Archive for the ‘Diary’ Category

Ramadan Bazaar

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

It’s that time of the year again when the Muslims start fasting for 1 month. I’m not sure whether my Muslim friends look forward to the fasting season or actually look forward to the celebrations after the 1 month. For me, it’s just simply great that the Ramadan month is here. It simply means more delicious food for me to choose from. There’s bazaar during the fasting month and not to mention the big celebrations for Aidil Fitri. Too bad this year I won’t be here to get myself invited to my Malay friends home for open house for a big treat during Raya. Instead I will be away in London starting university. But I could always crash the Raya celebrations probably in Malaysia House in London and eat all the good food there!

There are bazaars everywhere during this fasting period and I am so excited of going to one (after missing the past 2 years due to me being in Singapore) that I actually went to one the very first day of Ramadan. Went there with mom and sis and bought back quite some food for dinner. We could not finish everything by dinner and have to keep them refrigerated for the next day’s lunch. Here’s some photos from the bazaar near our home. It’s not a big one. I am a little disappointed because it used to be so much bigger 3 years ago with stalls on the left and right of the street and with more people.

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Some Random Updates

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

I’m quite a bummer I would say. I’m supposed to be so damn free during this holiday yet I’m not actively blogging. Correction: I AM VERY FREE DURING THIS HOLIDAYS I’M GETTING BORED.

Well since the time of my last update for the Manchester United game I’ve been doing quite some stuff like rain harvesting, OOPS!….travelling to Singapore, going for events, doing some shopping for UK, planning for the UK early holiday trip etc. I’m too darn lazy to put up photos of all the stuff that had happened.

Anyway I got almost everything I needed to go UK already. I’m just simply packing my bags to just fly early to UK and then find my uncle in Brno, Czech Republic. I’m bored sitting at home. I rather go early to UK and find my uncle in Czech Republic than sit at home passing time. It’s been 9 months already. Really long holidays is NOT exactly very good. I met up with so many friends already but many I still haven’t met up and most are busy with their studies wherever they are.

I wanted to go backpacking during this holidays but the scholarship season meant that I couldn’t leave Malaysia for an extended period of time. I was thinking of doing 2-3 months straight of backpacking. Well I will do it to Europe now that I’m going London to study.

I’m excited of starting studies in UCL. I’m looking forward to living in London. I’m pretty sure I will love the architecture of the city. And best of all, I will cherish watching football over there! I am a big fan of Arsenal and I look forward to going to the Emirates Stadium to watch Arsenal play their smooth-flowing attacking football in their new stadium. :D

I’m pretty sure much of what I will learn in the first year will be similar to what I learnt in A-Level Economics. Well probably some recap again. The 9 months holidays totally made me forget almost everything I learnt so far. It’s not good coming from a super stressed environment for 2 years to a super slack environment for the next 9 months. Well truth is I’ve travelled to Medan this holidays. The planned trip to Bangkok never materialised. Melbourne idea came by too late. Lots of trips down to Singapore but ironically not much trip around Malaysia.

Time passes by rather quickly. It’s not like watching rain fill up rain barrels during the rainy season. It’s so much quicker than that.

Anyway, for next week, Tuesday, 25 August at 11am, I’m going to Agathians Shelter in Seksyen 8, PJ to do some good to the orphans there. I’m bringing the kids out to MPH in Mid Valley to get them new books. Then later on will buy them all lunch at McDonald’s. And after that head back to the orphanage to play some games wit the kids. I had some funds from the Berkeley website thingy if you guys remembered and plan to spend the funds off meaningfully by bringing a big smile to the kids next week. There will be 22 boys for this outing. They are mainly in primary school. I have several friends coming along with me to play along with the kids. Drop me a message here or on my facebook or on my handphone if you are interested in coming along.

P/S: Bring along rain water barrels for this outing! JOKING-lah!

Manchester United Rematch in KL

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

I was not supposed to watch the Man United match in Bukit Jalil. After all I am an Arsenal fan. Why pay money to watch my archenemy play? Well it’s not about who’s playing; it’s about paying money to watch good footballers play some quality football.

If not for the sudden rematch in KL, I would not have watched Manchester United play strut their stuff here in my backyard. The whole thing was kinda sudden. It started only on Sunday about midnight when Yi Jiet was MSN-ing me about how he wanna get out of house on Monday. He said he wanted to watch the Man U match but thought we will just chill in Puchong having lunch and entertain ourselves in IOI Mall or some DirecTV.

Well at the same time, Wen Pin (Bryan) also MSN-ed me and asked me to watch the game. Having rejected him for the earlier match, I thought that this might be a great opportunity to go out with several friends. So it was agreed then that we would watch the match together.

