Under Where?

Butler's End, Grating Cheese and Expensive Lettuce.

2011-06-29T07:35:00.003+08:00

Year 2. Final week.

Another 4 more days before heading back to KL.

And as I had jinxed in the previous post, this post took an eye-popping, cheese-grating, water-boiling, chicken-frying 3 months to arrive, which is much much worse than the previous post to the previous previous post. And I’ve ran out of words to forward my apologies, but don’t say didn’t try: an apologetic cross hand handshake if you need some.

So, where has all the toothpaste been flowing in the past 3 months? Well, there was an Easter break in April in which I spent most of the days trying to analyse my ceiling and the paint on the wall. I’d also pretty much managed to understand why 4 is the most ideal number of legs a bed should have (mine has 5 though, the more the merrier). More importantly, I noticed somehow that the lettuce no longer costs 88p; dis-deflationary inflation, fancy tax, depleting dinosaur fossil fuel and the apparent fact that we cannot eat the infinite supply of grass by the side of the road ultimately meant that prices have to double eventually.

Easter swiftly passed like a trolley loaded with squirrels, and in comes the exam season sending the “Study! Study! Study!” frenzy crashing through every door in Leamington, Earlsdon, Cannon Park, Canley, Liberty Park, Toll Bar End, Binley, Butler’s End (no, I did not make the last one up) and every single conceivable nook and cranny in UK. And so, like a cherished Bugatti Veyron Louis Vuitton Edition production number 001 that’s parked up in the uncle of all basements and hardly see light and hardly hear chickens, we all nicely parked our limited edition bossoms on benches, cushions, sofas, hardwood, shit-lined grass and pavement trying to understand transmission mechanisms and Harrod-Domar models and Shepard’s Lemme. During the exam period, Facebook had little else going on besides friends reporting on the crowd size in the library. And the occasional FB hijacker posting shameless posts like “I am cute” and gender-bending ones like “I like pines” (note: I switched the vowels so that this post don’t come out first in search engines when people search for those kinda stuff).

And what’s happening right now? I’m still moving things out of the Pentagon into, guess what, PENTAGON 2.0 . nope, I’m not kidding, as I mentioned in the last post, I’m moving few doors down the road and got the same exact room. Yes, the one facing the much dreaded “why can’t you extend the kitchen all the way to the property boundary” garden and railway track. Well, supposedly, I was to get the room twice the size of the pentagon, but then, like how you catch a duck and turn it into London’s best Chinese dish, things changed, and hence the decision. The Pentagon 2.0 isnt much different from its predecessor in terms of shape, but as for the furnishings, its galaxies apart. There’s a few hitches in the 2.0, as it lacked wall mounted shelves, which meant that I gotta figure out where to mount my fluorescent tube lights. The table is also much smaller, which also means a smaller footprint, which means that I don’t think the printer will fit underneath. But on the bright, bright side, its got a queen-sized double bed. Overall, its like parking a Aston Martin V8 in the room; the car will fit, but I’ve only got an ant-sized amount of space to move. And, still considering whether to rename the new room, as there’s plenty of walls to choose from.

That aside, lets do a bit of news. Well, its Wimbledon season here in UK, and while people go to great lengths to try to watch the event live in London, all I did was go to my new house, flick of a button and watcha!! Live on TV. Enthusiasts might compare it to, say, watching the philharmonic orchestra live instead of having it pinch through the miserable 10 watts speaker on your Samsung, but then again, centre court tickets are like a billiardsesamestreet pounds, while pressing a button only costs me 2 seconds. Plus, I can cook noodles and grill chicken and chop expensive lettuce and still cheer for Sharapova when she gains a point.

Also, the 2012 London Olympics is starting to hype up here. All tickets are apparently sold out, which came as a small little disappointment to my gang of Hong Kong friends who intended to stay for the games and cram-lodge at my place. Good luck trying to get them on Ebay. Even with that, I’m still waiting for official Olympics merchandises to flood the sports stores.

On another note, news did report that the country can anticipate a mammoth-scale teacher’s union strike which would affect 5000 schools. The reason behind the strike is textbook-standard: low pay, long hours, pension issues etc. well, looks like its Easter break all over again for the kids.

To end this post, on a more thoughtfully thoughtful note, I occasionally ponder about where this blog is heading to. No, its not about the readership, more of like what’s the underlying idea behind Under Where. I’ve read a couple of successful blogs in the past, and they all share something in common: they have a very concise topic of discussion and target very specific readers. There’s blogs on how to modify your Skyline R34, fancy chess moves, sensual movies, illegal hawker food, latest electronic gadgets you don’t need, crazy shoes you don’t like, houses you cant afford, places you can never reach (I mean the space exploration jargons), every single conceivable things you can possibly lust and desire. Under Where, on the other hand is switching back and forth between living in the UK, to buying headsets that go missing, to analysing sounds that ducks make in the morning, to news that become outdated in the matter of breaths, to pure unadulterated random cack nonsense. Any comments on this perhaps?

That’s all for now. Apologies for the low quality language, its obvious I haven been doing this often enough. Will try to update more often since it’s the holidays, though no guarantee when will the next post arrive. Zing.

How To Choose a Roof.

2011-03-24T07:13:00.000+08:00

End of Term 2. Holidays.

Time certainly flies, and it does so at Mach 3, I presume, given that the post right below is already dated nearly 2 months ago. Well, some things just cannot be said out loud, such as the last line of the previous post: it’s almost exactly, uncannily, coincidentally, humorously close to 2 months. Scary.

Anyways, a quick update on the past 2 months then. As usual, nothing much that’s worth a mention, although it’s safe to say that term 2 is a term filled with, erm, social events. WEEKLY social events, to be precise. There were all sorts of gatherings, from society dinners to house gatherings. Kinda cool term.

It’s also a term filled with work though. Just like the end of term 1, a mad rush to complete 2 tests and a mega essay in a span of 1 week nicely replicated itself just before this holiday too. Who says history doesn’t repeat itself.

Anyways, once again, it’s the HOUSE-HUNTING season. Yep, time for the first-years to look for their own shelter, and for second-years, to decide on a roof made and maintained by strangers or the Uni. Just like, erm, I dunno, Pokémon season(?), you know the season is here when people starts asking you where you gonna land your behind next year. I’ve got mine already. How about you? :)

For those unfamiliar with house-hunting season (yeah, I’m talking to you, you guys who’s roof belong to your parents), I’ll just jingle you through the process. Before looking for a house, of course you have to have your heads counted, you know, confirm how many are going to live in. Well, there’s no tip for choosing the right housemate – it’s not like buying a car or choosing a hat, mind you – though it would be nice to live with someone you know.

Once that’s done, just crash into housing websites or the nearest housing agencies, tell them what you are (5 of us), what you want (a roof, some walls, preferably stones), where you want it (over there) . They’ll come back to you with some pictures and lots of words, but what you really want is to see the houses themselves. Go check it out, make friends with the current tenants, ask (quietly) which room is the best and which is junk, those sorts of things. Some top tippety-tip: count the bathrooms, so that you guys don’t end up collecting queue numbers to take a dump. Anything more than 4 heads and some hair, its best to opt for cribs with 2 bathrooms. Also scan the kitchen and roughly visualise it at peak hour, maximum capacity, everyone’s trying to roast duck, bake cake, squeeze orange and chop banana all at the same time. If your visual turns blue screen, it means that the kitchen might just be a smidge too small for all of you.

Other relatively-unimportantly important things to look out while searching for a cave is to spot the nearest bus stop: you wouldn’t want to take a cab to the bus stop every morning, it’s annoying. And also check if the bus goes directly to uni: if you have to transit, might as well take a cab.

If all’s well, then you’re good to sign the contract and start paying some cash!

Since housing is mentioned, I should update you that THE PENTAGON is doing well. I’ve been doing some spring cleaning in it, and the room now looks, erm, just like it always does.

Some news, and it’s not doing any good in Japan. The tsunami has left a really huge footprint behind, and I can only be thankful that my 2 Japanese friends are doing okay. There’s a donation drive around uni these days, and lets lend these volunteers our support for their continuous effort.

To end this, I was actually planning to do a product review for my next post. But then again, its a long-overdue plan, and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35 has been succeeded by the FZ45 recently; the Sony Ericsson C902 is about a year old now; and the iPod Shuffle is stolen, together with a bunch of other things. Got to figure out something else eventually.

So, a relatively short post for now. Til then, bing.

Mountains, Ketchup and Confusion.

2011-01-19T05:00:00.004+08:00

Week 2. Term 2.

The past 2 weeks didn’t go too well. It was mountain after mountain after mountains of work. Notice the plural I used at the last mountain to hint that more mountains will come after the current ones.

And that’s about the only things I’d like to say about the 2 weeks. Let’s keep it this way; it would be much more pleasant for everyone.

So, back to this blog. Hello, and long timed none seen. And I believe that anyone of intelligent you with half a peanut and some ketchup will notice changes that takes place in this blog once every 2 months. But, if you are nice, you can look at it that it takes me 2 of your power-ranging, money-changing, penny-farthing months to produce enough materials to write this piece of masterfeast out. However, you can be kanye west and say that I’m late for the post again. Your choice, my guess.

Anyway, let’s get the ball smoking and get to today’s topic: Confusion. I’m pretty sure everyone goes through phases of anxiety and confusion. No, not the one when you’re 12 years old. Or maybe 6. Something like that. I’m talking about now, you know, times when the weather forecast tells you that it will be happy and sunny and funny all day, but once you step out, you start looking like some hitchhiker, all drenched and looking miserable as if the whole world owes you something. But can’t blame the forecast though, just like how you can’t blame your ex. Things change over time fast. Really fast. And I’m fast to clarify that the ex thing is just a joke.

But anyway, confusion is a big thing. Even I’m confused too. Not with my own writings, but I mean come on, those guys who used to be introverts, pineapple and disgusting in the horoscope is now bright, orange and Jack Sparrow. Or maybe not.

But regardless, I’m pretty sure the weather is just as confused as I am right now. It’s apparently winter now but the only wintery about this winter is the look on us students face: white, dusty and filled with ink smeared from the previous test. With the occasional rain turning the dust into dirt. And camouflage us nicely with the carpets on 2nd floor. It’s almost as if I’m lying to people every time someone asks me how I am enjoying winter and I reply, “err, broken cheese.”

So what causes confusion? Boredom, for instance. People ask me what’s surfing in my past 2 weeks in uni and I tell them, “nothing much”. Nothing much, honestly. It’s so terribly "nothing much" that while my friend and I were watching some Englishmen building the new science block next door, we asked each other if concrete takes more time to set here or in Asia, and taking into account the temperature, humidity, air pressure, pregnancy period, weight of donkeys........we just wonked it and got into class. Confused.

Sometimes, simple things that are overly simple also confuse us. Apparently the VAT tax has risen again. I can’t confirm that with other goods, but on the bus, single journeys now costs £1.60, while a day pass will demand £3.40 from you. But as you would see, once confusion sets in, an analysis between me and my housemate show that: it would be cheaper to take a single journey if you take a single journey. If you take 2 journeys, it would be cheaper to take 2 single journeys. But if you take 3 journeys, it would not be worth to take 3 single journeys because you are taking 2 single journeys and 1 single journey. 4 journeys will not be worth 4 single journeys, as it would be worth 2 double single journeys, which meant that the day pass is worth 4 single journeys plus 2 double single journeys. We also came up with an equation, that if p is a single journey, and q is a double journey, then p+q=piu. Confused.

In that case, what is the cure for confusion? Well, the only way not to be confused is to be not to be confused. What does this confusing statement means? Leave a comment J

Will stop here, and posting some photos for your own consumption while waiting for the next post to come. Hope it wouldn’t take another 2 months. Zing.

Big Ben. Really Big.

Outside of Harrod's.

Drifting

RM30++ Yong Chow Fried Rice. After conversion, that is.....

p.s. photos taken with the Sony Cybershot, mixed results. Still working on how to upload picture bigger than 5MB from my proper camera. Help somebody?

My House, My PENTAGON?

2010-11-06T18:11:00.007+08:00

End of week 5.

How is it hanging out there? Hope it’s nothing like a cough and things start smelling like bacon. The weather is like the trains on the railway track these days: clouds come, then go, then the next one cometh. And before you know it, you’re soaked.

It was a really busy busy week. Had an assignment, an ongoing assignment, an incoming assignment, and an essay for countdown to New Year. And since the sun set at around 4pm these days, it brings back the memories of working overtime back at home whenever I walk out into the dark in campus. Minus the driving. And the quick stops for supper at the coffee shops.

As mentioned in the previous, yeah, I’ve moved out of campus, and into a proper British housing area, but with lots of students. Think of it as the area surrounding UTAR: like 21 out of 10 houses are rented out to kids that flew ten thousand miles from home, with a couple of angry neighbours slipped in between.

So let me run you through the property first. Gotta 5 rooms; 3 toilets (2 dump, 1 drizzle, all mutually exclusive in their respective cubicles); a kitchen big enough for a Kelisa; a living room that can hold a couple of sharks and enough seating for our, err, jingles, all 5 jingles; stairs steeper than a chicken’s bottom; and a big, utterly useless plot of land known to man as the garden that sits as a constant reminder of why the landlord just didn’t extend the house all the way to the boundaries so that the toilet rolls wouldn’t disintegrate when they roll down the perpendicularly built staircase. But even with all these, one fact remains: that it is indeed a very nice house. Its gotta new cooking hood; washing machine that dries and a drier that washes; great IKEA sofas for 5 gigantic jingles; nice carpets; and the sheer number of locks on the front door that its right up there with Mr Bean’s, and is probably the best display unit on the variety of things you can possibly put up onto a door.

Let’s move on to the rooms then. The house layout is comparable to what you find at home; double storey terrace houses, with 1 room downstairs and the rest vice versa. The ground floor room is the biggest, and though unlikely to be able park a truck in there, it could maybe hold 3 years worth of old newspapers. Or roughly the size of a Hyundai Sonata 2.0. Full spec, not less.

