My first step in the Mac World ^_^

I am not known to be lucky person when it comes to lucky draws BUT yesterday was somewhat different. For the first time in my life i won something which i hoped i would win via lucky draws. Though it was not the Ipod which i would really LOVE but i consider it as my first step into the elite world of Mac owners :p

Behold my lucky Ipod Shuffle. The thing about lucky draws are that you can't select colors but shucks, i was lucky enough to be picked so color is a second matter :)

Nice angle on the box

Front view

Content of the box minus the Shuffle

The total package =D

Time to charge the Shuffle and to fire it up ^_^

Edit /Update :

Your's truly accepting his lucky gift ^_^

Them dumbz, seriously.

The issue of Malaysians not willing to stay or work for Malaysia is not new. It did not started when the newspapers started to report that graduates are unwilling to return to Malaysia after completing their studies overseas. Or the cases of brilliant young minds leaving the country.

Case 1 : Olivia Lum (YES SHE IS NOT A SINGAPOREAN BY BIRTH)
For those who watched TV on weekends could have watched her story in of those documentaries that talks about great Malaysian Chinese who made significant contributions. If my poor memory serves me correctly, she was born in Taiping and was one of the few lucky females who get to study in Universiti Malaya during the 70s. She received her diploma and got what many old folks would call an iron bowl job, though the title is actually a clerk in KL. Due to her ambition and dream perhaps, she wanted to start up her own company which would bring benefits to the community, can't remember what was her original plan though. At that time, females are not highly regarded in a male dominated field and thus realizing her potential limited by such chauvinist views, she moved south and opened her company called HyFlux, a water treatment company. Her company invested in a revolutionary technique in water treatment and won a bid to treat water in a certain part of Singapore (which my memory again failed to register). Due to her low cost and effectiveness of the technique, her company flourished.

Case 2 : Graduate Doctors who studied overseas.
It was recently revealed that graduates may bypass the government hospital internship by spending more years overseas and return roughly 10 years (6 years of studies and 4 years of 'accompanying' spouse) to work as higher ranked (thus higher paid) and bypassing the mandatory internship in government hospitals when compared to local graduates. So why return when Benjamins or QEs are worth much more than Ringgits?

Case 3 : Straight A students of different color
This case happens every year though now that the media is getting more and more critical about this situation, there seems to be no shortage of it. It has always been the case of unfairness which is an open secret. Straight A students of incorrect color WILL lose to another student who achieved straight Bs to enter universities and/or choice course. They made the newspapers cover to be the best student in Malaysia BUT could not even get the course which they applied for which in my opinion is a no contest and should be accepted IF NOT offered seats by the universities themselves. Recently i believe being the correct color may not escape the same fate of being rejected as well, funny how the wheel turns, no?

Case 4 : How much do you think a Malaysian youth is worth for Malaysia?
According to a Chinese newspaper report which my mother shared with me, 40k. Yes, they are worth just 40k and 5k extra was given from other parties who took pity on youths who went for the mandatory (with unknown and more often than not lousy selection criteria) National Service. If my child was selected i would rather pay a doctor 5k to write an indefinite exemption letter to this so called bullshit NS. Youths who wish to go on these NS are not allowed to as they were not selected and those who do not wish or have complications are not allowed to escape this potentially 'death sentence'. I wonder what would happen if a famous Datuk's child passed away due to some mishaps during the NS?

So with just 4 cases which filled my head at the time of writing, one should be able to make their own judgement on this trivial question asked by the government.

What Are The Keys To Your Heart?

Actually i had something to blog but after 2 paragraphs, i scrapped it as again i seem to have thought up another topic which may not be so useful to blurt out. At least its off my chest after typing it out. So instead i went and do this test which i believe i had done before some time ago.

The Keys to Your Heart

You are attracted to those who are unbridled, untrammeled, and free. In love, you feel the most alive when things are straight-forward, and you're told that you're loved. You'd like to your lover to think you are stylish and alluring. You would be forced to break up with someone who was emotional, moody, and difficult to please. Your ideal relationship is lasting. You want a relationship that looks to the future... one you can grow with. Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment. You think of marriage as something precious. You'll treasure marriage and treat it as sacred. In this moment, you think of love as something you thirst for. You'll do anything for love, but you won't fall for it easily.

What Are The Keys To Your Heart?

Seems to be quite descriptive of me. What do you think?

Super Sunday Weekend the big 4 clash!

If you are not a football fan, i think its about time for you to stop reading. For those who are not you would know that the games were Manchester United vs Liverpool and Chelsea vs Arsenal.

What im trying to get at with this post is NOT about the results nor the antics which happened on the pitch. I went shopping at the new wing of Sunway Pyramid and so many people wore the jersey of their supported teams. To my surprise there are quite a number of female fans, not that i disapprove of this, of course.

