Kasih (tak) Berubah

I wanted to eat bagels. Made plans with my friend to try this one bagel shop called The Bagel Shop at Plaza Damas (or Sri Hartamas Plaza). The place was not bad. Not too big and not too loud. A little bit obscure from the public eye, but not too hidden. They serve decent bagels and generous with their sour cream.

I strongly recommend that place. The price is reasonable and there's no 6% tax.

After that late lunch, we went window shopping and book browsing.

The things that made my day was the bagel, book browsing and spotting the Tun's daughter. But the one thing that made my day MOST was seeing cinta hatiku, Ferhad....  <3

Oh dear... setelah sekian lama, baru kini dapat ku bersua dengan mu... <3

I think he looked better with dark hair (Ross made this as a joke to me)

I was so starstruck, I couldn't think much except for "ohhh ferhad di depan ku!"... "ohhh minat gilaaa dengan Ferhad..."  and texted my roomate about my new found joy.

Please forgive my for sounding so juvenile. lol. But I honestly felt like I was 18 again when fell head over heels listening to Kasih Berubah over and over (and over) again everyday on my walkman.

This is the song that I will never get tired of listening.

Triple A

I had a 3 days workshop outside of the city and since i was in town, i thought of dropping by to a friend's house to visit. It has been almost 6 years since i last saw her and her family. Everybody is fine.

I used to babysit her 3 kids once in a while. Today's post is titled -Triple A because all those little kids name starts with A. The best part was having dinner over at their house. lol. Back then being paid in food is equivalent to being paid in cash

Now all the kids have grown into teenagers.

Seeing kids grow makes you think how bizarrely fast time flies. And most of all it makes you realise you are THAT old... despite you 'feeling' all indifferent about your age.

Just sayin'.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Chivalry is dead, is it not?

Last Sunday I went grocery shopping. While walking to the entrance door of the apartment's elevator room with a handful of heavy carrying bags, a man passed by me, opened the door, he entered and then left door to slam shut before me. I was just 5 paces away.

OK, maybe he didn't saw me.

After I managed to open the door myself, I stepped in and saw him walking into an opened elevator. As I was hurrying to the closing elevator, we managed to make eye contact and then the door closed right in front of my face. He didn't even stopped the elevator door from closing.

At that point of time, I am sure he did saw me. And at that point of time, I knew that chivalry is dead.

How sad =(
==============
What is it with men, or actually Malaysian men with being nice and gentlemanly towards damsels in distress that are not their girlfriends (or wife)? I wonder if they treat their significant other differently?

• It is maybe because I am not hot babelicious chick or model-esque enough to be assisted? (btw, have you seen the Rexona advert? If you don't have fair, clean shaven pits no guy is gonna help you with that flat tires of yours even if you ARE a hot babe).
• Are they scared that if they held the door open, their significant other will get jealous and they'll have to sleep outside that night?
• Are they worried that if they held the door opened for me, I will instantly fall head over heels for them? Let me tell you brother, it takes more than that lah. I'm not some floozy.

I know, I know... women has come a long way from being the wailing damsel in distress. Our foremothers fought for equality and rights. But it doesn't mean that we should be treated as men. Obviously on the physical strength side, we are the lesser gender. I admit that.

Even though sometimes, I might sound like a feminist, I do like to be offered with help or assistance once in a while (service that I don't have to pay for).

Talking about chivalry brings about some stories from the UK.

• My final year team mates, who were all guys insisted that they walked me to this printing place in Riveside because they knew that place was quite 'dodgy'. Kind of like protecting me lar.
• People held doors open to others behind them even if they are 10 feet away.
• Some Muslim guys -the kebab types, upon seeing that I am travelling alone, wanted to accompany me to my destination to make sure I get there safely. I politely declined because I think it will be very awkward.

Stories from work.

• My work sometimes requires me to move around large and heavy equipments. I normally could manage one, but if it's more it's quite a bother. I sat across from two burly and tall men. Sometimes I had to grunt, huff and puff loudly to make it obvious I needed a hand to lift the heavy stuff. Sometimes I had to call them out and ask if they would offer me their service to help.
• There's a guy, let's call him E. I think he's the sweetest and nicest guy at work. Whenever he saw me carrying something heavy, he will run towards me and helped. Even when I said I could manage. There was one time at a dinner event, I could not forget this, we had some big prawns during the main course, E who was sitting next to me offered to 'dissect' the prawns for me and separated the shells. He did this for the lady sitting next to him too. Mind you, he already has a wife and I believe is happily married. But the point is, ladies and gentleman, I think E is the most chivalrous man I've ever met in Malaysian soil. Bravo!
• So that's one, out of 10. Or maybe more... 100? 1000?

