Saya Adalah Malas.

In actual fact, I was contemplating between using ialah which I felt is more appropriate, or adalah but in the end, I stuck to the latter because it sounds funnier. Its kinda like deciding between using I am or I is, for example, is no updates on blog because I is lazy, nows you knows wtf. Anyway, my blog title already says it all what, no meh? And the grandfather story goes on and on and on...


Life has been pretty routined lately hence the lack of updates, I do not wish to bore you to death with my wake up in the morning, brush teeth and occasional breakfast then drive to work everyday take the same route and most of the time having to face stupid drivers wish they would just be banned from driving forever. Then bootup the laptop, read and reply mails and open up facebook, the star and my blog with zero percent inspiration to update.

Code, code, code then lunchtime already everyday have to decide where to eat should just create a time table or even code an application to assist in the decision making. After makan then come back to office now moved to Level 4 already very cramped and stuffy really considering purchasing a stand fan especially after working hours, beh tahan. Continue to code, check and reply mails or attend meeting or discussions then sometimes make coffee to counter sleepiness due to heavy lunch, normally work until 7 something then pack, hibernate machine and head home normally this hour no jam already which is good since Loke Yew has now opened up all the lanes for traffic.

Reach home already have dinner then watch TVB drama series then wash dishes and take a bath and usually continue to work or sometimes sit blankly infront of the machine with the blog opened with the Create Post interface but nothing comes to mind at all like the coffee very thick already add more powder also useless. Then normally sleep around 12 something and wake up in the morning around 6.45 cause office starts at 8 fuh!


The above can be repeated as many times as you want, thank you. And touching on the coffee topic, I have managed to suppress myself from taking coffee and today is officially the 5th day that I have not consumed any type of coffee based products hurray but I think tomorrow confirm will break the suppression and none can stop me, not even the wife, muahahaha!


Okay, that's all I'm gonna be saying today and hope none of you peeps out there are going through what I am current going through. Oh, and I think I might just back track some posts, that's all for now, bai-bais.

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The Food Post.

A compilation of food images taken using the trusted sidekick from various events that never had the chance to be showcased up until now. Behold...

Taken during the buka puasa event with colleagues, the most suitable caption for this image being Overdose of Sweetness. Perhaps only second to some Indian dessert I had in my previous company which was soaked in thick sugar water.

Same event as above. Potatoes, mutton, chicken, baked beans with slices of mutton, coleslaw, pita bread, beriyani rice, grilled fish, some sourish vegetable mixture and the final surprise being, hummus as seen in You Don't Mess with The Zohan.

Taken during lunch with colleagues, the amazing walt taking the biggest slice of steamed battered eggs I have ever seen in my life. The size shown above probably takes up about 1/10 of the whole tray.

Taken during steamboat outing with family, forgotten the name of the restaurant which is next to a Bak Kut Teh shop located in Queen's Park in Jalan Peel right. Honestly, stuff found in Queen's Park are not really that cheap also loh, despite being rejected or out of season stuff.

Taken during lunch in Petaling Street. This is from the Koon Kee, or something like that, Wan Tan Mee store, which used to be quite famous once upon a time, the reason me saying so caused it was pretty deserted when we reach there. I still remember last time when I was in primary school, my dad used to bring me to this shop after school occasionally and we had to wait for some time under the scorching heat to get a seat. I think I used to hate this place.

Taken during the same steamboat outing as above, salted something deep fried sotong which is one of my favourite dish there. Salty and crunchy, yums, yums, yums...

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KY & HL.

My Heartiest Congratulations to KY and Hong Ling for their registration of marriage which actually happened last Tuesday, on September 9, 2008 (pssstt, because his initial plan of 08.08.08 somehow tak jadi, perhaps he was too excited for the Olympics). Really happy for both of you but not until the extend of tearing during the signing ceremony like some other people *coughs* Jac *coughs*. So bro, now that you're a married man, I guess you gotta behave like one and stop monkey-ing around that much anymore, eh? Anyway, congrats once again to both of you, to Uncle and Aunty (finally, another female in the family eh?) as well as to parents of Hong Ling.

