new gadget!

I've got a new toy (and no, not battery operated!)! Well, it is not a Wii or PSP or DSLite or a tall, cute guy or whatever worth blogging a mile about but it is pretty cute and useful!


Introducing - the mini, flexi, non-slip and multi-tasking tri-pod!


I know. Cars screeching to a halt, waiters dropping trays, people dropping jaws, dogs dropping bones, cats stop licking themselves etc etc. A little bit on the anti-climax side but it is cute! And useful! And cheap! And comes in lotsa colours! (but I only managed to get this blue one. Will hunt for a white or pink one) And it is small and portable! "Available in pasar malams near you. Camera sold separately," I almost chimed.


I spent some good 3 minutes to explore how I can utilize its flexibility.

You could prop it on a chair...

You could hook it on a table... should there be a need to take a photo of you lying on the floor

As my friend suggested, you could "hug" it on some tree branches when you are out in the wild and still need to camwhore yourself... as demonstrated here:

Now, my baby can take a photo of itself sideways, that way, this way, all by itself! no need to be on a flat surface!

Look ma, no hands!

*Btw, just wanted to note that I dislike Tesco tissue paper. It is rough and it smells. Must be a punishment when I decided on that very unfortunate day to buy a pack of Tesco tissues over Kleenex. Tsk. Tsk.

yvonne has internet!

Yay! After months of uncertainties and 2 weeks of total disconnection, I have decided to get certain and connected. I bought this iZZi internet package of 6 months which absorbs the activation fee and also comes with a little iBurst modem. This is what it looks like:

-my iZZi modem-

Oh well, maybe not as small as the Huawei modem which comes with Celcom or Maxis broadband but it is still pretty small nonetheless. About 3 times the size of those but light. Well, they work the same anyways - using USB. I'm not going to go into techy-talk (because I'm not tech-savvy) but OK lah. Pretty fast and this is (as explained by my friend, the sales agent) because they have one of their "base" at my area itself. So signal strength is always 100% here. Whoopie. Well, more info? All I know is the speed is 1Mbps. Not the fastest around but I guess meets my needs and I guess since it is a 6 months package, I could just use it for 6 months and decide later if I want to continue or not. Maybe Celcom and Maxis broadband would improve later on and have better rates by that time? hmmm. And then maybe DiGi will come around with good deals and say it's Time to Change. Till then, for the next 6 months, I shall be an iZZinet user.

And I like the orange. :)


Whatever. As long as I don't need to drag my laptop to the lobby and listen to little kids squel in absolute delight as they play in the swimming pool everytime I need to check my email or worse to post an entry.


Anyways, I like to squel too when I was a kid playing in the pool. I really don't do that anymore now.


The weather has been horrible lately and one don't get to see squeling kids at the pool. Rain and more rain. Dampening my spirits. Plus my office has become even colder now.

-My usually sun-beamed desk has been gloomily cold-

Anyways, some update about work. We had another successful party/outing for our deserving staff who have done their job well and made guests feel so happy they decided to write a good comment. This time, we went to Pavilion! Conveniently nearby and full of entertainment possibilities, Pavilion was such a good idea. We didn't even need to rent a bus.

We went to Kenko Fish Spa!

-oooh-

-here fishy, fishy, fishy...-

-very nice interior design with instrumental background music-

-some of my deserving colleagues-
Us: We're coming!
Fishes: Wah, buffet!

-I get a free dip too! *squel!*-

ahem.
There were big fishes and small fishes. The small ones were very ticklish while the big ones sort of mean serious business about eating our dead skin cells. The small ones were so small that sometimes I imagine them getting trapped in the hair of some of our more hairy-legged friends.

-my colleague iyzaccq whose feet were so popular amongst the fishes that wherever he sits, the others will not have fishes munching at their feet-

Yvonne: Where are the fishes?!
Iyzaccq: Nah, nah, give you some... *lifts feet from water*

and the mass school of fishes started to swim over to other people's feet.

