英"壳"兰

If you are not into football then stop reading as this post is not for you at all.

Ok for those who kept on reading, NO, i did not made a mistake in writing England in chinese. Let me explain, 壳 means shell. On paper, the English seems to have a bunch of top class players however when on the pitch, sometimes they play like a bunch of Championship or lower level players. Unable to defend, pass and least of all to score. So this "shell" of a team is not able to do what a nation expected them to do not to mention the millions of fans around the world. That being said, im not just overly critisizing one team only, the so called big teams are like a heavy stone in a lake.

Being an avid Manchester United fan, i would naturally know quite a number of English players who featured in the team not to mention the other superstars from other countries whose names are now even known to ladies who used to say, "Why would anyone be interested in watching a game where 22 men chase around for a ball?". Since some of the games are late at night i can only pick and choose a couple which i think would be worth watching and of course must be worth staying up and looking (+ feeling) like a zombie the next day at work.

Actually im not a big fan of the World Cup. I remember my first time watching it, 1994 US World Cup, i asked my dad to wake up early morning before school to watch Brazil vs Italy. I can't even get past first half and slept through until after the penalty XD

What i do like about the World Cup is to (hopefully) see some of the players which i buy in Football Manager games to flourish and make their names whereby there were relatively unknown to the outside world until they are now able to show their faces on so many television sets around the world. Sadly though most of the young players which i do buy may not be able to make it into the first team because there are seniors there which are supposed to be more established and mature to handle the pressure of the World Cup.

For the real footballing world perhaps this is where ambitious players or really good players who aren't at a big club yet to show what they can do and hoped to be signed before the next league season starts. The problem with buying players after the World Cup is that the prices would be inflated as they are now world famous literally :p Luckily for my team, Javier Hernandez was bought just before the World Cup started and he did show his qualities :)

Most football fans would be banking for a Brazil vs Argentina/Spain final. According to FIFA's fixture table, that seems really possible because these 3 countries are really strong. What most people be hoping for would be that it would have to go down to a penalty shoot out as that would be REALLY boring! Crisp passing and fast counter attack would make the game much much more enjoyable, just have to hope that the officials are able to keep up to pace and NOT to make wrong decisions like they have several times in the earlier stages not to mention eliminating England and Mexico. And of course Ireland's defeat to France via Henry's handball aided goal.

To end this post, i think i just can't help to take a swipe at international superstar Jackie Chan for his infamous epic World Cup blunder comment about who will be in the World Cup final, "Barcelona and Milan" ROFLMAOzedong!!!

Lego Big Morl - Ray

Strange title isn't it? Its actually a name of a Jpop band. This song was the other song which played in the background of a famous Japanese drama, Akai Ito. Yeah, crazy as it may sound i went and rewatch the whole series (11 episodes of 45 minutes) although i could basically remember almost every twist and turn of the drama. That's when i noticed that i did not have this song in the OST album which i burned along with the drama. Not an easy task to search a song which you do not know the title nor singer coupled with the fact that i don't understand japanese that well. So the next best thing was to try to search for the song with the translated meaning. Luckily this yielded the desired result and i found out the band with this strange name.

This is the supposed Japanese lyrics :

すべての意味があなたになるように歌にしよう
この感触も このコードも この甘みも 色も 匂いも

五感ではあなたのすべては理解できない 表せない
僕のありったけで そうありったけで都合のいいように受けとる

時々あなたは冷たく そんな時決まって世界はキレイで
僕ばっかりがその優しさを飲みほしてしまったような

過去を引きずる僕は 未来しか見ないあなたを
卑怯な手で鎖に繋いでは あなたの自由を奪ってるのかな

弱い僕はあなたのいない世界を生きる自信はないの
だからせめて先に死なせて
強いあなたは言うでしょう 「そんな事言うんじゃないの」
つまり あなたは僕の生きる光

Ray...
Ray...

Here are the translations by TimeLesSub, the fansub group that translated the drama :

Subete no imi ga anata ni
I’ll take everything you mean to me

Naru youni uta ni shiyo
And turn it into a song

Kopno kanshoku mo kono kodomo
This feeling, this chord

Kono amami mo iro mo nioi wo
This sweetness, this color and this fragrance



Gokaide wa anata no subete wa
The five senses can’t understand

Rikai dekinai ara wa se nai
All that you are, nor even express it

Boku no arittake de, sou, arittake de
So all there is of me, yes, all there is

Tsumru mo ii youni uketeru
Must be in good condition so I can understand



Tokidoki anata wa tsumetaku
From time to time you can be cold

Sona toki kimatte sekai wa kireide
At times like those the world is beautiful

Boku bakari ga sono yasashita no
All I can do is drink in

Nomi hoshite shimatta youna
That gentleness



Kago wo hisisuru boku wa
While I dwell on the past

Mirai shiga minai anata wo
You see anly the future

Hikyouna te de kusari ni tsunaide wa
While I cowardly try to chain you

Anata no jyuu wo ubatteru kana?
Are you fighting for your freedom?