I am not asking you guys out there to be like E, but I am not stopping you guys either ;) It's just that it would be nice that once in a while someone goes out of his/her way to help others without expecting anything in return.

Come to think of it, I think I am more chivalrous than some of the men out there because I've held the door open to some of the men and they didn't even say 'Thank you'. Not even a squeak!

But that won't stop me from being polite to people. The effort continues on my part.

Based on last week experience,
I am convinced now that chivalry is almost dead. Please prove me wrong and I will stop whining.

Back in time: Norman Keep

This is The Norman Keep, a fort inside Cardiff Castle. When Roman soldiers came to Britain and settled, they'll build a fort on the highest ground as a stronghold, such as this one in Cardiff.

If you're wondering what's up there, there's a circular area surrounded by tall walls. There's a few bench for people to sit down and a door leading up the stairs. If you follow these steps you'll find yourself standing next to the green and white Welsh flag.

The picture was taken during Spring, if you see the yellow daffodils growing on the side of the hills, that's Wales' national flower.

There's a nice panoramic view of Cardiff Castle grounds at this site.

So many cars on the road

The average Malaysia families living in the city typically owns two cars at least. One for the husband and the other for the wife. Sometimes there would be a third car, which is allocated for their children to drive to college.

Cars are not cheap in Malaysia, a car owner have to stay committed to spare at least RM300-RM500 a month for the next 3 to 5 years, that is only for a locally manufactured cars; which we assume was taken from old Milo cans (but now they sell in plastic refill bags only, are cars now made out of recycled plastics?). The monthly payment will increase from RM500 to RM900 if the potential car buyer fancies an imported car (depending on the brand and model).

On top of the monthly payment, there's also extras that is needed to get the engine running. Money for petrol (that increases every so often), insurance, road tax, maintenance, tolls and unnecessary accessories. So overall the cost of covering a car for a month is roughly RM1000 to RM2500. That's a lot, if you think of the amount in McDonald's visits, it is enough to feed all the kids that came to your house for Hari Raya with Happy Meals.

By the number of jammed up highways during the recent Balik Kampung exodus, we have A LOT of cars on the roads, which means our people think they can afford to own a car. This view is also supported by the fact that it is almost impossible to find a decent parking spot at the supermarket during weekends and there's traffic jam for no apparent reason on the Penang Bridge, exit to Damansara Utama, Tambak Johor, Tanah Merah.

On the other hand, some of us are forced to own a car due to the inefficiencies of the public transport. Some people I know had to spend one hour and take 3 different transportations to get from A to B, when with a car only needs 20 minutes. The problem with our public transport is that it is slow, not far reaching, expensive and not travel savvy.

Public transportation is slow because the bus gets stuck in the traffic jam created by the people who didn't want to take the bus to work. People don't take the bus because the bus system doesn't follow a time table. Therefore, commuters can't plan their travel. The buses can't have a time table because they're always stuck in the traffic jam. If there are no cars, there's no jam, and it would be able to travel faster and be on time. But since the bus system is not working that way, it's better and faster to drive to your destinations. When everybody wants to do the same, the roads get clogged up. This is a classic case of chicken and egg situation.

Public transportations are not far reaching. When I was studying/working abroad the Uni and the workplace was a walking distance from the bus stop. Unlike here, you'd have to walk a considerable amount of distance that equals to a cardio workout to get to the nearest bus stop. I don't know why that is so. Public convenience is key to good management. Same goes with rubbish bins (topic lain dah ni), if you place rubbish bins like 500m away from each other, I can bet there'll be rubbish strewn every 100 meters between those two bins.

Public transportation is expensive, I would say so if you had to pay RM10 for a 1hr ride on public transportation. Time is money. A bus ride from Pen to KL is RM40/RM60 per trip. Sometimes I think AirAsia can beat that price and they'll take you to your destination faster.

