Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Shopping List...

Recently I have compiled a list... probably a moderate length... containing things I plan to buy in the duration of the next few months... hopefully. For some reason I felt that my life will be more complete with the presence of these items in my room. Oh yeah before that, a couple of updates, recently my long lost roommate decided that it's time that he quit this room. I don't blame him. I would have personally asked him to leave this room if it didn't sound so cruel and as though I was chasing him out. So far I haven't seen him for like a couple of months. In the beginning I only see him around Tuesday, Wednesday and maybe Thursday. Other days, he is either in his own home or in class or out with friends. I kinda felt that he is really wasting his money renting part of this room. So basically he finally said he wanted to shift out like a day ago. Basically that leads to two possibilities, either I have the room to myself for double the price I am paying now or I get a new roommate. Right now I am thinking of having the room to myself. Still in the thinking stage though. Oh yeah and today, it is my first time having chee cheong fun (rice flour batter sheets that are usually rolled up like a swiss roll and cut and served with sweet and also chili sauce) with the yong tau foo (lazy to explain what this is) stuffs. I am speechless. After 24 years I have finally tasted chee cheong fun HAH.


OK back to the main topic my shopping list ... and the reason why I want it.
  • Phone (SE W580) - My phone have been getting crankier each day. The keypads are getting hard to press, the software is lagging and recently I am having problem with the charger. Definitely will buy it as soon as possible. Already gotten a great deal from a friend. Although there were some people saying that I don't need the phone cause I don't call them *ahem*
  • Ikea Table Top - Planning to replace the table top that I got along with the legs from some friends. The original table top is already sunk in the middle to the extent that it might be mistaken by me as an old aunty with a bad back. Definitely a good investment for MY room. Will put it near my bed and use it for writing, drawing and placing my meals.
  • Dustbin - Nothing to talk about. I need one. Been putting an empty plastic back on the floor and filling it with junk from evening till the next morning and taking it out when I am going out for work. Though I still can do without the bin.
  • A tablet - OK, this is not a needed item but more of something I wanted for a very long time. Something to help with be more serious about my hobbies with arts and stuff. Definitely can do without.
  • Inking / Felt Pen with a bottle of ink - Something I have always wanted to try. Been using a lot of pens but non could provide me the variation of line thickness and I kinda like how the line starts and ends. Kinda goes from thin to thick and then back to thin. Know what I mean? Feels more natural that way.
  • All-in-One Printer - I need a printer since I left the old one in the old house. And since I am buying one I might want to buy a multi-purpose type where I can scan stuff into my PC.
  • Ironing board - I just recently bought an iron but have been ironing on a piece of thick cotton blanket lined with a smooth cloth. Sounds weird? Well my mom used to do that and sits on the floor instead of having to stand. Not something I need badly though. Heck I haven't check whether this house has one or not. I better go and check later.
  • Pillow and pillow case - I can say my current pillow has turned to mush and it smells. Though I am kinda used to it, I want a new one soon. Need the extra pillow case for the old pillow. I still want it. Not going to throw that away!
  • Extra bedsheets - I have been having the two pairs of bedsheets since I came to study. So it's easily passed 4 or 5 years. Need to replace them badly.
  • Socks - What is there to say? I need extra socks for work.
  • Backpack - Planning to get a new backpack. A bigger one to be exact. My mom mentioned it before that I should buy one since I have been using it a lot when I go back home. You see for this short period of time I am pretty lazy to actually carry one of those huge luggage bag I have. That's all to it.
  • Bowl - Up till now I never own one before. Yes you heard me. It's true. I never had my own bowl here. Hah.
  • Fork and Spoon - Lost them. Need a pair.
  • Wiping Cloth - Need some for different purposes. Dry wipe, wet wipe, for drying stuff, etc.
  • Fluorescent Lamp - For my bathroom. Been showering in the dark for far too long.
  • Umbrella - It's the rainy season and I definitely need one. I've always had this believe that it will never rain when I am going somewhere. At most it's going to be cloudy. And one day the sky proved me wrong HAH. Had to use my jacket so that I don't look like I am wearing a polka-dot shirt to work.
I guess that's about it. Some are needs some are luxuries. Just too lazy to divide them. So far that is all I can think of. I could have added a lot of gadgets and stuff in there but ... nahhh those are 100% luxuries. I can still live without it. I guess that is it for today. If I write anymore about my old memories it's going to be another long post, so I better not.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Random Old Memories...

