I'm welling up with pride

Kakiseni.com's review of Broken Bridges, co written by Ky-Gan. They seem to like it. I bet he dreamt of this when he was sleeping during Math's tuition.

Nice work! I can't wait to see it.

I love my Treo

My new Treo 650 arrived on Friday night. I was playing with it all weekend when I was supposed to be working. So far, so good. I had to hard reset it last night after installing some dodgy third party software, but all my data was safe (thank God for frequent hotsyncing). I quite like the OEM software and interface too. I've used my dad's Windows Moblie HP iPAQ before and gave up after a few months. It's now with my sister.

Why Palm OS is better than Windows Mobile: (keep in mind the Treo 650 was released in 2004 and I haven't been able to patch the software to the latest version yet)

#1. It's fast. Although it doesn't multitask this is a blessing in disguise: Since every program you use closes after you open a new one, you don't have to go to the memory page and shut down each application one by one, like you do periodically in Windows Mobile whenever you're low on memory.

#2. The QWERTY keyboard. I've hardly used the stylus over the past few days. I hate styli in general because they are skinny fiddly little things. Also I don't fancy myself as a screen tapping maniac.

#3. The interface. This is pretty much an extension of reason #3. 90% of what you would do can be accomplished within 3 keystrokes. With Windows OS, where you have to tap the screen frantically with the stylus. With the Palm, everything is faster and more effecient.

#4. It's a phone FIRST, and then it's an above-average PDA. Ok it had lag issues when I tried to play a simple 640x480 MPEG-1 file that was 20 seconds long. I don't need a mobile media player in my pocket. It's not that practical and I'm not going to watch episodes of Lost on the bus at 10pm at night with kids in hooded tops and Burberry caps looking over my shoulder.

I also like my new SD card/USB pendrive. Did I mention I got my first paycheck on Friday?

Bored? Malaysian? Read this. It was shamelessly ripped from Moses' blog:
Ah Lek was asked to make a sentence using 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10..Not only did he do it 1 to 10, he did it again from 10 back to 1. This is what he came up with…..
1 day I go 2 climb a 3 outside a house to peep. But the couple saw me, so I panic and 4 down. The
man rushed out and wanted to 5 with me. I ran until I fell 6 and threw up. So I go into 7-eleven
and grabbed some 8 to throw at him. Then I took a 9 and try to stab at him. 10 goodness he run away. 10 I put the 9 back and pay for the 8 and left 7-eleven. Next day I called my boss and told him I was 6. He said 5, tomorrow also no need to come back 4 work. He also asked me to go climb a 3 and jump down. I don’t understand. I am so nice 2 him but I don’t know what he 1..

2.35 am: Oh sweet silence, thou art perfection.

I'm going to bed.

Someone hand me a sword

It's 2 am. I have to be up at church at 8.20 tomorrow. My neighbours have been keeping me up for the last few hours with loud music. I sleep pretty well with the music on, and I turn on my stereo to help me sleep. However, I simply cannot fall asleep when only a ceiling and a thick pillow separate my ears from two billion watts of cheesy hip hop and overplayed indie music. So. I rang the police.

They redirected me to Environmental Health, which only opens during office hours. Also, they advised me to keep a record of when those Neanderthals keep me up and to involve other neighbours. Right. A quick blast on OpenOffice later, I've printed out letters to drum up some support from my neighbours. I've also included a guarded warning/appeal just in case the offender reads my 1-page publication. Hopefully he/she (women know how to use stereos too) will read my letter and decide to shut the hell up. For good.

The pen is mightier than the sword, they say. What I need is a sword. I have the sudden urge to shove it up someone's nether regions.

Ban on names

I may be really late on picking this up, but I just picked this up on one of my RSS feeds.

Quote from BBC News from 'Malaysia outlaws unsuitable names':
"Now names like the Hokkien Chinese Ah Chwar, meaning snake, and Khiow Khoo, meaning hunchback, are being ruled out.
So too are Cantonese monikers Chow Tow, meaning smelly head, and Sor Chai, meaning insane.
Members of Malaysia's Tamil community will be discouraged from using the likes of Karrupusamy (black god), and Malays from trying names like Woti, meaning sexual intercourse."
Full article here.

Finally. I don't agree with everything our beloved government does but this is definitely a step in the right direction. What kind of lousy parent names their child Sor Chai? Anyone who went to school around the same time as I did knows how badly we teased each other. Our own names were dissected and twisted in the most ridiculous ways until around Form One, when everyone ran out of ideas and started using each other's parents' names. If anything I think it's a lot worse now. Well done to whoever thought about this ban.

Word of the day: Woti. It's been a while since I had a BM lesson.

Goodbye student life *sob*

So I'm starting work officially this week. I've got all of today to pack before I leave for Blackburn to start work as a FY1 doctor (yes, that's the official job title). I'm still going to be based around Manchester, it's just that I will be spending most of my week in Blackburn.

I'm going to miss student life. However I am looking forward to starting my job, scary as it may be (I've forgotten almost everything I've studied since my exams in May). It's going to be a (nice?) change and should be quite exciting.

Five albums that I've have been listening to a lot:
Live in Paris by Diana Krall
Head Hunters by Herbie Hancock
Aja and Gaucho by Steely Dan
Audio rip from Live in New Orleans DVD by Norah Jones
(I still like heavy rock music, really)

I better get some sleep. My biological clock is completely screwed up after 6 weeks of inactivity and I don't want to start work with a sleep deficit.

How to sing the blues

I found this funny, especially the last one. Ware the annoying popups.

Postseason blues

So I just got back from a wedding dinner/reception. Spent a long time waiting around for the tea ceremony to begin, but being the first time I've been involved at a tea ceremony at a wedding it was worth it. Also getting to catch up with people was nice, not to mention the money I got for serving tea for a couple of seconds.

Now for some good news: I got a job with a District General Hospital in Blackburn. I'm going to be there for the next two years beginning mid-August, with the small condition that I pass my finals. (Arrgh!) The more I study, the more I realise I need to know and it sometimes scares me that I'm going to be let loose on patients in a few months time. Anyway it's two weeks and a bit before I get back to Manchester so I'm going to enjoy being in Malaysia as much as I can in the midst of stressing about my finals.

I need a new band to fall in love with. It's been too long and I'm getting bored of my music. I still occasionally discover tidbits like Stevie Ray playing some killer slide in the 1982 Montreux performance (which I just heard while typing this), but I need to expand my list of influences. Post some suggestions if you have any. (if anyone reads this apart from Jeanette, that is..)

It's late and church starts at the ungodly (no pun intended) hour of 10am. Sure makes me miss those 11.30am services at Ivy...

2006

Happy New Year everyone!

Reorganised my links section and added a more sites to the list.

I'll be in KL for 2 months doing my elective placement. To begin with I really didn't want to end up doing my elective here in Malaysia, but right now I'm looking forward to it. I'm dreading the big city traffic that comes with KL, though. With my lousy sense of direction I'm going to be spending loads of time on the road. Thank God for in-car radios.

I've been eating so much over the past two weeks. By the time I get back to Manchester in March I'll probably be clinically obese. When it comes to food 'cheap is good', but 'cheap AND good' is, well, irresistable. (especially if you're Chinese)

Until I find something worth blogging about...

Another video

'Two videos in one day!' I hear you say?.. Yes, I've finally managed to upload this 80mb beast so I hope you like it. Thanks to Jeanette for almost capturing the full song. I really like this one. If Dan let's me know the title I'll post it.