Theven only came into picture the following day when we just called him about lunch to ask if he’s interested to go for the match, just before Yi Jiet bought the tickets in One Utama.

So Yi Jiet came down to my house at about 2 and we went for “chee chup chok” (however you spell that) aka pork porridge. Chatted awhile and we went to IOI Mall and played at some arcade and bowling. Yi Jiet got the shock of his life when he discovered how cheap bowling is in IOI Mall. We payed a grand total of RM4.30 per person for a game of bowling and shoes rental! Yi Jiet couldn’t believe that it is dirt cheap in IOI Mall…haha. It is only RM2.80 per game for students there. Adult price is at RM3.80 per game before 5pm.

We head to Bukit Jalil Stadium at 5pm. We wanted to avoid the jam and obtain good seats in the stadium. We did pretty well. There was no jam as the match was only scheduled at 8.45pm. We obtained rather good seats too.

Turnout at the stadium was about 20 to 30 thousand. Not bad considering that tickets are only sold for 2 days. We bought the RM58 ticket. The atmosphere for Saturday’s match would have been better. A capacity full crowd of 85000 people. And there were 5 goals during that match. And the host actually scored 2 goals! Who would have thought. Definitely beats watching a match on Direct TV (cable television).

Well the Man U rematch ended 2-0 in favour of MU. There was another Owen? strike that hit the post in the first half. This time the Malaysian team was not so lucky to score a goal. I saw some replay of the first match and I think it is better than the second’s. MU were pretty much sluggish in the second match, playing really slowly and giving lots of space to the Malaysian team to allow them to play. Yet, the Malaysian team pretty much suck and could barely muster any shot on goal.

Well overall it was still ok-lah. I’m just looking forward to go to London later in the year to watch my favourite Arsenal team play in the Emirates Stadium. There I will be looking forward to the fast fluid soccer that Arsenal plays. Anyway here’s some photos from Monday.

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Wen Pin (Bryan), Yi Jiet, me and Theven at the stadium

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Us holding the Malaysian soccer jersey!!!

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Some joker actually brought a thick text book to mug in the stadium. WTH!?!?!

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Ironically only Wen Pin is a MU fan. Yi Jiet and I are Arsenal fans while Theven is a Liverpool fan

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The half-full Bukit Jalil stadium

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Padang bola!

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Bukit Jalil. Would have preferred a full capacity crowd.

There were some jokers who came in Arsenal, Barcelona and Liverpool jerseys. There was another joker who tried to hang a FC Barcelona flag at the stadium. Everyone just simply boo-ed at these people. What a joke!

Btw we saw Pravana, Jagdeep and Theyson at the match too. Not bad. A meet up of friends haha. Watching the match at the stadium beats watching television with DirectTV though I’m pretty sure I save more money watching soccer on TV. Damn, there goes a whole in my pocket.

Paintball is really Pain-ball without the T

Monday, July 20th, 2009

My left hand is still slightly swollen, yet I am looking for some action and went paintball with some friends on Saturday. I do not have any photo. We are all too lazy to even take a photo on our phones.

Went to the Subang Paintball park. You can find more info here at TTSportsPark. Wanted to play in the morning at 10 but well Malaysians being Malaysians, we only manage to start playing at 11 cause some people are late to the max.

It was fun shooting people down with paint. It was like a real-life version of Counter Stike. Lucky we rented the jumpsuits to go together with out game. With the jumpsuits, we do not need to worry about washing off the paint from our clothes post-match. Also with the jumpsuit, we simply rolled around the ground like nobody’s business knowing fully well, we do not need to scrub off all the dirt from the t-shirts later on. RM15 for jumpsuit and body armour? Well worth the money.

Well paintball’s actually quite exhausting. The “Zombie” game where players who are shot can be reborn is just plain tiring. Capture the Flag and Elimination is pretty interesting. It was fun hiding and shooting at people. It’s just plain exhilirating when you are able to shoot down your opponent.

Since it’s just paintball with paint bullets, we did not really cared for our lives. I’m telling you if I’m a cat, I’m dead many times over because of the “Zombie” game. I was shot several times on the head. Man, some shots are just so accurate. Head-shots. There are some blue-black on my tummy and thighs. It’s actually Pain-ball without the T. But seriously, it’s not that bad. I was just exaggerating the pain.

It was great fun playing for about 2 hours. Was sweating all over by the time all the pellets are used up. I would want to play paintball again. Who’s up for it?