So basically the boring stuffs are over. Now for the goodies. Recently, whenever I remember or recall something in the present time it somehow leads me to old memories related to the particular thing I was trying to recall.


The fork and spoon thing, reminds me of my very very very old childhood life. Now that I mention this, to tell you the truth I don't actually remember my childhood life during the time when I was 1 year old to 3 years old. I only have a good memory of myself when I am 4 years old and older. I mean I had pictures of myself when I was 1 to 3 years old but I don't recall them very much. Especially the one with the birthday cake when I was 2 years old.


Now many don't know this but when I was a baby I couldn't stand when I reach 2 years old. My parents got pretty worried and they asked a doctor to check but there really is nothing wrong with me. Soon around 2 years plus I actually did stand and walk. Weird huh?


Hmm... what else. When I think about childhood times the most famous food that I can think of is instant noodles. Yes I was already eating instant noodles at that time. I remembered I had this deep plate that looks like a cross between a plate and a bowl. Red on the outside surface and white on the inside. I always have my noodles in that. Then I would be sitting on the table ... yes you heard me on the table and eating noodles with a tiny fork. Then I kind of advanced pretty fast and used chopsticks at a pretty young age hah. The chopsticks was dark brown with designs on the upper part of the chopsticks. Yes I still remember how they looked like.


Next thing would be my eating habit. According to my mom, not me, my mom... I stop liquid or milk diet at a very young age. I ate rice and solids roughly around 2 or 3 I think. Of course it started with porridge and stuff but yeah I went on to eat rice after that. Of course I still have my daily dose of the bottle during the afternoons. I would have this favourite mattress. It's thin, homemade mattress with a comfortable soft batik-designed cover. And I would have my naps and also have my bottle of milk on it. Heck I even bring it to my baby-sitter's place.


Yes I had a baby-sitter. More like a guardian actually. You see my dad used to teach in the morning, he teaches morning classes and my mom used to teach afternoon till evening. So there will be this particular period of time when I will be all by myself at home (excluding my brother and sister, they are busy with school and stuff) and basically it's best that I stay with the guardian during that period of time. So my daily routine would be to be at home for the morning part of the day and when my mom is going to school she would drop me at the aunty's place which is roughly around 100 meters aways or so and basically I would stay there till when my dad is free or evening when my mom comes home. Later on when I was in kindergarten I started my day at the kindergarten and my dad would fetch me to the guardian and I would stay there till evening sometimes.


Usually I bring food there. My mom would give me a box of the particular day's dishes and rice and I would bring it there to eat. On occasion I get to taste the aunty's cooking. The most memorable would be her fried rice. God it was black. Hahaha, seriously I think she got her dark soy sauce for free or something, it's almost a dark brown. Nevertheless it tasted great. Grains were dry and each grain is coated evenly and they don't stick to each other and stuff. Emm...


My mom used to cook during the weekends and evening. For the day time we usually catered. I remembered one dish from the caterer, the famous Lala (a type of shellfish) cooked with small chilies. Emmmm... tasty. Well basically that's the only thing I remembered about the catered food. And oh yea my family hated it cause at one time I don't know why but there is always the frequent appearance of ikan bilis and peanuts cooked in sweet spicy sauce thing. I got sick of it. But it was not bad. Just don't like having it too many times.


