Like I've mentioned previous post, my parents went to Harpin for holiday, so I'll be all by myself after work. Called Irene up, but she has to attend a dancing class. Instead of heading home and thinking of what to cook for dinner, I drove myself to Queensbay Mall before the traffic condition gets worse.

I like shopping alone as I will have all the time for myself. Concentrating on things that only I will be interested in. First I visited Padini Concept Store trying to see if there's anything which suits me. Found a nice shirt, but my body doesn't fit it well. Then I wonder around Jusco, where I managed to find a few items I liked. There's one cupboard which I might be going back to get tomorrow after full consideration. I'm now desperately in need of a place to fit all my books and magazines as they starts piling up.

Harvey Norman has opened a branch over there. They stock hp printers which I happen to learn how much the company spent on it's ink technology. The price is a bit on the high side for me now, but as my Epson Stylus C67 gets too costly, I might be getting myself a unit of hp printer.

I was rather hungry and tired by the time I finished 2 floors from end to end. But as I walked into Borders Bookstore, all these thoughts have vanished. Information continues to flow through my soul, purifying it and neutrilized all the stomach juices that makes it growls. First I browse through the Fiction section, but I went to a total halt when I saw the large collection of Photography Books, Manuals, and Guides. Sat there for like an hour before I force myself to leave before I starve to dead. But as I reached the Computer section, there I go again...looking through titles by titles, and flipping through pages of the books I'm researching on. Found a few titles that I would love read - Excel with VBA; Linux Hacks; and Photoshop CS2 down and dirty.

After Borders, I adjourned to Super Tanker for my dinner. By the time I reached there, it was already 9pm. After having RM6.90 worth of LokLok (cooked satay), went back home and get my car washed before calling it a day. All in all, I don't mind shopping alone as I can have all the time I want to see all the things I wanted. But when I intend to place a purchase, I would prefer to have 2nd opinion from Irene or a friend with me.

Labels: Myself

... That my parents are still working
... That my mom is still able to wear her sport shoes
... That my parents are healthy enough to travel
... That my sister is willing to cook
... That my house is comfy
... That I have a good career path
... That I have a good partner

I've just came back from the Airport, leaving Mom and Dad on the departure gate. I'm so happy that mom is so excited about the trip and can carry her own luggage despite having muscle aches. Malaysian weather really doesn't do justice to her, I'm glad that after working for 30 years, they are able to spend the money on a healthy lifestyle, and being happy.

Eventhough I can't join them, but I believed they would be better off without me delaying the trip with my photography. BonJour Mum and Dad.

Labels: Myself

Oh Christmas Eve, Oh Christmas Eve...how do you peeps celebrate it? Let me share how I've enjoyed mine.

Waking up beside the person I loved, sweating away in the steam room, and followed by a 2 hour long Jacuzzi together. Next we cooked lunch and drank the coffee Cirnelle gave me for birthday last year. We bring our lunch out to the garden and chatted away while the cold breeze splatter some water from the waterfall into our food.


Later, Irene helped me to complete the umbrella that has been Pending attention for quite a while. Won't go into the details, but I think our "artistic" skills still need some improvement. Notice the catch light on my eyes? The umbrella's flaws can clearly be seen. That's the only complain I have, after saving RM140 by not getting a umbrella designed for flash.

Here's the catch light that you can see in my eyes. The umbrella also helps in diffusing the light source. Will need to trim it properly to reduce the red cast more.


Later in the evening, we paid a visit in most of the Hotels in Teluk Bahang/Batu Feringghi. Didn't take much pictures as the time is a bit limited. Most of the restaurants are fully booked, or too lavishly expensive. Eden's THE SHIP RM69/pax, Rasa Sayang RM150/pax, while Tanjung Country Club has a Wedding Dinner (on a Christmas EVE??? ).

Had our dinner at a Korean Tepanyaki shop instead. We've been there before, but the food is nice, cheap and the environment is acceptable. Left her in front of the Church for the mass before calling it a day.

So, how did you celebrate your Christmas Eve?

