Sayonarra, Gin-san

Today, one of my fellow ex-Curtin Villa and also h3666 clan member, Gin-san, flew off today to somewhere to continue his studies. Soon the next clan member Yogi will be flying off soon to UK as well. By the end of this semester, h3666 clan will be officially liquidated. Just Ham and Dollar will be left behind, after 2 years since the clan was first established.

The good ol' days... now only 2-3 pairs of shoes remain. Hey, life goes on right?

Would like to wish to my leaving comrades all the best, live long, prosper and may we meet again one day. Cheerios.

Scrabulous Gone

I may be slow to find this one out, but I wasn't surprised at all. After being sued by Hasbro and Mattel, the Scrabble-like Scrabulous was removed from my application list, and also from Facebook.

I noticed it was gone from my favorites some days ago, since I was an avid player challenging my lecturers in a never matches of online word scrabbling. So my first thought was that the app got some problem or maintenance due to the new Facebook layout, alas it was gone for good. With one less fun app, Facebook is going to be quite for a while. Now I have to find a new app to challenge my lecturers, just for fun. *cough* I heard banned apps make comeback with different names, like Wordscraper, click this link *cough* Bwuahaha let the games re-begin!

Rest in peace Scrabulous.

Curtin Carnival 2008

After 1 week gun-running around Kampua Town, I left for Oil Town at 11:30pm Friday and made landfall at 6:00am. Groggy and bearing slight headache (must've been wrong sleeping position in the bus), I went back to h3666, unpacked and straight away took the 7:15am bus to campus.

Looking for a colored version of this group pic :) I'm somewhere in the corner there

There I just started off the day prepping for the Curtin Carnival along with other crews as early as 8am, and kicked started the whole event at 10:30am till 7pm. And I was involved with the John Curtin Leadership Academy (JCLA) charity booth.This year's Carnival conincided with Youth Day, so it's Curtin Carnival & Youth Day 2008 (mouthful). The events ranged from club booths, musical performances, dances, some more foosic delights, ghost house (was planning to scare the ghosts with some CV! gang members), but RM5 was wee bit too much and we're out of coupons, tarot card reading, tattooing (authentic tats woo...) and lots more which I can't possibly cover in details due to my lazy weekend mood. More pics will be uploaded somewhere in Facebook soon.

Everyone, young and old, big and small, came to the Curtin Carnival. Owh that's JCLA member Chuma with one of the lecturer's daughter.

JCLA Project Care's Mission to Long Makabar booth

JCLA Fortissimo's Spread the Love Campaign board (with Samson showing off his guns). Forgot to take a snapshot of Fortissimo's Ball-4-Charity events XD

Monkey Tattoo Studio dude at the tattooing booth

Wonder if they had "I Love You Mom" tattoo

Follow the footsteps to meet your DESTINY! Debate club's tarot card reading and nail art foot signs on the carnival ground.

Owh owh owh! *cough* a mysterious CV! gang member handing over a rose to a girl *gasp*. A true shock and awe :D

It's a blast, and the reception was great despite the usual crazy hot-cold-hot-rain Miri weather. As for the JCLA charity booth we're handling, happy to say it was a success as well. Now, I've been working non-stop for the past 48 hours (all the way from Sibu), and I need a 12 hours deep sleep retreat. Cheerios.

p/s: yeah I know the pics are blurry. I gotta clean my hp camera lenses soon, too much grease and outdoor use I guess. Although the bright side is that the pics are upload-friendly, I'll improve the quality after this.

My First Fine

Shaite, after 3 years since I got my driving license and and about 6 months after I removed that big fat P sticker from my windshield, I got fined today... well for overparking. There goes my clean record after eluding the municipal council ladies checking for expired parking coupons, been evading them for 3 years now so I think they know me better XD

Remember kids, parking coupons that lasts 1/2 an hour doesn't mean you can use it for 1-3 hours. Please help the municipal ladies ease their job by playing your part in scratching and putting up the correct quantity of coupons.

Getting Updated with the Gaming World

I was browsing around Sing Kwong for some new games that might be able to sate my lust for electronic games. Instead of finding another new playmate, I ended up realizing I'm gradually getting disconnected from the gaming world. It was either my study life, a phase of growing up or just the 4th gamer-life crisis.

All these upcoming games are beyond my knowledge (except Demigod). Visiting such game shops can update one's database about the expanding gaming universe. Amongst the upcoming titles are Demigod, Grid, NFS: Undercover, Dawn of War 2, Lost Planet, Spore et. al. other titles that is beyond my comprehension and beyond laptop's specs. Soon chico, soon...

