We all write like 15 year olds

Apparently I touched a nerve in my previous post when I said that blogging down whatever you did over the weekend to the whole wide world is akin to the writing of that of a 15 year old. Guess I'm not the only overaged 15 year old writer out there =P

Hahhaa. The thought of it cracks me up.

Nonetheless, for the lack of better justifications, I shall continue to post 15 year old writings. Well not all the time. But most of the time.

The thought of not further humiliating myself and no longer damaging innocent surfers mind's (by not blogging anymore - not the other stuff that I do; sorry folks that's here to stay XD ), has crossed my mind many times. But somehow I think there's some therapeautic quality involved when you know whatever rubbish you write will still have some sort of readership. Well ok maybe only I read my own blog but that's besides the point. Like I mean, really, who cares about what you did over the weekend!?!?! Who cares if you drove up to Genting to enjoy some nice view but all you ended up seeing was fog? But yet there's a certain joy in sharing your experiences to others (and it's even better on the internet cos you can tell more people with just one post!), no matter how superficial it may be.

I think I'm shallow.

aha aha aha.

One of those crazy weekends

My weekends, seem to fly by without me knowing much about them, and yet again this monday morning I'm here trying to retrace what exactly happened to the latest weekend.

Chronologically:

Thursday night - Movie outing with campus students: Forbidden Kingdom. Come to think of it, teruk la the movie. 11 bucks for a movie like that. I think that was the funny part of it . Bleh. And also how I realized that i'm getting olddddddddd.

Friday night: Movie outing (again!2 nights in a row!! zomg)... with Agnel, Kysern and Cheryl. Initialy Agnel called me up and said, "daniel, let's go watch forbidden kingdom!" zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. After quickly shooting down the idea and telling him that its not worth your 11bucks and friday night, we ended up watching "Lars and The Real Girl". Which I have to say was a better movie than "Forbidden Kingdom". It's an indie film, the low budget kind with minimal soundtracks and all, a bit longer than it should be but on overall very interesting.

Saturday: Did some housechores, went to scout for guitar pedals (with no end product), church meeting, then dinner at Cineleisure for agnel's birthday with the AF guys + girlfriends. Then had this crazy idea (I believe it's agnel's) to drive up to genting to have kopi, where apparently (according to agnel) there was this great outdoor cafe (coffee bean) thing where you can sip coffee and enjoy an excellent view. All that happened when we got there was the fantastic view of the kabus (fog). zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. So that evening we made a general consensus that if agnel says it's really good, rate down 30%, and if he says its really bad, rate up 30%. Plus when the kabus cleared all we saw was darkness. -_-" Eventually got home at 230am, no thanks to my louya savvy. 2nd gear all the way going up genting. What was funny was that there was agnel & gf, David Gary & gf, and me & kysern. ahahahaa. So we pretended to be a couple for a while.

Sunday: Whole day in church.

Today: ugghhhhhh monday morningggggg.

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I'm suddenly questioning myself what possessed me to narrate all that I did over the weekend for everyone to see. It's like so..... 15 year old. But then again to have typed this much nonsense and not post it would be cardinal.

*shamelessly clicks post*

Broke-rhitis

What started out as for-fun instrument is now sucking the juices out of my wallet. Guitar playing is expensive I tell you, now that i've caught the pedal-buying-bug aka quest for eric johnson's guitar tone.

Here's the list of money that could've and (would be) been better spent elsewhere (eg funding my dictatorship plans):

Bought:
Vox Big Ben Overdrive - RM450
RMC Wizard Wah - RM 680

Soon to buy:
Pedal flight case - RM300
Boss DD20 Giga Delay - RM700 (zomg i'm buying a delay pedal... what has the world come to?!?!)
MI Audio Crunchbox - RM500

Thinking of buying:
RC/AC/BB booster - RM500 (at least)
Volume Pedal - ???

The above already comes up to a whopping Rm3000. That's double the price of my electric guitar -_-"

Any rich sugar mama's out there? *grin*

I feel so so old.

In my attempts to be more sociable with people around me (read: social experiment #1), last night I agreed to join some of my church's campus students for a movie outing.

And boy, I'm feeling the age gap.

You see, being a dec baby, I'm quite used to being the youngest among my group of friends that I hang out with. Most of my friends are at least my age, or older. Last night was a complete role reversal. Many jokes were made by them, of which none did I understand. The cake came when a friend of mine was telling me about this comedian he saw on you tube, and how I should go check it out etc... which at that moment it dawned on me that the only YouTube videos that are non music or football related which I watch nowadays are Barak Obama's presidential campaign speeches.