Motorsport is Dangerous

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

I went go-karting last Sunday with my cousins, sis and uncle at Shah Alam. No photos yet. Again photos are on my uncle’s camera which I will probably only obtain in a couple of weeks.

Before being able to go-kart, I had to sign an indemnity form over all injuries sustained over the go-karting activity. And at the go-kart office wall there was a sign saying Motorsport is Dangerous.

It was not my first time go-karting. I just looked at the sign and laughed it off.
How can that small machine cause any harm?
Yea, right. WRONG answer.

All those Formula One shows on TV and racing games on computer, PSP and gaming consoles certainly placed a wrong perception of accident into me. They all seem so cushioned whenever there was an accident.

The drivers always almost come out unharmed. NOT.

Racing is indeed dangerous. All those racing accidents and impacts onto tyre walls are not as soft as they seem. They are tough impacts.

Learnt it the hard way. Well I kinda lost control (or shall I say I misjudged and lost concentration with my braking) and bumped my go-kart onto a tyre wall on Sunday.

Scenario seems pretty much similar to those accidents I saw on TV.
The impact seems cushioned.

Yea right. My left palm bore the brunt of the impact. I crashed into the tyre wall and my left palm felt pain. It wasn’t really painful but the impact was there. It dawned on me that the words Motorsport is Dangerous is indeed true. And there was a reason to sign those indemnity form. Even for a small go-kart that is not travelling at a really high speed, the impact of an accident can be felt. Imagine crashing a Formula One car at 300km/h.

Well, I thought my injury was a minor one. I continued racing for that session after having my go-kart pushed out the gravel. And I had a second run on the go-kart later during the day (which I believed kinda aggravated the injury)

Well left hand is still swollen from the injury. It is getting better though. Probably another few days and I will have full strength on my left hand and normal no-swollen condition for the left hand too.

Just made me want to race the go-kart at maximum speed again. And to not skid and lose control of the mini machine again. Oh btw driving the auto go-kart felt a lil weird since I do not need to shift gears. I prefer a manual machine. I should prolly get into sedan car racing with all the gear shifts.

Google against IE

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

In one of my previous blog post here I wrote about how Google sniped at Internet Explorer users on their Gmail account by saying that Gmail runs faster in Google Chrome. Well I realised Google snipes at IE users on the main Google search page too. There are constant calls for IE users to switch to Chrome.

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I’m no big fan of IE. I hate IE in fact. I find it amusing Google is using so many means to hit back at Microsoft. And now news are out that Google is launching a new Operating System also called Chrome that is based on the open source Linux for netbooks. Well if this operating system becomes mainstream, we will just see cheaper laptops in the future. Which brings me to the next question, should I get a Macbook, a laptop with Vista, wait for Windows 7 launch on laptop or a netbook for portability?

Some Update

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

So here I am again leaving this blog unattended. The last update is like 3 weeks ago? Hmmm well what can I say…I am not so hardworking in updating this blog. It takes effort in writing an entry (and also to improve credit) but I always find myself too busy doing every other thing other than blogging.

Some stuff on what had been happening. I launched an experimental web project to fundraise some money but I would not really count that as a success, I found out I got a scholarship, I decided on fulfilling my childhood dream of going to London instead of my teenage dream of going to Silicon Valley, I stopped my internship in an internet startup and I just came back from a holiday in Club Med in Cherating beach.

There’s no photo in this blog entry. The photos are in my mom’s and uncle’s camera. I will have to wait for the photos from them before posting it here. I am now again 1 to 2 shades darker.

Anyway, with my decision to now go UK, I have an additional month of holiday. I will be around KL till early to mid September. I am planning for some holidays. :) And lepak sessions with all buddies day and night again. haha

Also I need to do some really good shopping soon. Gotta plan my expenditure properly else I need to go for some credit repair soon. Nope….I shall only use the money I have and not spoil the clean credit. I am planning to get the Ricoh Caplio R7 camera I talked about previously. Or shall I just go a low-end Sony Cybershot since I think Sony’s a pretty reliable camera whereas I am uncertain about Ricoh’s quality. Hmmm well I will decide real soon. Till then wait for a proper update on this blog. lol

Bloody Spam

Friday, June 19th, 2009

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This is irritating. My TagBoard is being targeted by spammers. Damn leceh-lah must log-on to ShoutMix to delete these pesky comments. My comment function in individual posts are also targeted by spammers too. But at least WordPress has the Akismet plugin that more or less eliminated most spams though there are the occasional spam that slipped through the plugin. Gah. Bloody spammers. Go away. you are not invited.

Neither do I want any blogwalking jokers coming and leaving stupid messages on my comment or tag board. Dimwit spammers.