Yvonne: I think you have a lot of dead skincells

We were required to wash and scrub our feet before even thinking of going near these little underwater friends. While dipping, sometimes we saw the fishes rise up to the surface to sort of gasp for air and I wonder if it was the smell of 20 over people dipping in at the same time. Like it was too much to take. Hehe!

-shiny naturally exfoliated feet-

Anyways, it was very relaxing and after the 30 minutes dip, we proceeded to Red Box Plus to sing our hearts out.

-Bringing RedBox to a new height-

Speaking of RedBox, I joined some of my trainees to RedBox in conjunction with their last training day with us and boy, did they bring karaoke experience to a new height.

we sang... yes...

-JonJon doing some tribal thing, I think-

But I think dancing was the main objective sometimes...

-WeeJian: shu shang de xiao niao pi...-

I never thought that we would be so... so cabaret in RedBox. Oh well, anywhere Jon goes, there will be some sort of dancing or shaking going on. He must have worked for the Moulin Rouge troupe in his previous life.


Apart from these, we also had a bowling tournament thanks to my colleague Bin who patiently organizes these sport activities. All his hard work paid off when we saw the teamwork and the joyful atmosphere as we almost filled up the whole bowling alley.

This dude even managed to pose while I snapped! lol!

And we lifted one of our dear colleagues who was leaving for Maldives the next day.

All the best, Tony!

Eek!

Today is my first day learning Photoshop! Consider one of my goals achieved! I suddenly feel some added loyalty to my boss. Hehe!

...and proud of it!

Was shopping a day before and found just the right tee shirt to wear to such a training. Absolutely love this tee from wh. Very appropriate.



Anyways, I immediately put my lessons to practice once I got home. Learning is made easier with pure excitement and interest. I managed to crop out myself and changed the colour of the words on my tee. OK, OK, very basic... no time lar!

Mom and dad will definitely approve!

Wait till I learn how to "enhance"!


Anyways, in case it is not too noticeable, I had highlights done!


I spent about 3.5 hours in the salon at Lot 10. The motivation was the 50% sales at Isetan nearby. That's Roy, who patiently highlighted like, what, 3 strands with each foil (OK, exaggerated). Thank goodness they have loads of new and current magazines and that Roy is very chatty. I told him I was going for photoshop training and that ignited the fire in him. It seems he feels cheated because so many girls have posted such pretty pictures of themselves on Friendster and Facebook and such only to sort of dissappoint when the day of meeting arrived. When I took out my camera, which I told him and stress that I bring with me all the time, it only adds on to his suspicion that I'm one of "them".


Oh well, whatever. As long as you do your magic. Let's see what more I'll learn tomorrow! :D

Update:

I've just spent another hour on this!
Added some lip and cheek colour because I looked so pale... :)

sms

Have you ever sent an SMS to a person and then think for a few seconds and then open up the message that you have sent to check if the words came out right? I have a habit of doing that sometimes especially when I feel like I have not been really paying attention to what I was writing.

I learned how to do this from the first time I got a mobile phone which was in Form 4 or 5. I got a Nokia 3310 which is legendarily hardy and extremely user-friendly. All you need were the 'Cancel', 'Left', 'Right' and a central main button to work all its functions. I could type my message while watching TV and at the same time think about something not related to what I was watching. I could even be replying a message halfway through my sleep and then not remember about it. Sometimes people call me when I'm asleep and I would reply like I was really thinking but then I won't remember what I said when I wake up the next morning. Therefore, sometimes I too wish our conversations on the phone could be recorded each time so that I could listen to it again to see if I said anything... I was not supposed to say. It's like how I read my sent messages.

I don't just read it from where I have written the message under "Write New" after I send it. I close it and then go to "Sent" and read it as how the receiver will get to read. Why do I do that? Hmm. Beats me. But I do have a habit of replying messages while multitasking and sometimes the message might not sound or feel like how I meant it to be.

