Brain Ooze

I got a confession to make today on an incident  that happened on Monday. I started the day driving to work feeling like every Monday, sluggish, dreading, expecting the worse, missing my bed, dreaming of my sleep. I need to make a U-Turn along Yeap Chor Ee road, in front of the Petronas station so that I can drive down south.

Things happened too quickly.

The traffic on that day was clear, I presumed that a lot of people were still on leave.

In front of me, as I approached the U-Turn, was a slow Iswara. I braked. The Vios behind me honked and overtook me from the left and cut in between me and the Iswara. Unfortunately, we were both approaching the U-turn and the Vios could not cut in front of the Iswara.

When I heard the honk, I already anticipated some stunt by the car behind so I left some space in front of me for him to squeeze in. Up till now, everything was cool on my side. Just after making the turn, the Vios took the left and overtook the Iswara.

Out of no reason, I gave chase. Pedal to the metal. Engine RPM went up to 6000. I only had a glance of the meter because I was concentrating on the car in front. As I chased up beside them on the left, I can see that there were a couple in the car, quite old say around late 40′s to 50′s. The roads were still clear so I went ahead of them, still on the left and quickly swerve to the right, like I want to hit them.

Then I heard a screech.

Not sure if it was me or if it was them. But it was the most eerie screech that I have heard in a long time. It was not a long screech, it just felt near. I looked back and they were still on the road, driving slower now while before that, they were speeding along.

When I stopped in the next light, near Pekaka.. it dawned to me what I have done. Wife, sitting beside me was already to pounce on me. She hates being in the car when I act all angry, who does not. It was dangerous, what I did.. and unfortunately through some bug in my system, it did not dawn to me that I could endanger myself (to hell with other people) by doing what I did.. BEFORE I did it. For the first time, I felt mortal, knees felt wobbly and swear to god I will not do that again. I think I have gotten away with stunts like this far too many times. I think I might have used up my 9 lives.

Wife told me to let it go while I was making the U-turn after the stunt the Vios pulled on me.  She said they probably did not see the car in front, some people just don’t see what is beyond them and reacts to what they see on front.  I am not sure if that “speech” triggered me but after the turn, I felt like teaching them a lesson.

Wife was probably right, those old people in the car probably did not see what is ahead of them and just assumes that I brake for fun, on an empty road, making a U-turn, on an Monday morning (BTW, that is a sarcastic remark).

Am I proud of what I did? No, I was not. To the old couple in the car, drive safe and look forward beyond what is in front of you. But if you did intentionally do what you did, overtaking me from the left on a U-turn, then serves you right and count your blessings. I have counted mine.

These are the night shots of the goddess of mercy at Kek Lok Si Temple. Getting there is a challenge. The road up to the temple is mighty steep and because of the traffic jam, I need to stop the car on a slope and get it going again. A lot of handbrakes. When I arrived, the car smells of burning rubber. In fact, most cars smells of burning rubber. When I smelled burning rubber, I thought there goes my clutch plate. But when I smell burning rubber on most cars, then I am a little bit more relieved. A little bit because there is the challenge of going down after the shoot.

We arrived around 7.30pm and the jam was still tolerable. We were able to drive into the temple compound before the jam starts. When we left around 9.30, the traffic heading up starts from Air Itam town itself.

Took the chance to pray there too. Stick a few josstick and light a candle for world peace.

And I can say, the place is magnificent.

Talk a walk around Georgetown and like me, you will find a lot of sights that are interesting. I have always liked to walk around town, since my form 3 history project taught me that I see more when I walk. Still up to this day, I see a lot more things when I walk around town then when I drive.

Here are some pictures as I walk across little india (King Street) from Esplanade to Chulia Street for the Chinese New Year Open House.

I never knew there was an indian butcher around. Wife saw the meat hanging and quickly an animal came to mind.. pork.. nope.. beef.. indians don’t eat beef.. lamb.. close.. mutton! Yup. Goat..

Typical indian sundry shop BUT a lot more cleaner, more open and easier to see the goods on display

A house that is going to crumble at any time.

shopping at little india

drying out the tnee kueh. Not too sure why they dry it though. Maybe it fries better after drying.

Georgetown.. take a walk down history.. literally.

If you are new to English idioms, upping the ante means that you are increasing your “bet” and the value of something especially when there are risk involved (http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/up+the+ante.html). The idiom is taken from poker game.

