan Gereja this
morning as we were heading to mass. It seemed to be a low budget film,
considering the lack of road cordons, security or high end film
equipment so I just took a couple of shots and then went to church.
Anyway, after mass, we walked pass the set again and Richard noticed
that one of the cast is Anita Sarawak.

Remember her? She’s the local artist that was popular many years
ago, and she’s looking relatively young for her age. She was there with
her Caucasian husband. I don’t know much about her, this is what the
others told me. I don’t know what this film is titled, but Anita
Sarawak was getting out of Land Rover and there was also a scene
involving a mini that the guys had to push back and forth after failed
scenes.

Here’s a photo of Anita Sarawak beside her husband and some other
cast members. She was only there for a short time before leaving, and I
took this photo as we walked past (there are no cordons or anything):

Anita Sarawak is the one with the bleached hair.

Brain Tofu

November 15, 2003 by HB

Tofu brain.

The picture above shows what my brain has become. Rows of rows of
smooth tofu. Taufu lembut replacing my grey matter. I need at least 40
hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep to recover, but there’s not enough
time. My mental faculties did not escape this week totally unscathed
and I’m about to fall asleep right now. It feels like there’s a void
inside my skull where my brain once was. It’s Saturday morning and I
haven’t had felt this bad in a very long time. 🙂

There’s stuff to do tomorrow…I mean, later today. Ah fuck, I don’t
even know what to write. I tried writing a review and tried doing a bit
of work that I took home to do over the weekend but I can’t think.
Paleolitik 35,000 Mesolitik 25,000 Besi dan Gangsa 2,500. That’s what I
mentally recite during certain periods when my mind doesn’t want to
play nice. I don’t know if the times or spelling is correct it’s just
something I repeat in my brain. It’s from Form 1 Sejarah (History).

I want to eat but I can’t move. I can sleep (with help) but it won’t
be enough. Excuse this post. I will update tomorrow with the really
long due chicken rice post, which would be much less depressing, I
promise. 🙂 I will go to sleep now.

Paleolitik 35,000. Mesolitik 25,000. Besi dan Gangsa 2,500.

I still have this at least.

My apologies for not being able to reply the comments today. Thanks
for putting up with my sporadic updates and lack of feedback. I will
sort things out after sleeping. Meh, I’ve had worse. Everything is
fine. 🙂