Day In Day Out

12 November: tainted white sheet

When the phone rang twice while I was showering early this morning, I knew something was wrong...

I ended up having to take an emergency leave, spent the whole morning in the police station, being fined RM300, and in the company of three displeased vehicle owners all wanting me to sort out their respective damage.

My poor MyVi was so damaged it had to be towed to the workshop, and my spotless driving record is forever tainted.

Okay lar I got a parking ticket once lar. But that was because of a certain Ipoh police desperate to meet his monthly quota of tickets issued, who stood by the coin operated parking meter and issued me a saman as soon as the credit finished.

I swear I was at most 3 minutes late!

Bollocks.

Anyway, my clean driving record is now marred. =(

And you know what?

It's not my fault at all, I just took all the blames and hits nia.

Mommi, I still love you all the same. Next time hor, do consider my offer of driving you around, can ah?

Pretty pretty please with sugar on top?

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13 November: kena shit

While I was busy settling stuff yesterday, an urgent task silently slipped in.

Need to get a model done by next week.

If it wasn't requested by a colleague that I like to keep a good working relationship with, I would have answered with my usual: "please go through my boss".

Put all other tasks on hold and focused on this urgent but not important (to me) job. I am not practising my 7 habits. =\

Well, at least I am depositing in the EBA.

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14 November: boh eng lar

Kena shit liao mar si have to do extra work lor.

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15 November: "yes milord"

Slaving to fulfill His Royal Highness King Baby Hsiang's whims.

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16 November: work/life not balance

Had to work on a Sunday to get the urgent task completed.

sian.

=(

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17 November: hello penguin, nice to meet you

Company sent me to attend a technical symposium to listen to presentations and to eat free food.

Gain knowledge and weight. Also got to see Nelson walking like a penguin after his half marathon.

After that had to go back to office to finish the urgent task, once decided to do something I simply have to put in my best. Couldn't get passed the perfectionist within, boh bian.

So mar worked late lor.

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18 November: chain reaction

So difficult to just hand in a job and be done with it. Often there would be some follow up requests.

No exception this time.

Good thing it's a relatively straight forward follow up and I skillfully handed over to another colleague since it's out of my area of expertise.

My "tai chi" is strong! =P

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19 November: e-dee-ert

Refreshed my laptop today, finally got myself a new laptop instead of some waterfalled third-hand laptop full of grime and dubious stains.

Thing is, stupid HP thinks it's smart to set 1900x1200 as the native resolution on a laptop screen, forcing you to either set lower resolution with blurred texts or high resolution with tiny texts.

e-dee-ert.

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20 November: let the slack begins!

After working late for the past few days, I could finally breathe easier at the conclusion of my agenda in the 07:00 hours meeting.

Time to catch up on keeping my slacker extraordinaire reputation! =)

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21 November: I failed

I want to record this to remind myself to always put the important things in life first.

I forgot it's my wedding anniversary today until I heard the voice message left by my wife.

I failed as a husband I want myself to be.

Guilty and ashamed.

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There will only be four entries this month, and this is the third.

Random Thoughts

Collection of random thoughts...

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Passing of a Legend

Michael Crichton, author extraordinaire, passed away on 4th of November 2008.

The literature world lost a brilliant star. It's an extremely sad news.

Crichton gave us masterpieces like The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Jurassic Park, Timeline, State of Fear. He was also the creator of the television series ER.

I enjoyed all the novels from Crichton that I have read so far, he had never failed to enthralled, entertained, and even enlightened me.

Great lost.

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Blogging, sharing

It's my hope that more of my friends and colleagues will start blogging.

I truely believe in sharing. I don't mean the deep private personal stuff but there are plenty of things to share.

We can always learn from each others, even a simple entry about our day to day life may well spark an inspiration. A sharing of an observation may well be an enlightenment to a certain reader.

Knowledge is for sharing.

And what I truely like about blogging, is that we get to know the blogger more through the writings. Human beings are multi-dimensional, we may be projecting an image at work, another image at home, and yet another during social occasions.

Through writing style and written words we can learn more about a person, perhaps a side that we never knew like how nice CK really is. Of course, writing is a habit of renewal that highly effective people practises. =)

So come on my friends and colleagues, start blogging, start sharing!

Oh, please inform me and I will link you! =)

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Knots

Love is in the air!

Two lady colleagues will have their wedding ceremony this weekend.

It's always nice to know loving couples tying the knot and start the next chapter of their lives together.

Marriage is a sacred thing.

I wish them the best of luck and... "you go gal! It's YOUR day!"

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Ideal world

The company will be a lot better if we had a Win-Win system, and the employees possessed the maturity, integrity and selflessness to think and see the bigger picture instead of the tunnel vision that only benefit a certain individual, group, project, or department.

Too bad selfishness prevails and many just want to avoid additional tasks, put up a close-minded defensive wall to stop any constructive discussion, push the ball of responsibility around. All at the expense of the success of the project as a whole.