Labels: Relationship

Before I begin my unforgivable demand, I'll like to thank MBA,(Competent Communicator)CC John Yeoh for giving me an egg tart in conjunction to the Christmas celebration. Thanks also to Manager K for giving me a notebook for the similar occasion.

So let me start with my X'mas wishlist. Don't worry, I'm not asking for a Nikon D200 or a Hoya/Pentax K10D. So Santa, here's what I would love to get for being a good baby man.
1) Beginning Gimp:From Novice To Professional [Paperback/eBook]
Author: Peck,Akkana
Publisher: Apress
2) Wedding Photography with Adobe Photoshop
by Rick Ferro, Deborah Ferro - 2003 - 128 pages
3) Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Mechanical Engineering
Author: Miscellaneous. [Actually any mechanical reference book will do good]
4) Travel books filled with astonishing photographs (this will be for my gal)
5) And the last thing, a book shelf large enough to organize all the books I have. (I'm making do with the book sholder Ming Zheng's gave me for the time being)

If any readers are kind enough to supply me with such books, I'll be more than willing to provide you with a weekend of photography services (wedding, party, portraits, editing...).

Labels: Myself

The sun is melting my car tyres, but the christmas spirit is strong around me. After being getting "promotion", I received a BELATED Birthday gift from Mint Mui yesterday. In it, is a book rest with a message that writes

To a guy with a handsome full of general knowledge,
and full of wonderful jokes!
Take Care!

Hugz
~icymint~

While in it, she reminds me againg that "Sometimes you have to dream", which i seriously have no idea what she wants to convey. At the same time, she also pass me a gift from my 3 "Charlie's Angles" - Marimo, Corn and Bun. It's something close to heart, and reminds me to keep in touch with the Machi Gang always. Machi, do let me know if there's any reunion I'll make it a point to join.

What surprises me today at work is a christian supervisor of mine gave most of us a "KFC snack voucher" as a token of appreciation that writes

Thank you FOR ALL the support
Merry X'Mas & Happy New Year

I've created more trouble to him than helping him clear. But since I'm transfered to another line, I will only be seeing him during break times I guess, no more will I be creating any problems for him (except those that his techincians owe me).

Labels: Friends, Work

GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) is an equivalent to window's, but the language written is different. Need to have some knowledge of Linux before hand, which I learn while working. Now, typing away happily in Internet Explorer 7.0.

Not like I don't like Fedora Core 6, but I'll need a transition period to move most of my daily routine over one after another. Thanks a lot to Choobee for helping me on this grub issue since Sunday. It's good to be working with her in the same department (different company), which means that we can actually have things in common to talk about. Just got a meeting with my new Central Engineering group, I doubt that my job scope will be any different, but the transition there will take another 6 months or so.

Work is always challenging, interesting, and exciting. I wonder why others are hating their's that much? I admit I do complain, but thank God for giving me an opportunity to see the world, understand and learn from various different people. Thanks also to dad for building up my Ego, and supporting me throughout my life.

p/s: To discipline myself in exploring this "new" operating system, I'll most probably use my Tuesdays and Thursdays on FC6 while Mon, Wed and Fri will be spent downloading sitcomes from my WinXP.

Labels: Tech, Work

Installed and typing this blog post on FC6 a RedHat project running on Linux kernel. Hopefully it doesn't mess around with my other 2 drives. But now I'm having problem to get back to boot my Window's system. I muz have been neglecting some important steps on the GRUB or smth like that. Won't be able to get messangers for the time being.

It's not a migration, but the learning curve is still very steep, might need sim or hyuei's help this week.

Labels: Tech

Christmas comes early this year. I worried that it might be disaster, unpredictable avalanche to my future. That all comes to a confident agreement when I ended up sharing my joy with my gf. Waited for her to finish her meeting, and let her finish speaking before I share the good news with her. I've switched jobs~!

She has always reminded me that an engineer is not suppose to be working 3000 hours a year. But this is even a surprise to me when my collegues told me about it. I've only join the company for 6 months as an Industrial Engineer, learn a bit of testers and board repairs here and there nothing much worth mentioning about. But since the company went through an reorganization, I've been moved to a new department called Central Engineering. From some I heard is a better job prospect, while others tell me that I might not be learning as much as my current job.