Now to the interesting part, which i noticed not only in 1 or 2 couples but many. I will take 1 couple as example, the bf was wearing Liverpool jersey and the gf was wearing Manchester United jersey. I had a smile on my face from ear to ear to see a fellow female supporter *2 thumbs up*. I was wondering (this was before the game was played), if they are really HUGE supporters of their chosen team, and the game turned out NOT to be a draw, what would happen?

Thoughts went through my mind :
If Liverpool had won, the gf might say, "No sex for you for 1 month" LOLz.
If Manchester United won, the bf might say, "Im gonna score against you tonight" another ROFL.

Well, i might never know the outcome of that and i really felt an urge to give my friend a holler as she is a Manchester United supporter and her fiance supports Liverpool, i would like to know what would happen between them?

What do you guys think, drop me your thoughts :p

My car self upgraded! o_0!!!

Yesterday while driving home, my car sounded more and more like those sports car or some might put it as lala driving a those souped up (sound only) Wiras etc, or like a 5 tonne lorry struggling to climb a hill.

I really don't fucking know how those SOBs can stand those fucking noise of vroom vroom vroom!!! Fuck, i was in the car for only 45 minutes, i had a headache when i reached home and my ears were like the time when i came out of discos, lost hearing for quite some time before able to hear properly again.

While in the car i jokingly asked my wife whether she silently souped up our car with some turbocharger or some sports car engine mounted into our car. Well i would kill her if she did that coz the same amount of money could be used to do something MUCH better.

In the end, what made the noise was the exhaust pipe. What is missing is the small pipe coming out of the muffler. I have never seen or heard of such a kind of problem to car o_0.

Sigh what it all translates to in the end is that i have to fork out money to fix it coz i don't wanna maintain my current status as a lala. How much would this cost me? T_T

Krabi Trip Day 2

Another busy day as the gang have put on a tight schedule to do the island hopping trip. According to them and the travel agency, our 1 day trip if for other visitors would be broken up into 2 days. Anyhows, me and my wife woke up early to have breakfast and perhaps take some pictures. Breakfast was not fancy, the usual stuff you can find in almost any hotels nowadays, fried meehoon, sausages, eggs and bread. I don't remember seeing any coffee though.

As we stayed out the previous night until more than 1am, many looked like zombies and would prefer NOT to have their pictures taken so i took some sceneries and the hotel pictures. After changing, we gathered at the lobby where some of the guys are still having their breakfast and since we did not know that bread would be provided when we go snorkelling we decided to bring some of our own bread from the hotel's breakfast. We packed 2 bags full.

The van came to pick us up and brought us to town to board the boat as the tides there are higher at that time. The island hopping was nothing fancy, similar to what we can get when go to places like Redang, Perhentian or the like. The only difference would be the crowd on the beaches, i would say that more than 90% are westerners. Only saw 1 topless lady sunbathing and at that a middle aged woman. So again nothing fancy :p

At one of the islands, we get to visit a tsunami evacuation site. It was about a 5-10 minutes walk into the jungle and was about a few meters higher than the sea level, along the way, you can see the signs showing how high the previous tsunami water level was. The site is actually a rocky cliff where there are many jagged edges, i was thinking if the waters were to pound the people who were fleeing against the wall of the cliff then they would have cuts all over.

We had lunch and the food served was MUCH better than any of the restaurants that we visited other than the pizza of course :p. Perhaps its because we were all hungry, there was a green curry dish which i really do think pwns the rest of the dishes i had over the course of this trip.

Chicken island can easily be recognized by a shape of 2 islands where the smaller island looks like a small head popping out of the sea from its "body" (the other bigger island). We landed at its head and proceeded to walk over to its body. The walk takes about 20-30 minutes as we would be walking in knee high water levels at the middle portion of the walk over to the "body" island. The highlight of it was the fact that you can cross islands easily as there is nothing on this island.

The fishes during snorkelling were hungry as always when it comes to bread. I got 2 bite marks to show for =_=. The boatmen threw some leftover fruits including a piece of pineapple to attract the fishes to the surface. So photographers take note, pack some pineapples from the hotel along with bread to attract the fishes if you wanna take pictures.

The boatmen brought us to an island which some sort of a lagoon which they claim that Pirate of the Caribbean was filmed there. The water was very murky as there is almost no circulation of water in or out of the lagoon. We passed at the chance to take a dip there.

Like i mentioned to my friends earlier to skip the island hopping trip if possible because we finished all the planned islands with 2 extra hours to kill, so the boatmen brought us to an extra island where the waters was deeper and lifejacket becomes a must as there are strong undercurrents.

We landed in front of hotel's beach as its high tide there now at about 5-6pm. Everyone was exhausted. Final night dinner and we ordered all seafood with the usual dishes like pineapple fired rice and tomyams.

One of the girls know that there is a Tesco nearby and would like to go there and get something items like Lay's chips which i agree is something like half price that of Malaysia's. Remember i mentioned "nearby"? Tesco Lotus (perhaps something like Tesco Extra) was actually 25km from town and closes at 10pm. When we finished dinner it was already about 8.30pm. No time to lose but communication to get a tuk-tuk there was TOUGH! The driver gave us a superb price or so we thought, about 20-30 minutes later we arrived at Tesco. Upon reaching the price changed and our jaws dropped!!! He doubled the initial price and we both could not understand each other and had a big argument. Its so damned hard to find an English speaking Thai there. After frantic search for help, we got a nice Thai girl to help do some translation and found out that he was actually charging for a round trip.

So we did our shopping and i had a stomachache after paying for the goods. I went to the toilet and found that its operational hours is the same as the shopping complex??? 10pm closed. OMG, luckily i was having a bad stomachache else i would have had to take dump at the roadside.
I was so freaking tired that i skipped the clubbing session which the rest of the gang went until something like 2am.

Day 3 is just to pack up and head back home. Reached KL Sentral at about 5pm, GREAT just in time for traffic jam.

Krabi Trip Day 1

If you wanna view pictures, this is not the post, scroll down.

Like my previous trip with my wife's arrangement, there are some problem with flight arrangements. The previous time to Bali, i arrived half day late and returned 1 day later. This time, the initial flight arrangement was that we would almost not meet up with her gang, WOOTERs!!! So to make amends the flight now cost double of what it was supposed to =_= even then, we had to arrived 1 day late as the fare for the same day as her friends was a bomb.

Upon arrival about 1pm, we put on swimming wears and were quickly swept into a hired van to go to Crystal Pond. On the way there since everyone have not have lunch yet, we decided to ask the driver to take us for lunch. Communication was horrendous, because his skin color was like those of a Malay man, many a time we used Malay to speak with him LOLz. Some of the people have demands like i want tomyam seafood, tomyam with big prawns etc etc etc. Because the driver had to keep his eye on the road which was going through some construction and the waving gestures of the passengers on what they wanted, brought me back to the memories of Bali drivers where they can somehow avoid accidents in situations which i would be sweating or at least slowed down already.

He brought us to a restaurant, built on top of a small man-made lake where they rear fishes, i managed to catch glimpses of some huge catfish, some which looks like flowerhorns, etc. Ordering was another problem, the menu was surprise surprise in Thai and very lousy translations. The waiter could not understand a word we were saying and vice versa for us. We asked for the captain or at least someone who can speak a little English to come over. Taking orders took about 30 minutes =_=". The time was already about 2pm and about 45 minutes would pass before we could smell food.

A walk of about 15 minutes was required to reach Crystal Pond. Crystal Pond as the name suggested would mean something clear and pristine. Indeed it was, i have NEVER seen a pond this clear and yet able to accommodate swimmers while maintaining its crystal clear waters. We spent about an hour there lazing around, the water was not cold so it was not really a welcomed rest. We were the loudest bunch there i suppose, breaking the silence of jungle surroundings.

The next destination was Hot Springs. Again some walking was required to reach the destination and along the way you will be beside a warm river of cobalt color. After a 10 minute walk, waterfall sounds was heard and i was ecstatic because i thought i could get some cooling off on a hot day. After looking for a place to set our things down, we crept into the running currents flowing down a waterfall full of small dams so that people can rest in. I was the second one in the water, the water temperature caught me by surprise, it was hotter than the hottest setting which you can get from a water heater. Literally took my breath away similar to what cold water would have effect on you. Took me about 5 minutes or so to adjust myself before being more comfortable immersing my whole body into the hot water. Muscle aches from the 2 walks were relaxed, at least something to gain from the hotness i suppose.

The journey to the hotel took ages, my estimates about 2 hours coz my butt hurt BAD. After shower and some rest, we hailed a tuk-tuk to bring us to town. There were many choices but we settled for a nice fusion place. The pizza was NICE, thinner than the thin crust from Domino's and Pizza Hut BUT so are the toppings :p. After dinner, we walked a bit to do some shopping, the prices of items are roughly the same as Malaysia and many were overpriced. A singlet would cost RM15 or more T_T. After 1 hour of walking around, the gang who had spent the previous night in Krabi ahead of us negotiated with a massage parlour for the cheapest price. RM28 for an hour of either full body or foot massage. The parlour was too small to accommodate all of us at the same time so the guys had to go to another one and pay RM30 for similar massages. After the guys massage, we walkied the girls to find out that they have actually went for a 2 hour session =_=".

So the guys went for a walk around, not really knowing how to kill time, we wanted to search for a pub to sit down. There were some interesting ones, with girls doing pole dances and some only in their underwears BUT many are what we call BEH-KWA-EH! in hokkien, which literally means FUGLY. So for our own safety's sake we decided to grab a bite at McDonald's. I had a meal called "Samurai Pork Burger", its something similar with the Prosperity Burger but the sauce was sweet. They even have chocolate pies for choices other than our usual apple pie. RM13 for a large set, i think.

I think i would split it down to days as im kinda long winded :p