One World Hotel

My brother came home one night and told me he had a free room at One World Hotel. It's the new hotel near his and my office. So we took the whole family over and I decided I was going to stay the night there. I thought the novelty of parking my car in my office and walking to work right next door would be fun.

We celebrated my nephew's belated birthday with a cake cutting and that little boy didn't want to go as they had Astro in the room. They had Justice League on Cartoon Central, damn... that's a good cartoon.

After I managed to shoo everyone out, it was already midnight. As I laid down to sleep, I realized there was a faint smell of new carpet. I'm pretty sensitive to chemical smells, I think it was the glue they used for the carpet. That drove me nuts while I was tossing and turning trying to sleep. The pillow was too hard. Most of the time, when I go to hotels, I bring my own pillow.

Other than that, it was a really nice room with great ammenities. I didn't have a chance to explore the rest of the hotel. I'll upload more pictures later in my flickr account. This is the first time I uploaded a 10megapixel picture without shrinking the size or using photoready to edit it.

By the way, the picture below is of the hotel lobby. Quite large but I think it needs more plants. Doesn't have that warm feel to it, feels very imposing without greeneries.

Pulau Ketam

I took a day of from work today to take Chui Yan's grandfather and granduncle to Pulau Ketam. The drive took about 45 minutes on the highway. Got a little lost after the highway ended but we got back on track after I looked it up in my map.

The four of us took the ferry to the island and spend an hour or so walking around. We ended up at a restaurant for lunch and soon made our way back to the mainland as we had to send Chui Yan's grandfather back to KL Sentral to catch a flight back home to Kota Bahru.

We took her granduncle to Digital Mall to buy some software to bring back home too. Got stuck in a major jam driving back to OUG. It took more than an hour just to get from the digital mall to OUG.

Anyway, it's been a tiring day. I manged to upload the Pulau Ketam pictures in my Flickr account. I'm considering getting a pro account so I can upload more pictures.

Meetings

I hate going for meetings where things just drag on and people don't know when to end it. You go to the meeting with a rough idea of an agenda and things to discuss but along the way, things start to veer of tangent and the next thing you know you're discussing some hot gossip about national leaders.

The worst part is, I'm too polite to tell people to stick to the agenda. I don't want people to feel bad or 'loose face'. I just smile and nod politely. Most of the time I have time to kill anyway, but at times I really need to use the loo and wish the meeting will end soon.

It's the same with phone calls. Most of the time, I just don't feel like making small talk on the phone with people I hardly know, let alone remember their name. They start of with "how are you" and I say "okay" even though I'm all tense at having to talk on the phone.

I guess I'm just so not a talker when I'm with someone new. With people I am comfortable with at work I'm quite talkative. I can joke with them and talk about mundane things. However, when I'm with someone new, I'm usually quite formal or even totally ignore them. Its not that I think lesser of the person, I just dread talking to new people. I rather be introduced by someone I'm already comfortable with and then have 3 person in the conversation. I suck at 1 to 1 conversation.

Thanks for the pen

Usually, I always have a pen. I feel naked if I don't have a pen with me if I leave the house. Besides my wallet, watch, handphone and keys, a black fine tip pen is a must have. The thing that drives me nuts is how I always end up loosing the pen in the office. Most common reason for loosing the pen is loaning it to someone and never seeing it again. Usually, its my hosts who wants to loan it to use during the show and they forget to return it to me.

I used to have those Parker pens and I engrave my name on it, even those go missing. Somewhere out there, is a few idiots with a pen with my name on it! Yesterday, my pen when missing again in the office. Today, as I was rushing to sign in the attendance sheet in the morning, I was searching for my pen in my shirt pocket and realized it was missing. This time I had enough, I asked the secretary for a pencil to use temporarily for the day and I spied a box of kilometrico pen in her drawer too. I asked for one of the blue kilometrico pen also. She took one out and gave it to me. That was a defining moment for me. It was like getting an award of recognition. One stupid pen and I felt like giving an acceptance speech clutching my kilometrico pen like an Oscar.

