Catwalk your heels off

Tonight, I am not going to work. I am not even going to turn on my laptop. I do declare.

For the past two weeks I have been working every day and night. Weekends included. In fact, weekends were even longer hours as I started work the moment I woke till late into the wee hours.

Doing the one thing that got me hired in the first place - cool guy doing hot catwalk thermal modelling.

I like doing hot catwalk thermal modelling, for I am competent with it. I will not boast like some people as being a thermal expert (because I am not, am just a thermal engineer), but I do am fairly decent with thermal numerical simulation.

I would be happy just to do thermal modelling, but job scope has changed since I joined the company and I no longer just provide modelling support. The sad fact is I pretty much get roped into anything with the word "thermal" in it, or anything that's remotely related to thermal.

Luckily no one has come up with "high temperature restroom cleanliness thermal solution" yet, else you would see me cleaning the restroom with hot soapy water.

Anyway, let's get back on topic.

Two full weeks of doing thermal simulations to compare the performance of new tool designs. 24 models to cover the many variations of the 5 designs.

And if you knew me, you would know that I didn't just do a single case of simulation for each of the model. I did a total of at least 350 cases.

Granted, most of those were calibrations of my base model with the empirical data, but for every model hence, I did at least 4 cases to cover different scenarios.

While it's the computer that's crunching the numerical equations, models do not generate themselves. Slight variation of a design, for example the change of a hole size or location, is not just about modifying that in the model when there is non-uniform thermal contact resistance map to consider. Also, post-processing more than 350 cases takes time.

Anyway, I have documented the model predictions and my analysis and handed in the report this evening, I am hoping that's the end of this.

Cause while I was busy burning up with all these, I lost the quality time with my wife and sons, missed the Bulgarian dinner with my family and god-sister-in-law who dressed up and made up prettily for the evening, lost countless hours of sleep, and didn't have time to play DotA! >.<

If only I could also take a month to install the thermal simulation software, request for training, give suggestion and plan but commit to nothing, or just send e-mail saying I agree with what the other has said.

Oh, and welcome others to the "thermal world", whatever that is.

So happy to see you!

This one is for my dear friend Lily, otherwise known as Veronica (it's like her artistic alias or something), or more commonly the siao cha bo. =P

Received an e-mail from Veronica the model extraordinaire today asking me why there's no October entry on my blog.

After I got over the shock of knowing there is actually someone following my blog, we found out that the reason she wasn't seeing my previous entry was simply because her internet connection was cacat. The entry loaded after a few minutes. =P

She asked why I didn't write anything on Lynn & Jeff's wedding, which we attended last Friday.

Hmm... she probably doesn't understand slackerdom very well. Last Friday only wor, which self-respecting slacker would post a writeup so soon after an event one? Have a reputation to maintain, okay? ^_^

Told her I got no photos yet to go with the writeup (if I do write about it, that is), and besides, need the right mood and feelings to write something one mar. Told her I don't know what to write since I haven't got the "feel" yet (translation: slackerdom =P). My mood was pretty much dominated by the incident of my younger son falling off the bed that night, hence the previous entry.

Anyhow, shouldn't have bothered explaining, since she wasn't interested in all that. This reply from her summed up what she's really after:

Nvm one... chin chai put a line said you were very happy to see me again...

...

Sorry huh Lily, I freely admit I am not very good at expressing myself verbally, face to face encounter makes me timid. I am slightly better with written communication and since you siao enough to ask for it we so friend friend, here's it:

Yo Lily, I was so veli the happy to see you again that night!

Happy? =P

Honestly, mightily glad to see you again. ^_^

That Dreaded Sound

This one is for the parents...

Middle of the night. The sound of something hitting the floor.

A breath stopping pause. Followed by the bawling of your baby.

You are instantly awake and practically jumped off the bed. Your heart somewhere below your guts.

Rushed to pick up the baby and hugged him/her close to your chest.

But the damage is done.

Lights get switched on, checking for bruises and any other injury while soothing the poor baby.

Stayed up long after the baby has gone back to sleep. Feeling guilty for not waking up in time to prevent the incident.

Heart broken to pieces seeing that purplish bump and the residual tears at the corner of the eyes.




Poor baby Young will have a bungalow on his forehead for a few days to come.

I am so sorry my dear child, papa has now placed something to prevent you from falling off the bed again.

If only we have done that earlier.

Now Everyone Can Fly

In case you are not aware, "Now Everyone Can Fly" is the tagline of AirAsia.