When I was walking around I realized more games have popped up since my last update, and to know I used to be amongst the first few to know and try it out a few years back. Now, I guess I'm just old... need to catch up with the gaming world soon before I succumb to the unhappy reality of work life in the next few years. Gamer 4 Life!

Metal Gear Solid 4 is in my wish list a few months ago, and is still in the list along with God of War 3 and Mercenaries 2. And just yesterday, an MGS4 was there sitting in the exclusive PS3 shelf, waiting for me to obtain it once and for all... it's calling me... must resist... my preciousss.....

Catch a Fire

Today I woke up all slow and calmed (Sibu morning breeze can do that to you), despite getting a call from Chuma at 7am I just head back to sleep and got up at 10am. "Mood must be high today" I say to myself half-asleep, "because it's Sunday :D". So do whatever what not, and then tuned into HBO and caught Catch a Fire.

This is one great based-on-a-true-story political movie. Two thumbs up from me who watched it through and postponed my shower. So anyways here's the spoiler, RUN if you want:

The story revolves around the life of Patrick Chamusso, a dude with a loving family, a great job and basically living 'the good simple life'' in Secunda, South Africa. Besides working as a foreman at a Secunda coal-to-oil refinery, Pat coaches the Secunda Lions soccer team consist of promising child players. Upon returning from a championship outside Secunda, the refinery Pat was working at blew up and he was accused of being a terrorist by the apartheid government.

With his friends, wife and even his wee key player got whupped badly by Nic Vos (some Anti-Terrorist agent in South Africa at that time), Pat decided to join the African National Congress (ANC) for some freedom-fighting training along with thousands other oppressed apartheid victims. And this, ironically, shows how the agency and the apartheid government has turned innocent Pat into the very terrorist they were trying to stop He then got involved in a terrorist plan to continue blowing up the whole refinery he is working on (yeah, the refinery is UBER BIG and the first terror attack was not so damaging) to give a liberation message to the Boers. Pat almost succeeded with the plan, but sadly Nic Vos managed to find THE bomb that was meant to blow up the refinery kingdom come. He was arrested and was sentenced to 24 years in prison in the Robben Island. Luckily a famous political figure, Nelson Mandela, a fellow anti-apartheid came to power and abolished the apartheid system for good. Pat was released after only 5 years in prison, and South Africa is liberated.

Again, great movie and I recommend it for those who are into unbiased political movie which covers the life, struggle and pain from the people's point of view that managed to make me feel attached with the characters in the story. For me, I'll say the movie ranks top in my thumbs up list along with another movie, The Pianist.

External Links:
Catch a Fire

Free Week, but Not So Free

Yay, I'm back in Kampua Town for the first free week of Semester 2 2008. Well, not gonna be free due to assignment and some charity work that's got to be done soon. For now, I'm just gonna enjoy the healing Sibu weather (yeah I'm sick on the last 2 days before I went home), miss the cool moody Kampua Town weather :)

Talking about weather, the last few days in Oil Town the weather was acting strange again. From 8-11am it's coastal sunny and hot then by 12pm it's thunder and rain till 2pm, then it's sunny and hot again till 6pm. It's really a change from 31'C to 26'C then back to 31'C again, nuts! XD

So the loco change caused my system to fooked up as well, and I came down with not one, but three flus (I blame people who don't know how to sneeze away and really like to sneeze out loud in front of my face so I can bless them). But I'm okay now, just a few sniffles and numb smelling sensors.

Back to the post title, yeah, I won't be free for the 1 week. Will be doing some assignments that's due after the free week, and have to coordinate the crew to make Curtin Carnival a success. Then I gotta conduct my part in helping a charity project in Miri here in Sibu with the help of Georgie. Haihz...

Oh well, for now I wanna sleep, watch TV (yeah really missed TV) and go hunt for some kampua's head. Happy free week!

TMNet Streamyx' Notorious Slow Speed

Today while waiting for the pages to load, I got the urge to test the line's speed to see how bad the service have deteriorated over the years. So I avoided going to TMNet's Speedometer for the test, and straight ahead went to another speed tester testmy.net which is non-TMNet to get a non-fabricated result. And not so surprisingly I got this from testmy.net:

Click image to ENLARGE (may take a while to load, you know how the speed is): Yeah 30Kbps. This was the download test result for a simple 512 file in Senadin, Oil Town. And from the comparative bar chart you can see 'me' equivalently short with dial-up. And I agree with the comment "Ouch, are you on dial-up or something?"