Upstairs, the size of the rooms now can be properly illustrated on a bell-shaped curve. Except that it’s the bell you install onto your bike. Upstairs is where the extreme lies, very much like how a cute little roll of toilet paper sits next to the humungous kitchen wipes. There are 2 proper, rectangular-shaped rooms, both facing the main road, and both occupied by equally rectangular people, I meant bed frames. Ones got a window the size of a, err, small window; the other has got bar stools and a really high table to accommodate the heater underneath. No, it’s not the stools you make when you eat 15 burgers at the nearby pub, ‘tis those high chairs that are upright and designed to create epic proportions of discomfort to your jingles.

Then, on the other spectrum of kee-eee-ring bell, there’s the ‘reasonably sized’ room that will probably park a Smart, provided that the car comes with a sunroof for the driver to escape. But then again, the car will be blocking the room door, so he’ll still have to figure out a way to leave through the ceiling. Or just come in something else. An ironing board, perhaps. Anyway, swaying out of topic, an apologetic salute if you need some. So yeah, it’s a cosy room, almost squarish in size, but has a window that you can hang 3 weeks’ worth of laundry to dry. And still get light into the room. Big.

Last, but not least (in terms of size, of course) is my room. Positioned right in the middle of the bell graph, where metal hits a bigger piece of metal, it betters the rest of the rooms as my friend discovered recently; it’s got more walls than any other parts of the house. 10 to be precise, 5 if you start crying. Part of the chimney goes through my room, hence the few extra walls. And THE PENTAGON sits right at the corner of the upper floor, which is why I can only open the main door and the wardrobe one at a time. Otherwise, it would look like something out of Narnia, and people would start entering my room and walking into my socks. The window is also probably one of the largest, but with such a view out of it, I’d rather move the wardrobe there. My room faces the ultimate representation of extreme garden maintenance, and the railway track, so there’s nothing to surprise me every day, unlike the taekwondo wushu I-P-MAN ducks last year. But at least it’s quiet, and I’m pretty delighted about like. Unlike the heater that is installed right next to my bed that if I max it out at night, I’ll wake up looking like your typical English breakfast; ham&ham.

So there you have it, short post with whimsy ideas and queasy language. Anymore apologies you need, you’d have to YouTube it yourself. This is it, my house, my crib, my grotto, whatever you want to call it. I think I’d call it THE PENTAGON. Or maybe not.

Staircase

My window. See, I'm not lying.....

Kitchen

Main Entrance

Sofa, baby!!

p.s. photos turned out weird on the blog, blame the 3-megapixel limit I'd used so that it would load on blogger. Otherwise, it'd be 12, and no photos will get uploaded.

It's Been Awhile.......

2010-10-25T04:42:00.004+08:00

Week 4 of term 1. Year 2.

Indulging in some micro-blogging again. Seriously seriously got no time for anything. I’m not kidding. The toilet’s no longer got space for any bookshelves. See, I told you.

A bit of updating before I do the big B(Log). I’m now out of the Land of the Ducks. Uni policies insist on doing so for second year, I’m just playing my part. So, no more ducks, but I’ve yet to name this 5-room, 1-bath place. Maybe I’ll just call it 1BATH, like how people like to shriek 1U or something. What do you think? But don’t think it will do, sounds too much like the other uni. Moley-donkey, gotta think of another name. Need more time for that......

Managed to dig out something I punched over the summer holidays. Yeah, I know, that’s why I’m gonna hit you with some numbers: 3 months I left the blog idle, 2 months I’d been on the job (and on the edge of my seat), 4 weeks into the term and I don’t even have 1 minute to type out something proper. Bear with me, I suppose time will tell if more time will come.

Here we go.

“One month into my internship.

One of the many things that I have learnt over the past few weeks on the job is why I seldom hear working people talk about subscribing to the TV movie packages i.e. HBO, Cinemax and StarMovies. Well, it’s not that it costs an elephant to maintain the monthly subscription, nor is there limited rubbish, I mean movies, to kill time with. It’s just that there’s no donkey time to even sit down and watch anything during weekdays, or at least for my part. I used to be a super pinch-me-I-think-I-saw-Jet-Li-at-Petaling-Street crazy fan of movie channels, and a strong believer that the creator of HBO should be awarded Nobel prizes, for the peace they bring when I was kept occupied for the few hours. It’s comforting to know that you have the 3 channels at the mercy of your fingertips, and the sense of security that there’s always something that the next channel could offer once a movie ends (or you could just watch a few ‘behind-the-scenes’ while waiting for the next film to arrive, or make the crucial dash to the washroom, if you know what I mean). But then again, these days, I think I’m losing the urge to sit in front of the ‘box (or to update the term, the ‘panel) on weekdays. Mind you, I still fiddle with the remote control once in a while, but movie channels are usually out of the question.

Which brings to the topic of how some movies can be total rubbish. Even for a short while. Such as “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”, on which I burnt my hour and a half. I thought I could re-live some of those pre-uni times by killing an emptied-slot Saturday afternoon at home, but little did I know I was better off counting sea-shells in the monsoon drain; there won’t be any, but that’s just how bad the movie is. Oh, mind you, the cast is strong, with ex-sexy-bow-tie-and-crocodile-shoe James Bond man, Sean Connery leading the team of, among a few, an invisible man, an invincible man, a vampire, a hybrid, and a, err, policeman. With 2 guns. That will never jam up. Oh, and before I forget, the boatman.

Don’t get me wrong. I used to be a big fan of “The Invisible Man” and “Van Helsing” and “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” books, and notwithstanding, Mr. Bond(s), but to see all of them gather up in this Indiana Jones adventures-que film made me keen to question if the movie line is a bit too saturated. There’s too many big-shot, famous characters that we have watched and read about somewhere else, yet in this movie only played small, almost cameo roles while the focus is largely focused onto a Brit and an American who possesses no superpowers, making them seem less EXTRAORDINARY compared to the rest, if I must. If there’s something to enjoy in this film, it would be the relatively cool graphics they used on some of the characters. Like Dorian Gray for example. The immortal man who never ages, sand-like stuffs start to spew out of him when he gets shot. Or how the Invisible Man, walking around carrying a book of some sort. Yeah, you could say the people at the Fantastic Four franchise did a better job of hiding Jessica Alba, but it’s just as refreshing to see such natural movement to the book as it floats mid-air, but just as organic as someone holding it.

Yet, like how a small piece of gold disappears when thrown onto a pile of shredded paper, the movie is brought down by, you guessed it, the relatively un-cool graphics. The ship was the funniest of them all. A rough estimate with my finger on the screen tells me it’s about as tall as the Statue of Liberty, yet it’s able to sail through the tight, shallow waters of Venice half submerged. Without getting stuck. Amazing. And let’s not forget the car. It is fine that engineers in the past weren’t, let’s say, ‘well informed’ that it’s easier to steer an axle rather than 2, and there wasn’t any thing called the power steering in the past to control 4 front wheels, so let’s call it a day with that and let it be. But to see the car race through a collapsing Venice, without any debris scratching the detailed paint of the uglio-mobile nor any falling on the precious head of the Western policeman, is off the charts in the non-humour humourous scale.

So, my verdict? Its a good movie if you don’t have any pre-installed ideas of vampires, transforming dudes and invisible man stuck in your head. And it’s not that bad too if you don’t mind graphics coded by polar bears using Wordpad (think 2012), then this movie is tailor made for your Saturday afternoons. Otherwise, go watch somewhere else. Like Animal Planet or something.

And oh, yes, I am back at home, where I came from. Just a little story-telling, the night I had to leave London, my flight was delayed by a mise-mise-mise-miserable 2 hours. Airbus, please please hurry up with the A380 deliveries, and if you do, cows will grow less beard so they are less painful to look at. Or that the wine next year will taste better than when Boeing delivers the Dreamliner. Whatever it is, you’ll be blessed for doing good deeds for students and inter-continent travellers, like us. Otherwise, it’s the usual story, and KLIA leads my charts in airport trolley quality. Their flawless design, ergonomic wheels and perfectly-weighed brakes did a great job in keeping my luggage together.

And it also amazed me how strategically-located our airport is, that it slowly creates anticipation as you approach the city by car. You land in the airport and see modern, extravagant world class design. Then you leave the place and it looks like you’re driving in the middle of Borneo, albeit on well-lit, 4-lane highways, and you’d be like thinking whether you landed in KL, Northamptonshire or something. But as you cruise along the highway, you’ll notice the landscape along the road changing slowly. Very slowly. Almost like how some movies focus on one place and let the seasons pass for a few years; rain, leaves, snow, wind, rain, leaves, snow, something like that. Roadside, it starts with trees. Then the houses start to appear. Then advertisement boards. Then condominiums. Then factories. Then more advertisement boards. Then it’s the combination of the few. Then you know you’ve landed spot on when you see the Twin Towers. Amazing. Just amazing.”

That’s all for now. Will end with the movie poster by lugaluda.com. And a picture of the Pagani Zonda Cinque from www.webridestv.com because its a mean-looking machine. Bing.

Paris, STOP Signs and French Taxi Driver.

2010-06-20T07:48:00.005+08:00

Week 7 of exam term.

3 days after the last of my exam papers. And I lost count of the number of times I said that I neglected UnderWhere. No excuse this time, not that I ran out of them, but I rather keep them for some other time.

Think I left this blog idle for more than 2 months already. But even I couldn’t help it, and to say that what I covered this year is a million times harder than what A-Levels had to offer isn’t a pleasing statement at all. But anyhow, let’s update you guys on what’s happened, what’s happening and what happens soon with this micro-blog post again, compiling short stories that were well hidden in my HDD over the past have-little-monkey-idea how many weeks.

So, let this begin.

“Some week in the middle of the holidays.

I lost my sense of time, and have no idea how long I left my blog idle. There are good reasons for it: late night outings, an unforgettable holiday, odd trips to the library, stuff like that. I know, I’m full of excuses, but I can’t help it either.

And its even more odd now that I am blogging from the library. Mind you, I didn’t walk 10000 miles here just to write a handful of nonsensical sentences with a touch of humour and sarcasm, just taking a break. From my work. And the crazy mother and kid sitting next to me.

Ok, enough of the sad stories, and lets blog.

The final day of the term was epic, and when I say epic, I really mean EPIC. Held in Copper’s Room that night was Foam Party. I have little idea what was that, hence I didn’t get the tickets for it. My bunch of friends did, and little did they know they were about to burn 5 pounds into thin ash, but more on that later.

So, the plan was that, I join them for pre-drinks to the party at about 9pm, and as they head to the party, I grab one of my friend’s guitar and head back to the land of the ducks. Then I sit and wait and once they are sick of the foam, we head down to Coventry for another round of, err, social event.

So far so good, and I headed to their place for some drinks. Expectedly, soon, everyone started saying weird stuffs, and their faces were as red as STOP signs. Unexpectedly though, one of the red-faced guys decided to get more drinks, drinks that can only be bought at the counter, not off the shelf. Fast forward the story by an hour, and all you see by the end of the day are people answering the public phone, people looking for non-existent keys and people who couldn’t walk in a straight line. Surprisingly, perhaps too pre-occupied with the guitar, I manage to stay in shape throughout the “event”, only to act as THE emergency worker of the night, keeping my friends off the streets and back to their room. Didn’t go home with the guitar though.

Since then, its night after night of gatherings with my future housemates, and the earliest I manage to get back to the land of herons was at 1....am. I also discovered that sunrises in the Duck’s Pandora can be breathtaking, as I manage to see them on 3 consecutive days, one of them when I was on my way back from a whole night of cheesy jokes. Breathtaking it really was.

And then there was a trip to a job fair in London, where I suggested we wear formal. They chose to think that I was making some donkey jokes, and we ended up being the only people at the fair not wearing formal. But lets not talk about this now, I know I don’t want to.

Ok, now for some news. Remember the time when you read about the public transport strike in Paris a few weeks ago? I can tell you now, it was called off. Cos the French taxi driver told me so. “No, no strike, all transport still go....” or something like that, he said. And that’s all I have to say about my trip to Paris. No, I’m not kidding. Let’s put it this way. Imagine, you are gracefully riding on a horse, galloping across the Grand Canyon with maximum bounce and at speed of a, err, horse. Then imagine, that the horse is a wooden one, and there’s no padding between the horse and your big brass buns, and the wooden piece of junk is bouncing so hard your nose just became your eyes and your kidney stones fell out through your ears. That was how my trip went. We massively overspent until all that’s left in our wallets were dust and some more dust.”

So, yeah, the holidays. So much happened within that 5 weeks that if I have to tell them to you over coffee, we’d be better off drinking in Costa Rica just in case we run out of beans. But I’ll try to stay within the 25,000-word limit.

So, when we were not in Paris or London, we did picnic around the campus area, one of the more epic one was set in front of my friend’s place, where we placed the mat down and suddenly, weird stuffs like a pot of soup, bananas and Econs books (!) started appearing out of nowhere. We’d then took it a step further, bringing the party all the way to probably the nicest place in Uni : Heronbank. Good weather, great view of the lake and even more swans and ducks. Epic.”

Then, the “exam” term began. I name it the exam term for something that even I found interesting: there were almost zero classes altogether in this term, which is the total opposite from home, where classes increases by the factor of three thousand and twenty-twelve as the world inches closer to examinations. A fresh approach, and one which I wouldn’t expect to happen at home anytime soon, for cutting classes meant cutting attendance as well. Moving on:

“Week 1 of term 3. The exam term.

Good to hear that we have virtually zero classes, that equals to more time to do the right thing. Or maybe not.......”

So what happened? That you’ll have to wait til the next post (or else the 25,000-word post will become a health hazard).

And now that summer holidays officially begin, and I have a few more weeks before leaving for home, allow me to briefly brief you on what to expect from the coming posts. There’s going to be a handful of full product reviews, stuffs that I lived with for the past 9 months. Also, hopefully, there will be some updates in the car and business industry (I hardly touched a car magazine in the past 4 months and recently stopped my Economist subscription, but will try my best not to disappoint). And to end this post, I will continue my effort to put up more photos onto this photo-non-intuitive blog.