"Thank you for this pen. In all the years of service, I haven't seen much gratitude but today to get this pen is a recognition of my 7 years of service here. To be finally recognized with a cheapo pen shows that you care. Now if I loose this damn pen in the office, I return it to where it came from. Thanks!"

It's an ugly pen to have jutting out of my shirt pocket, but heck... it's free.

Monday coming

I'm dreading Monday. One of the managers on Thursday told me I would be doing a new recorded program. All these while, I'm still producing the current one I'm doing. Two programs at once! Not like I haven't done it before, it's stressful, but I survived.

I looked at the locations, most of it is outside of the Klang Valley, one was in Tawau, Sabah. Cool, at least I get to go somewhere I've never been before. It's been more than a year since I've done a recorded program. A little rusty but I've learned a lot since done about post-production. Now I just have to assemble a team. I feel like Ocean putting together Ocean's 11.

Updated Blog Format

I had some time to kill so I updated the blog format. Looks prettier. Feels like a new handphone cover. Just an illusion it's new but it's the same old thing.

Previously, I used to upload photos into Flickr and then link it to my blog but since I don't have a paid account, I upload them into blogspot directly now. I used to resize it but now I think I'll just use Photoready and optimize the photo for uploading, at least when you click on the photo, you get the larger version. I take all my photos at 10Megapixel size now.

Friends

Just uploading some photos I took over the past few days.

Datin Norjuma & Wardina. Juma dropped by the studio right after the show ended for a visit. She lost quite a lot of weight since the last I saw her. She had a pretty bad experience with the Malay gossip papers writing about her weight problem. I hate how those trash resort to embarassing someone for profit. That's why I put the watermark in the picture. I know of a friend who had pictures taken of her blog and used by the same trashy Malay newspapers for the front page.

Nurul Shahada, Natasha Hudson & Wardina. Wardina's daughter jumped up from the back just in time to get into the photo. Wardina brings her daughter to work quite often, she runs around the studio behind the cameras while the mother is working up front. Natasha Hudson came by to read some poems from the two books of poem she wrote. I told her she's got a nice voice, she should try recording it as an audio CD for kids.

Azizah, Azean Irdawaty and me. Azean Irdawaty on the show talking about her experiences with breast cancer. This wonderful actress is going for breast cancer surgery over the weekend. This would normally be a really scarry experience for most people, but this lady must be made of steel, she is so calm. The doctor told her she had stage 3 breast cancer. I hope she makes it.

Strange Bird

I stopped by the field opposite the LRT station at Taman Bahagia for cendol and rojak. While I was doing there, there were a lot of birds hopping around eating the left overs and I spotted the strangest bird. It looked like it had a little ball dangling from around its neck. I couldn't get a closer look as it just flew of when I approached it. I did manage to get a few pictures of it. The guy selling the cendol says he's seen the bird fyling around there before. I think it looks like some sort of tumour growing out of the bird. Well, I ain't eating the same thing the bird has been eating.

Ina

I got a letter dropped on my table that generated a smile at least. It's a bit smudged but I managed to take a photo of it and touched it up with photoshop. Click on it enlarge it.

Apprehension

Yesterday was a day full of apprehension. I had a show to run and also an assessment interview. The company was running a promotion assessment and today was part 2 of the process. It was an individual interview where I was tested on my communication skills. I usually don't get too scarred when going for interviews, maybe just a little nervous. After being on the 'other side' interviewing people, I'm a bit calmer now. Should take another month for everything to conclude.

Yesterday's show was interesting. I had 3 local female writers on the show sharing their passion for writing. The hard part of running a talk show is finding someone who is passionate in what they do to talk. I think those in the creative line like writing are those who are really passionate about what they do. Its almost like a religion to them, where you put aside time and prioritize your life according to your passion for writing.