Public transportation are not travel savvy. Not chic. Who wants to come out of a bus smelling like diesel? When I was abroad, mums used to go the city pushing their babies on prams on a bus. There are also compartments for you to place your bicycles or shopping bags in the train/bus itself. Simple and yet convenient.

I hope to see the day we are able to rely on public transportation to go to places. But is it only a pipe dream? Would it affect the sales of our local car manufacturers and make them roll their mats (gulung tikar)? I'd rather put my RM1k up for investment than paying for a metal case with wheels that depreciates yearly.

Just some thoughts that came up to me when I spent 30mins just to find and frakkin' parking space. I have a decade worth of experience as a driver. And in that span of time I've only received 4 summons and I've got all of them when my car is not moving --> when it is parked at the wrong place and at the wrong time (illegally). This unnecessary expenses could have been avoided if there was enough parking space for everyone or there's a decent public transportation that could help me to get there. 

(Almost) Everyone is in FB

Facebook is the "IN"  thing nowadays. I was skeptical of FB initially, mainly because my friend who introduced it to me keeps going on and on about how fun it is to play Vampire and Zombies on FB (ugh!) and take quizzes. That's what FB basically do last time. But now after many Facebook facelifts and re-vamps (pun intended), I've changed my mind ever since.

On a daily basis, I normally would get maybe 1 to 5 notifications a day. 10 is the max. 0 on really slow and boring days. But on this particular day, when I logged in FB around lunch time,  there's a couple of small red boxes blaring at the top of FB menu wanting my attention. 

30 new notifications and 10 new friend requests!
Wait a minute... I never get this much request in just a single day. This must definitely be spam!

Went to look at the thing that started this all. I was tagged in a class photo. A photo that came from the year 1992!

Up until today, the comments mounts up to 161, and still counting, though slower than initially. I was the Penolong Ketua Darjah that year.

And that started the wave of comments, from people that I haven't heard from in ages! And most of us are now connected to each other thanks to FB. And thanks to FB, I am now able to put names to the faces that I've forgotten all these years.

It is amazing and almost magical to think that one single picture is able to bring everyone together and how it manages to take us down memory lane and somehow it felt like this happened just recently and not 18 years ago. My goodness, how time surely flies!

It was good to hear from classmates again, especially from primary school =)

CPH... alternative route

Today is our last day at CPH Mot office. Two weeks of work, we integrated, we disintegrated, we get stressed out, we found a solution, we hit a brick wall, we went around the wall, we were up to each others' nerves and we made jokes out of each other and laugh at our silliness.

At the end of the last day, the four of use decided to go out and celebrate our two weeks of hard work. Drove from Glostrup to Copenhagen and parked at the hotel. Walked for 15 mins to Stroget and found a cafe. The food took ages to be served (we were starving), but we had a good chat while waiting.

After dinner, we walked back again using a different route. Through Christianhavn. (All taken using mobile phone).

Walked... past through the Christianborg.

Then past the Dansk Jødisk Museum

Then crossed a bridge towards Christianhavn.

Christianhavn is a working class area in Copenhagen. It's quite snug.

Walked some more past the Church Frelser Kirke

Walked further and reached the ugly part of Copenhagen...

And finally here, where the guys wanted to go the freetown of Christiania. It's a 'groovy and "funky"' infamous place if you know what I mean... no pictures allowed beyond this point. If you think Amsterdam got some cool hash cafe houses in town, then this is a village of hash houses and many more. (Don't tell my mom I went here).

We went through the free town and to me, it's a stark difference compared to the surrounding places of Copenhagen. Can't believe such a place existed in this efficient town. As we leave the pot-filled-air village, a sign placed on top of the exit says, "You are entering the EU now". lol.

We walked back to the hotel and pass this symmetrical view of the hotel upon the lake water.

CPH... an introduction

I am sorry, I've been rude to you.

In the past few posts, I've just throw stories and pictures about CPH without much introduction. Entah apekebende CPH ni?

CPH is the flight destination short for CoPenHagen. CPH is the capital for the Kingdom of Denmark. And yes, Denmark has a Royal Family and may I say His Royal Highness Crown Prince is very dashing and handsome prince :)

That was off-topic, now back to Denmark. The country is made up of a few islands and a part of the Europe mainland. The country shares borders with Sweden (where IKEA originated) and Germany (the wunderbar football team in World Cup). The map below will show a clear picture where CPH is in Denmark.