For example, if I wanted to say that I can't go out for dinner or something, I might have typed (while snacking and answering calls or writing my 'to do' list):

"Sorry, can't go out tonight. See ya some other time!"

But if I were to be really focusing on the message, it might have been typed as(maybe while only snacking):

"Sorry, I don't think I can make it tonight. Hope to see you some other time though. You have fun! :)"



And if we are not pre-occupied, we might be pressed for time. I've been replying messages when I'm busy too but I always try to type it as I feel it. One of the worst example was

"K" (in case you were wondering, it means OK)

Of course I don't do this. This is way too... erm... disconnected.

Erm, how hard is it to type an 'O'? Or and an exclamation mark?

Anyways, I normally type OK as:

"Okie dokie!"

Sometimes it would be:

"Okie dokie! :)"

Sometimes if I am feeling really happy, it would be:

"Okie dokie darling! :)!"

If I were to type to my boss, it would be:

"Certainly! :)"

When I'm not too keen:

"OK!"


There are also times when I have received messages which have had too much attention from the sender and all those flowery words and more-than-one SMS just to say one thing. For example:


"OK, no problem, I'll surely get it done for you because you have been so nice to me. Think nothing of it. What goes around comes around. Maybe one day you can get to help me too..."

OK, maybe it is not just saying ONE thing but seriously, get on with it. I'll prefer:

"OK, no problem. Anything for you.:)"

Wah. Now that's a message which will actually influence me to help the sender when there is a need for it. It will actually encourage me to reply too.

You'll definitely know that I'm not interested in replying a message when I don't even bother to use a fullstop. For example:

"Yeah ok see you soon whatever"

Erm, minus the whatever. Hehe. I'm not that rude.


I don't really use those SMS short forms(what do we call it?). Basically, the SMS short forms are ways to save time. For me, if I were to actually think about all the short forms, I'm actually making an extra effort and am concentrating. For example:

"c u l8er. w8 4 me @ d Ntrance. ttyl."


I will have to also say it out loud to see if it makes sense. Effort, I'll say.


There are also times when I feel the need to use more words, especially when I am asking for help. Haha. I once sent a message like this:

"Base on our friendship of 2 months plus, I need to ask for a favour. Do you think you can assist me with something which I think will probably be peanuts to you since you are an expert in what you do?"

Or something like that. Can't really remember. But I got a positive reply. Cool! So I didn't just waste my time typing. Luckily I use T9.


Wah, so much to say about such an ordinary thing. I do prefer calls but of course SMS is still the most cost-effective and still gets the message across. That is if we actually pay attention while we SMS. I once sent a message complaining about this girl A to girl A. Because I was doing other stuff and since her name was somewhere there in my head, I naturally selected her name and pressed "Send". Dangerous, I tell you. Don't ever do that. Nuh-uh. Oh yeah, that's also one of the problem with Nokia 3310. It is too easy to send a message that I didn't even have enough time to realize what I was doing and stop it in time. My current Sony Ericsson is alright. Not too easy but not tough either. Maybe I should switch to Samsung. My dad's Samsung is such a mystery. But phones being so high-tech nowadays, I guess we really do need to know what we are pressing or clicking to get the functions working, so yeah, should be quite safe. And yeah, I want a new phone. :(

309-tales of a technophobe

Intro: You're in for a long read...


The first time I saw this particular promo poster, I questioned, "Why 309 ya? Is it like 4400 (the series)? Did they get lost somewhere too? Or maybe it is a date? 30th September? Is it a code?"

I very much later found out that it was actually 300. The extra splash of blood, which was a feature in this movie, made it look like 309. And it is about the ancient Greek world which is something I like to watch because I know oh-so-little about this part of history. And Brad Pitt made it look so glorious in Troy. I was just wondering how accurate these movies were. Anyways, I got the movie from Jiawei and was ready to watch it. Or was I?