To top it off, while everyone was hyper at about 9pm lining up for popcorn, I was yawning. zzzzzzz. And I still am.

Old old old old old.

On other fronts, we watched Forbidden Kingdom. The movie.., man I dunno what to say. I found the production more funny than the show itself. It felt kinda B grade, with the flying martial (I initially typed "marshall" -_-" ) arts and all that, but it was quite nostalgic for me to see sun wu kong (the monkey king) again in a movie. Brought back childhood memories. But all in all I quite enjoyed it.

Monday morning blues

It's one of those days where you wake up on monday morning and realize you didn't have much of the weekend to youself and suddenly find yourself at work again.

Corpses, I tell you. I understand how it feels like to be one.

*returns to crunching numbers*

*crunch crunch crunch crunhc zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

died-ed

Playing futsal is bad for health when

• the last time you did any proper sort of running was all the way back in Nov 2006
• all the people you're playing with are superfit buffalos
• shortly before playing you had a giant serving of banana leaf rice

Ughh. I think I'm going to die any moment.

Someone come collect my corpse please.

*collapses onto bed*

Social Experiment #1

I found out, I'm a lot more vulnerable than I imagined myself to be.

I've always thought that I could place a firm lid on my emotions (any form; anger, despair, affections, bliss etc), hence rendering myself "less vulnerable" than your average 24 year old guy out there.

But damn, sometimes no matter how hard you try, it just goes beyond you. I guess I'm human after all. Heck even by posting something like this is already out of norm/character for me.

Bleh. Oh well, just embrace it.

Self social experiments make you vulnerable.



On a totally unrelated matter, I should get myself a good pair of headphones. Just need to find a pair that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Everything is so expensive nowadays.

Blunders and Bloopers

When I was a young boy at the wee age of 10, my dad imparted to me very profound words of wisdom, which somehow rather unfortunately went unheeded by me up to this day. It's called:

"Read properly."

-_-"

Sometimes regulatory work can be a tad bit mundane, but occasionally something comes up. Unfortunately for me, this time the "something" that came up was a mistake entirely down to my inability to read off the correct column, resulting in a rather embarassing conversation with another company's actuary.

"Well, if you take the figure from the 'Business Outside Malaysia' column and add it with the figure from the 'Business Within Malaysia' column, you will get the figure in the report."

"oh...whoops."

*smacks self on forehead*

Ughh. Shy only.

Reflection for today

Deny sin, not desire.

Reading the book "The Journey of Desire" by John Eldredge (not sure how his name goes) opened my eyes to this. Often as christians (or actually anybody, for that matter) we've been indoctrinated -unconciously maybe- that to desire is evil.

Truth is, we were meant to desire. God made us that way. Always longing for a life that can and should be better. Always seeking that special moment in life where you are at peace with the world, content and satisfied with what you have, love and loved by the people around you, having a sense of worth, purpose and destiny and so on.

Unfortunately, our short term myopic nature always leads us to seek quick fixes, things that feel good for the moment, but never really satisfy, and in the end makes us worse off. We try better jobs, faster cars, bigger houses, sex, porn, alchohol and whatever else; in our attempt to fulfill that desire that is bursting deep within us.

Some of us never stop trying, but end up finding ourselves in the depths the morning after our high. Some of us, in our attempt to stop being disappointed, kill our desire, and then go on with life trying to get by.

In the beginning, when God created Man and declared that "It is good" and was pleased with what he had made -much like how I would be happy with myself writing and pulling off a blazing guitar solo-, life then was as it was meant to be. When Man could fellowship freely with God and enjoyed His divine company. Then came the Fall and the rest is history for us.

Restoration, or the fulfillment of our desire; will come in that day when the creation is united with the Creator again. In moments of worship when you have an Encounter with God, we have a glimpse of what the union will be like, a time where the deepest longings of our souls will be fulfilled, as it was meant to be.

Till then, keep desiring.

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On to more trivial matters...

Aiyo! Arsenal out of all competitions again(!) this season. Referee kayuu! Last week didn't give a stonewall penalty, this week give a penalty that wasn't -_-"

Edit: I just watched the highlights and zomg... Arsenal got pawned by the referees.

Bleh.

Now that it's finally over...

I can have my social life again.

But just for the record, people should ban 6 hour exams. They are bad bad bad. I don't even play guitar or study for 6 hours, but I had to WRITE for 6 hours. Uggh. I'm just glad it' s over.