And then I decided to go to the Speedometer just to be unbiased, then while I waiting for the test to run I got this half-way through:

This is LOLable. "Our server is currently busy or unavailable. Please try with another FTP server or TRY AGAIN AT A LATER DATE". I guess the later date refers to me going back to Kampua Town and start tanam some sayur and sell the harvest after two months. And I'm not surprised if I'd still see this message again by then.

Shaite isn't it? Paying RM88 for a 1Mb and you only get 30Kb/1000Kb... A true daylight highway sweet talking con company. Maybe a petition to improve the service and get the line to the promised speed will do the trick, or anyone wants to form an angry mob mobbing TMNet offices?

External Links:
TMNet Speedometer
testmy.net

Food Day and Night

Seriously the reason number 1 why I gain some weight over the semesters is because of the food in Oil Town. Not to bad-mouth the town, but frankly just to point out there's just too many choices here ranging from your typical kopitiam menu, to usual Western, the Kashmir delicacies and anything beyond. And another thing to consider is that the food are available almost 24 hours in this town, and food literally don't sleep, until 3am anyways where most stall operators close shop and sleep because they're still human beings. Due to my 'what-the-hell-let's-just-try-it' attitude, almost half of Miri food joints have been raided.

As opposed to what I usually have on weekdays (stuck with campus menu) here's my average weekend diet:

Morning Breakfast, Brunch and Lunch

Tandoori, a few roti canai, and maybe some mamak style mee goreng can kick some ass to start the day with some South Asian delights.

At Taj, Lutong and yeah that's a new guy at the roti canai department

Evening Dinner
For me, nothing beats a good spicy bakso for dinner. If chicken soup heals the teenage tortured soul, then bakso heals my tired student soul. I can't believe I can't find one of these back in Kampua Town.

At Najua, Pujut. Bakso mee kuning sapi. Damn I just had to try the sapi bakso and I ended re-finding a new love (for bakso) because of the sapi balls. RM4.00. And no, the pic was not Photoshopped, the only thing I added was the K4L watermark

Late Evening Supper
Meh, I don't go out of Senadin at night so I usually hang out with colleagues at your ever friendly Senadin food stalls. The hub is usually the Lot 5593, although the menu disallows me to eat there, I just grab some Coke + 100 Plus and have some jokes with buddies till 11pm or so. And of course there are nearby halal stalls where I can dapao some King Burger and bring it over to finish off all the jokes about May. Owh there's TV here, and that means I can get some Olympics updates from time to time.

The open air food court between Curtin Villa- Curtin Village, Senadin. Of course I don't eat at this joint (hint hint, look at the menu LOL), I just dapao from the next joint and bring it over to 5593 to hang out with kamchengs. Why? "Because he's from Sibu" (Georgie, 2008)

Hitting Colombia Asia

My foster brother left for Kuching to lead the university's rugby team for a 7vs7 match on the weekends, so he asked to me help take care of his car while he is away leading the team to victory. I was paiseh when he asked me to use the car at my own leisure since I have a principle of not driving other people's car in a foreign town, you know la, anything might happen and that anything might lead to bigger sheet. But anyways I did use it to go to Lutong to meet God like what I always do every Friday, and Irwin hitchhiked with me. I did not want to bother to carpool with others since they have 2pm classes and I might slow them down.

He may not look like it, but this is the most nervous, tripped out and restless Irwin I've ever seen for the 4 semesters knowing him

And if only this was in .gif format or some video you can actually see how shaky he was waiting for his turn

After prayers I sent Irwin to Colombia Asia in townfor some medical checkup. And for a nutty dude I never seen him this nervous, because he's really tripping and all out restlessbecause of the impending checkup. Really made me wanna ROFLOL but I did not since it's another person's health we're talking about here.

Trying-not-to-be-bored look, waiting at the lobby for the boy to finish his checkup. Chubby angle XD

So anyways he went through the checkup unscathed (I think, from what I can see anyways), and he's doing fine. He did however brought a funny story:

In a diagnosis room with some doctors, some patients and a lot of nurses:
'Sick' Irwin: *panic* *restless* *panic*
Male Doctor: Relax, everything's gonna be alright
'Sick' Irwin: *panic* *restless* *panic* *sweat*
Male Doctor: Good, just relax. Alright... girls! Come over here!
'Sick' Irwin: *panic* *panic* *happy* *panic* *sweat* *:D*

For a RM34 medical checkup service, it didn't take long and yes, unfortunately the doctor was just joking. We drove straight home afterward and spent Friday like how weekend is supposed to be spent. Whatever illness he has isn't that serious and he is still able to join any LAN party anytime soon.