picture of the day

2009-02-09T01:38:00.000+08:00

A few months ago I hit a car in front of me right after I exited Sunway Pyramid. It was drizzly, the tar was wet and being close with the car I suppose I deserve it. I thought it was bad, until I went out to look the damage. I broke the right indicator while the car I hit, a silver Waja, suffered a mild scratch. The owner of the car, a Chinese lady and I took a look at each other car, nodded to each other and I drove away. I mean, there was like nothing.
In another occasion, while enjoying a smoky breeze with open windows along the Federal highway, a bloke threw up a cigarette butt outside, and when I thought it would miss the car, it managed to hit my windscreen and flew right over my arm. I felt what those abused children feel about abuse. If I was deranged, I would speed up my car and threw a brick, and lucky I didn’t have any brick, and driving a Kancil, taking over is just a no-no.

Stupid coincidences. Well, everybody had one.

And here I was, my indicator still broken, and another thing broken was silence as my dad continuously reminded me (thesaurus for nagging) about the indictor that needs replacement. I wasn’t furious, but it maddens me to think that he don’t even use indicators while on the road, while I’m the one using it while I can. (Note, this is not Linsday Lohan’s Confession song.)

I mean, seriously, car manufacturers should consider that they could cut the cost of producing cars by not including these in the car they are making: indicators, cigarette butt place, side mirrors, vanity mirrors, because somehow these things are useless, especially here in Malaysia. Well, to most of us. Oh, a louder horn would help. A catalogue for a new car should have options to all of this, since they always put higher price on safety. “A new sedan. 2-litre engine with ABS, EBD and everything. 50% off without those alphabets and indicators, cigarette butt place, no mirrors. FOC 12,000 decibels horn.”

I drove around for 3 years and 50000km wondering what the heck is wrong here. What’s wrong of putting up indicator while changing lanes or turn into a corner? What’s wrong of putting out the cigarette butts and small rubbish inside your car and throw them up when you found a trash can?

Maybe I’m just not driving long enough to understand. Maybe I won’t. I just don’t even understand why people smoke in the first place. Understand and doing it is two different things they say, but why start when you want to quit? We often said we found the solution, but it still leave us in grieve. Maybe it’s true Yuri Orlov (not a real name apparently) said in The Lord of War, that cars and cigarettes kill more people than a gun does. “At least my gun has safety switch,” he quoted. Anyhow, that quote was rubbish. Nobody should kill themselves and another human being.

Well, I guess I should fix that broken indicator and clean up the car, so that my dad will stop ‘remind’ me and instead enjoying the ride in the car to the surau.

2008-11-29T23:55:00.000+08:00

Though it was too late (thanks to my stupid planning) we managed to postpone Farah's birthday dinner to the Saturday night. Many thanks to her friends, Nadia and Alda for planning it and making this better, along with them is Mr Gary (I wish I could steal his bike someday) and Nuzul (nice to meet you dude).
Tony Roma's restaurant at Cineleisure was the venue, and initially I regretted a bit for booking our table outside (not mentioning any names, but it was only 3 out of 7 of us really use the smoking area privilage) and the droplight was too bright (I should have complained) but on the bright side, it shone over our birthday girl, who looked really sweet and green.
For Farah and I (and I think all of us) this was our first dinner at a TR, and ordering took a bit of a time since we have to know what to order. I meant really long. Maybe just about 1 hour. After a lot of question asking and considering and thinking, rethink and asking again, I ordered a combo meal, which consist of 6oz. of sirloin steak with grilled prawns and fries and coleslow as side dish. I didn't sure about it, up to when it was on the table, but the little meat and 5 average sized prawns and the fries and coleslow were actually good. Farah ordered ribs and chicken and that tasted good too. The drinks were free flow, though I only top-up once (the last one we had to test mentos in it, and it failed big time). I'm not sure for the rest of the gang, but Farah mentioned that the steaks were the best in town. I believe her in that.
Not sure if we needed one, dessert (I know how to tell dessert and desert apart and not how to say it). This cookie (and all those stuff on top of it) what I thought the most interesting food that we had. The dinner I suppose had been terrific, but this is something different. Along with this cookie (it has a name,towering-whateveritis) were the spoon, 8 spoon we were just simply took them up and eat the whole tower to the ground. I wish it was the ending, and not ending it by watching Lakeview Terrace. A really wrong movie to watch in the middle of the night. Don't get me wrong, Samuel L. Jackson is my favorite, and he got his stuff alright, but it was too draggy.
What about the birthday girl? She just laughed when I told her this on our way back, and that how the moive should be a bedtime story. How the fries simply taste better. About the gang. The laughing and the smiling. I like it. And I know I have to figure out how to make her stay that way.

"Painball"

2008-11-01T23:46:00.001+08:00

I never knew I'll get a nasty bruise on my tummy when I woke up this morning. I was cranky, and a bit pissed because my phone got barred last night, so I can't call anybody, including Farah, as we planned to go to play paintball today. Painball, now I know.

Met Farah's college friend, Jeremy (all these times I knew Mimi wasn't a lady) and Khairul (his white car was a catcher), and they said they are beginners too, which probably made me a bit relieved. I didn't have a clue about anything they say, about shooting with markers and safe zone and bunkers until we arrived to the place (it's in Subang, just before Holiday Villa).

