sixthseal.com – Page 288 – Leading the wild into the ways of the man…

You guys are killing me

August 27, 2003 by HB

I just got a Western Union money transfer totalling RM 153 for
excess bandwidth charges during my lunch break today. That’s more than
10% of my monthly paycheck…of course, like I said before, everyone is
welcome here at sixthseal.com. 🙂 It’s just that I have to figure out
how to reduce the monthly bandwidth usage.

Anyway, as you can see, I’ve changed the front page to display only
6 days back, but there’s a lot of photos on my page – it’s been part of
my weblog since the inception – at least one relevant photo with every
post. It’s why I stuff my Nikon 885 into my pants pocket in the past
and it’s why I sling my Nikon 5700 everywhere I go now. I don’t want to
break the feel of that, and the (barely updated) Picture of the Day has
also been with sixthseal.com since the beginning and I don’t want to
change that either.

Well, if anyone is interested, I’m allocated 5 GB transfer per month
and I pay US$ 5 for every GB after that. At the rate visitors are
coming in, I’ll have to do something before the bandwidth bills becomes
exhorbitant. I’ll discuss with my host if it’s possible to open another
account and register another domain and integrate them, as in allowing
each account to use bandwidth from the other – effectively having one
account with 10 GB transfer. As veritas is fond of saying, RM 153 is
153 mg of generic alprazolam (Xanax). 😉

Anyway, I got the Western Union money transfer done during lunch
hour at the Bumiputera Commerce Bank at Komplex Antarabangsa (or is
that Plaza Antarabangsa), which is just beside the place I work –
interconnected internally. I happened to notice some workers wearing
“BCB Penipu Pekerja” (BCB shafts their workers), some sort of protest
going on here.

Second day at work was much better than the first, at least I have
something to do, keeps me occupied. Strange thing is, I woke up at 6:15
am yesterday and arrived at 8 am and I woke up at 7 am today and still
arrived at 8 am. Very puzzling. Anyway, at least I didn’t have to do
battle with the Bukit Bintang/Jalan Pudu rush hour traffic and
unwilling taxis today – our senior programmer Wai Hing was kind enough
to send me back.

Well, tomorrow is Thursday so I will investigate the Bangsar
connection after work…will probably take a taxi from Bangsar LRT
station and then try the buses on Friday (coz Fridays means no work the
next day, unless I have unfinished business). That would be my mode of
transportation from now on. I’m still going to take a taxi in the
mornings though, until next week when I’m sure of the public
transportation routes to take the bus/LRT combo.

I’m going with my gf to eat that 6 cheese pizza by Pizza Hut and the
Haagen Daz mooncakes this Saturday. I need to go to Low Yat anyway
because my over enthusiastic insertions broke my mouse’s P/S 2
connection. I’ll also need to pick up a pair of headphones. Right,
enough rambling, I talk too much when inhibitions are reduced. 😉

Oh, right, I couldn’t even see the moon, much less Mars. It’s way too cloudy and the street lights are in the way.

My apologies, I feel extremally sleepy right now. I will reply every
single comment tomorrow either before office hours (will go early) or
during lunch break. Thanks for understanding…haven’t been getting
enough sleep lately.

It’s what’s for lunch

August 27, 2003 by HB

I stayed back instead of going with my colleagues for lunch because
I needed to find out where the nearest Western Union outlet is (for my
excess bandwidth bill, what else), re-check the convocation dates and
ask about leave so I can actually attend the ceremony – that would
happen after lunch though. Oh yeah, I asked the technical director
about taking photos inside the office and yeah, it would violate the
non-disclosure agreement if I post them, so er…that front door is all
you’ll see of my work place. Sorry. 🙂

I guess that means I’ll have to write a thousand words to explain –
it’s a rectangular room with a joined desks around the corners, and
there’s currently 13 people in the room – 1 technical support, 2
quality control, 1 temp and the rest are programmers. 1/4 of the staff
is female, the rest is male. Opposite us is a room with a somewhat
similar configuration, that’s the creative team work place and that’s
not a thousand words, but I’ve got other stuff to do during lunch hour.
Oh and btw, it seems that we have 2 hours for lunch – 12 pm – 2 pm.
Anyway, I’ll reply the comments when I get back, the Western Union is
really up there on the To Do List, I will pop out if it’s near. I’ll
post again tonight and reply all the comments, thanks!