There is a story about a beggar lady who was given ploughland the size of four oxen by a King who ruled the lands which is now Sweden as reward for entertaining him. She took the oxen and set the to plow. The plow cut so wide and so deep that the land loosened and drew out into sea. The torn up land is now separated by water. There she set the land for good and called it Zealand. This is island where CPH is located.

And below is an enlarged map of Copenhagen itself. The city sits next to the sea and there are a number of small islands divided by canals. Although separated, the infrastructure is very good and each of these islands are connected to each other via bridges and also underground metro.

Denmark is a Scandanavian country, way up in northern Europe. I was talking with my friend 'Lucky' earlier and she says it's very hot in Germany 38'C. But in CPH, the max temp is only around 25-ish.. and if it's cloudy, it can go a bit lower. I guess it's the geographic location of CPH that's by the sea and up north makes it slightly cold.

The people in Denmark are called Danes and they speak Danish. Although not everyone in Denmark is blonde, but from my observation I think they come with variation of blondes; dark blonde, light brown, platinum blonde... however the HRH Crown Prince is not blonde. Which is fine anyways.

The currency is the Danish Kroner (which I think means Crown). And at this moment, the exchange rate is 1DKK = RM2. To put the value into perspective, a bottle of carbonated cola is 17DKK, which in Msia only sells RM2.50 a bottle. A lot of things are marked up because tax is implemented on each sales item by 25%.

Yes tax is high. I was told the income tax is around 45%. But you could see the tax benefits the public. Education from the lowest to university is free. Health care is free. A MOT colleague told me he was diagnosed with cancer, but it's gone now after going through cancer treatment all been paid for. The public transportation system is very good. There's trains, buses and underground metro. A 12 km train ride to Glostrup (MOT office) from CPH takes 17 minutes. The condition of these transports are very impressive; cushioned seats, clean, tv, aircond, small transmitter, and free internet on the train!

Famous people from Denmark includes the Vikings (but now they put their viking boats in the garage and their viking hats with horns on the shelf), Hans Christian Andersen (the fairy tale writes - Little Mermaid, Ugly Duckling), Niels Bohr (they physicist who discovered the atom structure), Caroline Wozniacki (the WTA tennis player), Micheal Learns to Rock. However, Nora Danish and my cousin Danish Anakin is not a Dane.

Alright, I think that's enough education for tonight. I hope we all know more about Denmark now... NEXT, more pictures tomorrow :))

CPH... of meeting people

Today, I'm feeling very much better than yesterday, thank you. Alhamdulillah! København here I come!

[pictures will come eventually.. hihihi.. i hit blogger first before transferring photos. But first a couple of stories ...]

Event 1:
Was out in a kiosk at the central station buying a cool drink. Saw a couple of what looked like Msians with two (tired and screaming) kids. Had eye contact with the mom and smiled at her. Then there was an awkward moment where both of us wants to ask each other if the other was Msians, but we hesitated... so I quickly left.


Event 2:
After 'escaped' from Event 1. I boarded the bus and got a seat. The bus filled up quickly so I gave up my seat to an elderly arab lady (EAL).

EAL: (smiled) Syukran
Me: Afwan
EAL: Arabia? (Asking if I'm from arab country)
Me: La'. Meleyzia... (this is the most advance level of Arabic I could muster)
EAL: Speaking arab to me.....
Me: Only manage to smile and nod before dropping off at my next stop.


There's not much difference between the two stories, both are about interaction with each other. The first one, I failed to do so, and the second one, only managed 2-3 phrases through. Both which I suppose could do better.

I am afraid that I have to admit I am the typical Msian, who are nice to others and not to each other :-/

I used to be friendly last time, but after having been snubbed in London a few times, I've tuned the friendliness down to 1... a lot of people say orang london takut nak tegur other msian sebab nanti diorang nak datang rumah tumpang makan. London people.. what say you?

Well, I hope I can mend my mistakes next time. Sorry to those Msians family :(

CPH... Not feeling so well

This is my first weekend in Copenhagen, was supposed to go sight-seeing and being all touristy in the city. However, I caught a bug and down with a fever on Saturday... :( I hope it's just a normal running nose and fever and not anything serious. Asian with flu-like symptoms are a scary sight to see at this moment. Slept the whole morning and woke up around 2pm and feeling slightly better.