Until then, let’s look forward to a better tomorrow.

From top: at Leamington Spa, a town near campus: Paris trip, including the Eiffel Tower, Arc De Triumph and The Lourve

Kungfu Panda, Useless Machines and Polo Candy

2010-03-17T06:10:00.003+08:00

Monday of week 10.

Coz I don’t like them make the panda do kungfu.

That’s what my friend said when I told her about Kungfu Panda. Cool.

Aside from that, things had gone fairly okay. Forgive me for the 2-week break. I think its 2 weeks, but doesn’t seem to matter much, when week 10 is the last week before the 5-week Easter holidays begin.

Not much going on as well in the past 2 weeks. Well, the weather seemed to have changed for the better. It’s been very sunny these days, and the sun only leaving us at about 6pm, which is nice, because nobody likes a jog in the dark at 4°C. Walking to Tesco had also been a much more pleasant journey with the light.

Shopping in there though, was not very pleasant, as usual. But things took a turn for the worse last Wednesday. I was in a hurry that particular afternoon, so I only got about half the stuff I wanted to buy initially. Seeing that the queue at the cashier was short (which does not happen very frequently in this corner of the Earth), I made a run for it, only to be stopped by a staff, who asked me to use the self check out machine. Just to let you know, a self checkout machine is a cashier without a cashier in it. You scan the barcodes yourself, pack the stuff yourself, make the payment yourself and get out of there. Unfortunately, I belong to the group of sensible beings who never trust these digital stuffs, because they are bound to fail. Which it did. So did the rest of the staff in the store.

I did tell Ms Bossy that I prefer to queue. She said it would be quicker to use the dumb machine. I said I have all the time in the world to queue. She insists on me using that shitbox. Okay, very well, I’ll give it a try. So I loaded the stuff onto the counter top and started to scan the things. My first packet of instant noodles went well. The second didn’t, and already I was cursing. So I asked for assistance. Then Ms Constipated came to my counter, fiddle with her keys and my noodles, and it scanned. My third one again refused to show up on that piece of donkey machine, and this time Ms Constipated came back, and said “It wouldn’t scan if you put too many things on the counter.” Okay, got it, and it would have been nice if you told me earlier, and got rid of that pissed-off expression of yours. Hence the name. She looked more annoyed than my neighbour’s dog when my slippers went over the fence back at home. I think she probably found this young man a really big dumbo for not knowing how to operate the electronic elephant dump, but then again, Ms Constipated, do you know the difference between the Cournot and Bertrand model, and how is it related Kreps-Scheinkman theory? If not, then what are you fussing about? There’s bound to be something that’s beyond one’s knowledge, and it is unfortunate that today, I am stuck with this piece of junk appliance. Get yourself transferred to the cold storage department if you only want to show off that cold look and don’t intend to help out desperate customers who are forced to face the chicken feed machine in the store, like myself. And in the end, it did take me longer to get out of there compared to just queuing at the cashier. So much for customer service.

This led me to recall if there’s any of these ciplak machines back in Tesco Mutiara Damansara. And if I’m not wrong, there’s NONE. And I came up with a few reasons for these useless scanners to just remain in this part of the world. Firstly, the cashiers in KL would pack up your shoppings into plastic bags for you, so already it’s an advantage, or should I say, more pleasurable to let them do the job while you are busy searching for coins. Then, the queues in Mutiara are almost always 4 trolleys long at most, and there are a handful of express counters that cater for rushing customers. Again, no reason to employ those orangutan machines. But more importantly, and this why I think those plastic machines would be left to rot if installed in Mutiara, is that problems would be solved quicker with cashier around than otherwise. She scans an item, you find it too expensive and don’t want it anymore, she says no, cant do, you look at her with the George Clooney stare, she shouts for some dude who comes running with some keys, beep-boop-beep and back to business. If you, at the self checkout thing, scanned something you didn’t want, and the customer service guy is out for lunch, you might as well drown yourself with Pepsi if you insist on not buying it. And patience, I presume, is never KLite shoppers’ forte.

Ok, enough ranting. Apologies for that if you need some. Lets do some news. Toyota seemed to have disappeared from the automotive radar. This brake (or the lack of it) issue really reduced their public image to a piece of toilet roll, and no amount of bowing seemed to make things better. Really feel sorry for them. BUT, BUT, yo, chaps and chapess at Toyota, more reason for you to launch that FT-86 as soon as possible, cos you can be sure that for those who buy this car, braking is definitely not an issue. They’ll probably be modified and installed with Brembos the size of dinner plates and braided steel brake lines and floor mounted paddles, but, you get my point. It’ll sell.

GM, cheekily, had also had their own set of recalls, probably to check on the brakes too. No, no, just joking. Their recall centers on some faulty power steering. Which, if you give it a good thought, seems much more dangerous than the thing in Toyota. Tell me which is worse: not being able to slow down for a tree, but still able to put it in neutral to regain braking and steer away? OR braking hard, tyres smoking, but not being able to steer away from it? I can’t tell what’s in your head, but seems to me that if you can’t steer, you can’t drive.

Then there’s a new kid in the block of billionaires. A new kid who just moved in and blew the pants off the neighborhood. Haha, no, not really. He seemed more like the quiet kid on the block who keeps running after the ball and one day disappears with it and never returns. Whatever, cheers to Carlos Slim, richest chap in the world, and current world record holder of the most number of Zeros in his bank account and financial portfolio. 9 of them, if you must. He’s worth US$53.5 billion, according to Forbes, and this made me wonder, if he’s on a shopping spree, this is probably what he could afford. He could get about 40,000 Bugatti Veyrons, which is about ten times more than what’s produced. He could build 2 Burj Khalifa side by side with change to spare to build some waterfalls. He could buy every single thing that Lithuania produces in a year by matching their GDP. Or he could buy 53 billion tubes of Polo, and give each person on the planet 7 of them, and keep 10 for himself.

So, I guess that’s all for this post. And nope, I’m not going back to KL for Easters. Will try to update more frequently, now that the holidays are coming. And to end this, here’s a pic that I’d got from EVO.co.uk of the car that might potentially save Toyota from trouble: the FT-86. See ya.

How Not To Reply an Email

2010-03-02T04:48:00.001+08:00

Right into week 8.

Once again, a fistful of reasons for the delays. My birthday bash, Chinese New Year, tests, essays, economics summit, the list goes on. And more unfortunate is that I cant tell you all about it in this post. Or at least not yet.

‘Tis gonna be a short post this time (I’ve got 2 essays and a test coming up), so just to keep you faithful readers occupied for the time being, here’s a guide on HOW NOT TO REPLY AN EMAIL. Below are 2 emails that I’ve sent out so far regarding my group project. Mind you, I didn’t change the names in the email to protect any image or something, I really sent them out this way, although her name is obviously not Marion. And apologies to Sniff Petrol, but I just can’t get enough of the nickels thing.

First email is a reply to my friend regarding a group meeting:

Tickle my nickels, the CDA project art thou come.

Small wonder today the weather ain’t so Gary, the ducks snorting their own turd and people fumbling around fully feathered just as heavily as they are shedding it. oyster sauce and water chestnut knows no fear in this muddy day. So does the park bench and the diving birds.

Big wonder, thou, is our project. great biscuits of suggestions, thought there aint masterminds anymore in the world of Elizabeths and Roxette. Just one piece to point out: maybe we should get our squeakies together one day to skim through the work before assigning the cake to each person? A little brainstorming and Ninja Turtle would do no harm.

Aside from that, well done, Marion, and looking forward to everything the world has to offer.

Gary

Second email (so far) is to ask if she sent me the right thing, because I have little to no idea what was in my inbox:

Fundle my candle,

Great weather today, Marion. Not too cold to freeze the squiggles, and not too warm to bake the nickels. Same can’t be squirmed of the industrial trial today. The panting peacock just had to wiggle 2600 weasels when all number housewives could squeak an amoeba just under 10000 to make some biscuits. Little known, I fancy it. As effective as getting the kangaroos to stop breathing to reduce CO2 by 35%; sounds like monkey Valentine, but give it a few clockers, and then they stop breathing for good. Whoopee.

Back to today’s oysters. Just curiosity for peanuts, I wonder if you saw what you just squirrel-mailed me? Well, 12 jars of “which provided at.......” and “how much pay to s......” Good cookies, I reckon, but overdone to the pencil. Almost like calling him Alexander the Third......from left. Sigh, I’ll have to sausage up at 7 tomorrow and start the Sta-tallatta in the house of books.

Anyways, good work once again Marion, and looking forward to the next snuggle up. Thought I have no half watermelon when will it be.

Gary

Well, this is it for this time, on HOW NOT TO REPLY AN EMAIL.

Movie Review: The Warlords and 2012

2010-02-08T05:28:00.005+08:00

End of week 4.

Sheer carelessness and overconfidence once again left me all alone to spend my weekends with the mallards and avian. I’d gone through Friday without giving a thought at all that my friends would be out of campus for the weekends. Then on Saturday, I discovered some facts and a lot more. A friend went to London, some went to Sheffield, a few went to watch football, some went for rugby, and the rest went to watch footballers play rugby.

So, with the Anas platyrhynchos still scouring for grass and weed outside, I decided to catch up with some movies. After rummaging here and there, I found two films that would suit the cold and not so quiet night (my flatmate decided to turn the kitchen next door into ZoukOut ) : The Warlords and 2012.

So, lets begin with The Warlords, or “Tau Ming Chong” in Cantonese. Chinese war movie about some dynasties in the past (Wiki says Qing, wont doubt them), starring the cool Jet Li, the cooler Takeshi Kaneshiro and the, err, quite cool Andy Lau, and the subtly pretty Xu JingLei. Its about a soldier who left the military after being betrayed by the institution, leaving 5000 of his dudes dead on battlefield. Then he joined some thugs and advised them to join the army, so that they can be bigger thugs. He then got betrayed by the institution yet again, and almost everyone relevant in the movie dies in the end. Winner of, amongst the many, Best Film and Best Actor award. Mind you, they had 2 nominations for best actor. That’s how good the movie was. Until I watched it.

Let’s talk about the good sides first, as I don’t want to give you the negative image as yet. The war and fighting scenes were excellent, and the cinematography used was unusual compared to other war epics such as Red Cliff (1&2). The usual SS (stab and slit) was present, with the lead actors killing their way to victory. But what caught my eye was the way the director focuses more on the ‘unknown’ soldiers, rather than just making the lead actors look invincible. Peter Chan, the man behind the scenes, had made the side casts feel more integrated into the plot, rather than just, well, side casts. Whereas in Red Cliff, the generals and ministers didn’t even bother about the small ones. Here, I like the scene where Andy Lau begs for food from the ministers, and subsequently distributing the buns to his people. Doesn’t seem like much, but not often seen on other movies either.

Also, I liked the thought-provoking idea of a man with his principles. Jet Li strongly believed that all the villagers should be left untouched, while all soldiers must be killed. Again, doesn’t sound like much, until you see Andy being chained to the pillars while screaming not to kill the enemies who surrendered. Jet insists that if they keep the enemies alive, his soldiers will have to share the food with the other useless squirrels, while Andy thought it was inhumane to kill them because they surrendered. But Jet then said that, if they chose to be in a war, they chose to kill, and be-killed, so to speak. Both sounded logical and sensible at the same time. And that really made me wonder, if that happens to some pitiful chap in real life, how on earth is he going to solve it.

The negative parts (though not as negative as the next review) is just my opinion on how to make this movie better. And all I’d like to say is: the plot is too thin. Even kids with an IQ of -24 can tell that in the end, who dies and who doesn’t. The idea of betrayal is just too obvious. Then, there isn’t much depth in the dialogues, not like in Red Cliff, where the generals talk over coffee, or tea, on the strategies to attack the opponents and they draw it on maps and this makes you think if its viable or not. Here, it’s just showing the old, wrinkly imperial people BS-ing with Jet and Andy, and that’s really annoying when you start to see those antique beings as people sitting behind cashiers and registers. You know what I mean, thinking that you are a yob, a nutter who can’t speak English, an idiot who has to pack your own groceries, those sort of stuff.

And the budget. US$40 million. Microscopic by American standards, and especially the next movie. But the relatively big budget is not reflective of some core parts of the movie: to make the movie look good. Look at Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, with only US$15 million to play with, and they make people fly and mixing subtle soft focus and deep colour contrast with intense er-hu music. And Red Cliff: US$80 million, which in coins will fill up my whole flat with change to spare, and once again, spotted with soft, slow close-ups on the magnificent Lin ChiLin. And lets not forget the part where the camera chases the pigeon at the end of Part 1, and you can indulge yourself at the immense detailing of each and every vessel of the enemies. Here in Warlord? The only entertainment the lead actors get are some cheap looking opera at a run-down restaurant. No ladies in silk dancing away, no talented old lady singing and playing the er-hu. Which is the total opposite of The Banquet: undisclosed budget, but in SD format, looks as vivid as HD, and hence freaking beautiful to watch.

All in all, it left me a little disappointed, though I had high expectations for it. But a good, thought-provoking movie altogether, which can’t be said for the next review.

2012. Which in my language, would probably mean “I have really low expectations for it, and the good thing is, it was fulfilled.” And I’m forced to tell you all the backside, opps, bad side to it first because you’ll have to give me some time to think about something that hasn’t gone wrong with it.