During job orientation, I've already asked one of the department manager if they encourage people to move around and learn from other areas. Over 30 years of history, usually people like us are not encouraged to move. But I've only been there for the shortest time, this might have been a record to them.

I have totally no idea what I'm going to do there, my job description, how my new boss is like, and what the product they are manufacturing. Good part is, I'm not in the manufacturing line any more, and hence I can concentrate more on the development of new products, new process, and improvement in the companies operations. Besides that, hopefully I will be able to be sent for trainings (finally!) which is like once in a blue moon for my current position.

I will miss my collegues which have been teaching me a lot, guiding and supporting me despite my insufficiency. At the mean time, I'm looking forward to the new challenges lying ahead of me. Like what CBT says, "What could be more worse than your current job? Think positive."

Labels: Work

Attended their meetings as a visitor. Knowing the culture in Toastmasters, it's easy to get along. I've already known the Toastmaster of the evening, and some of the members who were working in the same place as I am.

My collegue is attempting his first assignment, the same one I did last week in-house. He was bad in his granmar, but it's a good attempt for him to step out of his comfort zone and speak up. Mr Y is vulgar in nature, and 4 letter words might be the most common english term he use during work. But I do hope that with the Toastmasters program, he'll learn to gain respect and improve his English at the same time.

I've also learn a new Tamil word - "Chandran" which is one of the words to describe Moon. I've also get to understand more about the 4Cs in diamond, and motivated by Jessica who presented an uplifting speech. I've also met some TM from Intel TM Club, and also a meticulous English teacher who taugh all of us what "articulatory verbs".

Table topics is rather eye opening, where we have to make up a story out of a few words mixed and match by another person. Most of them barely make a sentence out of those 5 words, but it is a good attempt from Peng Yew. The Vice President of Education (VPE) for this club is an officer in the place I work, hopefully I can arrange to have my assignments done that as well.

Labels: Toastmasters

S-ATA has always being ringing on my head when I think about HDD. But never did I really know the difference until I've made the wrong purchase today. S-ATA HDD and external casings costs a bit more compared to IDE, but since it's a "newer technology" I don't mind paying extra.


Found this interesting gadget called E03 by Stysen selling in the PC Fair. It's a bit expensive as compared with the other casings, but I buy their idea of putting a fan to cool down the system. Paid RM96 for that. As for HDD, I've always wanted to get an additional 3.5" HDD considering the price is dropping. Thanks to Richx, I decided to get a WD2500KS for RM272. ( 250GB, 16MB buffer, SATA II, 7200rpm)

That's until technology becomes a nightmare to me. Get back home, open my CPU, strip off my harddisk. F@#$!!! Why are the pins different??? Flip through some manuals only to find out that the seller sold me a IDE HDD last time when I bought my computer a year ago. That's to save his costs through ignorance and negligence of his customers. DaMN!

Boh huat, I'll have to use my newly bought HDD as an external instead of a replacement. But now comes another problem. Don't assume HDD comes formatted. When I've switch on the power, the hardware can be detected by my OS, but it doesn't show up on My Computer. Called up a few favours until finally managed to get help from my uni senior - the great Mr S.

Luckily he has all the knowledge and equipments ready at his house. Drove through the heavy rain to find a place I've never been before. Thanks to the tip given by mom, I managed to find the place quite easily. What surprises me is when I step into his room. I've always felt that I spent a lot on gadgets, but this is the first time I see a bedroon with one 19" LCD connected to a Pentium D CPU while the other 19" connected to an IBM laptop, wireless keyboard and mouses, 1 external HDD and another dedicated external HDD, 1 set of 2.1 speakers while another 5.1 hiding under the bed. All these things are cool with in an air-conditioned room.

Surprise you enough? That's a boy's world. Thanks to him, managed to format the HDD, and get it working. Now using it to backup all my Pictures first before moving forward to backup my movies.

Labels: Tech