Taken during the signing procedure, ah, such blissful smiles.

Anyway, on this very day as well, I no longer can deny it and have to finally admit that I take shitty pictures, especially in events, enough said, huhuhu. Thousand apologies to KY this time around, fortunately you have a backup else I shall commit harakiri for ruining such a beautiful moment. That said, it can be concluded that it doesn't matter what camera you use, a lousy photographer will still take lousy photos.


On a side note, this post is written using Google Chrome, a first time and I can see that some of the tags are not appearing correctly when switching between Compose and Edit HTML mode, while some others are much different, funny...

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Jacklyn.

This is Jacklyn - wife, owner of laureljacklyn.blogspot.com as well as strawberryclothes.blogspot.com. Picture taken before she headed off for a wedding dinner on Saturday night, location, in my room.

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Happy Mid-Autumn Festival.

But for me it was just like any other ordinary day because:

1. Dad and Sis were out to attend seperate wedding dinners hence Mom and I just cincai tapau something back for dinner, instead of our annual makan besar outing

2. It was raining for the whole evening, hence no moon sightings and I'm not sure whether my Aunt offered her prayings but we didn't join her. No makan-makan = (

3. Also due to the rain, cannot lit up lanterns nor candles outside which is one of the events that signifies the mid-autumn festivals.

Anyway, I do hope that others had a much better time celebrating than I did spending the night alone in front of the TV watching the Monza F1 race chomping on mooncakes, ah, even though there's such a huge variety of mooncakes available in the market, I still prefer Snow Skin Lotus Paste without Yolk over everything else.

*abandons idea of taking and posting a picture of mooncake because my house ran out of my favourite one* Click here instead, same meaning, same purpose, minus the work, lols. Thank you to Adrian first.


Once again, A Happy Mid-Autumn Festivals 2008 to Everyone! Look out for hidden messages inside your mooncake, sent by PKR perhaps, lols.

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System Down.

Wasted most of the day troubleshooting a suspected hardware malfunction on the PC, one of my worst nightmares. It all started when the PC refused to budge during the Power On Self Test (POST) boot, even after many resets/restarts, remaining static on the Checking NVRAM process which prevented me from even accessing the BIOS setup option. Dang! Fortunately I was still able to access the net (all hail the great Internet), using the other machine of course, to search for possible DIY solutions.


Error: Booting stuck at Checking NVRAM process
NVRAM stands for Non-Volatile Random Access Memory which continually store information, normally the BIOS settings and stuff, even then the power has been turned off.

Possible cause of error:
This one, quite susah to identify I tell you. Few of the common known causes includes battery on motherboard running out of juice, hardware changes, hardware incompatibility, hardware malfunction, etc. Since you have no idea what the actual cause would be, the only way is to find out through trial and error.


In my case, I had to try all listed below, except #1 before finally being able to identify the possible root cause, its either a hardware malfunction or a sudden stroke of incompatibility which up until now, I am unable to conclude. Nevertheless, I have achieved the main objective which is to get the PC running again, yay?

Just as a reference, possible solutions are as follow, depending on the cause of error, of course:


1. The NO-FRILLS solution
WHY - You either have no idea on what to do or you are just lazy.

Send your PC to the nearest technician/repairman directly and leave them with your headaches. After a round of shopping, food and perhaps some karaoke plus a few phone calls later, you'll be returning home with an up and running PC. Much like car mechanics, the cost would be totally dependant on how good that guy is and how well you know him/her, hehe. I was on the verge of doing so before my stinginess took over the decision making skill segment of my brain, subconsciously.


2. The battery no juice solution
WHY - Unable to access the retained CMOS configurations, possibly

Change the battery on your motherboard loh, its those 3.5V lithium based coin-like object, only much thicker. Take note that the battery swap should happen fairly quickly else your BIOS settings might get resetted, similar to solution #3. Unless you know how to re-configure them, do it real fast.