My most grateful thank you's to all the people who have been praying for me. I know some of you prayed harder for me than I did for myself. Thank you so much. You all are wonderful brothers and sisters. Me love all of you =)

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I was watching a youtube video of Barak Obama giving a speech at some event (will link it later), he's one cool guy. I admire the values and the message of hope that he stands for. Maybe one day our country will have a leader like that.

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It's nice to be back at work again, though it's kinda killjoy when you're done with your exams, happi-fied and all then suddenly you realize that you've gotta go to work the next day. Heh. Nonetheless a quiet day in the office so far, most people are away on study leave with the exam

period being now.

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Aiyo they recalled the Savvy. So now have to take another day's leave to send the car to the workshop. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Proton proton...

I should not blog when my thoughts are all over the place like that.

Quarantine III

Screw studying.

Im'ma play my guitar till the cows come home. HOOOOO!

Quarantine II

Being in quarantine does mean that you're less in touch with the outside world. So last night while hanging out with my friends, they asked me, "hey daniel, have you ever heard of ken lee?"
"ken lee? who?"
"go see la oh youtube"

930am this morning, i youtubed "ken lee"



My poor brain.

But I gotta say that's one hot judge =P

Quarantine

Over the past 4 days I realized I can withstand significant periods of solitude, specifically, not having human interaction for some days in a row. In fact I'm beginning to enjoy the lack of human interaction. Not bad not bad.

But maybe that also explains why I've been talking to myself more often. It plays tricks on your mind I tell you.


That said, I can't wait for Monday to come so I can get this exams done and over with.

Exams! HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This is why Eric Clapton is Legend

On Equity and Fairness

In view of my impending dictatorship, some plans and thoughts have to be trashed out first so that the future implementation is as smooth as possible.

A friend of mine drew my attention to an article in the Star that he penned (okay so at least the paper is not all propoganda) regarding scholarships for rich kids. Incidentally, I had been contemplating (yes this is how I fill up my free time) on the same issue but on a more general scale.

There have been many calls by various quarters over the years in our country to award education scholarships/university places based on meritocracy. As much as it seems a wonderful and just idea, on closer inspection it's not so simple as giving you your place cause you have a couple more A's.

What meritocracy assumes (and champions) is that we all have equal opportunities. Most people would see "equal opportunities" as you getting your chance because you "deserve" it, i.e. you have better results.

However, it is also important then, to consider whether all of us had equal opportunities right from the start. Reality is, we don't. Some of us have good parents, some of us have no parents, some are poor, some are rich, some are better academically, some have better teachers etc. So strictly speaking "meritocracy" doesn't exist.

So now one questions. Is it fair then to compare and allocate university places or scholarships (as far as govt sponsored scholarships as a public service) solely based on one's academic results? If not, how then do we decide?

What irks me most nowadays are students from well to do families complaining night and day about fairness and equality when they don't get a scholarship. They need a reality check. Firstly, scholarships are a privilledge, not a right. It's not stated in the Malaysian constitution that you will get that scholarship because you scored more A's than another person. Secondly, they would do well to consider other families who struggle to send their kid to high school, let alone Uni before they decide to start ranting about equality.

That unnecessary rant aside, there needs to be a way to recognize the talents of different people, ensuring that they are not handicapped by their circumstance. Also needed is a way to draw out those talents from within them, and giving them a platform to express themselves.

Pancit

April 7th is the date of an extremely important but annoying 6 hour actuarial exam for me. Since the turn of the year, I've been slaving away studying ridiculous amounts of material to prepare for the exam. But even after all that if I take the paper right now the odds are still extremely bleak.

Today is the first day that I actually woke up and felt that I've run out of steam. There's just something that kinda puts you off when despite slaving your ass for so long you are nowhere close to completion in the preparation of the exam paper.

This qualified actuarial salary better be worth the annoyance.

@#$%@#$%^@#$%!!

Tommy Emmanuel

He just makes you want to play guitar.

Talk about inspiration.

Dictatorship plan is back on

And after that totally random post on programming, its back to the elections.

Just as the swearing in of the Perak MB has been called off for today (I lazy to link, go read any of the online newspaper sites), I have subsequently reignited my quest for my dictatorship.

Over the last few days, we've seen how fragile things can be in this country. Especially when our politicians are involved. Let's take the opposition for example. Right after denying BN two thirds majority, they act as if they are the new superheroes and saviours of the country. Worse still now, within a week we've seen all sorts of undermining, squabbling for seats, backstabbing, rumours of rallies to claim the deputy MBs post etc.