AirAsia is a low cost airline, and honestly, if you do not care about anything else but cost, AirAsia is a good choice.

Before you think I am being paid or bribed to say this like some other blogger is, hold your horses.

AirAsia sure gives you competitive airfare, sometimes so low it's hard to believe. The thing is, that's not the only thing that's low with AirAsia.

There are also low quality planes, low quality services, low punctuality, low inflight food supply, and low customer care and responsibility.

If you have ever been on an AirAsia flight that was on time, congratulations! Quick, go buy lottery! For the rest of us, please expect a delay, it comes as default and consider yourself lucky if the delay is under 60 minutes.

If you are flying AirAsia on a long flight or flight involving a meal time, please do yourself a favour of either packing your meal, or pre-order the inflight meal. Else you might just end up like my sister-in-law who had to go hungry while flying back from Australia because the aircraft ran out of food.

If you were stuck in that unfortunate situation and you cannot stand hunger, then maybe you should try to persuade other pessengers to sell you their meal by offering twice or three times the meal cost, using the money saved from the cheap airfare, of course.

If you are planning an important trip, for example to attend a convocation, wedding, or just a hard-earned vacation, think twice before you choose AirAsia. Imagine you have applied for your annual leave three months in advance, booked the accomodation and transportation, rushed for days to get your work sorted so you could have peace of mind while you travel, checked online regularly on the flight and pre-ordered the inflight meal, only to find out one week before the trip that the flight you have booked and paid for six months ago has been cancelled... >_<

The reason? Something about aircraft maintenance and nope, there is no alternative flight on the same day offered as replacement.

<sarcasm> As we all know, something as important as aircraft maintenance is always scheduled on a whim to cause disruption to the service instead of planned well in advance to minimise impact to business. </sarcasm>

So if the timing of your trip is also low priority, or the convocation and wedding ceremony can be delayed, like for a mere few weeks, just for your sake, then yea, go go AirAsia!

Oh, I haven't got to the best part yet!

Know how we found out the flight has been cancelled? Well, father-in-law needs to cut short his trip so a change of return date is necessary. It's while asking for a change in the return flight that we were told the outbound flight has been cancelled, and earliest flight available is 9 days after the original date.

What. The. Fish and duck.

Imagine if we didn't need to change the return date. That's one week before our trip and AirAsia hasn't bothered to inform us about the flight cancellation yet.

Bollocks.

Unbelievable craptastic low quality of service!

Now, for the icing on the cake (yes, still more!), remember the advice of pre-ordering inflight meal? Yea, we followed our own advice since the original flight has dinner time smack in between, the meal cost came to RM60. AirAsia cancelled the original flight and new flight is now on graveyard shift time (midnight to early morning), there no longer is a need to have inflight meal so we thought of cancelling that.

RM35 for processing fee please.

I have used WTF and bollocks, so I will just go with speechless.

Now everyone can fly... but do you want to?

Sorry Me

His Royal Highness King (Young Man) Hsiang is already three, yet he often falls when he is walking.

Hopefully it's just carelessness and his lack of attention on where he is going and not something serious.

He fell again while we were leaving Tesco today, wifey admonished him for not paying attention on walking and he said:

"Sorry mama."

"Don't say sorry to me, you fell and made yourself pain pain lor."

"Oh... Sorry myself."

*pause*

"Sorry me." *pats his own head*

Crunch Time

Recovered from the flu/cold/slight fever that prompted the previous entry in a record two days, usually it took me longer (yea I know, weak, fragile old man). I think it's due to all those vitamin C tablets I consumed.

After the flu I had my first ever gastritis that rendered me immobile, curled in pain on my bed. I am no doctor, but I am guessing it's due to the citric acid from all those vitamin C tablets I consumed... Good thing my mom has some Chinese medicines at home, still I had a delicate stomach for three days hence.

Then the workload skyrocketed. Today's the first time I turned on my home computer since the weekend, had been working till the wee hours everyday after dinner these few days. So the hostile takeover of the Wednesday badminton session wasn't such a bad thing after all, I left the office about the same time as we usually end our session anyway.

Really bad timing for so many things to happen at the same time period. So much to do, so little time.

It's either bad timing, or simply because I am such a slow person. The price of working in snail speed (but very thorough!) is the sacrifice of my sleep.

And health, humour, blogging desire...

Alrighty, back to work!

Under the Weather