Lastly my mom's cooking. Not the best in the world or anything extra special. But they are just too darn tasty. There is just too many dish I can recall that tasted great that it would fill another full post just by naming them. OK fine I will name a few. I remember all the spicy dish, kangkung or okra fried with sambal belacan, sambal belacan and lime dip, sambal salted fish, curry chicken, dark soy chicken with herbs, tom yam, baked beans with assorted stuff (I don't know what to call it), ju hu char (a hokkien dish which literally means stir fry dry squid strips, though it's mainly consist of jicama or sengkuang, carrots, onions and mushrooms cut into thin strips and cooked with dried squid strips, chicken meat and prawn, mainly it looks like popiah filling) and also the original fried fish coated with tamarind and stuffed with paste consisting of turmeric as the main ingredient (originally if I am not mistaken this dish originated from a dish where fish is stuffed with sambal not turmeric). That is just to name a FEW of the dishes I can recall.


These are just cooked dishes, I haven't got to pastries and cookies and cakes. Hmmm... but I guess everyone get the picture now. Well I should stop here. This is basically the food part of my old memories of home. Sigh how I wish I could taste them again or better yet learn to cook them myself. Nowadays my mom don't get a chance to cook this kind of stuff since the whole family is staying in an apartment so it's not a good idea to cook oily frying type of food unless you want to spend the rest of the day cleaning the whole house.



I remember I used to hang out in the kitchen a lot. When I was not in school and my mom is at home she would be preparing food in the kitchen and I would be there to help with easy task like peeling onions and potatoes, make sambal belacan with a mortar and pestle (that was a freaking hard work... and painful for the eyes too), stir the pots and wok while my mom prepares the ingredients, shell prawns, fry omelette's and a lot more actually. Yup I liked to help in the kitchen. If it's not for my IT-related interest, my dad and aunt used to say I could become a chef... or so they say.

I guess this post is getting too long... I better stop. There is just too much memories that we don't cherish at times just cause they were normal and uninteresting compared to the time I probably did sky diving and the time I might have almost died. Then again thinking back to this normal times, I felt that somehow I missed it very much and how I wish I could go through it all over again. It's just amazing how much I recall from a simple thing as a fork and spoon. I could have written tonnes of post with just the food part of my memories. I guess I should stop now. Seriously I should stop babbling all the time. Must learn how to control and arrange my post. Hah.

Work - Day 4 to 8

OK... so I didn't live up to my own expectation of updating every working day. Today is practically day 8 and I am going to cheat and write for the rest of the 5 days together. It's not like I want to but there really isn't much to write about actually. Plus I admit, I am lazy. Hah.


So the past few days my tasks hasn't been that exciting or challenging yet. For some reason all the projects are currently properly distributed to all the rest and well, lets just say if I didn't do anything for a day, they wouldn't know. Hah. Of course I don't want to risk myself getting fired for challenging myself in such a manner. Basically my daily routines consist of going to work, check-in, read a couple of articles of news online, have breakfast, once I get bored I start asking for jobs, have lunch, continue doing my work, tea time and finally go back home. Sounds kind of boring huh? Well I don't actually have tea, the rest had tea but then again when you see others doing that you won't have the mood to do your work anymore.


My task currently consist of just checking for errors and making sure I fix them if possible. Simple as that. Since I don't have a specific module to work on yet. Life have been pretty boring I guess but somehow I still feel that time passed pretty fast. I guess that's good.

Today is special in a way I guess. I finally got my pay. My first pay! Tomorrow I will be getting my pay slip, so I heard. I guess I am pretty happy. Now all I have to do is wait for my OTHER pay to come in. Yup, pay from my old job. It's not going to be much since I work for like 3 to 4 days only that time. Probably I will be low on cash this month. Thank God I saved. I will be getting full pay next month. Nice.


I think I overspent during the weekend. Not a really smart move by me in a situation where I am not getting full pay yet. On Saturday I went out and spend roughly RM200 or more. Well it's not a normal weekend expenditure so it's OK. I watched a movie which by the way sucked, Beowulf. I am OK with the animation and all, but somehow it felt kind of corny and lame and not exciting (I am sure they tried their best). Somehow I came home feeling regret and thought that I would be better off watching Hitman. Anyways back to the story, besides that I finally saw the game I was looking for on the window of the shop. I grabbed it for RM159 (Ouch). But all I have to say Call of Duty 4 was totally worth it. Believe me, my mouth was stuck opened during the weekend on how great the game felt. But that's another story for a another day. I also ended up buying a clock for RM40.