First, the graphics. I thought it was forgivable, since I was watching it in Flash. Then I saw the earthquakes and splitting roads and I thought they made the movie with Microsoft Paint. The limo was stupid, the drive through the collapsing glass building was stupid, the Bentley spinning on the ice when it leaped off the plane was stupid, and the arcs were incredibly stupid. When the limo made the jump, the passengers at the back felt nothing. Lincoln suspension technology at its best? My foot. Then it crashed into the glass building, and while in there, the building seemed to stop collapsing. And there were no one in there, no tables, no chairs, just some paper. Maybe they drove through the income tax department? And the Bentley defied the laws of physics, and created its own, that is “if thy moving object falls on ice at the speed of sound, thy shall spin one round and stop, and not damage any bumpers or destroy any wheels in the process.” Hilarious. And finally the arcs, and I said finally because I won’t go any deeper with the graphics or I will go on for months, is that it left the Tibetian mountains through a hole less than the quarter of the height of the hills. And crashed into Everest looking about half the height of it. Did the water that entered inflated it?

And then there’s the sheer un-common sense of some things. In 3 years, Mr President Obama will turn from a 40-ish year man with 6 packs and white teeth, to a 70-year-old with alarmingly receding hairline and a water bed under his shirt in the movie. Doesn’t make any sense at all to me. I mean, if they want to make it as real as possible, then go all the way. And his daughter really grew up in the 3 years.

Then there’s the free riding problem. Yuri and the Gang paid a billion Euros per pax for a cruise round the Everest Sea (huh?) but those Chinese builders and a few thousand more dudes (where did they came from? How did they know about the secret project?) that were hanging around the dock could board for free. Talk about first come, last serve. Like Nando’s in Birmingham.

There’s also the cleverness of Dr Satyam, the dude who lives right above the most unstable part of the planet, containing active plutocarbohydranikejenifferpotatosmiroffbananapinkpanther matter which would cause earthquakes and sinking land mass. And is more worried about the safety of Americans than his family above. AND whose house is the only place on earth not hit by an earthquake. But a tsunami. Crikey. And did you notice him and few thousand people trekking as the arcs were closing? Guess where they’re going? You’re right, I have no idea either.

But there’s some wit to the movie, I suppose. Like how Professor Adrian said, “This room could fit 10” when he was butler-ed to his cabin aboard the, I dunno, HMS INTERNATIONALLE FREAKING EXPENSIVE CRUISE TRIP, but didn’t tell the captain so, and instead just asked so that those Chinese engineers be invited to the loading deck. He’s smart, I can tell, cos if David Hasselhoff landed in his room, he’d have to spend the night picking up burgers from the carpet.

Dr Gordon was a genius too. ‘The Breast Guy’ at day, the ‘Pilot who only had an hour of lessons and then could fly the largest Russian airplane’ dude by night. Speechless.

Also, I suppose these guys are all used to the cold, as they could just walk in the freezing cold in Tibet wearing nothing but a coat for Curtis, Bermuda shorts for Dr Gordon, t-shirt and some fancy hat for the kids, sleazy Tamara, Yuri’s chick wearing her dog and Yuri himself, forever in a coat and tie, whether he’s waiting for the landing gear to repair itself, or when he’s launching his kids into the air.

So, what was enjoyable in the movie? Well, I found this movie quite hilarious, actually. Like the guy who was supposed to be Arnold Schweazzehaihfiafiger quite funny, desperately copying his accent. Or how the software on the arc was not written in Chinese, given that those guys built the thing. Or how is it ever possible that even after the worse volcano eruptions the world has ever seen, the skies were still as clear as Lithuania. When scientists used to say that dinosaurs were possibly killed because the blanket of ashes stuffed their noses and turned them into what’s known today as Shell V-Power. AND, AND, how a stupid power drill can stop a potential 10 tonnes of arc door from closing. I mean, did you see the size of the gears where Gordon became minced meat? They were huge!

I could go on and on with this also, but just one question before I end this post. Notice that the Chinese Premier was nowhere to be seen? I dunno, maybe I just overlooked. But assuming that he wasn’t there, could it be that he was already launched into outer space with a Chinese-made space shuttle and the Taikonaut at the wheel together with the whole parliament and their families? And leave the Americans and the stupid rich people to take the plane and transit and transit again and queue up to get into arcs with the waterproof properties of a copy of The Star? I mean, this is what people should be thinking of, not “Oh, in the future only China can save the world, they have the capabilities” and stuff like that.

Long post, apologies for that if you want some. Take all the time you need in this world to read it.

Of Toyotas, Tesco and Roll-Overs

2010-02-01T05:03:00.003+08:00

End of week 3.

Blogging can sometimes be such an arduous task. At times, so much happens in a week that it would take more than 1000 words, or even 1500 words to describe. There’s meetings on Monday, meet ups on Wednesday, Hustle on Friday and a weekend in Birmingham or something.

And then there are times where nothing faintly spectacular happened at all. Such as this week. So ordinary and mundane beyond words. And so ridiculously typical.

The weather was as usual- cold but with this gloomy “I’d like to rain, but only when you walk out without an umbrella” look. The ducks were as usual- noisy and leaving trails of undigested grass everywhere. Classes were as usual- some funny lecturers, some not so funny. Work was also as usual- a pile of them.

My kitchen was as usual- messy on Tuesdays and Thursdays, squeaky clean on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Tesco was as usual- long queues, long wait, and long walk. The Financial Times was as usual- ban big bonuses, something about Cadbury, and Gordon Brown.

It wasn’t the worse week, but it was bad enough to deserve a blogging.

It was also as usual, with people who only comment on something just by looking at it from a single perspective. Its like saying Jay Chou is as normal as my week and as handsome as a teapot, and then when you watch him live, POW!! He’s a genius, a man brimming with talent, a soul made of G sharps and A minors.

What I’m referring to is the recent recall made by Toyota on their cars to replace the floor mats. It seems that those mats, if not properly fitted, would jam the oil pedal wide open. While that sounds great for drifting, I suppose the old uncles and aunties and 401(K) recipients wouldn’t have found that funny. But leave that aside for a moment. What caught my attention were the comments made that this mass recall would damage Toyota’s outstanding reputation in their owners’ head. Err, I’m not sure about that statement though.....

Lets run through a bit of history, and go back in time when some of the new Ford SUVs left the factory, all gleaming and shiny, with its new found ability: to roll over at highway speeds. Like how ducks naturally leave their solids all over the place, the new Explorers, for some reason would turn turtle. And its not just a handful of them that were written off and hit the scrap yard: there were more than 160 cases. And what did Ford did to mend things back? I have no idea honestly, but Firestone did receive a record fine for not dealing with the issue properly. This made news and many lawsuits over the years, and then what? People are still buying Explorers until today. So my question is, if the absence of proper handling of the issue and presence of rollovers and big news done little to damage Ford’s image, then what is that small recall gonna do to Toyota and their sales charts?

I suppose it would do the sales charts even better.

It shows that Toyota cares for their customers. Though the young dudes would fancy the idea of a wide open throttle along the LDP, Toyota is now giving them the option to lift off the oil and onto the brakes in case they’re heading for the McDonalds drive-thru at the speed of light. It shows that Toyota is committed to making good, safe cars and ensure (or at least try) that their customers live long enough to return to their showrooms for another Camry. And this is the most a customer can ask from a firm.

US ’08 Mercedes GLs models have shiny, distracting dashboards. Audi Q7s (used to) have some fancy LED dash displays that when you put on a polarised sunglasses, you wouldn’t know how far you have travelled. And the Ford Escape that Car and Driver tested left the factory with rattly roof racks. But did any of them recalled their GLs and Q7s and Escapes for a replacement, or at least a repair? Nought.

Toyota, on the other hand, did recall their cars in the past a handful of times. For instance, when their Lexus cars had, for a short period of time, brake lights with a mind of their own. The market did come up with similar predictions, that the recall would in turn destroy the marquee’s image. But after the recall, a survey found that owners were indeed happy that Lexus was responsible enough to stand up for their faults, and naturally their brand confidence had grown over the years.

Thus, only time will tell if this mass recall would poke a hole through their image balloon, but I reckon Toyota customers would appreciate this even more. And if they can escape this recall unscathed, it will be a very big eye opener to both customers and other makers alike. Customers can be sure that their Toyota would not leave the factory with any major defects, while making them think if other car makers would go to such lengths for the same reason.

So, this is it, this week’s post. Business as usual tomorrow onwards.

The (EPIC?) Post

2010-01-24T07:29:00.001+08:00

End of week 2.

Ok, I know my epic post is overdue. Big time overdue. And I also have to cancel it, due to many, many reasons. (Time constraints, time constraints and time constraints. Your choice) I’m sure you would be asking, “2 month overdue and you blame it on time constraint. How ironic, or the lack thereof.” Yes, yes, my apologies, for keeping you at the edge of your seat with the previous post, and then making you fall off when the post wouldn’t arrive until two months later.

But fear not, as I’ll replace the epic post with a less epic one, but is no less epic than the originally-planned epic one (Huh?). Due to time constraints, again, I’m unable to type the whole post from scratch. Instead, I’m dipping my toes into micro-blogging, in which I would make a compilation of blogs written on my Nokia in the past few weeks to tell you what has happened. (My Nokia keypad is 5mm wide, how micro is that!!). What I’ll do is just copy all the stuff from my QuickOffice over to Word, and see what would it turn out to be. So, let’s go!

12th December 2009. At Coventry train station, while waiting for my ride to London to arrive:

“So, I’m waiting at Coventry station. Can’t wait to get into my MH flight tomorrow, although I still have to get to London before I could start thinking of the flight back home. Didn’t know that some chocolates and t-shirts and notes can weigh this much. Think I better not put the laptop and the 1kg Cadbury together in the bag pack, or I’ll be 3 inches shorter by the end of the day. Not many people on this side of the platform. Long day ahead, I can foresee.”

Then I realised I got on the wrong platform. (Thanks Captain Platform, your info is so accurate you can start writing history text books. In Huttese). Got into the right train later on and left at 1pm. In the train:

“I wonder if all these horses and sheep and cows would be bothered by these trains passing by every few minutes. Will the noise stress out these animals, and make them skinnier and produce less milk? If so, please put them far away from these rail tracks. Prices of meat here is already expensive enough, the economy cannot afford anymore skinny and stressed animals.”

Got to London at about 3pm, and had to rush to my friend’s place, before rushing again to the shopping district in Sloan Square to collect something. While on my way back, in the Tube:

“Porsche, Porsche, Aston, Porsche, Jaguar, Bentley, Ferrari, Porsche, had never seen so many Porsches in a single night before. It’s as if the national car here is Porsche, like how we see Protons all over the place at home. I guess Rolls-Royces have some veto power or something around here, because only the Phantom can stop at the side of the road, while others cant. And there goes another Porsche.”

The next morning, had to rush for my 11am flight. At Heathrow, while waiting for boarding:

“No wi-fi in Terminal 4. But that’s not going to dampen my mood for the 13-hour flight home.”

After getting onto the plane, Mr Pilot said that some of the luggage was stuffed into the wrong plane, and the flight would be delayed. But don’t worry, because “a lighter plane can fly at a higher altitude, so this flight would only take 11 hours.”

It was touchdown 11 hours later, at 7am local time, and naturally, I wouldn’t have time to blog about anything. Heck, I didn’t even have time to meet up with my friends, only knocking on Kang’s door one evening when I happened to be around the area.

I spent a few days in Singapore, crashing Orchard Road, Ion and Zouk. Nothing much there, except that clubbing there seemed really safe, and a Visa can do wonders over there down south.

In KL, it was the usual: karaoke, movies, and eating. And spending more time at home.

2 and a half weeks later, and I’m back in London. My friend came late to pick me up in Paddington Station (I took the Heathrow express) and I was so worried that I would be spending the night there.

I went back to the home of the ducks the next day, only to return to London a week later when I was informed of a relative’s arrival there. Got there in no time, and had a great time walking around parts of London that I have not been too. But the more exciting part came the next day, when the worse-in-30-years snow fell upon London. Instincts told me to leave for Euston early, and fair enough, I suppose I caught the last train leaving the city that day, at 2pm. As the train slowly chucked northwards, the snow got thicker and thicker. And back at home, when I checked the weather forecast, 2 airports in London were totally closed, and most flights in Heathrow were cancelled. I was this close, this close to Facebook-ing in the train station throughout the night.

Then, the last micro blog came last week, when I met up with a friend in a restaurant in campus. While waiting for him:

“I’m now in one of the university’s most expensive restaurant. Yet I still have to self order. It does feel weird though, as I am paying more than RM50 per meal, and I still have to queue up to have my order taken. I mean, lets think of it, in a coffee shop back home, even if my order only costs RM1 (like what, 20 pence?) there will be a dude who comes over to take my order.

Apart from that, things had been going well so far. I spent the whole morning getting ready for a non-existant class, only to end up reading the newspaper in the library. Lecture was good too, the lecturer interesting and nonetheless keen to lecture(?)”

So, that was it. 2 months. 3 countries. And some micro blogging, which I don’t even know whether I’m using the right term. Anyway, apologies for the epic thing, and this somewhat lower-than-usual quality of blog, and as I’m still not used to uploading photos, will have to wait for that. Until then, take your time reading this post, while waiting for the next one to arrive.

Sharks, Vodka and Magic Ducks

2009-12-05T05:32:00.002+08:00

Week 9. Weird week, I must say. Both on the weather and what has happened around campus.

So, lets start with the weather. Monday. I thought this Monday was a normal Monday, as always. Except that it wasn’t.

So I got up at about 8, opened the curtains, and went to the bathroom. And then I ran back out to the window. The first thing that crossed my mind when I looked out at the lake again was, “Am I drunk?” Then I thought, no I am not, because I didn’t drink anything else the previous night, besides chicken soup and orange, so I can’t be hung over over some chicken soup. I also asked a bunch of questions, like am I in need of a new pair of glasses, or that I am still dreaming, because, staring at the lake, I saw the ducks and birds STANDING ON the lake, not SWIMMING IN it. They were really like that magician, Chris Angel (or Angle, given the shape of his face), walking around on water like nothing’s happening. Then I looked closer and there it was; a sheet of ice on the surface of the lake. To the far right, the wooden platoon was all white, presumably covered with a sheet of ice, and to the far left, the pathway under the huge tree was white too.

