Oh my! Another Transformers entry so soon. I think I should have a “Transformers” category in this here weblog. Yes? No? Maybe? On the cover of Empire magazine…. is Optimus Prime. The image was eventually found – while I was link-hopping on the net – at Don Murphy’s message board. All I can say about it is… what an awesome image. Excuse me while I take a look at eBay for Adam Sandler’s unversal remote control so I can fast forward time to July of next year.
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Irfan Gets Wet at Ulu Langat
Sometime after noon and after Ain made mi goreng, we took a drive to the back end of Ampang, went over the hill and headed for Ulu Langat for a picnic. It would be a perfect day if not for the quadrillions of other visitors clogging up the roads, streets and paths with people and cars. I tried cursing them to transform them into frogs and such, but then I remembered that only worked in story books. After that it took us about 45 minutes to get through about 5 kilometres of road for the trip back. Traffic jams suck. Especially at narrow kampung roads. So without further adieu here are the pictures of the more fun part of the trip. We found a relatively empty spot by the river, Sungai Congkak, where we had to cross a wooden bridge to reach a clear picnic spot. There were a couple […]
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Walking, Talking and Punching Bots
As of last night, the new Transformers trailer went online. This is not the fleeting 2 microsecond glimpse of a silhouette smashing the Mars Rover teaser bit which I caught in the theatre just before Garfield: Tale of Two Kitties. (Yeah, I watched Garfield. Shut up in the back there.) This one shows a whole bunch of Cybertronian aliens, in various modes and transforming. There’s even a shot of the protoform stasis pod crashing down. I am happily surprised that there are no loud rock and / or rap music in the trailer to mark the movie as “cool” to the teens. It’s just a bunch of quick cuts of… well, lots of bits that made me and Irfan very happy as we went to bed last night. It’s not an adaptation of any of the Transformers sub-universes. I’m not even going to go “But Megatron was a gun!” or […]
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Irfan Goes To School – After A Fashion
Irfan is now registered as a Standard 1 student at Sekolah Kebangsaan Pandan Indah. He is in fact the 32nd student to be registered at the school for the 2009 intake. There were a few observations that we made about the school when we registered him there today. The school staff seem to prefer Waja as their vehicle of choice. Note to self: Find out why their preference seem to be similar. Is it because of something sinister like a Nyarlathotep cult-like thing that permeates the school? Or is Proton trying very hard to market their cars to teachers? School administration offices appear to look exactly the same anywhere in the country. Same old front desk counter, clerk tables, sofa for visitors and even the cluster of potted plants, which all looks eerily familiar for both Ain and I after twenty years. Apart from the flat screen computer monitors, I […]
Continue readingWhat Kind of Rich are You?
If you’re a rich person (with more than a couple of grand in cash handy at the bank, able to invest in businesses, buy houses and yachts and other assorted rich guy items), which among these three categories of the financially wealthy do you belong to? Getting rich is a means to an end, which is to help as many people as possible. Getting rich is a means to an end, which would be an uncontrollable sociopathic urge to hurt and leech more from people around you. Getting rich is THE end itself and you’ll do everything to get there, ensure your security to this end even if others around you get hurt. Here are my messages to people of each of the above categories respectively: Keep up the good work. How are you breathing air outside of a Saturday morning cartoon? When the fecal biomatter hits the rotating impellers, […]
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Best Office Space Ever
So after the exam today I headed down to 1 Utama with the new laptop. Using the mall’s WLAN I was on the internet browser connected to the office via Skype in seconds, replying emails, as well as checking up on the work forum. I also took the picture above using the lappy’s 1.3 megapixel webcam, just for the heck of it. By the way if you’re hard up for wireless internet, the benches right in front of the MPH bookstore (top floor) is information supersluice tube. Bathrooms and surau are close by. Who knows… you might even find yourself in a conversation with a friendly passer-by which ends with you yelling at the top of your voice, “Yeah! This is future of office work baby! Go back into your sunless cryp- er, I mean office and sulk!” Meanwhile not far away, a dogfight between an Incom Corporation T-65C-A2 and […]
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For Lack of A Better Game
So out of watching four episodes of Heroes in a single night , a game between Ain and Emma was born. The first to yell out “TIM KRING!” whenever his name came out onscreen wins. That’s eight times in three hours. Once during the short intro and the other when the Executive Producer name appears during the story after the intro… each episode. Not as easy as you might think. You get caught up in the teaser, someone’s bound to forget to yell immediately when the name appears. “TIM KRING!”
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In the Space of Forty Odd Years
I can’t believe it’s been 43 years between the two images below. Both show the same characters. The first was illustrated by the late great Jack Kirby in 1963 ten years before I was born. The second was drawn by Yanick Paquette in 2006. The first has the members of the original class of Xavier’s school horsing around during training – still in their teens. The second shows the same group of people years later – older, wiser and scarred aplenty – just after the events of the House of M and in the thick of the current Civil War storyline in the Marvel universe.