Decided to go to the shopping mall, Fisketorvet. I think I can manage that, take but 5A from hotel, then at the police station, take bus 30.

Entrance of Fisketorvet; name was taken from the old trading center for fish (fisk).

Was told that this is one of the largest shopping mall. When I was there, there wasn't many people around despite the summer sale (udsalg). I got myself a baju, a coffee presser, chocs and some ubat.

The shopping mall is facing the harbour. Copenhagen is surrounded with water (vaand). And the view here is overlooking a makeshift swimming pool. Anyone can go for a dip. There's a number of these pools around in the city. I've seen two already.

Then had lunch/dinner at an American style restaurant. Reagan burger, fish fillet burger with potatoes. And cappuccino.

I guess the reason not many people was in the mall was because of the World Cup semis. Even the waiters was not interested in serving me. It was Germany-Argentina and Germany kicked Argentina out 4-0.

The thing about doing a walkabout in the city on your own is the limited number pictures of yourself. In this picture I'm already feeling half-dead and desperately wanting to return to the hotel room and get more rest.

I hope I'll feel much more better tomorrow and do more exploration! Wish me well.

Fembots

Fembots (of Austin Powers fame) are making their way into Hollywood and they're lead by the two most bizarrely pop queens - Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. Yes, bizarre is the word. I don't know what else to think of these two women other than their songs are hip, but the video clips are just weird for my palate. (Oh yes, what's up with Astro removing [V] from the channel list?!)

Pop songs, in a way, are just catchy tunes with empty meaningless lyric. But they stick to your brain like Elephant Glue. Sometimes I wonder if the radio DJ is to blame for playing nonsensical pop songs in the radio over and over again?

Sometimes, certain songs reminds you of those days... For instance, I remember Beyonce's Crazy in Love to be my summer song in 2003. It was a crazy year. I stayed for the summer 'nomadically' (it's oxymoronic to have the words 'stay' and 'nomad' in the same sentence is it?), went backpacking to Spain and Belgium. Had some adventures and misadventures. Whenever I hear that song, I will automatically be transported back to 2003 with a smile on my face. Although I can't say I love that song for it's lyric.

What is your momentous song? Care to share?

So how does this post relates to those fembots again?

SHOES!

Today's entry is my response to Dieya's tag, which is about shoes. I humbly admit that my collection is quite dull and bland in comparison to hers. Well, shoes doesn't actually rank high in my list. Don't get me wrong, I like shoes, but I find it particularly hard to find a good soles mate (no pun intended :P) that I really like and am comfortable with. It will take me about 3 or more trips to the store (sometimes the same one) just to make up my mind.

But on good days, shopping for shoes is easier when there's a pair that really catches my eyes and sometimes I can hear those small tiny voices calling out to me, "Buy me, buy me... you have to buy me".

Here are some shoes that's in my collection.

This first one is a sandal, which I wear almost everyday to work. I wear this one because it's very practical and hassle free. I sometimes have run to meetings that's located in another building. It's easy for me to slip in on and take it off if I feel like sitting cross legged on the office chair and when I go to the surau.


On other days, this sports shoes is my second alternative. If I'm planning (or feeling) to go to gym after work (there's a gym at work!) I'd put this on when I leave the house. Easy, I don't have to take one extra shoe bag to work. At my workplace, sport shoes/ sneakers are the most popular shoes worn by young engineers here. It's all casual here, jeans and our orange/green M logo uniforms.



Well, although the workplace attire is casual, sometimes, when I feel all business like, I'd try to wear one of these two. The one on the right has come a long way with me... I used to wear this to lectures during my uni hey day. That's why it looked a little bit ratty, so worn out. Sentimental habis. There's a couple more business-like heels (black pair and white pair) that I wear for other occasions like for interviews (sshhh!), but I forgot where I left them.



Now, these ones are my favorites, but i seldom wear them. Only during weddings, raya, dinner at hotels that I chose to wear them. I'm still looking to expand my collection with green, white and yellow heels, but like I said it's hard to find the right one. But I'll keep my eyes open.

Back in college, we had this extra hours classes in the afternoon. During that time, the corridors are very quite, maybe because everybody was very sleepy after having had lunch. And then suddenly we could hear a 'Tap, tap, tap' sound of heels knocking on cement, first the sound was faint and it grew louder as the sound comes closer 'TAP, TAP, TAP'. Us students will be sniggering and quietly because we know that's the kerani approaching.

That was a story about what comes to my mind when I think about hard heeled shoes. Somehow I think it affects me because I'd get all self conscious when I can hear my heels tapping loudly to the floor. Haha, perasaan je kot.

Jinxed?

I don't know whether it's just me or Murphy's Law is trying to prove a point, but since my last post about the importance of backing up your files stored in any kind of memory material, things started to go wrong.

I also starting to wonder if I have strong magnetic field emanating from my body, causing hard disk and flash drives to lose their contents... hmm, possible? no? but both occurences happened in a short period of time. what are the chances? right?

First my 4GB Kingston flash drive started acting up. Fortunately the first signs were noticed, and I followed my instinct to back up the files before the flash drive decided to zero down it's own memory size. 4GB gone just like that.

Note:
If you notice that saved folders and files unable to open, and files extensions/icons are funny or not normally what it used to be, better back it up.

Yesterday was the worst disaster. My laptop hard disk suddenly failed on me. No symptoms and no indications were given before hand. I came to work and turn on the laptop, and it stuck in the boot up cycle. The whole hard disk corrupted and crashed in just one split second. 120GB gone just like that. Didn't managed to back-up anything... all my collected datas, documents, pictures, songs and softwares vanished in one minute.

Note:
Must do a regular back-up every now and then. Anticipate worst case failure because these things are unreliable.

I'm still cool about this though. I believe I can still retrieve all my hard disk contents back when I send the hard disk for inspection. Apparently there's a company here specialising just in this field - retrieving lost data from corrupted disks. Must be making good business. I hope they will make a good job.. if not, I'm definitely gonna be depressed.

It's Complicated

The word "It's Complicated" really hangs rather strongly to our global culture and technology today. It is there in our process. It is there running 'the place'. It is there holding our technology together. It is even there to define our 'relationship status'.

Sometimes I might think that we just like to make simple things unnecessarily complicated, and I'm starting to feel scared thinking about it. "Why am I scared?" you may ask... and I shall explain.

Have you ever thought about the end of the internet? I do. The thought comes every time there's a power failure at home and there's no way to connect to the internet. This might come from a selfish point of view, but when the unfortunate day comes when everything (the internet) ends, I wonder and worry that the next human generation might not be able to retrieve all our blog posts and all our pictures that we posted in the internet. All memories of human kind living in the millenium age all gone and all lost in the virtual world called the World Wide Web, forever.

Human beings are a brilliant creation. We are able to think and create systems and machines that makes work easier for us. Going back to the simple lever systems, then the torque and gears and now we have a complicated system of metal and cylinders that moves collectively what we call now a car! Amazing. God knows what's in store for us in the future... flying cars? I don't know.

The same technological evolution happens for everything around us. Cave stones carvings becomes moving pictures, numbers evolved into complex mathematical formulas, communication through smoke and scroll of letters grew up to become telephony system and emails. The list goes on...

The camera obscura was the very first camera invented. Here's a website that shares a short history, the inventor and how you can make your own camera obscura in your bedroom. Compared to the pocket sized digicam we have now, you'll need at least a degree in these fields -> mechanical engineering, electrical engineering or software engineering just to create one camera. I'm not even sure one person alone with ALL the mentioned 3 degrees could create a digicam from scratch in one lifetime. Like I said, it's complicated.

Say that you've found yourself stranded in a land somewhat like History Channel's Life after People kind of situation. No electricity, and you've found a roll of film and a memory card.

The photographic film that can be easily processed if you know what chemicals to use, add in a little bit of McGyver's knowledge you'll have your pictures back. But the memory card.. pointless to try and extract anything from it in no electrical supply condition.

My point is, old technology is reproduceable. On the other hand, our atomic age technology makes is impossible to create things from scratch on your own. Just to read a thumb sized memory card, you'll need electricity, you need to find a way to produce semiconductor just to make a chip (making a semiconductor is not just boiling sand into liquid), this is only ONE piece of the puzzle of a highly complicated system that is called the computer.