So, of course, Google to the rescue, and a quick check on the weather forecast reveals the current temperature to be -2°C, and the highest it would go on that day would be 4°C. Out comes my wool coat and gloves, my Abercrombie back in the wardrobe, and as I walked around the uni alongside my squealing and shivering friends, I felt like I won the Noble Prize for Genius-sity. Soon, I found out that there was a frosting that night, and there’s even snow, I suppose. Don’t really trust my source though, because I deliberately turned off my heater that night as it was a bit warm. Either he’s wrong, or there’s something wrong with me.

Also, The Daily Telegraph and, new to this week, The Times were sold at below market prices, at 45p. This got me thinking, whether I should thank the publishers for being so understanding and selling us the papers at discounted prices, or the Londoners for happily subsidising us. I guess there’s a bit of price discrimination here (I know I sound very econ-sy, but can’t help it, I eat, sleep and read econs everyday). Okay, let me rephrase it; I guess there’s a bit of price differentiation among the regions (even worse!). But whatever, I’m sure you get what I mean, that the newspapers are priced differently at different places to appeal to different types of buyers.

Call me greedy, but I still can’t figure out why this doesn’t apply to other books and magazines. Yes, there’s subscriptions, but if you look at the leaflets, it’s for a minimum of around 20 weeks, in which within that period, the ‘subscriber’ wouldn’t be in town (or even the country) for 4 or more weeks, and the magazines would be mugged by the ducks and eaten for supper. The thing is, we students definitely wouldn’t be in the university throughout the subscription period. Our term is 10 weeks long, and then followed by a 4-week long vacation. Take a 52-week subscription, and it’ll get worse during summer breaks, as the accommodation assistants will have a hard time figuring out where to put the thousands of copies of Times and Newsweek and FHM and Vanity Fair and whatnot when the 700 occupants disappear for 3 months and their post boxes are filled with pizza delivery leaflets, should everyone choose to subscribe to it. My thought is, sell the mags in the newsstands at subscription-rate prices, so we could buy them whenever we have time to read them (or whenever we are in town). Besides, we students are always broke (thanks to £3/pint drinks and £15-train ride to London), so it gives publishers a lot more reason to re-price their mags. Probably with the adjusted pricing, reader volume would increase too. Reminds me much of home, where the (desperate) public like you and me pay full price for a copy of The Star, while the small kids in primary school who could hardly pronounce their father’s name can get the paper at 40 cents off list price. Why on earth some 8-year-old would want to subscribe to newspapers, I have no idea. I never said life was fair.

Moving along. This week, in campus, it was a normal occurrence to see people walking around with childish balloons tied around their necks and with a mattress on their head. Lecturers and students were to be found drinking beer and vodka in the lecture halls. And, the gnome-d guys would walk around with a handful of flour and baked beans (and a lot more on their head and face). Don’t get me wrong and call the cops, my university didn’t lose authority over the students, and there wasn’t a strike among the uni staff either. It was Rag week, where this Rag Society, in the name of charity, would, aside from delivering beer and mattresses and spill beans all over your face, send chocolates and flowers to your loved ones, and balloons and a singing Santa Claus to the other weirdos. I was honestly afraid my neighbour would send me my own chair, but thankfully it didn’t happen. Otherwise I would have drag raced the crazy cyclists along Library Road.

What they deliver didn’t stir my attention; it was how they made the delivery that was a bit interesting for me. There would be this team of about 5 guys, 4 decently dressed, and one in some costume. (In Macro class, a shark came. For World economy, it was this green thing, a fusion of Kermit and Bob The Builder or something). Really cool, and these guys do special deliveries too, like hugs. They should have more of these events, not just because it’s for charity, which is good, but it also takes away the routine-ness out of the uni. It gives us (or more like me) a chance to stop and ‘woo’ the mattress guy and wish him luck that he hasn’t got many hours afterwards, and subsequently snicker behind his back when he’s off to his next lecture. Yeah, it’s bad, but it makes people happy, and that’s more important.

Okay, I am writing too much in this post. Next posting will be an epic one to mark the end of the term. Haha, but whether it would be posted by chapters or a freaking long one, I have yet to decide.

Anyway, Week 10, HERE I COME!!!

Windy Coolness and Cheesy Business. Or is it Cheesy Coolness and Windy Business? You Decide

2009-11-28T02:57:00.002+08:00

So, week 9 is coming to an end. And I am starting to make an effort to blog a little, which is good, I suppose, take a break to tell you what’s going on around here.

Which isn’t much, considering that I hadn’t been out often this week.

But, in the past few days, the weather has got a bit weirder. Monday morning turned out fine; sunny and breezy, the ducks happily shedding their feathers all over the place. But within an hour or two, it turned cloudy, then dark, then the weather system unleashed the mother of all winds; it was so strong that when you watch the rain, it’s as if the drops of water were hosed at 90° rather than falling from the sky. Tens of umbrellas were fatally destroyed, papers (presumably posters for climate change) flew everywhere, and everyone standing outside the library at that moment looked like Batman, jackets and scarves blown up like some epic superhero movie. I for once looked like George Clooney, when he’s got a bad hair day, that is....

24 hours later, and it seemed that my uni had been transported into a totally different weather dimension. The sun was even brighter, the wind was gone, more ducks and herons this time. Then, you step out of the accommodation and POW!! Your nose is frozen. Weather forecast forecasted (so corny) 4°C that day. THAT DAY!! Not night, but the day, and I wouldn’t doubt it, the first time in many years since I trusted those silly graphics of clouds and rains. I was properly insulated though, my Abercrombie and Fitch jacket doing a tidy job of keeping myself and my handphone nice and warm. But my nose and ears were, I dunno, frosting? So listen up, Nike and Adidas and Marks and Spencer and Cheetah and Kiki Lala, and whatever clothing line, here’s a tip to make some money (or at least my money). Try selling ski masks that reaches up to the nose, something like Zorro’s but inverted to cover the nose rather than risk not seeing any oncoming car.

That night, though, my uni was transported back to the initial horrific climate conditions once again, with a severe downpour and even stronger winds reaching 16mph, if my memory (or Google) didn’t fail me. Which is about 26kmh. Which is normally how fast some uncles drive in KL. Freaking slow, but latch yourself to his windscreen and you get what I mean. Imagine walking against it, just like what I’ve experienced, and everyone on the path looked like they had osteoporosis, slanting back and forth and side to side just to stay upright. Funny.

These days, the sky turns dark at 4.30pm, rather than the usual 5pm a few weeks ago. With this, I can tell you with certainty that jogging at 5pm with temperatures hovering around 6°C is not a right thing to do. Right after my last class on Thursday, I gave it a solid 5-minute run back to my ecological duck-friendly place. After getting into my room, I felt like pouring hot water down my nose. That was how piercing the cold was. And funnily, after jogging around my biologically diversified place many times, I still can’t get myself to sweat.

A bit of economics now, and the Dubai debt default thing seemed to be a new hype today. Dow Jones is down 154 points (at time of press), presumably being affected by this. That’s what economists do best: relate everything together. Pimco’s investment manager went like “relax, testing testing oni, very quick okay wan la” (@CNN). Experts say it isn’t a crisis at all. US stock markets were like “Sei Lo!!” and percentage points fell.

This is big news, but there’s something that is even more important than the crazy debt: the Krafts-Cadbury thing. Oh, its so big that it will determine whether we will eat chocolate or chocolate cheese for snacks. It will determine whether future Dairy milk will come with bacteria and microorganisms. And, it will determine whether the Cadbury packaging will remain purple, or become yellow. Scary.

I can’t imagine how Krafts is going to integrate the famous Cadbury Dairy Milk into their line of products. Imagine brown Oreos, Jacob Crunchie biscuits, and Toblerone Flakes and you are not far off. I also cannot imagine Cadbury stuff taking in a bit of Krafts: Cadbury Dairy Milk with Ali Coffee, Dairy Milk with Taco Bell, kinda scary. And then there’s the cheese- Dairy Tiramisu!! Can bake cake....

Then there’s the Cadbury factory in Birmingham. The chocolate figures were annoying enough, but if they’re sold, there might be Cheeseman and Chocolate Girl holding hands in the amusement park, production side that smells like cough mixture, and at the chocolate bar, they ask you, “green cheese or purple cheese to go with the chocolate?”

Maybe Krafts would just buy over Cadbury and keep them as an individual entity, like Oreo, you don’t get Oreos with the yellow stuff inside, do you? Or they might just use it to make better Toblerone. And Taco Bell.

Let’s just hope for the best, and eat as much Cadbury as possible, in case the brand disappears.

And hope for good weekend as well.

Oh My Blog......

2009-11-21T23:42:00.005+08:00

I have neglected my blog so badly that when friend had actually went “go update your blog la”, and I thought, “oh, ok, yeah, what blog?”

To make it up to my blog, I’ll just write a summary of the week, not like I have a lot of time to do so (gotta a lot of catching up to do i.e. catch up with some sleep, catch up on football etc etc).

So, let’s go.

Week 7 was a week of ups and downs, just like any other week here. There’s The Economist going on promotion, selling for a pound with free gifts and the Guardian newspaper going for 45 pence and giving out free chocolate and tea. The weather was not so good on aggregate, windy and rainy, and there was more duck poo on the walkway than last week.

But leave that alone. I‘ve gone out twice this week at night, on both occasions to the same place, Varsity. It’s a pub somewhere north of the campus, only 5 minutes from my scenic place, but 5 years from all the other ugly places. Which is far, for my friends. I hear you say “why the same place” but this is a campus university, not Campus@Euphoria or something, so choices will be limited. Unless, of course you want to go pub-crawling in Coventry and get drunk and get on a wrong bus. And end up in Pulau Tioman. And be late for next morning’s lecture.

But anyway, back to Varsity. (sounds just like another building block in uni. Hey guys, where’s your next class? Humanities building? Maths and Stats? VARSITY? ) The interior is very TGI-ish, with wood and soft lighting all over the place. There was no music on Tuesday, but it was a blast on Thursday, as it was a £1 night, where selected drinks went for a pound each.

Nothing much happened on Tuesday, as we only thought of coming here to check out the place. A pint of Kronenbourg and a bucket of chips later, and we were off at 11.15pm. But on Thursday, it was more crowded, and we had to sit outdoors as the bar and tables were full. This posed a new set of problems. Aside from my pro-photographer friend complaining about the hopeless lighting, a quick glance on the Internet showed temperature of about 10°C and winds of 10mph. So we had guys who shrieked ‘cold!’ after 3 Heineken, girl who shrieked ‘cold!’ all the time, and a guy who was bored of all the shrieking. Guess who.

Nightlife aside, I did spend my last weekend (Saturday) in the Cadbury Factory in Birmingham. It was a much-needed outing, considering the after effects of being conned in the Maths test (comparing the past year papers and the actual ones was like putting HSBC Bank and Tyra Bank side by side; both are banks but that’s about it). Anyway, the place was not very beautiful, but interesting. We began our excursion with a visit to the mini museum. There, there were displays and portraits of the pioneers of Cadbury, as well as a glass wall looking into the factory, where robotic arms were arranging the chocolates for packaging. The robot had actually made a mistake, as it arranged the boxes too close to the edge of the boxes below. The second row came, and, pow, all of the top row chocolates fell, and out came my laughter. Then the machine operator came and picked them up. Some robots just never learn.

Then, it was a short trip into the history of how the dairy milk chocolate was made. Before I go on, grab a Cadbury chocolate wrapper and observe the 2 glasses of milk being poured into the chocolate, and you’ll notice that one is full, while the other is half full. This is because, while the 2 pioneers of Cadbury was figuring out how to give the chocolate a better texture and taste, one had drank half the cup before deciding that fresh milk could be added, thus the milk-pouring symbol.

History lesson over, we were lead to a chocolate bar, where we choose our ingredient, and top it up with warm, liquid chocolate. I went for marshmallow, which the taste was an out of this world experience. We then got into the larger museum. There, they had displays of all sorts of Cadbury; the first few original Cadburys (all expired, I suppose); chocolate trumpets used in their TV advertisements, and media boxes explaining how each type of Cadbury was made (Caramel is good, Turkish, er...no comment). Past that, we ventured to the production side, where we caught glimpses of how the chocolates were manufactured. No doubt it was a fun job to work in a chocolate factory (Willy Wonka comes to mind, but not that hat) but watching those guys in white standing around the machineries, looking at us looking at them, I dunno. Like a zoo?? So bad....

Past the factory, and into the amusement park, where we get into the ‘car’ and it brought us along a track decorated with figures of chocolate houses and animals and, I can’t really describe it because it was really meant for kids and I can’t decipher what message it was sending out. At the end of it, the attendant unlocked the car and the first words my friend said to her were “WHAT WAS THAT?” That’s how bad it was.

Finally, gift shop time. Everyone went for the, wait for it, 1KG DAIRY MILK BAR!!! Other stuffs we bought were irrelevant compared to the mother of all chocolate bars. I was looking for 2kg, but, I suppose they don’t make it because if the robots drop them, the guys will break the robotic arm. I also took the assortment packs, that holds 25 mini pieces of caramel, crunchie, flake and dairy milk, as well as some Santa’s biscuit or something. The t-shirt was very tempting as well, but, oh well, maybe next time.

So, here’s it. 7 days of week 7. There’s more to come, I guess.

Birmingham city streets

holographics used to tell the stories

museum exhibits

chocolate trumpet

Chocolate Marshmallow

at Varsity

lousy drink

Service Industry? KL Number 1!!!

2009-10-21T04:11:00.002+08:00

88 cents. Thats how much in ringgit that I am paying for an egg here. Its only half the price (and twice the quality) back home.

That’s all that I have to say about this place.

OR NOT

Because, back home, things are a lot more accessible. A lot MORE.

I’ll start with the shops, and after being here for 2 weeks, and making countless trips to Coventry, I suppose one business etiquette that I can deduce is; all the shops I've been into is short-handed. Compared to KL, its actually quite severe over here, this problem, and this is something that I cannot comprehend, because the basis, the nature of doing business is to start with providing good customer service, be it advice and recommendations to concluding transactions smoothly and quickly. And it’s hard to find this here.