While waiting for others to join us, I did a little study around the course with the dudes, and my heart was filled with a lot of worry juice that made me...well, worry. It was a small area, I suppose a little small than half of a soccer field with high fences as walls, netting included. The field was filled with a lot of big sandbags in different sizes, and I thought of Omaha landing back in June 6 1945 motioned in Saving Private Ryan. Then they have a bigger area, with trees, but we won't be fighting in it yet. Maybe someday I'll be like Sergeant Carwood Lipton in Band of Brothers when they, E Company want to capture those German artillery, shooting from the tree and hope for the best. Someday.

Preparing was easy, with me adding some additional safety precaution. I rented a red jumpsuit and with that, I felt much better. I put on my vest and the mask (this will get you kicked out from the place if you take it off during playtime), and I felt I'm ready to shoot somebody. And yet we were still waiting for some friends to join. You can imagine how much I sweat in those apparels. It's sure a bad fashion to walk around town looking like a Hell Michellin. Waiting apparently over, and 10 of us divided into two groups. There were briefing, which to my surprise it was a lecture I really don't get sleepy and I did ask a lot of questions. I'm not going to mess this up.

Gracefully we went into the field, and it start as soon as it was. I supposed we needed strategy to play, but not this time around. I'm just going to hang around this time. The first game wasn't a thrill, so does the next 3 games, as I always finished my round of ammo and got sent into the safe zone (I did got scolded for taking off my facemask in a game). The thrill came in the last game, when I decided to take off my red jumpsuit and just ran around with just a vest over a pagoda tee. It was, I thought, will work, until I dumbedly got shot by Farah, and she was happy about that. With that shot, I was out and done.

Note; I never knew I'll be shot by my own girlfriend today. If I'm in America, this will be not that funny.

MotoGP in town at Sepang Circus~!

2008-10-21T22:25:00.001+08:00

I always wanted to go and try capture racing pictures. Or motion photograph, in another word. I practiced at Putrajaya a few times before, and it was alright, but not really alright since it wasn't that cool. And to go Sepang F1 circuit, the tickets can be tad expensive, and there's no way I can put up with all the people there.

Last Sunday, to my surprise I was really jumped out to go to Sepang to watch MotoGP. No sentiment here, but actually I never really like racing. Rally is okay, but racing was like...blank. Anyway, for foremost reason for my eagerness being it was my first time there. And it's free, a friend of Farah's friend, Gary, was kind enough to give us free tickets. It really was an opportunity, despite there were a bit problematic, we got there eventually.

It was hot, full of cars getting into, and full of peoples wandered around, and at that time I thought I might regret this. I was glad that Farah wasn't that smug as she used to be in time like this, although she wipe kleenexfull of sweat off her face. Being optimist, we barged in and walk around, posed with some cool looking bike, but not enough to get us cool.

Not long after we wandered around, the emcee annouced that a freestyle riding will be on. Really wanted to go to watch race instead of a guy pulling crazy bike skills, I kind of hesitated but we went to watch it anyway. A Portugal dude went out and rode his bike like it was nothing, like monkey on a circus bicycle. And to my surprise, the gig was the best motion photograph I ever had, like this one. With that, I decided to spend more time with Farah. Nothing to lose.

Nokia E71: A nice thing to start.

2008-10-17T00:04:00.001+08:00

With the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Kind.
I had hoped this image that I create will be like the reviews and comments that most users write, like a user help another with reviews and first-hand thoughts. The laptop (I hope) creates a working environment and the blue glow creates the coolness of it. The tagline is really what I thought of it.

I've been wondering for a long time on what to write about, but this picture really does inspires me to write something, and as a pilot article, I want to cherish to all of you gadget lovers, you know who you are. Even I don't know it, but I guess I do love gadget. Fact is this: I captured this image using Canon 350D, while listening to The Ting Tings' Great DJ played on Windows Media Player with my bluetooth headphone. You can see all of these are related.

I've bought my E71 a mere week after it was launched. It was nothing, except it wasn't sold in Malaysia yet at that time, for a lot of reason and primarily it was cheaper. It is a real beauty, in every way. The look, the usefulness, the coolness of metal and youthfulness of it. It isn't that superior; it's way cheaper than iPhone and HTC Diamond, but I think it's why it is what it is. It's the best phone I ever had. Yet.

Back then, I remembered when I started working in Watson's Alamanda, when my dad gave me a little Samsung phone to use. I could use it at RM30 top-up monthly, because I only have a little number of people to communicate to. Since then, it was just like an evolution, and boy, it was fun. Well I'm a liar if I told you I'm happy, but it's been educational. Most of the times I only upgrade my phone when I lost the one I had. A lot of things can happen, the phone's too slim and slipped out from your pocket, your friend stole it from you (literally it happened to me. More money got out, and for most occasion I was smug, and I always made mistakes and eventually unhappy with what I had.

It's true you can't use every function that even if you could buy a decent phone, because most people are who they are. For me simplicity always wins, and apart of that, you must know what you need. Back then it was impossible to create a phone with decent battery life to use all of the function all at once. But now, and especially with this, I could use it for almost two days with my music player playing through the bluetooth headset, surfing the net and call my mum. Of course all of these happen occasionally, and that's the beauty of it, because it could save you more.

So there goes my personal view in the new fad. I've just started blogging. A hug for myself. And hope I will write more.