Who cares? As long as I don't get the extra work and don't get the blame that will impact my annual review. Right?

=\

Empathic listening is so seriously lacking, so is the willingness to find a common alternative that benefits all parties.

Sad, but true.

At least I can always dream of an ideal world.

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There will only be four entries this month, and this is the second.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to Scribble Pad!

It has been a year since I started this blog so I can skip all the html coding needed to post on my Sharing Corner.

And I am liking it. Anything that gives me more time to slack is good. =P

Some statistical data of this blog after a year, as of the entry before this one:

• total number of entries: 132 (12 months x 11 entries per month. Yes I am consistent ^_^ )
• total number of visits: 4746 (with at least 90% contributed by myself =P )
• total number of comments: 152 (with at least 50% contributed by myself =\ )

Basically, this is a blog with low number of readers and lower number of readers who leave comments. Pretty much what I expect from a craptastic blog, so all is good! =)

On another note, it's also my birthday today.

I am not one who is ashamed of my age, I turned 21 31 today. =P

Colleagues and friends had treated me to two lunches so far, all in the same day since I eat like a pig and would have gone for a third lunch if only the lunch break was longer.

No lar! One yesterday and one today lar. I eat relatively little, it's not easy keeping my stick slim figure you know? =P

There was a celebration in the cafe yesterday, with a yummy blackforest cake and birthday song sang twice. First time in funeral tune and second time in an upbeat tune! =)

The cake was a tad small for the number of people and all fault was mine. I was the one who selected the cake (my colleague insisted on buying one) since I honestly didn't think many would turn up.

I should clarify that it's not because I am popular that more turned up than expected, it's simply because there were colleagues playing foosball in the cafe at that time. =P

My sincere thanks to all who has been in anyway involved, be it lunch, the celebration in the cafe, the birthday greetings through instant messages, e-mails or messages on Facebook, Friendster, et cetera.

Thank you very much.

I am truely touched all over my body.

Special thanks and appreciation to...

• YT for organising the lunch and celebration yesterday
• Wen Wen for organising the lunch today
• Lily the model extraordinaire for the rose, the first flower I received in my life if my memory has not failed me
• Lay Ling the bowling queen for the virtual birthday song, virtual cake, virtual candle blowing and virtual birthday wish =P
• My dear brother for the card from Australia
• My loving wife for the whole blackforest cake and all the love
• His Royal Highness King baby Hsiang for smearing me with his food-filled hands, I know you love me and just wanted to give me a hug =)

Oh, and I have another lunch with friends tomorrow! =D

Edit: and thank you for not wrapping my car!

There will only be four entries this month, and this is the first

Vocabulary Lesson with CK (October 08)

bollocks noun

Bollocks, the "coconuts" a Sarawakian blogger often mentions about.

No, it's not a fruit, nor is it tumour shaped like coconut growing out of a body.

It's the male sex and endocrine gland that produces sperm and male sex hormones, as shown in the image below.

18SX warning! Look away if you take offend seeing perfectly normal body part.

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image source

Bollock = "balls", also boringly properly known as the testicles.

Bollocks is often used to express frustration, or meaning nonsense or bullshit.

For example: "that's just complete bollocks!"

Bollocks is my word of choice to replace "shit", or "damn", thanks to Kate Winslet in The Holiday. It's a nice movie.

See the movie clip below, Kate said it at the very end.

Numbers & Random Thoughts

146 months together. More to come.

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15 months old. Full of energy.

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8 days ago. Sense of achievement.

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6 days to go. Again, meh.

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1 hour car park to car park. Home-Kulim with a smooth traffic.

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9.5 hours left. Agenda in meeting which I have not prepared. Better go.

没头没尾

无聊天写个令人费解不加符号的长长句子给那选择离港随风逐流游戏人间放纵自我的情迷丫头盼望梦幻小鬼莫留恋徘徊于桃花源而该悔醒勇于面对最真的自己

Me is Happy

Received my first department award today.

Happy happy! =D

I have received a few recognitions since joining the company but they were all related to minor stuff. Mostly as a token of gratitude for my involvement in organising the team building events, or helped out in a lab tidy up, or assisted in a sharing session, that sort of things.

Today though, I got a proper development project related award, even came with a plaque too.

Truth is, I felt a bit undeserving of the award. The title of the award implies to me it's technology development in mechanical and signal integrity.

I am a thermal engineer since I am hot. While I am on the team working on the same product, I have no direct contribution to the mechanical and signal integrity part of the development.

Guess I just got a tagged along award! =)

Oh, and no, I am not going to return the award. Nope. =P

Here's hoping there will be more to come and that I will be able to pull my weight by getting a thermal related award for the team.

Hey! I can always dream! =P

Anyway, me is happy.

To all the kiddies reading this, me is happy is improper, the proper way is I am happy.