Yowai boku wa anata no inai sekai mo ikiru
If you weren’t in this world I’d be weak

Jishin wa nai no dakara semete saki ni shin nazete
And without confidence, so at least let me die before you

Tsuyoi anata wa iu desho? “Sonna koko iun jyanai no?”
You said be strong, didn’t you? “Don’t say such things”

Tsumari anata wa boku no ikiru hikari
In other words, you are the light of my life

Ray…

Ray…

Initially the song sounded wonderful but almost at the end they started jamming in a manner which i don't really appreciate. Sorry lar for those who are very good in music and can appreciate perhaps the hard stuff that they did to achieve that racket :p

Not my money to spend

I suppose this has been the case for many years now. Like most of my colleagues (if what they claim is real), our salary is gone before it enters our account. How so? Credit card bills, installments and whatever loans that you currently have. If you have standing instructions to pay them then its deducted even before it goes into your account. So what is left can also be considered as not your's because if you need some sort of transportation to work, the money that you need to spend is not your's as well because it has to be paid to get you to the place which will pay at the end of the month. Its such a vicious and tight circle that you almost cannot get out of :(

I was offered to go on a trip with a friend to Sabah. I was so excited that i quickly checked airline ticket prices and try to find the best rate. Nice, its just RM500 for return trip. Since the offer was that i would be given free accomodation and perhaps even some free meals so RM500 for a well needed vacation is considered cheap. Then it struck me when it came to paying, i don't have the RM500 to buy the tickets because the money is not for me to spend ...

When i went for a haircut just before CNY a few months back, the hairdresser commented that my hair is thinning and seeing his opportunity to try to sell his treatment package, he offered to do a free hair scan to show the health of my hair. I have done that scan before and know the advices so i fast forward him to intro me the products and the whole package would be something in the region of RM900 for 10 treatments or so. Judging from my facial expression, the hairdresser quickly change his approach and tried to sell only the shampoo + tonic package which was somewhere in the region of RM200. Seeing that its CNY and i have not really checked the damage incurred to me for the festive season, i can only decline. After CNY, i came to realize that i was over-reaching much more than i thought and eaten into a budget which i cannot refill :(

Last week there was a promotion going on in my company's foyer. I found an interesting and very useful item. So i asked for the price of the item and was quickly taken aback by the price tag (after discount) of RM100. Ok, im not going to fork out RM100 for something which i will not be using too often. My colleagues who were with me at that time told me that that was a cheap price to pay. They bought their's for more than RM100 albeit a different brand. I can only politely give a smile back to them.

After lunch, they tried to convince me to buy the item again saying that its really cheap and i should get one. I just could not take anymore of this so i just went ahead and told them the truth that my money now is to prepare (if required) to bribe the headmaster of the school which i try to enrol my son into.

These people whom i have described before in my previous post that they always claim not rich can somehow always manage to afford expensive stuff usually the sums are >RM500 and claims that its CHEAP but when they really need to spend on the other necessities, they will be reluctant to part with RM1 or RM10. For me, wherever possible i will be reluctant to part with RM1 or less. Perhaps they came from a better off family before so they are used to buying those branded stuff. However the strange thing is, most of them are not that is why they are not willing to part with RM1 on necessities but would much rather spend their hard earnedsaved money on the branded stuff.

My current goal now would be to ensure that my son is able to enter the school of my choice NOT because its a good school but rather the distance. It would be convenient in the future if need be to fetch him or to go to his school. Anyways, chinese schools would be expensive anyways so i need to prepare as best as i can. More years of not my money to spend still ...

1000 Chinese Characters

I was once told that if you could memorize 1000 of the most used chinese characters, you would be able to read a newspaper without much problem. In view that i am a banana who is enrolling his son to a chinese school, i must be able to understand or able to teach him if he asks.