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Stuck in the Jam: A Matter of Taste
Whee! A webcomic! Based on a true story, even. Which happened earlier today. Director’s Commentary mode on (since most of the text is in Malay): Normanis isn’t a standard Malay-Muslim name. I’m guessing it’s an allusion to names beginning with “Nor” (or “Nur“) which is Arabic for “light”. Suddenly there’s a Malay word there “manis” which means “Sweet”. Therefore Normanis is literally Sweet Light. Of course, I’m assuming it’s a female name since I’ve never heard it before. To square off the quip, “tawar” for the conjectural husband and “pahit” for the eventual daughter respectively means “tasteless” and “bitter”. I have nothing against your name Normanis, whoever you are. But thanks for being the subject of a side-splitting off-the-cuff joke while we were stuck in a traffic jam which will no doubt be lost on readers of this entry, and I have only one excuse for all of you: “You […]
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Early Morning Raid at the PC Fair
Well, to be honest it wasn’t that early in the morning. It was about 10AM. And it wasn’t a raid as it was us moving slowly through the computer exhibition picking out stuff to buy after we, for the first time ever, have the budget to buy computer-related thingamajigs at one of these PC Fairs. There were no tablet PCs sold as far as I can see. Before the PC Fair opened we had a picnic at the KLCC park with the takeaway nasi lemak which we bought at the LRT Corner outdoors restaurant near the Tenth Floor Headquarters. Irfan had little to eat – just some curry puffys and teh ais. He didn’t seem to mind hunger when the super duper playground was within striking (and spitting) distance. And here’s Irfan’s favourite playground in the world, as well as a few other worlds. He calls slides the “Wheeee!” for […]
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Tablets Seem Fun To Work With
Tablet PCs, used by the personnel of Stargate Command’s Atlantis Expedition (particularly Dr. Rodney McKay) seem to be cool little gadgets to work with. I wish I can buy one around here. Are there any being sold here in Kuala Lumpur at all? Perhaps the PC Fair at the KL Convention Centre coming up next weekend?
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What Transpired In Pakistan
Like DSA 2006 back in April, we were at another defence exhibition only this time in Karachi, Pakistan. My apprehension was soon laid to rest as the local organisers as well as the other foreign exhibitors who were great folks whose company I enjoyed. Whenever we got together, there usually was loud chuckling and sometimes there were incredible belly laughs, which I believe began for the first time when we tried to figure out what the acronym “CIP” actually was. Nope, ain’t tellin’. There were Barry and Martin from Australia, John from England, Bernard from the Czech Republic and sometimes we were joined by Jean-François from France, who was our neighbour in the exhibition booth next to us. All of us were ably and excellently cared for by our Pakistani attachés (so to speak) Shah, Shamir and Arsalan. I was chained to the booth most of the time because the […]
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Karachi is Sunny but Cool
Today Hikam and I took a drive around town with a tour guide / taxicab driver. The idea was that we’d tell him what we needed to buy on a souvenir hunt and he’ll know the best places to take us. Although we tried very hard, we couldn’t find a T-shirt that reads My Friend Went To Karachi and All He Got For Me Was This Lousy T-shirt. In fact very little T-shirts were sold at the souvenir stores. They mostly have leather and fur goods, onyx-carved trinkets, ornate metal-ware and beautiful cloth for traditional wear. Like Malaysia, there are lots of motorcycles on the streets but wearing helmets are voluntary. Other unlikely vehicles found on the streets of Karachi is this human-powered banana-carrying cart and the donkey cart. We missed an opportunity to take a photo of a cart carrying metal drums (stacked at least 10 feet tall) drawn […]
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So There We We Were At Jinnah International
Hikam and I arrived at about 2025 local time via the Pakistan International Airlines flight. It was enjoyable. I think I slept four out of the six hours airborne. The inflight movie was Pirates of the Carribeans – Dead Man’s Chest. Luckily the hotel transport people were waiting for our arrival. One less thing to worry about. It’s now almost 1000 local time in the morning, and we’ve had some breakfast. Access to Wireless LAN in only in the lobby on the ground floor and on the 6th and 7th floors. So, here I am in the lobby trying to get some information down the internet tubes.
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First There Was Lunch, Then It Rained
Today, Teik Sing, Ahbau & I went out for lunch, just because. We had nasi lemak ayam madu and talked some. The restaurant is situated near the Glenmarie industrial park’s Petronas gas station. Across the street was the Federal Highway. On the other side of that was the Batu Tiga train station. I thought the nasi lemak was delicious. Then it rained.
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Next Week I Fly To…
…Karachi, Pakistan. The journey will be nested between the coming two Saturdays. Since the company is small I have to run around getting stuff done in preparation for the trip. Between this and the course assignment – that had me on edge for weeks until I finally submitted it one week late – I had no time updating this here weblog. Heck, I didn’t even have time to come up with some artwork which I promised myself I’d come up with for recreation time. A stand-out moment during the running around would be last Friday when the Airline employee looked at me (when she realised I was booking the tickets for myself) and asked with a tinge of disbelief, “You’re the one going?” Hopefully by two weeks we’ll have some photos of Karachi here. (And hopefully we’ll have internet connection at the hotel there.)
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