My direct comparisons may be harsh, but, as far as the title of this post is concerned, I'm not complaining, just, you know what I mean. In London, the medium sized sundry shop is run by only one dude and one counter, and I had to wait for him to stop talking on the bloody phone before asking him for a top-up; our most isolated 7-11 has 3 cashiers, and they don’t need to scan the newspapers, just give them the coins and run. Like how Malaysians put it, “collect money also got problem, how to do business?”

The McDonald’s next to the London eye, a large, really large tourist destination has only 6 counters, and was packed like sardine at lunch, and had little seats left in the 2 storey building; our unknown Sri Damansara branch has about 9 at peak hours, and short queues, and lots of space next to the kid’s playground.

The Burger King in Oxford is a work of genius. They take the order from around 5 customers (and their money), make them wait like monkeys for 15 minutes, then only start filling out the orders, asking you again what you ordered. Our Burger King? Most of the time its empty, so no queue, no waiting, excellent service

In Coventry, the SportsDirect shop has a missing Nike sales guy; our Royal Sporting House has around ten following you all the time, like you are there to steal something, and our Nike stores, wow, they let you try every shoes until you find the right one. That’s what I call service.

The Tesco here has got 20 counters max. Back home, even our small Tesco express in Desa has 5 express lanes PLUS some 30 odd counters. And small Atria's Giant has more than 20, if you have to compare. Mutiara Damansara? If my memory didn’t fail me, its 40 cashiers, and it opens a new one everytime there’s more than 3 trolleys in the queue. World class.

Here, in the handphone shops, you have to collect a number and wait for at least 30 minutes to get some assistance. COLLECT NUMBER!! At home, even a really small shop in Cameron Highlands can sell you a phone faster, and probably serve tea as well, and tell you the latest neighbourhood news.

Then there’s the issue of opening hours. In Malaysia, the public transport extends their service hours during the weekends to accommodate more passengers. This makes sense, as people naturally go for late-night movies and come home late. But in London, certain Tube lines are actually closed during the weekends to facilitate servicing. And the bus lines are less frequent. I just don’t get it. Why can't they just service it at night, like back home?

The Tescos (and Giants and Carrefours) actually extend their opening hours especially in the weekends, but here, they close at 4pm. I find this really strange because, people like me who stay far away from Tesco wouldn’t go there on the week days for obvious reasons e.g. too busy, too tired, things like that, although they are open 24 hours. The same happens in KL, where on weekdays they work their socks off to make ends meet. Thus, Tesco Malaysia is considerate enough that, taking in to account the people actually prefer to shop in the weekends and take their own time, they extend the opening hours to 11 or 12pm. That’s what I call doing business. Unlike here, when I could find the time to go out and buy my groceries, they choose to close at 4pm.

If all these happen in KL, all the Kopitiams and Papa Rich would explode at lunch time, they will need at least another 2 Mcdonald’s in Sri Damansara, and the LDP toll would be closed after 11pm in the weekends, so if you find yourself in Scarlett at 12pm, might as well spend a night there. Crazy.

I could go on and on about how the Tesco cashiers just wouldn't help you with stuffing the groceries into the plastic bags, or how I had to queue in the HSBC bank, where in KL, they make you wait in a bright lounge with weird sofas and free water, but that’s all the time I have for now. Gotta check my fridge and plan my next trip to Tesco, this time on a weekday. They might as well close for lunch, like back home......

The Old is Gone, I am Here

2009-10-12T00:38:00.009+08:00

It’s my first post from abroad, and the first after nearly 2 months of abandoning my Under Where? Don’t know how many posts it will take to tell you what happened between the previous post and this, and won’t bother either.

So, I shall begin this epic post by answering the questions that I am sure you all are keen to ask for the past 2 months: yes, yes, I am fine, uh huh, yeah, I can see the lake from my room, uh huh, no it isn’t as cold as what you think, its England, not Siberia, yes, I get what you mean, must budget la, if not of course eat bread and drink water towards the end of every month, yeah, a lot of walking, yes I miss my car, no, I don’t miss rice, because I have 5kg of it sitting in my shelf, and I do my own cooking, and if I have to convert my currency everytime I buy something, I guess I’ll have to settle with bread and water, yeah, lectures are good, got some free time in between them, yeah, made some French and Russian and Korean friends, no haven’t been drinking and partying, yeah, it’s hard to find authentic Asian food here, and yes, things aren’t as straightforward as it used to be at home.

From my lengthy answer, you’ll notice a pattern going on here: I have to deal with everything on my own. And it isn’t just me, it’s all the dudes and dudess in the uni, be it undergrad, postgrad, exchange students or language centre students. And no amount of information and advice, whether it’s from the graduated cousin or the PhD uncle will prepare you for life on your own.

1 very simple illustration. It’s late at night, and the fridge at home ran out of milk. You feel lazy to drive out and get some Dutch Lady, and went to bed instead. The next morning, the milk is back in the fridge, probably bought by your mother. But, over here, you are lucky if your Dutch Lady don’t disappear with the carrots and the eggs. And you have to walk for at least 5 minutes just to get new Dutch Lady and carrots and eggs. That’s what’s interesting about living on your own.

And then you have to watch over your own health, making sure that you don’t fill your blood with MSG and melamine from the microwaved pizza and cuscus, and don’t drown yourself in Pepsi and Coke, and most importantly, Jack Daniel’s.

On top of that, you have to monitor your studies (on your own as well, lecturers won’t speak to your parents, not even a word), constantly check the uni email, your results, assignment dates, meet the tutor, attend seminar, make sure your timetable don’t clash (like my case), and be present at the stuff you need to be present in. Then you have to schedule appointments with the lecturer if you need assistance (unlike in college) and learn your way around the library to look for books (even more unlike in college)

Finally, and more significantly, you have to watch your finances. You have to chase up the bank if your card hasn’t arrive, constantly monitor your account to ensure that there’s no fraud, and crucially, watch your balances so that you don’t have to eat bread and drink water towards the end of the month. I am not complaining, but, welcome to England.

I’ve only been here for a week and the half, so I can’t comment on how hard the syllabus is (though maths seemed quite scary, but I will work on it more) or how complicated the assignments would be. But what I have discovered in the past week or so, is that uni life is not about pushing the limits of yourself. It’s more about knowing the limits, knowing how far you can go. So, it’s not “Yesterday, I took 15 shots of rum and was able to count to ten, today I’ll take 20”, but it’s more like “I took 15 shots and was puking my way back to my room, today I’ll have 8 shots and cheat with some cherry juice”. It’s also not “yesterday, I studied till 1am, today I’ll stay up till 3am.” It’s more like “If I want to last till the end of the week, I’ll call it a day and continue tomorrow morning.”

But what I can tell you is that the definition of fun in university life can vary in each person. My cousin’s definition of fun in university is having a friend with a car and thus go clubbing whenever they could, while my friend’s example is sitting in the quiet room in the library everynight. There’s also some who enjoy mixing with people from all over the world, and some who would stick to their group from the same country (so out!). All I can say is, its up to you to look for all the fun, and not let others dictate what you should and shouldn’t do. Its also about not doing things you’ll regret (like me bringing a bunch of friends to the pub, and paying through my nose)

Also, another thing I discovered is that here’s the only place where you have to be cautious when studying, because as you sit for a long time, your body temperature falls and the cold will slowly creep on you without you realising it. But that’s not the excuse to skip studying, of course.

I’ll end this post with some behind-the-scenes pictures of London, Oxford and Coventry. Until the next post arrives, I wish all uni students (and myself, nonetheless) Happy Studying and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and.............

Millenium Bridge at night

London Eye

Big Ben

Trafalgar Square

Coventry

Oxford

SonicGear Spark Plug Unox Plug-in Headsets: Full Product Test

2009-08-14T16:14:00.002+08:00

It’s been 2 weeks since I laid my hands on the Spark Plug Unox headset by SonicGear. They were in-ear plugs, something that I’ve been looking into for a very long time, since I’ve never been able to find a pair round-heads that would fit my ears properly.

Let’s start with the purchase. I primarily plan to use the plugs together with my MP3 player. I found the OEM round-heads awful; it lacked bass, while the treble course and lacked clarity. And before I knew it, the left side stopped working.

Personally, I prefer headsets with high clarity, thus my criticism on the OEM headsets. Because the player didn’t come with a screen and equalizer, I was left with no choice, but to test the headsets on the spot during the PC Fair. I’ve pitted the Unox with 5 other headset, and it was the Unox which sounded the most balanced and detailed. I’ve gone for glossy black, so that it wouldn’t stain easily. The other colour available was glossy white.

I’d split my test results to 2 sections and their subsections. One main section is the real life test, which delves into its build quality, usability and practicality. The other main section involves putting the sound quality to the test. This said, I had put the most listening time with the plugs paired to the MP3 player, but tests using the hi-fi and the PC had been conducted as well. The listening test involves 3 genres to test the individual sound qualities of the earplugs: accapella music, to expose clarity issues; unplugged, acoustic songs to test out the bass and lower frequencies; live stage music to determine the richness and wideness of the sound produced; and finally, a run-through over some pop songs that I’m really familiar with to spot any minute flaws. Most of the songs tested in digital format are MP3s playing between 256 and 320kbps bit rate, while HDCDs of the same songs were played in the Panasonic hi-fi for comparison. On the PC, its both digital format and HDCDs, played through Creative SoundBlaster 5.1 soundcard. I did a simplified version of this test at the PC Fair with the MP3 player and the headsets blew me away, even with the noisy surrounding.

The Unox box contained the headsets themselves, 2 extra pairs of silicon ear gel for the plugs (Yes, the silicon plugs are replaceable), and a “high quality soft leather pouch”. Construction-wise, the head set seems sturdy, and the wires connected into the headset feel solid. Overall, I must say it’s built to last, as my 2-week test proves. As for the jack, it’s gold-plated to reduce signal loss, and the wires are 1.2 metres long. In addition to that, the earplugs come with a one-year warranty.

In the real world test, there’s little to fault the headsets. The sturdy build meant I can pull the wires out of my pocket without worrying that the plugs will be disconnected and be left in my pocket. The length is typical of any 3rd party headsets, and is long enough for me to listen to songs while leaving the player in my bag pack. The silicon gel is a bit soft, and since it isn’t made for noise cancellation, I must say it’s pretty impressive in filtering out the noise from outside, but lets a bit of sound in, allowing me to hear incoming cars or someone calling out for me. The silicon attracts a lot of dust though, but that’s because I leave them everywhere, so with careful treatment, it wouldn’t be a problem at all.

As for the sound test, it works well with the MP3 player. The absence of the equalizer meant that a bit of detail will be lost while playing accapella, because I can’t tune the higher frequencies. But the Unox tried hard, squeezing every last bit of detail out of the tiny player. With acoustic music, the Unox performed well, the bass feeling solid as ever, but not intrusive at all to hurt my ears over long listening hours. It didn’t do too badly with concerts either, as I managed to hear the background screaming clearly while the band plays. The pop songs sounded reasonable, with little to fault, except with higher frequency sounds and possible bit-rate issues on the player.

It was a different story in the hi-fi test, the bass being much louder that treble, causing unevenness in the music played. Don’t get me wrong, the hi-fi output was good, and the sound produced had much clarity, but the disproportionate volume of the bass gave me great difficulty to listen out for the treble. It barely managed the accapella, the deep voices sounded excellent at high pitch, but ear numbing bass kicked in at lower frequencies. It excelled with concerts, producing an even wider sound and volume, and it performed great with solo sections of the guitar. Disappointingly, it flunked the acoustic and pop song tests; the bass was heavy and treble was on the soft side. Clearly, the hi-fi wasn’t made for earplugs output.

On the other hand, the Unox felt right at home when connected to the PC. Bass and treble were well balanced in all genres; it did particular well with acoustic songs, clearly differentiating the wooden bass guitar from the electric ones, as well as the different drum beats. With the volume pumped up, it sounded even more detailed, but only with high bit rate songs and the CDs, as 256kbps ones had lost some treble quality and eventually sounded coarse. Also, the concert songs didn’t sound as voluminous as the hi-fi. It could have been the soundcard pushing the sound quality to the next level, and confusing its 5.1 engine in the process, but I will run the test on a laptop with built in soundcards and keep you informed on that soon.

To end this report, the Unox cost me RM25 during PC Fair, and I’m pretty sure it’ll go even lower over time. Yes, it wont sound as good as the Sennheiser and Bose ones, but if you are looking for a pair of headsets that wont break the bank and costs more than your player, while producing reasonable sound quality, the SonicGear Spark Plug Unox gets my thumbs up.

MPH Book Fair

2009-08-13T22:25:00.002+08:00

I went to the MPH book fair this morning. It was a very last minute decision, so turned out to be a lonely outing, because none of my friends I called could make it in such short notice. If you know me well, you’ll know that I adore seeing Mr. Bean naked as much as I adore making last minute decisions, so, as always, it’s my fault.

Anyway, back to the book fair. The fair is typical of any MPH book fairs in the past; its like looking for a needle in a cow farm. Cheap gems were hard to come by, unless you dig deep and look at every shelf. The fair was split into various sections offering different discounts to no discounts at all. Avid readers will enjoy the 30% discount offered on almost all the latest books found in their bookstore, which for me isn’t high enough, considering that most of the books cost as least RM50. If you want to know, the Twilights and LOTRs and Outliers were on 30% discount.

The older publications were on 50% to 70% discounts, and by saying old, they were really old. I did manage to unearth some good marketing books, but didn’t have the heart to fork out RM20 for a 2001 publication. Almost all the children and cookbooks were in this section, as well as some books written by the Olsen twins.

This time, the largest section of the fair would be Value Buy i.e. no discount. There weren’t any discounts, but the books were relatively newer than the ones in the 50% and 70% discount section. But, I must say again, they weren’t cheap too. The hardcover book entitled Shift, a book on Nissan’s turnaround costs RM44++, and so as some Donald Trump books, all but a few ringgit cheaper that market price.