3. The clear your CMOS solution
WHY - Settings corrupted or unable to read the new plug and play devices

There are 2 ways to do so, one is to remove the battery (remember to power off and unplug the power cord first) for more than 30 seconds and the other being slightly more complicated, which is todo a hard reset using the jumper. First and foremost, power off your PC and unplug the power cord then locate the 3-pin jumper normally located near the battery. Remove the jumper from the default position (usually connecting the 1st and 2nd pin) then connect it to the 2nd and 3rd pin. Wait for a minute or two before returning the jumper to its default location.

Power On your PC, the earliest indication of the reset would the the processor speed running at a much lower configuration.


4. The check your hardwares solution
WHY - The boot is not proceeding due to issues with new or existing hardware

Strip your PC to the bare minimum, just leaving the processor, one stick of RAM and the video card (if your motherboard comes with integrated display capabilities, better still, used that one). If the booting goes through, congratulations, it seems that one of the hardwares removed is causing the Checking NVRAM issue. Now all you have to do it reattach the hardwares one after another and do a boot sequence each time. Sure it takes time but at least its solve-able unless its the HDD.

Else, I pray that you have additional video card or RAM standby, chances are, either of these is the culprit. Worst still, I've read a case where a bent pin on the processor would likely to cause this error else well. In my case, it was the Video Card argh, of all things, it has to be one of the more expensive parts, WHY!!!


Sigh, not only that, after reassembling everything back in order, I found that one of the RAM is not functioning properly, leaving me with only 512MB. This one really a case of sudah jatuh ditimpa tangga, not forgetting to mention it has to happen when I am poorest. In actual fact, the PC has been acting up quite frequently in recent times and no loh, cannot afford another machine because her notebook also not yet finish paying off huhuhu *hates installment packages suddenly*

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F5.

You guys must be really bored with nothing but only words on this blog lately, so I shall take this opportunity to post a long overdue picture from the Flower Power series. Right at this moment, sadly to say, some of the plants taken back then did not make it through to this very day, suspected either overdose of sunlight or water. Condolences and as a sign of respect, these pictures would remain in my heart forever as a commemoration to their fight till the end wtf merepek must be lack of sleep.

A refresing scene of nature's greenery to take your mind off from the stress(s) of work for a little while. And no, I did not purposely water the plants to get this effect.

One of the potted mini plants that did not make it.

p/s: F5 keys is also the refresh function shortcut key for most application in the Windows system but I guess most of you already know that hence the title because the purpose of these images is to refresh your mind a little.

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Wedding Cards.

Or to be more precise, the invitation cards to one's wedding dinner and in the chinese community, it is also more commonly referred to as the Red Bomb for reasons that I am not really sure of as well. Perhaps in the near future, this term would not be applicable anymore as designs for these invitations cards have reached a new level. Not being limited to only red & gold, some are white or ivory or cream with pink or red linings and design, or black with golden linings (quite pantang hoh?) and many other, creativity certainly knows no boundaries in this case.

As for us, there were some valuables lesson learnt here and there during the whole process of, uhrm, how should I put it... requirement gathering? Fortunately, the lady attending to us was really patient and helpful, perhaps she has reached the ultimate level in dealing with clients like us, total noobs. Anyway, allow me to share some of the experience gained:


- The variety of designs available for us to pick from were really, really limited, even much less than we have expected since most of it would be free (voucher from the dinner package). Terasa especially after browsing through all the choices available in the outlet.

- These cards are really costly.

- Of course, we have the option to opt for other designs but by doing that, each card would only be subsidized with a miniscule amount from the voucher and that would result us having an additional cost to bear. Considering these cards only lasts a few weeks, I would rather spend the money on other stuff, like a chest drawer *lols, inside joke*

- These cards, two words, really costly.

- Everything can be designed, from the envelopes to the card itself, to the layout of the contents, the background, hard or soft cover, coloured or non-coloured and much more but also know that everything mentioned above comes with an additional cost, some as lum sum, others, charges would be on a per card basis.

- Needless to say, these cards are really costly.