Funny thing about the clock is it made me realize something. There are tonnes of stuff I wanted to buy recently to make my life a little better here all alone and all. They are really simple everyday stuffs like for example, fork and spoon, clock and a sewing kit. Just take these three items. Simple everyday items, but darn they are actually hard to find in the beginning.


I lost my fork and spoon in the first house I rented I think. It's during one of those parties they have where you bring your own cutleries and stuff and it somehow got stuck in someone's house. I don't know who. My fork and spoon went M.I.A. So I have been trying to find a good pair since I always forget to ask my mom for another pair whenever I get back home. Hey who ever thinks about these things when you're at home right? By the way I have yet to find a fork and spoon. Note the important point of the sentence before this. A fork and A spoon. It's hard to find cheap, decent looking pair of fork and spoon. It either comes very expensive single heavy pairs or cheap 10 billion forks and 10 billion spoons in a bag, which I don't need. I just one pair. Nothing more nothing less. So basically in the end, I am reusing plastic forks and spoons I get when I take away food from shops.


Next is my clock. Now the new clock cost me RM40 plus but the real amount I spend on it is around RM50. Why? Well it started off with the old clock not working one night. In fact, I remember it was the night before the first day at my new job. So to cover all bases, I set my phone alarm and also my NDS alarm. Then when I manage to get myself some batteries to replace the old ones (I thought it ran out of battery), it still doesn't work! I was like what the ... It's really frustrating at that time cause I bought the batteries at a very expensive price since I had no choice and it's not working. So I had to get a new clock instead. Then it suddenly came into my mind, where do I get a cheap decent clock? I know you're going to say a watch/clock shop but I seldom go buy a new clock all the time and it slipped my mind. I had to go around looking for it. There are even some watch shops that only sell watches, hence the name a watch shop. But finally I found one somewhere, not much choice, so I just picked one that seemed not so expensive.


Lastly sewing kits. Those things are hard to find. Seriously I don't even know under which category of the supermarket should I go to to find this. Since someone suggested I find it in Watsons, I will try to find it there next weekend. Oh and by the way, I lost my custom-compiled-by-mom set of sewing kit somewhere along the numerous times I shifted from one house to another. She is going to kill me. Lets just keep this to ourselves. *Ahem*

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Work - Day 3

I have reached day 3 of my work. Today, being the nervous guy I am, I was preparing for the people to give me a hard day. Instead, I didn't get to do anything today. Surprised but somehow part of me felt relief somehow... and most of the time I felt bored. That's for sure. I think I have read more newspaper articles compared to the past couple of years put together. Hah.


I still feel awkward there. Part of the reason may be because I am new there and I haven't got the feel for the place yet. Another part of the reason would be for some reason I am placed by chance at the wrong spot. I am work mostly on programs and the place I sit is filled with people who work with graphics. Same thing happened when I was having internship there. What a coincidence. Probably that is why I feel much closer to the people working with graphics compared to the programmers. Graphic/Multimedia designers are much easier to socialize with compared to programmers who usually keep to their own group most of the time or themselves in some cases *ahem*.


Today I am proud to say I have yet again manage to spend only RM10. I guess I am saving as much as I can and keep it for a better tomorrow or spend it on a phone maybe. Hah. This probably won't happen for very long cause during the weekends I would probably be spending a lot to buy supplies for the week. Can't wait to find out how much I spend.


Hmmm how I feel today. Mainly the whole time during work I was bored, cautious and I felt a lot of tension waiting for maybe a surprise job that I need to finish off before I leave today. But I guess when the clock strike 5.30pm the feeling disappeared. Instead now I have the same feeling as though I am tremendously lacking in social life. For that I doubt there is anyone to blame. I guess somehow during my transition to my current life style I have lost contact with a lot of people... OK fine... it's all of them. Now I am saying this with respect to face to face socializing and not in front of the PC or anything. Seriously I haven't met up with anyone for quite some time and somehow it's beginning to make me worry.