I wouldn’t say that it isn’t worth going if you’re into the latest books, but if you are looking for cheap, older publications, such as storybooks and textbooks, you ought to look somewhere else.

And then there’s the parking. The place was in an industrial area, so as expected, there weren’t any proper parking. I parked at the road side, feeling less suspicious because it was 11am, and there were many other cars parked along the road too. I went back to my car, and fair enough, there was a ticket stuck on my windshield. So I walked around the place, and almost every car had a ticket too. The bikes parked behind me were gone, presumably towed away. Then I drove around the area, and THERE’S NOT A SINGLE LEGAL PARKING SPOT. The roadsides were not painted, so no white or yellow line.

So, if I want to be nice to you, I’ll ask you to drive there with a companion waiting in the car while you do your shopping. If I’m the devil, I’ll ask you to walk there from home, cos no matter how tired you are, it’s still better than getting a ticket stuck on your wiper.

At the end, I did buy a RM30 book, with a 30% discount. So my total expenses would be the book for RM30, and 2-hour parking for about RM150. What a deal.

Here’s a map of the place, if you want to get there.

The fair ends this Sunday, and opens from 10am to 8pm.

PC Fair 2009

2009-07-31T22:47:00.003+08:00

I went to PC Fair today with good old friend Zhee Chuan. I bought what I wanted, and had kinda great time, but I cant say if I had a good day.

It started with the train. I got into it at bout 12, and expecting myself to be meeting up with ZC at the promised 12.40, latest. However, it felt like Mr. Driver was having his nasi lemak at the wheel, as the train occasionally cruised at walking pace (okay, I’m lying. I could walk faster than the train) and at other times, sped at full speed, and it felt like it couldn’t brake on time at the next stop. Never mind, I could be easily spotted at KLCC as the idiot who ran all the way from the train station to the Kinokuniya bookstore at the top floor.

And so I met up with ZC, albeit being bout 10 minutes late, and we proceeded to the food court. Once again, out of luck. The place was packed like Genting on the first day of Chinese New Year, and we spent a good 10mins searching for a seat. Still no luck, so we had to head to Burger King for lunch.

There, because ZC bought the meals, I thought I’d get him the self-serving drinks. but at the drink dispenser, sits probably the stupidest ice dispenser in the universe. The dumb machine is precisely built in a way that as you press the dispenser with the cup to fill it up with ice, none of the ice would flow into the cup. Instead, all the large chunks would narrowly escape the lip of the cup and fall onto the floor, and only the small, miserable pieces would fall in. So, I used my hand to push the dispenser with my hands, only to DISPENSE some purple F&N onto my hands. My mistake, of course, but guess what? When it dried up, it left a stain on my hand. Its almost 8 hours later, and I still cant get the stain off. The bigger problem? I drank a cup of it. Stupid.

After lunch, we headed to the Convention Centre, and got up the escalator. Suddenly the bloody escalator stopped. (Probably due to overloading) I lost my balance, and although I managed to skillfully avoid the butt in front of me, the escalator still drew blood, and I had a small cut on my leg. My luck, I guess.

Things went for the better as we headed into the exhibition halls. I managed to get myself a headset, a SonicGear noise isolation earphones, while ZC had all the info he’s looking for. I also managed to convince the salesgirl that I didn’t need another SonicGear earphones (I only have one me, one MP3 player, and 2 ears, not 4, so, sorry….). But it didn’t go as well as I wanted too, for my battery went low when a bunch of Avira models were available for photographs, so nothing for you guys to feast your eyes upon. And then there’s the weirdest advertisement I’ve ever came across.

What have they done to the biggest action star from Hong Kong? Of course, it looks kinda cool, but what has martial arts has gotta do with antivirus?

Anyway, it was good outing, but the drawn blood was really unnecessary, Mr. Convention Centre.

Look Upon the Stars……

2009-07-27T16:20:00.000+08:00

It was in December 2008 that I gone through one of the most enjoyable day in my life thus far. No, it wasn’t speeding up and down the windy roads of Cameron Highlands the whole afternoon, nor eating ice-cream on that particular freezing-cold day. It was my trip up to the tea farm in the middle of the night, which I’ve done a million times, but this time with a totally different perspective to what I see.

It was about 10pm, when my cousins and I left Tanah Rata for the tea farm located midway to Gunung Brinchang. By the time we got to Kampung Raja (the foot of Gunung Brinchang, and the entrance to the tea farm), it was already half past ten. We made a left turn up a small hill, and a couple of twists and turns later, we stopped at the side of the road. The road, in the middle of the tea farm, was dark and serves as an access road to those living in the farm, and Gunung Brinchang, so traffic was extremely light at night, let alone this late. So we turned off the engine and lights, and got out, only to be hit in the nose by the chilling breeze that ought to pierce my throat. As it was pitch black, there wasn’t a view at all, although the road overlooks half of the farm, and the moon wasn’t in sight too, presumably looking for somewhere warmer. A little gossiping the next day told of temperatures in the region of 16s in Tanah Rata that night, and a few degrees lower in the farms. I wouldn’t doubt that.

Then we looked up, and the sky was lit up with stars. There were many stars, presumably hundreds of them. Some were blinking (I hear you say satellites, but lets not spoil this, okay? :P) while others were brightly lit, and as always, I stare in awe.

This place never fails to surprise me. The previous time I came here, my cousins held a birthday party for me (two cars, a piece of Secret Recipe cheese cake, a candle and multiple torchlights at 12am), and about a year ago, my cousin broke up with her dude at this very spot.

Having completed my AS at that time, it was a real time-out for me, to catch a breath before returning to KL. Just like taking off my glasses (Post 2), but this time, it’s all real and a lot more comforting. Being in a peaceful place with no phone signal is one thing, but being in a peaceful place accompanied by the sounds of insects and leaves feathering each other, you have to be present to feel the serenity.

I laid on the bonnet, staring straight at the sky, while trying to reflect on life and what I’ve been through the past 12 months, but all that comes to mind is that the next 6 months of A Levels will (fingers crossed) be much better. Indeed, life at TCSH was much better over the months, but its only when my results are out that I could tell you life was indeed better there. Until then, I’m just gonna lie atop this cold metal bonnet and try not to fall asleep.

Market Crimes- Just a Joke, A Bad One

2009-07-14T11:32:00.000+08:00

About a week ago, I met up with a couple of friends who took Economics during their A-Levels stint. A few drinks later, we ran out of topics to discuss, having already talked about our target universities, the courses and other ‘general’ matters (girlfriend-boyfriend things), so we accidentally came up with a nonsensical joke about economics in the market. If there was someone to blame, it has to be me, having started the topic which ended as a really crappy gauge of our economic knowledge. Anyway, here’s how the joke went.

It started out as a kind of news statement; I asked them if they heard of the incident in the Damansara market, where this fishmonger was arrested by the AH MA (Anti-hedging of Morning-Market Associations) for illegally hedging his supply of tuna. Since oil prices were high, people were getting hungrier, and global warming has caused many tunas to be medium-rare when fished, prices of tunas have shot up three-fold, so this good fellow decided to hedge these tunas in advance to his loyal customers. Indeed, they paid a higher price for the meat, but they didn’t mind, as long as the tunas kept coming.

Our crapping frenzy started, and soon, ‘news’ of short selling of pork in a market in Desa has been being banned has emerged. Prices of pork had risen to hundreds lately, and farmers are desperate to short sell them to maintain a high demand for it. The local ARSE (Association for Regulating Short-selling Entity) received complains from local customers who missed out of the fun of short selling, and pork selling short when they got to know of it.

In as separate case, a swindler, known as Tan Mad-Off of Puchong market, had cheated thousands of their life savings for buying chickens that never existed. Local authorities, AH PA (Anti Haggling Ponzi Association) called it a “highly-organised Ponzi scheme of chicken feet and salted eggs”, but declined to comment further.

A spin-off of beef also occurred in Subang, where increase in prices of beef forced its derivatives to rise as well. Beef has got so expensive that bull riding is a rarity nowadays, donkey is the new cow, and Disney replaced Connie the Cow with Donald as cost-cutting measures. Local municipal councils are closely monitoring beef prices to prevent foreclosure of less competitive farmers, as well as to ensure the NCR (National Cow Reserves) remain at an optimum level in case of any spike in demand i.e. dinnertime.

Finally, courtesy of a friend who never fail to fail Econs (just kidding!!), he gladly informed us that the Fish and Chips Index reaching all time high. The FTSE (Fish and Tuna Stock Exchange) remains stable, but the KLCI (Kuala Lumpur Chicken Index) fell by a few points, and a whole lot of feathers.

It was a joke, a lousy one. And this was my afternoon gone. I couldn’t think of a worse afternoon.

Luxury Cars: Outlook of the Future

2009-07-08T17:27:00.001+08:00

Funny as it may seem, the car segment which is radically changing and undergoing a revolution right now isn’t the performance sector, nor the superminis. The GT-Rs and GT2s and Veyrons have pushed the envelope of racing technology, and as far as it goes, twin-clutched gearboxes and trick 4-wheel-drive is the best and the most radical it could muster. The Focus RS returns to its roots; 300bhp and FWD (which makes it less likely for you to kill yourself), as well as the Abarth (lightweight body with torquey engines). The only segment undergoing a revolution is clearly the luxury car segment.

The likes of the A8, 7-Series, and S-Class have, in a way, enjoyed monopolistic position and advantages in the relatively small but important segment over the years. It is these cars that represent the flagship of the company; these cars are fitted with crème-de-la-crème gadgets before slowly being mainstreamed to the rest of the range. The revolutionary ABS and Drive-by-Wire coming from the S-Class, the love-it-or-hate-it I-Drive, and the similar but simpler MMI all found their way to the lesser models over time.

Then there are the smaller players, such as the Phaeton, Phantom, Maybach, LS460, and Quattroporte which command a smaller share of the market overall, but somewhat a tour-de-force in their respective country; the Lexus in the US, the Volkswagen (tied with Audi) in China, and the Rolls-Royce in, well, Dubai?

What is there to revolutionize in this car segment, I hear you ask. Just get a car with the wheelbase of a truck, stuff the interior with exotic wood and dead animals, put in the largest engine available and there you have it; a luxury car. But think again. If the current crop of luxury cars and all its techno stuff is as far as it can go, then these two cars, to be launched soon, will have no purpose to exist: the Porsche Panamera and Lamborghini Estoque. And it ain’t the techno part that these two cars is pushing; it’s the design envelope.

These two cars could be the ugliest metal sheets you’ve ever seen, or the prettiest to your eyes. And this is where these two cars differ from mainstream. Is the A8 or the LS460 ugly? You wouldn’t call it hideous, nor you’ll call it pretty; their design is ‘safe’ as a luxury car, appealing to the young, but not offensive to the elderly (which can’t be said of the 7-Series, but that’s a different matter altogether.)

However, this where their similarities stop, for the reasons of existence are as different as myself to an otter. The Estoque, to begin with, was born to continue a historical path; to succeed the 4-seater Espada, but this time giving it 2 extra doors and a larger boot. The radically-designed Reventon-wannabe ought to be Lambo’s first four-door, four-seater (apart from the LM) and expect it to fill up the rear mirrors of the Gallardo on the autobahn, given its monstrous engine and performance. It targets Russians and Asians who had struck rich with their oil fields, though sales isn’t the main reason of its slow birth.

Which cant be said of the Panamera. Designed by Pininfarina, it serves to please the eye (though as I said, not all will think so). However, the design of the interior that is relatively similar to the mainstream Porsches and the use of engines shared with other models, makes it, in my opinion, less exclusive compared to the Estoque, and has more to do with chasing sales figures in the Middle East, which is exactly what’s done to the Cayenne, now the best selling model of the car maker. It seems to me that it’s the numbers that Porsche is after, and not the essence of building cars that lives up to its heritage, that Porsche is doing, given the financial setback its undergoing.

I hope I’m wrong about it, and although I’m not a Porsche fan, I have to admit they have been producing really fine cars over the years and its indeed sad to watch the once-exclusive brand being commercialized.

Kuantan Trip (Final)

2009-07-04T16:37:00.004+08:00

I got home yesterday evening. Had to leave due to (UN)foreseen circumstances. Or maybe I was just plain tempted to leave anyway, not that I really mean it.

I took the 1.30pm bus, so it was quite a hurry to leave (I had to pack my clothes, eat durians, and play Midnight Racing once more in less than 45 minutes). Anyway, I got to the station on time, and looking forward to reaching KL.

The bus however was slightly depressing. To begin with, the air conditioner at the rear wasn’t working (yaya, sudah buka AUTO, belum start lagi, Mr. Driver said). Then, it was driven slowly on the highway (to my relief), but at Karak Highway, it picked up speed (not to my relief), and it was overtaking everything in its path. It even raced an empty dumptruck and a one-tonne lorry.

Soon the brakes were starting to smoke, and the whole cabin is filled with scents of freshly charred brake pads. What happens next is something I’ll never forget. Smelling the scent, the other (uninformed) passengers started to panic. But instead of trying to find out what’s that smell, they all started to shut their air con vents, so it ended up being hot AND smoky at the same time. Only after a while that a dude went to ask the driver about the scent, and being informed that it was the brakes, only they started opening up the vents again.

I got back to KL at about 7pm, and really had no mood to go out that night, except for a short meet up with my primary school friends in 1U. So, if you are reading this, Kelvin, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to your party. In simpler terms, I didn’t want to spoil it.

So much for a holiday, and it turns to be otherwise.

Kuantan Trip (Part 2)

2009-07-02T19:11:00.003+08:00

Or maybe not.

Its day two. And I have all the time in the world to blog.

I’ve been nowhere today, nobody wanted to bring, or ask me out. I’ve got no newspaper to read, all’s sold out. Sad case.