- Another reason to regret on for not learning mandarin even though its a one of thing because we totally had no idea on what should be printed on the mandarin side of the card (neh, chinese wedding cards have the english version on the left and mandarin on the right). I learnt that I should be referred to as the only son rather than the youngest child and there's some notation for the grandparents if they are still alive and some other stuff. Sigh. Basically, we were either just agreeing or requesting her to make the decision for us, lols.

- Again, these cards are really costly.

- It is important to check on the draft of card design, especially the madarin part where the characters might be incorrect, you know how in mandarin for one word there might be 300 ways of writing them, huh?


Okay, now we're done with the cards, I guess we can start worrying on the guests list once again, sigh. Btw, when we were done with the cards the other day, we saw one lady selecting the wedding cards on her own, don't know why but suddenly felt very kesian for her loh, having to go though this stuff alone. I wonder if Jacklyn used to feel the same way back then or it didn't matter cause she really enjoyed them as she's finally getting married lols sure kena pukul one when she read this later.

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Munch, Munch.

Finally, we're done with the food tasting, albeit being a little late, at the restaurant where our wedding dinner would be held. It happened last Friday, there goes another day of my annual leave but what to do as they were unable to allocate any weekend slots for us, so good business hoh perhaps I should venture into F&B sector.


Yalah, I also know these tasting stuff not totally realiable one since its only catering for 10 individuals now but during the actual dinner, the guests would be multiplied by 500%, food quality sure jatuh one. Then again, free food mah, who could resist, maybe you but definitely not me, LOLS.

I tell you what I think. These food tasting are specially created to cater for the older generations because our parents would insist on ensuring that the food is good. The reason, 50% of the guests would be their invites who do not know us or might not even seen us before, so, other than tumpang gembira a bit with my parents, they would be spending most of their time eating (and drinking). That's why our parents would kan jeong on the food so much lah. End of theory tak sah.


Of course, other than the free makans, we were there to discuss on decorations for the tables, seats, dining hall and all that stuff *I can almost see visualize my savings flying away* which reminded me that the GUY had yet to send me the quotations, sheesh. Also hoh, the manager liasing with us all these while had be off-site that particular day, my assumption was her being afraid to deal with Jac face-to-face anymore, those who know Jac well enough should know why hehehe.


Hence, Jac had to return the following day not accompanied by me cause I needed to work got deployment to production mah what to do. The purpose was to clear our doubts on some uncertanties as to get the card printing vouchers (free woh, don't want ah, can really save a lot here) as well as the map for table arrangement which she managed to wrestle away from the manager who was unwilling to give until we finalize the number of tables initially, wahrao.

I think Jac is really keng one loh, don't know what hidden super power she has always able to get what she wanted one, of course nothing that is too melampau one lah. Like free stuff, discounts, more free stuff, more discounts, her skill in haggling is almost absolute, perhaps second only to Jen, kap kun krap!


Come to think of it, printing and distribution of wedding invitations is kinda behind schedule, considering there's only about 2 months plus left. Nevermind, worst comes to worst, I'll just confirm your attendance and pass the card to you on dinner night itself for you to stuff in the angpau money, muahahahaha. Perhaps I can consider online transaction or credit card services as well considering how many feel insecure lugging so much cash around kan?


Okay, that's all for now, have been very much deprived of sleep lately. If you didn't see me update for some time, it's either I'm too occupied with the wedding preparations, too loaded with work or too busy attempting to finish Summon Night: Twin Age on my NDS.

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Hitam. Gelap.

Bad luck is when a driver started a race well, gaining positions and taking the lead, along the way increasing the distance with weather conditions improving and when there's only a few laps left, it suddenly started raining.

Bad luck is when you lose the lead due to slippery track conditions after holding on for 40 plus out of 44 laps.


Bad luck is when not only you lose out in fighting back for the lead, you had to run wide, slipped and crash onto the barrier.


Bad luck is when you learn much later that the race winner had been given a controversial penalty for slipping into a chicane, took the lead, dropped back then sling shot-ed and supposingly gained advantage over your lead.

Bad luck is when your race mate was handed the win and the crucial 10 championship points just because he drove like a slow-poke during the rain to ensure a finish when everyone's fighting for the championship.