Muppets. Don't they realize that the votes in the last election was not for them but rather against the existing government? They just happen to be in power in a few places now by default. I was slowly being persuaded over that these people are sincere in their quest for a better Malaysia, but all that it looks like now is that their all power hungry idiots who put themselves first before anything. How the royal family of Perak has the patience to put up with all this nonsense about the MBs post and the state exco line is beyond me. I have serious respect for them (royal family of Perak), because if I were them I'd just kick out the whole lot and rule the state myself.

Fortunately for them, the ruling coalition (ie our dear friends BN) can't do much about it at the moment since they are all fighting for their own individual political survival. MCA is having infighting (nothing new), UMNO is also infighting (also nothing new) , and let's not even get started about MIC. So lots of mudslinging going around at the moment everywhere, and the best part is its internal.

This country is seriously in need of a few good men. We need some proper leaders.

Maybe we should all just have Sultan Azlan Shah & family to rule the nation for now. They seem the most level headed and respected people around.

Or maybe I should just run for dictator.

me and programming, it's a love hate thing

Away from the europhia of the elections....

One of the nice things about my job is that I get to use whatever approach (within reasonable limits) I want to do my work.

So occasionally when I get bored of writing reports (which is actually, very often), I usually muck around a bit doing other stuff. One of them of which is building spreadsheets with macros and all.

The VBA I learnt (or didn't learn) back in Uni days seems like a lifetime ago. All I remember about those classes was a huge dark hall, comfy chair, droning voice of my lecturer and a lot of sleep. Which resulted in me not really knowing squat about VBA.

Nonetheless, my construction skills learnt from many hours of playing Lego when I was a kid was revived when I started poking around a VBA module again. And I gotta admit, its quite fun (hardcoregeek alert!). The many hours spent staring a stupid code that spouts out error messages, causes excel to hang in the middle of 10000 simulations (which is happening as I type), and then finding out that there was not much point in simulating that part of the data, and finally scrapping the whole thing... so ... so... headexploding.

But its worth it when it finally works. *smirk*

Living in historic times

As far as Malaysians are concerned, we are.

Last night's election results were -if there's such a word- "tsunamical". Mind blowing in fact. Anyways, lets just recall the day bit by bit.

It was my first time voting, and naturally with everything that has been going on the past week -eg opposition ceramah's gathering up to 10000 ppl- everyone knew that this was not going to be just another election, but a rather pivotal one. And I, was ridiculously excited. So early morning 10am I marched off to the nearby polling station, and well, I was caught totally unawares of what I saw there.

Nothing.

Just a handful of people. In my mind I had always imagined it to be packed, with ppl screaming for you to vote their party as you approach the place, flags, hats, everything. But this was just quiet. So much so that I completely forgot about my earlier plans to take a few photos. The whole process took like 3 mins, go in, get your slip, X marks the party, insert into ballot boxes, and the end. Kthxbai go home.

So go home we did. And chilled for the rest of the day, talked a bit of politics with my tailor who came by to hand me some stuff that I made, and then waited. Till night.

To say that I am happy with the results is an understatement (for those of you who have no idea what happened, for the first time in 40 years, the opposition parties in Malaysia managed to reduce the ruling coalition's 2/3 majority). As most people are. No one had expected such a result, not even the opposition parties.

And for the ignorant, don't get me wrong. I'm no anti establishment person (unlike some muppet datuk on the tv3 interview who tried to fan some racial flames by saying the chinese in Penang are an ungrateful lot etc...until later they found out that selangor, perak and kedah -predominantly majority malay states- had also fallen to the opposition, and had nothing to say. In your face foo!), or anti malay or whatever. This is a victory for democracy, where previously they could change and amend the constitution as and when they like, but now no more. Finally after so many years there finally is a form of check and balance in the Malaysian parliament, and more importantly for Malaysia, a hope for multiracial politics, where we are no longer defined by skin colour, but are all Malaysians.

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edit: I found out the name of the racist muppet. Let's name him and shame him. Malaysia has no place for people like him. He's no dato, but he is as stated by Malaysiakini (in an article by Neil Khor entitled "DAP must rise above race now"):

"....On the national front, these gains can quickly turn sour if we allow certain racist elements to dominate the airwaves. Already Zainal Kling, emeritus professor at UPSI (Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris), deliberately explained the electoral results through a racist lens. He was on TV3 throughout the election results night refusing the accept the reality that Malaysians have rejected the BN's race-based formula in Penang, Kedah, Kelantan, Perak and Selangor. Most of these states have a overwhelming Malay majority..."

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So here's to a better Malaysia.

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And to make things even better:

Man U 0 Portsmouth 1
Barnsley 1 Chelsea 0


MWAHAHAHAAHAHAH


This has been one heck of a weekend I tell you.