And I do realize I am spending less and less time chatting on instant messengers. In a bad way I suppose. At least last time I could say "Hey I still keep in touch with them online", but now I have none. Sigh I wish people would contact me and for me to contact them
more often. Feeling kind of lonely. Oh well time to sleep it off.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Work - Day 2

Everything seems to be fine. Even though I had some problem sleeping the night before I manage to wake up feeling fresh after a cup of coffee. I manage to get ready and reach there early in the morning and got my ancient PC to start and get ready to face what is to come today.


In the beginning I really wished that I didn't have anything to do today since I am pretty much not in the mood to do anything and preferred to waste my time doing nothing and reading newspaper and chatting the whole day. Yes that was my intention. But then again I don't know why but I got this feeling that people there aren't going to let me go so easily. So around 9am as expected, a colleague drop by my workplace and told me that there is going to be a meeting later on and he might want me to join in and probably assign me something to do.


No problem with me actually. I was pretty pumped, nervous and well I had mixed feeling but doing something is better than doing nothing so I guess I was pretty happy about it. So the meeting started and everything was fine. Discussing about project progress and stuff. Though I think I didn't understand most of the stuff that they said. After it ended immediately I was assigned to do some easy task (I think). Just as I was about to start, another colleague came. Now this lady is the person was my supervisor when I was doing my internship. Anyhow, she also want me to help her out with some stuff. So basically they just agree that I help her since her project is due today.


Task was pretty simple, just rename some variables in a source code and edit some stuff regarding the color theme and do some testing to see whether the pages worked. Now the first two stuff was easy. Took me a while to get use to the code and also the stupid PC but then I manage to go through it smoothly after that. Then came the testing which kind of pissed me off cause I think that is what took me so long that I actually went back more than an hour later than I am suppose to.


This is not my codes and I am not complaining or anything but seriously it was darn messy and I find it pretty hard to track down the problems. God knows how many times I went back to her for confirmation on certain issues with the code. Secondly, I have to say I am not familiar with it, I just jumped on it today and it's hard to understand how everything worked and so on. All and all it became tiring and frustrating in the end. Most of the problem I had was pretty stupid and could have been avoided if they would stop freaking copy-paste every living crap out of examples and stuff. Everything was not in-order and the indentations were horribly done. But since it's my job I just suck it up and did it.


Was having problems with some variable that just didn't want to get a value. In fact I didn't even know where the variable came from. But I guess you can say it was a miracle, at the very end I manage to find the dumb problem in the code and manage to pass the value onwards. I feel so geeky talking like this. This will be the last I guess. Wish I could come back early just now to do some laundry. Sigh. I guess I have to wait till tomorrow then. Oh yeah and I am proud to say I spend less than RM10 today.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Sunday Bluez...

Haven't write for quite a while. Partly I was too busy partly I just didn't feel like writing. I don't know you decide. I guess a little update on what's going on is necessary. I put my resignation letter on the 9th last month (October) and after cutting out my oh-so-a-lot of annual leaves, I manage to cut short my one month notice and was able to stop working on 25th last month. That was the initial plan but being the caring person that I am *ahem* I decided to work for the company during the public holiday on 7th to 9th this month... and have a long break before I do that. I started my holiday on 21st last month and was on holiday till 7th, worked for 3 days and then another week of break before my new job.


Spent around 2 days here before leaving for home. I didn't want to waste time as there were tonnes to do at home. I sure missed my family. For the past couple of days before I go back I dreamed about my family a lot. Everytime I sleep. I had a relaxing a week or so of holiday with my family. Sadly to say this was only the icing on top of a garbage pile waiting to surprise me. For some reason my dad felt like going to visit my brother in Singapore since I was around. Guess when is it? Correct... 7th till 11th. Which is roughly around the time I had to go back to the old company and work. BAM! Straight in the face. Ugh I really regret being nice. Seriously. But since I already promise them I didn't go for the Singapore trip. Sad case.


The one week plus went by superbly fast and I was back in Cyberjaya. Worked for the 3 days in the old company. Didn't feel fatigue or tired or bored. 3 days went by in a breeze and I broke away from the company for good (except I have to go take my last pay check this end of the month). Anyhow, I had another week or so of holiday before I start my new job.


Started to feel the pressure. I felt that I was a little rusty and started reading some books regarding my new job. I guess it was a way for me to feel a bit more comfortable and confident about the new post I am taking (though I doubt I learned anything). So last Friday I went to report myself at the HR and went to the new place to work... or rather sit there doing nothing for the rest of the day. They provided me with a PC and a place; met a few familiar faces there and basically that's about it for the whole day. Thank God it was Friday. That leads to two sucky weekends which is yesterday and today.


I was already very excited and can't wait to watch Beowulf. It premiered on Thursday and I was getting excited and decided to watch on this weekend. Sadly to say, to my surprise, I couldn't get myself to go. I don't know why. I was disturbed by something for the past two nights. I felt lonely again. You know those moments where you just felt that tremendous urge to talk to someone even though it's going to be just "Hey what about the weather today huh? Pfftt...". I felt the need to share with people how I felt, heck I just felt like talking to someone that's about anything, I didn't care, just wanted to do so.


But whenever I open my Yahoo! Messenger, I felt like I was looking at an empty list (even though it was more than a page long of people online), whenever I reach for my phone and unlocking my keys, my fingers were already reaching for the locking keys again. It struck me, have I lost the ability to communicate with fellow human beings? Have I become what I feared, a lonely old shadow that follows through time without people noticing me? Or is it because the right person isn't there to listen to what I have to say? Nevertheless I felt it in those two nights. It's those feelings which I always relate to as being in a dark room and seeing the distance between me and the people I know grew further and further. A little terrifying.


Talking about nights, I swear I encountered something freaky again the night before. I woke up around 4 in the morning and in my sleepy state I heard "Psssttt.. psttttt" coming from the window. Almost sounded like someone calling. For you info, there is nothing out the window except 11 floors downward. I took a peek or two but didn't see anything and went back to bed. Scary.


Oh yeah. Something has been bothering me too. How people reacted towards my new job. I know some of you actually supported me and was happy for me. Besides being my own decision to change for a better future, I did change cause I was kind of sick of everyone asking me why I haven't leave that half-a$$ job yet and why I don't think about my future and why don't I was a better paying job and more challenging job. I got sick and threw the letter on the desk and left finally. In a way that was to shut everyone up somehow. But somehow it didn't. There are still a couple of people left who are bugging me. I am not saying it's a bad thing. I just felt a little offended. I got a new job, it's not the best in the world, it might not even be in you Top 100 List, but it was my choice, I felt happy with it and it was an improvement from my last job. Why can't you guys be happy for me? What is with all the questions about why I didn't leave Cyberjaya and why did I choose to work THERE? In a way it make me feel like I have made the wrong choice somehow and didn't meet their expectation. I know I am not suppose to do things according to people's expectations but somehow I want to truthfully say, it offended me. I know you all were concerned over me and meant only good things to happen to me, but couldn't you guys at least respect my decision and support me a little? I mean I am sure I supported you guys when you guys made crucial decisions in your lifetime. Why can't you do the same for me?


I said it once and I will say it again. You guys weren't there when I needed people around me to support me. It sometimes make me wonder whether the 4 years was even worth it. It makes me wondered have I wasted my trust all this while. All I needed was a congratulation, that would even make me feel a bit better that what I feel now. Sometimes you guys make me so sick and full of regrets that I've chosen to live in solitude. Don't blame me for who I am cause you don't have a right to do so and I know the reason wasn't just because of me...


And for those who supported me I thank you cause you have made me feel much better. If it weren't for you guys I don't know how I would have been.