I was craving for a movie. Any movie. Just to spend an hour or two staring at my laptop, not necessarily paying attention and comprehending whatever efforts that has been poured into the making of a movie. I wanted to Crunchyroll a Korean movie; probably a funny one with a really cute guy. No luck. Why is it loading so slow today? Leave it on for a while. OK. Something else in the meantime. Is my Grey's Anatomy 3 Epi 1 done? Nope. 80%. Aiyo... Looks like I'll have to settle for bloodbath 300. This is like a last resort thing. I wasn't in the mood for the Spartan's killing spirit. I was planning to keep this movie till when I really need the spirit to do-or-die. Then somehow my media player won't play it. Ar!! Why! ROar! I really want to watch a movie! Now I have even passed my nap time! Never mind- chillax. Use Gom. Ar!! Compatibility issues! ROar ROar!

I asked my housemate if she had any movies for me to watch. She had one Korean one which is superbly funny and has a cute guy in it. The BIG problem was they were speaking Korean and the subtitles were in Chinese. Ar! Why didn't I pay attention in Mandarin classes! Ar!! Then seeing my flustered face, she offered some old movies. I picked one which was still OK.... It was Casanova. I seriously don't know since when this show existed. Then, when I tried to play it, the player cannot read it because it is too scratched! My laptop actually told me that the cd is either too scratched or is dirty. Since when did laptops do that? Even my 3M fibre cloth thing couldn't help. I'm doomed.

*dialled Jiawei's number* "Dear! Why cannot watch?! Stress! Help!"

Upon Jiawei's advice, I downloaded another player will most probably play this file. It is taking too long. OK. Give up. Technophobes usually do this when the second available option fails. To nap it is.

When I woke up, I found that the file which I have been downloading for so long was not really an installable file... Not that I know what I'm talking about. It just doesn't work, OK? Delete button is the only option for you now, you sorry little waste of space! I just don't like my desktop to be so cluttered... :D

Then I thought, it is OK. My Korean movie should be done by now. Oh yeah, it is. I cooked my new found favourite egg noodle (healthier than Maggi, I suppose, because I'm on a Maggi strike [because they wouldn't come to my exhibition]) and made my teh-O panas and settled down to watch. I managed to watch the first 2 minutes of silence and whispering and then it jammed when the lead actor was appearing. Ar!! ROar! Why! I just really wanted to watch a movie!

*dialled Jiawei's number* "Opah! Help! Everything just won't work!"

After Jiawei helped me calm down, I decided to abandon the whatever player and take matters into my own hands. Download a new Gom (of course Jiawei suggested this too). Finally, after a few minutes, it worked!

*dialled Jiawei's number* "Opah! Can redi! Can watch redi! I graduated!"

Jiawei said he was proud of me and is happy to see that I have this spirit. Because then he wouldn't have to be on call to help me solve my techno-probs all the time. Well, not like he was studying or anything at the moment. It is my right, right?

Anyways, finally getting to watch 300 was like this glory you feel after you win a war. Gosh, these people were harsh on their kids. The people of Sparta were all good looking. I know, I know, they discard the not-so-good babies but everyone looked good. The men looked like Brad Pitts in Troy and the women had serious curves. Then when King Leonidas decided to bring some 300 men to "take a stroll, stretch their legs" and sort of secretly defend Sparta against one million Persians, they looked like 300 Brad Pitts in Troy taking strolls and stretching legs. Did I mention that I just wanted to watch a movie to stare at the pc for an hour or two without paying attention?

As I was about a few minutes into the movie, I suddenly heard someone talking in Korean. Oh, NOW the movie, which jammed earlier, decided to play. What just happened? I really don't know. Sigh. I wish I knew. Hmm. Anyways, to stop the Korean movie for the meantime, I could have just clicked "pause" but I clicked "X". So, there goes Part 1...