Or not. Cos I made a new friend. My new best friend for the day is the PS2 darling. She’s from Japan, real slim, slender and stands tall and proud. She’s warm too (I think it’s got to do with the cooling fan). And she’s really good at what she does too, playing the MIDNIGHT RACING: DUB EDITION DVD smoothly. I’ve got so much time today I toured the whole Tokyo city in the game. It’s quite real, the scenarios and maps quite similar to the real thing. I spent time chasing trains, running over pedestrians, crashing the cars until they burst in flames.

Then, I moved on to knowing the wrestling dudes better. Its Kelly Kelly vs Victoria in WWE WRESTLEMANIA. And the top time-burner I’ll recommend to any gamers whose girlfriends dump them for the GUCCI store: the 30-dude ROYAL RUMBLE. It took me more than 40 minutes of intense finger-breaking actions on the controller to complete it. The 4-man TLC is also quite a time burner, with 30 minutes of table-crashing, ladder-smashing, hammer-lashing and bamboo-caning to win the bloody campaign. Others like the TRIPLE THREAT and HELL IN A CELL, takes about 25 minutes to complete. Great for boring, lonely afternoons.

Another game, the NSF: CARBON, my cousin completed it before this, so I’m just playing to earn some cash to spray all his precious cars pink and brown. Pink ZONDA F, what blasphemy. Pink SKYLINE though, it looks kinda cute. Or the intense boredom is has got into my brains.

It’s raining now, so I guess there won’t be any drinking-out sessions until the rain stops. And the beach is closed, so no outing either.

Looks like there’s more ranting to come over the days.

Kuantan Trip (Part I)

2009-07-01T17:34:00.002+08:00

It’s the first day that I arrived, and I just came back from East Coast Mall. It didn’t take long for me to start missing KL. Though I’ve been here a million times already, this is the first time I found out how lousy some shopping centers can get. Mind you, this is not the first time I’ve gone shopping here, but nevertheless this is a real eye-opener.

Getting to the mall is perhaps the most comforting thing to do in this outing so far. There’s no traffic at all, the basement parking is abundant and easy to find and, surprisingly well lit. So up we go, and I first headed to a bookshop (so that I don’t have to stare at dresses and high heels and stuff like that). I’m not going to name it, otherwise I’ll go into another fit of rage, but never mind, the interior décor is kinda nice, and that's where the complements stop. I started reading TOPGEAR to burn some time, and I could sense the ever presence of the sales girl, keeping a lookout at me relentlessly like I’m going to run out of the store with the July issue of FHM. Never mind, I thought, this isn’t KL. Then I went on to read a paperback, FREAKONOMICS, if my mind, and rage didn’t fail me. As I reached the 10th page or so, this same dudess came to me and said, “Tak Boleh Baca”. I went, ‘OK, where’s it stated?’ and I looked around for a sign or note. She just said “Kalau u sudah baca, mesti beli buku ini.” This is my holiday, and I didn’t want to ruin it so quickly, so a quick “idiot” whisper (and another ton of maternal expletive later) and I stood up and left.

Only two things that came to mind when hearing her ‘statement’, one by far is what distinguishes KL shopping malls from the ones here; bookstores in KL leave chairs around the place for customers to sit down and read whatever they like. The stores here not only expect you to stand while BROWSING, they also expect you to but something without knowing the content. Ok, some might think that you can read the rear leaf on paperbacks to understand what’s going on, but the leaves don’t tell you the author’s writing style, or the size of the fonts (this for me is important, because paying more than RM30 to squint doesn’t make any sense) .

The other funny thing is, and this is for you, Ms. Stalker, WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT I’LL BUY A BOOK IF I’VE READ IT?? Sudah baca, mesti beli…..go back to kindi, goodness. How am I supposed to baca the 200+pages in less than a day? Heck, even if my eyes can take it, my legs would have given in long before, ‘cos you didn’t provide any bloody chairs.

So now, here I am, constantly reminding myself that this is not KL, and it’s not a BORDERS that I walked into. Bookstores here don’t have chairs for you to sit (they have chairs to stand and reach up the cupboards) and everyone in the store is a stalker. I could have gone on with the stalkers in the DVD shop, but never mind, I'm letting you off with a warning. Hopefully its only in Part I that I’m ranting.

Carpark Nonsense

2009-06-17T11:57:00.001+08:00

Rewind the clock back to the month of March of 2009. It was just like any other normal college day. Come to college, attend lessons, go for lunch, then attend more lessons, and before I knew it, its time to leave already. So as usual, I walk up to the car park, insert the parking ticket to the ticketing machine. As usual, the machine would be yapping all the nonsense. “Please insert your ticket”, “please insert the amount of money shown on the display”. As usual, the screen displays “RM3.50”, and AS USUAL, the machine won’t accept paper currency, only coins! I’ve bloody encountered this a million times since I got to TCSH, and it has been a real spoiler to the otherwise very calm and serene atmosphere here.

I mean, collecting money is the very basics of doing business. If you can’t even collect money effectively, then YOU’VE FAILLED!! GO BACK TO KINDER!! What’s more, it's not like I'm not willing to pay, and this is sad. And don’t get me started with big headed guards who thinks (or pretends) to understand English, or the hopelessly-positioned exit ticketing machine. Its already absurd to charge such high rates on weekdays (2 bucks for first two hours, 50c for subsequent hour) and really obvious price discrimination (1 dollar per entry for weekends!!), and they still make us climb extra flight of stairs and drive further just to pay the fees, then make our exit a test of skills (or my patience, at least). This is rubbish.

GT-R: Best Car in the World? Definitely Much More Than That.

2009-06-15T16:11:00.002+08:00

And so everyone (myself included) thinks the Nissan GT-R is the best car in the world right now. EVO® magazine makes it as the ‘Car of the Year’, having beaten the 911, and trashed the R8 on the hills; AUTOCAR voted it as the ‘Best Driver’s Car’; WhatCar has it as the ‘Best Value-For-Money Performance Buy’; Car And Driver pitted it against the American Legend (the Corvette), in the American Game (a drag race), on American soil, and the GT-R won. (Sadly, C&D had to make you read between the lines to understand that the GT-R won, but only by the smallest or margins, for very obvious reasons.)

Not to be forgotten are the world-beating figures that the GT-R churns out that would oust any other performance car without having to participate in a group comparison. 0-60 in 3.8 seconds, tops out at 193mph. And who can ignore the price: £56,795 for the basic model, which is mind-boggling price for mind-boggling.

Now, the question is whether is this all this Nissan could do? And my answer is a downright NO. Notice that I left out the horsepower figures above? 473bhp? Its not a world-beating figure, if you ask me. Even the EVO XI now leaves the factory in FQ-400 forms, producing in excess of 400bhp (with a 2-litre motor!), and a lightly tuned one (like running on free-flow air filters and exhaust, and higher boost) can easily match 473, if not top it. However, in a power comparison, the Audi R8 needs 3.9secs to reach the century, and it takes a 5.2 litre V10 with 518 horsepower on the tap. That got me thinking, how on Earth did the Nissan do it?

I’ve got a theory to this. It’s not Nissan lying about the horsepower figures, nor are the marketing people playing down the hype the car has created. I would think that the problem lies in the engineering of the car itself, where it does not (and will never) reveal the actual power it produces, thanks to some clever trickery by the engineers. To all car nuts out there, I think its time you realize that no magazine reviews have successfully publish the GT-R’s wheel dynamometer figures. They will always say that the ‘dyno test is confusing the AWD traction system, and the slip differential is busy shuffling power between the 4 wheels, occasionally producing less than 200bhp’. It would also add that ‘if we run the engine dyno, yeah, its close to matching the manufacturer’s horsepower and torque figures’. For your information, the engine dyno is rubbish, if you ask me, because it’s the same method that the mileage guys use to calculate the highest fuel economy possible. The engine dyno measures the air-fuel ratio at a particular RPM, then uses a software to work out the fuel used over a particular range. The thing is that, this can be done while the car is stationary, which makes little sense, when the real mileage figures involve a lot of other stuff i.e. aerodynamics, wheel resistance, power loss (at places such as the gearbox and torque converters), and driving style. The same happens when measuring power, the engine is revved to a certain RPM, and A/F mixture is used to estimate the power produced, and just like measuring mileage, the power loss is not taken into account.

Thus, this is where wheel dyno comes in, where you place a car on frictionless rollers, and accelerate the car over a range of gears and speed and use softwares to work out the power at particular RPM and speed, in WHP figures, or Wheel Horsepower. It works best for either front- or rear-wheel drive cars (with traction control turned off, and without a limited-slip), where power is only distributed between the 2 wheels, and takes into account all the power losses, like gearbox and differentials. However, the Nissan is 4WD, and has one of the best 4WD power distributing system in the world, making it trip and stumble on the frictionless rollers, when the software is programmed to send most power to the wheel with the most grip, and it cant tell which wheel has the most of it. So if you place one on a dyno, it might think its snowing (given that the rollers have low friction), traction control and differentials intervene, and all you get is a GT-R producing 200bhp. And if you have to know, a Mazda 3 has more power than that.

All these makes measuring the GT-R’s power accurately impossible. I strongly believe that that beast is producing well in excess of 500bhp, and its Nissan’s intention to make the GT-R a played-down supercar slayer, capable doing it with minimum effort. They’d probably gave the lowest possible estimate to the horsepower figures.

I’m a big fan of the GT-R, knowing that there’s much potential lies in the car, and I’m eager to see what can Nissan do more to the car, hopefully in the form of a V-Spec (like the great job Nissan has done to the R34 V-spec). What do you think?

Clarity: A Need or Want?

2009-06-14T14:07:00.001+08:00

As a person who has been wearing glasses for eternity, its safe to say that seeing the world through a pair of lenses gave me a clearer picture of how the world looks like. Like how magnificent the Petronas Twin Towers are when seen from far, or how majestic the Great Wall of China stand as I view it from the foot of the wall, and how weird and scary the SsangYong Stavic really is. Of course, there were also practical, reasons to put on those UV and infrared-cutting lenses, as it allows me to carry out my day-to-day activities (drive to college, copy notes from the white board, read my Word documents on-screen without blinding myself).

However, it is when I put my glasses away that I see the real world that I’ve always thought of: the grainy, blur, unclear world, full of uncertainties and certainly requiring a lot of patience and imagination to process. I have to admit that I’m quite particular when it comes to my glasses, I always want the clearest possible view though them. But, growing up(finally!), I began to question myself; What’s the point of seeing the world so clearly, when you don’t know what are you seeing? Thus, whenever I feel tensed or confused, be it with studies or life, I choose to sit down and remove the lenses, only to stare blindly at something. For instance, at home, I could be staring at the ceiling fan, its rotation blurs out as my retina can’t focus onto it well enough. But, from a different point of view, I could also see it as a fan moving very, very slowly, for my focus only catches glimpses of a stationary blade, and that’s a totally different perspective if the fan that I’ve been living with for years (if my memory didn’t fail me). The same goes with the car poster in my room. In perfect clarity, the Volvo C70 exudes all the characteristics their designers aimed to create: macho-ness, the muscular shoulders emphasizing on the waist and width of the convertible. But off goes the lenses, and all of a sudden, it’s a Volvo displaying fluidity and organic shapes, with almost a monotonous silver colour, something you’ll never find on a Volvo. The wheels seem to integrate into the vehicle, and at times, it can look better than the real car. Whenever I’m outside, my lens tend to exaggerate people passing by, the brightness of the lights, the hustle and bustle of everything, which can be stressful when your mind is as messed up as mine. But once the lenses are removed, I felt the sound, the glare and all the unnecessary stimuli removed as well, living behind a blur, quiet and lonely world. I could look at anyone, anything and suddenly everything slows down. My mind goes blank and relaxes, and as I began to focus on my breathing, I could literally feel my body loosen, the muscles not as tense as before. I stare at my work, and all I see are blur lines after more blur lines. I look out of the window, and it’s a mixture of green, blue and black light, save for the occasional speckle white light coming from what I would deem a passing car. At this point, I would close my eyes and rub my temples, which amplify the pain in my head, but it also feels rather comfortable, surprisingly. It felt like I had let go a really heavy baggage for a short while, to take a short breath, loosen my shoulders a bit before carrying it again, when I open my eyes. Reluctance (to carry the bag) is hard to fight, but the blur, spectacle-less world is always only an ideal, theoretical world. It is powered my thoughts and imagination, and is indeed unreal.

Whether I like it or not, the REAL world is always, relentlessly waiting for my return. So, on goes the glasses, accompanied by my work, the noise, the glare and the headache, but thinking back about the feeling of not lugging the baggage for a while merely encourages me to keep it on my back till the end, and would always be a reminder to the real world I belong to.

My Very First Post!!

2009-06-12T23:14:00.000+08:00

So this is my very first post, and without doubt my first dive into the deep, tranquil waters of blogging. I thought that while Facebook has that “What’s On Your Mind” column, I didn’t see it as being suitable for long articles, and as for Twitter, oh well, 140 characters are a little too few for my liking, thus my move to start blogging.

So, I thought I’ll fill up my first post by describing what will this blog probably be about. To begin with, I probably WON’T be writing anything football (the charming Mr. Shebby will do that for me on ESPN every week, thank you), as well as politics (there are other bloggers out there who can do better than me, I’m sure). And all the things that we Malaysians normally abstain from mentioning (religion and sex, although I’m pretty flexible about the latter).

What I’ll be writing about are probably issues that affect our life, be it directly or indirectly, as well as stuffs that guys normally talk about, like cars and music. And occasionally, I might do some revisit of the old times, be it a holiday or my time in school and college. However, I am keen to spice it up a bit, by having user generated content, where you guys tell me what you want to read on, and I’ll try to come up with something. But that will only happen when traffic on my page is higher, but until then, do leave any comments, be it constructive or not.

I highly value feedback and comments, as I have to admit that I do occasionally go overboard where technicalities are concerned. So, once again, feel free to enquire and leave an opinion.

Finally, a toast to the birth of Under Where?, and the dawn of modern user generated blogging!!