Personally, our ancestors are the bigger genius. They're the ones who originally initiated the ideas for all the gadgets that we hold in our hands right now. I say this because the things that they came out with back in those olden days can still be reproduced today without much process and hassle.

Therefore with that said, maybe it's a good idea to back-up everything that I've ever saved on all my semiconductor devices and everything I've ever posted on the internet and start to make hard copies on paper and try to preserve it for the sake of my future children to see. Just in case the internet doesn't work because there's a problem with the electrical supply and telecommunication lines ;)

Missing you... so much, almost like, crazy.

I inflicted something upon myself last month. Something that I never dreamed of doing last year. Maybe this is some sort of a new year's resolution stuff-kot? Don't ask me what's the purpose of doing it, it's just a spur of the moment thing that suddenly pops into my head and I'm curious to know how long can I hold myself in the face of temptations.

I, Dyanna, a coffee-holic, an avid coffee and tea drinker, who drinks profusely every morning and every day decided to turn cold turkey from all caffeine substances. From doing 120km/h to 0km/h, a complete stop in a split second without even slowing down gives you hell of an impact from the impulse force.

I decided to replace all the liquid anti-oxidant routine with clear water and fruit juice. Yes, I know coffee has anti-oxidants, but from what I see here, drinking it everyday doesn't make me look any more like Maya Karin anyways, so what's there to lose? ;P With only one exception: only drink other stuff if and only if i'm choking and there's no water is available.

First week:
Had no problem whatsoever on the 1st day, probably because I was very excited with this experiment.

Problem starts to seep in on the second day till the rest of the week. I forgot to take into consideration that my section partner took the week off. This simply means all work loads comes to me and it was a pretty hectic week into the schedule. Take that and plus the caffeine withdrawal effects that I was experiencing, it was a perfect formula for 'the opposite of productivity' (is there a single word to describe "un-productivity"?). There was a point in time when I feel like my brain is going to explode (literally) due to over processing of thinking activities that was being done without any stimulants that it normally needs.

By mid-week, in the midst of the constant headache, feeling of eternal lethargy and emptiness inside my soul; I started to question and blame myself; "Why do I ever wanted to do this?" and "Why am I doing this to myself?!1!?". But I still held on to my 'pledge'.

Second week:
By the end of the first week. The constant headache is gone and I'm no longer feeling sleepy (though burned two hours sleeping during the day during the weekend).

It seemed now that I am able to wake up more easily in the mornings and getting less irritated. Quite chirpy, which is weird because I really am not a morning person. This is quite liberating actually, because now my mornings are not dictated by my morning cuppa Joe. It's like a car that doesn't need its engine to be warmed up first before driving out, you can just drive away instantly. wow...

The second week at work is as hectic as the last. Even more so with Yoda master coming from the Planet States is here with us. Productivity has climbed back to it's normal high or maybe better since I was able to read through a detailed technical specification booklet without falling into a comatose state and further more understand what the technical details of the specifications are. wow...

But an interesting incident happen in mid-week.

At work I have a few friends who are an avid coffee drinker. They even got into a debate over the the definition of what makes a 'cappucino' a cappucino and not something else (!!). That is how passionate they are. It's like a little club or something like that. So this friend of mine came strolling along one day bringing with him a little jar of coffee, unbeknown to him that I'm on a caffeine-fast. Bless you friend. I'm keeping the coffee just in case I decided to fall back into routine. This is the biggest temptation ever! Once or twice everyday, I popped open the lid to take in the bitter, intense and inviting aroma of its contents. It's like falling in love for the first time, over and over again. I'm ashamed to admit that I get a little 'high' from doing this -substance abuse much?

However, as my caffeine-less time and sense of achievement grows with the days, there's still a lingering feeling of emptiness and dullness when I'm having breakfast. I'm looking at my plate of nasi lemak and glanced to my mug of hot plain water, I thought to myself, it definitely feels like something is missing here..

I haz the crazies.
(That is my now lonely coffee presser on the left.
And beside him (coffee presser is a 'he'?)
is the new addition to the family.
I swear I can smell the aroma coming out from my computer screen!)

ps: this might be the most caffeine-less bizzare entry I've ever posted.
pps: these are links to some of the pictures of Miri and Brunei in Tabblo. Still more to come.