Bad luck is when the championship seems to be drifting further as the season draws close to an end and you have not had a race win since April.


Bad luck is Kimi Raikonnen where nothing in F1 seems to go his way. This is a tribute to him for being one of the unluckiest drivers in Formula One history, from his racing days with McLaren with reliability issues, to his days in Ferrari which is marred with inconsistent performance. But the race in Belgium, especially the finale, has got to be one of the best through out the season so far. I was unable to remain seated until the crash. Sigh.

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Quickie.

At the start of the month, I made a promise to myself not to neglect this blog as much as I did back in August but looking at where things are now, seems like its gonna be even worse, shame on me. Its not like life has been dull and boring all these while, just that there has been too many stuff happening, plus work as usual, that I couldn't even find a minute to sit down and come up with a proper post, sigh.


Even now I am typing this in the midst of waiting for Jac to come on over then head out for lunch then I have no idea what is in plan for the rest of the day *just received a call from her, she's already on her way* *so real-time-ish post eh?* So, till the next time, cheerios.

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Work, Work.

With no task in hand, you are almost bored to death as each passing minute felt like an eternity. You request for some tasks to be assigned and secretly wish that work keeps flowing in to keep you occupied.


With some task in hand, you work extremely hard to clear all task on hand as soon as possible in order to slot some time off in between assignments, a quick break is always welcomed. As more work started flowing in, you get excited and start planning for the workload distribution in accordance to the deadlines. All is well and you are happy.


With even more tasks coming in, the pressure starts falling in. Your schedule is messed up as deadlines overlapped one another and you can't even find time to shit, what more to reorganize them. Work gradually slips into your personal time as you start regretting for making such a dumb wish initially. You start slaving away, day in, day out and your work becomes your best friend.


With such massive amount of task on hand, you're given another blow, one that is almost as deadly as the King Cobra. Your mate call it quits, you almost fainted but maintained. His workload is then distributed among the others and you hear others complaining of hard time at work. You feel like slapping them on the face, five times, rapidly.


With still that much workload, you wonder when the agreed replacement would be coming in and three weeks down the road, the mentioned replacement is still nowhere to be seen. At this rate, panic would be an understatement.


Thanks to many sleepless nights, early morning struggles, hundreds cup of coffee and extremely long working hours causing you to be always late for appointments later, not forgetting the current halt of incoming tasks, you managed to somehow clear off most of the work. You gave yourself a salute, a pat on the shoulder and a McDonald Sundae Cone as a reward for your achievement.


As the tension starts to ease, you can't get use to the feeling of not being occupied by work. You start double checking on every tasks on hand, optimizing whatever that has already been done, proof reading and all that stuff. You feel kinda bored and hoped for work to start pouring in once again. OH THE IRONY.



Post content inspired by having to work in the OFFICE on a beatiful Saturday afternoon. Title inspired by the working peons of the Orcs from Warcraft III, if not mistaken.

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A Friday.

That should have been less packed and could have been much better since I was on leave but ended up totally exhausted, even more tiring than working itself.

MORNING: Engaged in a particular session that deserves a slot on my history book as being the longest, it lasted for 2 hours and 15 minutes plus another 15 minutes of waiting time. Details shall only be revealed later, depending on the success rate.

AFTERNOON: Due to the prolonged morning session, had to rush back home to pick Jac up but then she had to run some chores first so I ended up waiting for her. Bad time management, she has. Rushed all the way to Bukit Kiara for food tasting then had to head out to search for the lost father adois.

EVENING: Thought of taking a quick nap but was hushed into taking pictures for that person's online-shop blog. I should start requesting for a percentage of the profit then, if there's any to begin with, sheesh.

NIGHT: After dinner *curry crab yang amat shioks* headed out to meet a bunch of secondary schoolmates which lasted for an hour or two or three couldn't remember cause I was already extremely tired by then. Been awake since 5 something in the morning.

MIDNIGHT: Finally able to get some rest.


So, how was your TGIF?

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