There has been several incidences where he asked me to read to him what was in his books but i was unfortunately and very disappointed with myself that i am not able to comply to such a simple wish :(

Since i do not have a co-pilot anymore so i have to suck it up and take up the challenge of learning one of the most complex language ever created with more than 50000 characters in its arsenal. Although i am not totally illiterate in chinese but i fall way short of 1000 characters. Perhaps at a max, i could get around 50-100 characters which is not good enough sometimes to read even the headlines =_="

With a little help from Google, i managed to find this site which offers a flash card like interface to help you learn chinese. I hope to be able to memorize the 1000 characters so i may be able to read a chinese newspaper or rather more importantly, able to read to my son :)

A long time coming

Pfft, can't believe its May and i just started my wishlist :p Seems reasonably achievable

Air-conditioning for the house
Pretty straightforward IMHO

Fix my car's external problems
Though its only bringing me to the LRT station everyday but i want it to look like its old self not the current dented here and there :(

Goodbye Tiger
To be finally able to leave

Really say Goodbye?
No explanation necessary

To weight <=75kg
The below chart shows that im in the overweight section :(



Use my passport again before it expires
As straightforward as it can be ;)

How the hell do you ...

put on contact lens??? Today i took many many attempts to put that small piece of plastic onto my eye but my eyes blinked every time i got the lens about 1 cm near my eye :( Tried again and again but there is just no way i could get the lens nearer to my cornea.

In my final attempt (not because i gave up), i managed to touch the lens to my cornea BUT BUT BUT my eyes blinked before it could properly set and it tore :( To make matters worse its a colored lens ie expensive. Well the upside is that i got it for free :p Downside is that i did not get to look good for a day :(

So seriously how do you wear contacts? I still have a few more contacts which i also got for free to try to wear. Friend who wear contacts, please pass on your tips and tricks or techniques. p/s : as you can already guess, i have not touched my cornea before so putting on and taking off will be a MAJOR challenge.

I really don't like wearing glasses, sorry lar to those who wear glasses. Its so mafan, always will slide down and make me look so uncle :(

Like butter spread over too much bread

I remember i wanted to blog about how stretched i was at work earlier this year. Stretched to the point where stress would accumulate at my neck and it was so stiff that i can't look to the side. Actually we are stretched in terms of staff, 3 colleagues left and no replacement have come in. The boss' favourite tagline, "Nobody is irreplaceable". Sure its easy for him to say, especially now that he is no longer my boss in a way due to a recent restructure. Just 50% of a boss because he is double hatting ie taking care of 2 portfolios.

To make matters worse, we the supposed replacements for the earlier exodus of staff to foreign banks which just established themselves in Malaysia, are totally new to this field of work. Like many people, one will be very motivated to work in what they thought would be interesting. I was actually overjoyed with the initial work. No more programming, no more bugs, no more pulling my hair out thinking what if the fuck is wrong with my codes, etc. After the orientation and honeymoon period, the workload began to pile up because to begin with we were understaffed as a group of 10 (boss included) would support the whole company.

The learning curve was really like the exponential line because i had to be thrown into the thick of the heat because like i mentioned we were understaffed and others have their own work to do. Asking over and over again ticked them off and you can see it on their faces if not in the tone of their replies. Luckily and thankfully, i have other friends who helped me in my work. They guided me away from most pitfalls but one learns better and faster by doing mistakes. So sometimes i was intentionally left in the dark to fall and to learn to watch out for the dangers so that i won't repeat them.

The bad thing about me is that sometimes i am slow to pick up on some things and its quite apparent now that im in quite a big mess now. My colleagues do offer help sometimes to help me catch up to their speed. I was told i was not running fast enough as my colleagues pace in doing work so i need to catch up. Well to be honest, now im really tired of this running. Getting old ei? Huffing and puffing everyday until im exhausted and will need to go to sleep by 10.30pm every night. By the time i get to my bed, my eyelids are no longer able to be open but i still need to make sure that my little one falls asleep before i can sleep in peace.

Taking leave for rest or even the long break during CNY did not do any good because if you are not work, the work will still pile there waiting for your return. If you go any longer, you can be sure that the pile will only get bigger. I so so wished that i could bring my little one somewhere during his school break this week but that is not to be. Sigh, a big project cutover is looming and the top people are focusing on the successful cutover so that their project may finally begin. On second thought, im actually handling 2 big projects which in the project manager's word would be, "It must not fail!".

"Like butter spread over too much bread" is actually quoted from Bilbo Baggins in the movie, The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring.