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| Goodbye 2004... hello 2005 ^_^ |
| 12.30.04 (10:50 pm) [edit] |
There goes another year. Taking this opportunity to wish all fellow bloggers a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
May the new year bring fresh spirit and even more productive blogging!
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| Quake in Asia. |
| 12.26.04 (7:00 pm) [edit] |
I'm pretty sure by now most have heard about the major quake which hit most parts of Asia yesterday.
I was still asleep like a log for most of the morning. I didn't realize the severity of the event until later during the day. When news started trickling in about local casualties, I thought it was just another case of us Penangites exaggerating things as usual. I told myself... "Nah, we can't be affected by quakes. Malaysia is way off the ring of fire".
It was only after I turned on CNN and saw how bad the situation was in Sri Lanka, India and also a mention of Malaysia when it hit me that this was a big one. I logged on to the net and started browsing the local dailies. Initial reports mentioned 10 casualties on the island (Penang) I was staying on. Later, it was updated to 21. During the evening, 33. The latest I heard was 38 reported dead and 30 still missing at press time. I'm dumbstruck.
I can't believe what I'm seeing. I'll let the pictures do the talking.
[i]Picture taken by Paul S. Russell, shows a tidal wave approaching the Batu Ferringhi coast at about 1.15pm.[/i]
[i]Tidal waves seen surging towards the shore in Tanjung Tokong in Penang.[/i]
[i]Residents along the coast in Tanjung Bungah taking out their belongings from their homes as a precautionary measure.[/i]
[i]Two fishing boats washed ashore at the Jalan Tanjung Tokong by a tidal waves which hit coastal areas of Penang.[/i]
[i]Cars and motorcycles parked along Gurney Drive in Penang were swept by waves and strewn accross the street haphazadly.[/i]
[i]Tidal waves destroyed this fishermen's pondok and several houses along Tanjung Bungah.[/i]
[link]http://thestar.com.my/news/st...[/link]
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| Merry Christmas ;) |
| 12.22.04 (11:58 pm) [edit] |
I know it's 2 days away, but I can't help it. I don't actually celebrate Christmas, but I really like the atmosphere surrounding the whole thing.
How do I describe it? Everytime I think of Christmas (aside remembering it as the celebration of the birth of Jesus), I picture myself curling up under some warm covers during a cold chilly night while sipping hot cocoa, peering out of the window and just gazing at the colourful lights in the horizon :lol:
I'll be on a short break. Work is the last thing on my mind for the next few days. I'll be back next week.
An early [b]Merry Christmas[/b] to all TBLOGgers and the rest of the bloggers out there! Let's savour the last few remaining days for 2004 :wink:
![]() =http://img.photobucket.com/al...
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| Get well my friend... |
| 12.19.04 (6:52 pm) [edit] |
It's funny how sometimes the things you see and encounter changes certain aspects on how you view life.
I paid a friend a visit at the general hospital over the weekend. He was in the pinkest of health when I last saw him, which was about 3 years ago. A very animated and friendly guy, who's presence is always well felt. I got to know about his current condition about 2 weeks back.
He suffered a slipped disc on his lower vetebra. Which caused him great pain, but it was a while before he sought medical attention. By then, the pressure building up on his lower back, caused by the slipped disc, pinced a number of nerves and slowly, he lost partial mobility of his legs.
When I saw him on Thursday, he was in great spirits, but I can see the toll which the injury cause to his physical well being. He underwent a major surgery the next day to fuse the 3 lower fragments of his backbone to stabilize the spine. He will lose some ability to bend his back and also a chance that he will need assistance when trying to walk in future.
I spent sometime talking to him after the post-op. He was constantly needing shots of morphine to dull the intense throbbing pain running down the column of his backbone. It will be a long road to recovery and his career is now on hold.
I was dumbfounded when I realized that he is only 4 years older than I am. Just thinking about it made me realize how fragile the human body is and how much I have taken it for granted. When I got home, I sat down by myself and thank God for all the blessing which he have given me. Difficult as life is, we should sometimes take time to appreciate the little things which we have been generously bestowed with.
JY, I'll be praying for your recovery. Stay strong my friend.
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| Finito... |
| 12.13.04 (5:50 am) [edit] |
Finally, after 2 months of marathon dining, I'm done. I've completed my 11th wedding dinner and survived to live and tell.
Chinese wedding banquets are lavish occasions which consists of 7 to 9 course dinners. The menu is usually made up of cholestrol laden ingredients, exotic seafood, and a whole lot of other stuff which I don't even know what to call; essentially things which you don't see everyday. Which isn't exactly a bad thing. But seriously, 11 of these in 2 months is really an overkill.
Last Saturday, I attended another old fren's wedding. Which wasn't anything out of the ordinary. That was until the groom decided to whip out the good stuff and plonked a big bottle of Black Label scotch on our table. We were expected to polish this one off before the end of the dinner as our approval of him getting hitched. Only problem was, half of us could hardly drink. Yours trully included. You can knock me out with as little as 2 rounds of drinks.
However, being good sports that we are, we decided to do juz that. An hour an a half later, with the help of several bottles of tonic water to mask the heavy alcohol taste, the bottle of scotch was soon dry. I hate hard liquor. But... that night was an exception. Those rounds of scotch gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. Mabbe it was the atmosphere. Mabbe it was because I was slightly drunk.
Whatever it was, who cares? As long as there's good company, interesting conversations and a good time; that's all that matters.
Oh yeah, btw, I will be embarking on a self-detoxifying regime from tommorrow onwards. Gotta do something to get all the cholestrol, fat and alcohol out of my system. I accumulated enough over the past 2 months to last me 3 lifetimes... :wink:
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| Company night. |
| 12.10.04 (6:46 am) [edit] |
Just came home from my company's annual dinner. This event was absent during the previous year since there was a pretty massive cost cutting exercise back then. This year though, the company held no punches and the management tried making it as lavish as possible.
The venue was a pretty posh hotel downtown. This was actually a pre-war building and had a very nostagic collonial feel to it. The theme of the dinner was "Elegance Night". I didn't bother to dress up for the occasion so I felt pretty much like a fish out of water when I arrived there. Really suprised to see many of my colleagues dressing up to the T. Most of them were in coats while the ladies looked fantatic.
Anyways, after we were ushered into the main ballroom, the MCs kicked things off. There were the usual long speeches, followed by dancers of the in-house troupe... etc... blah... blah... boring stuff. The highlight of the dinner was the guest stand-up comedian, Harith Iskandar, a really big name in our country. This fella had fantastic comic timing and had the audience laughing their guts out. Nothing was sacred to him as poked fun at Malaysians, Singaporeans and even the good ol' US of A... but all in good taste.
We were treated to a 6 course dinner. I hate dinners of this sort as the hotel take their own sweet time to dish out the goodies... and this could eat up a time span of up to 3 hours. And I was starving.
As usual, we were treated to some bread first. Nothing great... in fact, it was way too hard.
First up, was the prawn cocktail. I enjoyed this cold dish. The prawn was fresh and the accompanying salad gave the dish a crunchy texture.
Next, was the cream of seafood, wilted spinach & creme fraiche. Exotic sounding dish, but was way dissapointing. Way too diluted and not flavourful enough.
Another appetizer was lime granite. This was basically a lime based sherbet, but was poorly done. It had the consistency of shaved ice. That's why I didn't bother to take a pic of it.
The main course was a mouthful. Oven roasted chicken breast & baked honey cod fish, buttered pasta, seasonal vegetables and wild mushroom sauce. The roast chicken and cod fillet was sublime. Tender yet juicy. The same can't be said for the pasta. It wasn't near al-dente. In fact, it was practically uncooked. Really dissapointed with this.
For desserts, we had creme brulee, baked chocolate tart with berry fantasies & assorted fruit tartlets. These were fantastic. As you can see, I even forgot to take a photo first before I pigged in. I only realized this after I've taken several bites.
Finally, I had some mild tea to wash everything down.
It was a fun dinner, which was unfortunately marred by an inconsistent dinning experience. Overall it wasn't too bad.
At least I won a printer during the lucky draw... which made me beam ear to ear. It was a great way to end the night... :wink:
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| The little things... |
| 12.01.04 (1:20 am) [edit] |
December marks the start of the end of yet another year. It's pretty late into the evening, and the lighting in the office have switched over to energy saving mode. I kinda like the dim atmosphere though. I didn't get much done. The whole shitload of verifications I ran today came back with double the amount of errors I expected. Which means I will have to wring my brain dry tommorrow to try and solve them.
It's cold, dry and deafeningly quiet. Back then, my phone will usually ring at around this time. Just listening to the voice at the other end was enough to make me forget about the worries that I had. I can still remember the first time I tried asking her out. It took me 3 days just to pick up enough guts to make that phone call. I still can't find the words to describe the feeling I had when she actually said yes that day.
I was a really quiet fellow back then. The only reason I stood out during my college years was due to me being considered one of the brighter bulbs. This is not to say that I'm smart, but somehow, I was able to acclimatize well with the exam environment. I still believe I fluked my way through college since I hate studying. I was a loner, but she treated me with kindness, accepted me into her circle of friends and always made me feel like the luckiest guy alive. Now that I think back bout it, it feels kinda surreal that my first was all that, and then some.
During the year and a half we were together after college, I felt I could do no wrong. Cliche as it might sound, I was pretty much in Cloud 9. I secured a relatively good job, I made pretty good strides in my career and best of all, I had her by my side. She opened up her world to me and I did the same. She taught me the real meaning of caring and loving someone. I was naive. Things don't stay the way they are. You have to work to maintain it. I learnt that the hard way. I slacked off.
To cut a long story short, working environment got a lot more challenging, a number of misunderstandings, being blind to your loved one's need, opportunists moving into the picture, etc; it doesn't take a genius to guess what happened next. I was back at square one. Things got messy, close friends were lost along the way, a hell lot of lonely and teary nights, but eventually the hurt became bearable. 2 years helps swallowing the bitter pill a little easier.
Silly as it sounds, I'm still hoping the phone will ring again one day...
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Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. A process that uses both N- and P-channel devices in a complimentary fashion to achieve small geometries and low power consumption.
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