One thing I realize was that this 300 movie had a lot of blood. Blood splashing, spurting, dripping. However, I don't see any blood on the ground. Totally CGI I think. Something like when I watch Jiawei play World of Warcraft. The dead people will bleed and then somehow the blood and bones will disappear. Did I miss the housekeeping team? I don't really rationally know what I'm saying. Anyways, I saw that when the Spartans decided to kill the messengers, they stabbed, the blood spurted but when the guys fall into the well, they don't have any wounds or blood stains. Hehe. I know I'm not supposed to look so much into this movie. But I think it was very "yeng" (gaya, stylo mylo) of the Spartans each time they charge forward.

After that movie, it was about time for me to do my laundry because they have been soaking for about 4 hours now. My MSN nick read:
"doing laundry... as usual... my favourite activity of all time.. whoa... woohoo... yay... tres bien..."

Boy, was I washing. For victory! For clean clothes! My two hands against you big pile of laundry! ROar!

Anyways, washing clothes is one of the most hated chore around. After ironing clothes. And washing dishes. I just can't take it anymore! My skin is very sensitive!! ArR! Wear gloves? But the substance inside gloves are the main cause of my finger's sensitivity. No choice. But then, hand-washing clothes gives you a sense of confidence towards the outcome of the clothes later. How many times have you thrown your clothes into the washing machine and have them come out disfigured, discoloured and so crinkled you need to steam them before ironing? This question is not applicable to males.

OK, we have Japanese washing machine nets for the above. I was just consoling myself.

After the laundry, I saw that the Epi 1 of Grey's Anatomy is done! 100%! Whoopie! I'm really into technology now... My first downloaded episode of a series. Cool stuff. I right clicked and there was no "Open with..." Sigh...

"Opah!!"

Technophobe's choice!

With my CNY holidays being numbered, I had to do something interesting to make the most out of it before I head back to boring lectures, crazy assignments, impossible deadlines, terribly early mornings, coffee therapy, maggi meals, the unbeatable KL public transportation (!) and everything unhealthy. Coincidentally, just as I was out looking for what Kluang has to offer for amusement, I chanced upon the Worms 3D PS2 game.

New and improved!

My first reaction was, "So cute!" If I didn't remember wrongly, quite some years back, either David or Gary was very into this game (which was most probably 2D at that time) and my reaction at that time was also, "So cute!"


Nostalgia got the better of me and I decided to buy it and have a go at it for the first time(Of course, as you may have guessed, I actually did the Tutorial first and became a laughing stock). OMG! I just found my favourite game! I'm going to get the PC version too(if there is one)! A while ago, I thought The Sims 2 was one of the more interesting games for girls. But you don't hear me talk about The Sims anymore now do you? It was just a phase. I don't think I'm very good at keeping track of other people's bladder. Sorry, poor Sims who peed in his pants and lost his girlfriend.


However, I do think I'm going to like this game for a long time. I used the Classic Theme and their voices are so adorable. If I hurt myself (which I did many times), my worm will go "Stupid!" I found some pictures(below) from their webby www.worm3d.com to show you how cute they are.


The Worms have very cool(and cute!) weapons this time around. My favourite was the classic Bazooka because its ammo is forever green and I sometimes do not know where to throw the grenades. This one is always a winner.

The Bazooka

The Worms may look so mean but they are actually very cute.


They also have more mobility now, thanks to the very many gadgets such as the Jet Pack, the Parachute, the Teleport and the rope thing (I forgot the name because I haven't mastered its technique). My fave is the Jet Pack of course.

Complete with safety features too.

The worms are also very expressive as in when they are bored, they start checking out their nails. Sometimes they goof around by pulling their eyebrows down to their upper lip to create instant mustache! One of my fave funnies in this game is the "weapon" called Prod.

Prodding

It isn't really a weapon. It doesn't hurt the enemy at all! It is just an index finger thing to poke at your enemy worm
- to move them a little near a landmine
- to push them off a cliff into the sea for instant death
- and to show off your prowess by just poking them. Something like the Skip Rope which also comes with the tag, "You don't even bother me." They just do some skipping to waste their turn to attack.


Naughty, ya! Totally recommended!