XM Malaysia

August 26, 2003 by HB

XM Malaysia

I just started my first day of work today – it’s at XM (Malaysia) at
Kenaga International at Jalan Sultan Ismail. It’s quite a while from my
place, I took a taxi there, it’s about RM 8 but the taxi back was RM
10+ due to the horrible traffic jam at the Bukit Bintang and Jalan Pudu
area.

Kenaga International

First day at work was okay, got to know the staff and my colleagues
in the technical team. Surprisingly, a lot of taxi drivers doesn’t know
where Kenaga International is…deja vu from Melbourne where there’s
frequent stops to consult Melways (a map) and many questions for
directions. 😉

There is a nice, relaxing fountain at the bottom of the Kenaga
International building and my work place is located on the 16th floor.

Look at the vivid PURPLE BLUE of the brinjals. Is that normal?

Anyway, a bunch of us walked to Bukit Bintang for lunch at the food
court on top – it’s surprisingly near, I could have walked from my
hotel to the first interview. Oh yeah, I heard from my colleages that
there’s a Putra LRT station – the KL Central one, that’s only 8 – 10
minutes walk from the office. The nearest LRT station here is the
Bangsar one and that takes about RM 5 by taxi to Medan Damansara so I
thought that works out to around the same price, taking into account
the LRT ticket. Anyway, I won’t try tomorrow morning, but I’ll use that
to come back tomorrow night and see if I get home alright. It’s just
too much of a hassle to get back by taxi during office hours…my
grandmother could walk 50 times faster than the speed traffic moved
along the traffic congestion areas.

I waited damn near 1 1/2 hours for a taxi…no one wanted to pick
anyone up during the peak traffic congestion office hour period.

Anyway, I don’t have any other photos except of the ones outside the
office place…I signed a non disclosure agreement, and since most
monitors were displaying code of some sort, that might violate it. I
will have to ask permission before taking photos inside the work place.

Bangsar mamak @ Jalan Telawi

August 26, 2003 by HB

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

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

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

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.

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

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

August 25, 2003 by HB

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. 😉 Anyway, I just came back from mamak so
I’ll just post this and head to bed. Mamak photos will be up tomorrow.

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

There were lots of people ice skating at Pyramid Ice.

Which made me crave ice cream for some reason…

Baskin Robbins has this Summer Sundaes sundaes going on.

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. 🙂

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.

There were men with umbrellas.

Prancing men with umbrellas.

There were even women with umbrellas.

And tea pots, no less…

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

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

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.

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

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

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! 🙂

Pentazocine experience and thoughts

August 25, 2003 by HB

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

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

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.

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. 😉 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. 🙂 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)

August 25, 2003 by HB

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). 🙂

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

August 24, 2003 by HB

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.

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.

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:

and the toilets are covered with jokes…

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:

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

Anyway, here’s a photo of us:

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. 🙂 I’ll turn in early
tonight and wake up tomorrow for a whole new effort in sending out
resumes. Later.

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. 🙁 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. 😉 Nevermind me, I’m too relaxed right now.

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

August 23, 2003 by HB

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

There are stalls selling fruits.

There are massage parlors.

There are large book stores.

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.

There’s people selling drawings and wall scrolls.

There’s lots of tourists.

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

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

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.

A dumpling store at petaling street.

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

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

Cendol – a drink made with shredded ice and stuff.

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

Hong Kee Famous Claypot Chicken Rice @ Petaling Street.

This is claypot chicken rice for 3.

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

August 22, 2003 by HB

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:

Pouring out the base