Anyway, I was just about to upload some photos but because of the sensivity of the person in it, I think I better put a watermark on it first before I upload it. I wouldn't want a tabloid newspaper/magazine to reprint it without my use, even if they mosaic the person's face. I think I'm going to put a watermark on the photo that says "not for reprint in tabloids like... (publication name inserted here after I do research) and online forums". I'll put the watermark over the person's and body, just to make sure if they do reprint it, it's visible... and it's going to be a huge watermark they can't photoshop out haha!

Haven't been compelled to write anything lately. Sure, there's a lot to write but everytime I sit in front of the PC, I'm half asleep already. Today, I came home early from work so I thought I'll turn on the PC to surf a little.

I've been trying a less-meat diet for the past few weeks already. It started out because of my cough. I avoided eating chicken because the chinese medicine shop said I should avoid chicken. Okay, so after staying away from chicken I thought okay, what the heck... I'll just avoid eating pork and beef. I've already stopped eating beef for more than a month already.

I still eat pork and chicken if I am out eating a shared meal with someone. I don't get enough protien so I still eat fish and crustaceans. I did some self questioning on why it is morally wrong to eat chicken, pig and cow. I figure pigs and cows are animals mammals so that's bad because they give birth and how those animals are slaughtered isn't very nice either. Chickens aren't mammals but they still get killed pretty grusomely.

Fish I deduce that they don't have a social structure like higher genus animals. Yeah, so I eat dumb creatures. Kind of like how vegetables don't have brains and don't feel pain so its okay to eat them. It's like that ethical question, what if an animal was genetically modified so that it wanted you to eat it. I don't think I would find that objectable unless eating it would be bad for my health.

I finally put a deposit to buy an apartment. It's in Bayu Puteri. Hopefully in a few months time after everything goes well I get to move in by December. The wedding date is in December too so timing is everything. I love the view from the apartment. It faces south over looking a school and you could see pretty far all of central PJ. I figure investing in a telescope should be pretty fun. Opposite the apartment is Mutiara Oriental Condominium.

Tomorrow, I'm going down to the hotel to put down the deposit for the fuction room for the dinner in KL. Now I have to find a photographer. Chui Yan has found her dress so that's good. I think so far everything is going find... I hope so!

Datuk Siti
Just a picture of me with Datuk Siti. Okay, I know what you're going to say... she put on weight. Yeah, I guess she did. No, she's not pregnant as of the time the picture was taken. She's still a fantastic singer.

Back to normal

I got my PC back from the shop. The motherboard blew out from the lighting that hit my house. The lighting surge came through the phone line, into the modem and through the router. It then when through the LAN line into my motherboard. It even fried the IDE cables. Good thing my CPU, RAM and hard disk was okay. I got the same model motherboard so I didn't have to re-install anything.

The only problem I have now is with the new modem. It comes with a router too and its too complicated for me to setup. Not so familiar with network protocols. Almost got it to work by trial and error.

The pass few days, I've been going back and forth to Sunway Medical Centre. My uncle was undergoing surgery and I had to ferry my relatives back and forth from my house. At least that was something to do in the evening. Otherwise, I would normally be glued to the PC. I'm just so addicted to this PC. I get withdrawal symtoms when I don't have my PC around. I get restless and wonder what to do.

Talk softly

I came home after dinner celebrating my father's birthday to find my
computer, router, and modem fried by lightning. The monitor and
speakers still work thankfully. I hope its just the motherboard and
not the hard disk too. I have resorted to blogging from my phone.
Looks like i have to take this pc down to the digital mall to get it
fix. I called streamyx to see if they can replace the modem for me. It
seems that it was pass warranty. I always assumed that this was a
rental modem and i could get 1 free if it got hit by lightning. I
guess i was wrong. Excuse me if i don't use paragraphs. Its hard to
use the enter key when it doesn't exist on my phone keypad. Today i
when to see the doctor again. I have a really bad cough for a month
now. On pheglm but the cough is so bad i wake up in the night coughing
and choking from it. Its something i never had before. The doctor said
it was my asthma i had when i was young coming back. Damn it, it must
be those idiots smoking in the office. Now i have to use an inhaler.