Have you heard of the 24 chinese drums? A team of 24 people will beat 24 chinese drums, those used in lion dance, to create a loud beat. The trick is that all 24 people need to have some semblance of syncronization.

Now up that 4 times, make it 88 drums. 88 is a good number according to chinese and 88 drums takes up a lot of space. 88 drums will be what they played in the Georgetown Chinese New year celebrations yesterday. I missed the show, but I would assume it is awesome.

Look at the amount of drums.. you will know why.

Iraqi doctorate student charged with reckless driving

NIBONG TEBAL: An Iraqi, who is taking a doctorate at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in electronic engineering, was charged in the Magistrate Court here Friday with reckless driving and causing the death of a student at the university, Fadilah Abdul Halim, 27, last Thursday.

Hamood Sheehab Hamid, 45, was charged with committing the offence driving in a reckless and dangerous manner, under section 41 (1) of the Road Transport Act 1987, at the traffic light exit to USM, at Jalan Transkrian about 9.45am.

Hamood Sheehab Hamid, 45, at the Nibong Tebal magistrate’s court on Friday

However, no plea was recorded because Hamood could neither understand English nor Malay

He neither understands English or Bahasa.. and yet he is taking PHD in engineering at USM? does that not raise questions? While we all poor mortals have to pass Bahasa to get a chance to APPLY for the university, this dude is taking up ONE PHD student’s space in a local university and he could not understand english or Bahasa.

GREAT!

What kind of students are we producing from the universities? Types like this!

Fantastic country this is. Just Fastastic.

This year is my first year celebrating chinese new year in my wife’s hometown, Kuching. For the past 2 years, we flew back to Kuching on the second day of chinese new year. One thing I noticed is how everyone asks the same question, how is it here compared to Penang?

Most customs are the same, as we are all still chinese. The wife is Christian but they too celebrate the new year. We go visiting, exchange ang pow, have reunion dinner, the works.

The intepretations and implementions of these customs are a bit different than what my family are used to. Maybe other families in Penang celebrate like the wife’s family.

In most houses that we visited, a full meal is served. Speciality that I noticed being served in every home is “kacang ma” cooked with chicken. Kacang ma is this dried leafy green herb that is an acquired taste. Big thing in Kuching, never seen it in Penang, also not big outside kuching.

I got drunk after the first house before noon. Felt woozy but I have felt worse. That is the first for me. The host, a family friend of the in laws, kept pouring beer. They even broke out the red wine and vodka, hell bent on getting everyone drunk by noon.

Bak kua is a must in every home. They are served like normal kueh, which is welcomed for bak kua monster like me.

They also fry up sarawak keropok and served with acar, pickled, not like the cooked one in Penang.

Then there are the kek lapis, layer cake. All collours and flavour.

Finally, chinese new year is the raining season here, a welcomed respite from the heat of Penang.

so I got something of a semblance of Enterprise service on my blackberry. Reading crackberry forum, I found that I could use a re-director. The re-director is installed into a PC that has to be turned on all the time. It forwards the email to my phone using the BIS. In the process, I need to hook up the blackberry to the machine and it does some syncing and adds in IT policies.

The good thing is that now I can receive emails from office, but not the full email.. if the emails are too long, I only get the first part and I am not able to download the rest of the message.

So now I have to enter a password to use my blackberry. It is a safety feature. Good for me too because if I loose it, people cannot access my blog and facebook.

It also syncs up my contacts, so on my computer, the outlook has all my personal contacts and my blackberry has all the office contacts.

For some reason, I cannot sync up my facebook calendar and contacts with my device now, not sure if it was because of the policies.

Although I can get emails from the office, I cannot send email using office email. yet.. I am sure there is a workaround but I am too tired to workaround now.

Blackberry enterprise service in malaysia is still expensive. I need to subscribe to a business plan and it is at least RM100 onwards.

should have gotten an iPhone :D:D

Congratulations! You have gotten yourself a blackberry. Now you can get access to the office email and be a workaholic. So you get a good cheap data package. You think you are so smart.

You got the facebook app installed. All contacts imported. WordPress installed. Personal email pushed to the device.

Then today you found out, after 3 days of trying, that the package does not have BES that you need to connect to the office network.

Called the service provider and they say they cannot add BES into the package cause, they cannot.

I am so depressed, I almost broke down. This is how it feels like to spend money for this feature and not to have it. Might as well go back to prepaid and my trusty 200 ringgit phone.