lost in translation

I was at my favourite fruit stall near Pelita (Grand Palace area) looking for mangoes; theres this row of stalls selling fruits just after the traffic light. It is just shocking how bad the quality of fruits that we get here. I remember going to the supermarket in Sydney (woolworth's) just around the corner from the hotel and there in the basement, the freshest and most beautiful fruits and veges of all colours.... its so freaking amazing. Since the supermarket is so near I just take the lift down and like buy food all the time its so fresh and tasty. Even the eggs are freaking delicious. And tomatoes. And so on... and my parents; they were like high on fresh fruits and produce. The look on their faces when it was time to pay at the counter was priceless.

Anyway, was busy picking mangoes when the auntie keep talking to me in Chinese. She was pointing at something at one point, went to the back and came back with a mango cut in half covered with one of those food plastic cover and showed that to me. She was still talking to me in Chinese and I was not in a good mood at that time so I was just shaking my head. Was minding my own business picking mangoes, handed the fruits to her for weighing and she kept on pointing at some pulasan looking fruits and kept babbling in Chinese. I kept on shaking my head and with a sigh paid and left the stall. Sometimes it gets really annoying, especially if you face this situation every single day... and also especially when I have been buying fruits at that stall all the time... and seeing the auntie all the time!!..

When i was in Phuket people talk to me in Thai. I can be believable as a Thai but I think its the bushy eyebrow... (think Thai PM). Thai people are really "friendly" almost every thai person you see will try to sell you something or get you to go somewhere. I found out the most effective and polite way to get rid of them is to place my hand together (like the buddhist prayer), bow a bit and say kapkumkap. I have no idea but it worked for me.

The offshore visit aftermath

I have been feeling rather under the weather since the offshore trip couple days back. I just recovered from flu before the visit, and getting it again in just a few days is not normal to say the least. Not that I am getting the normal flu sindrome like runny nose, high temp and all that, its just dizzyness and feeling wanting to puke. I think I have figured it out... I might be having the 'land sickness'. Thats when supposedly the brain gets used to the rocking and movement at sea and finds being at land and keeping still disorienting. Its worst when one keeps still, and driving your car around helps. I think that explains everything, or maybe its just another case of me trying to self diagnose and thinking doctors dont know what they are doing.

Having said that, I went to a private hospital here in Miri and enquired about tamiflu before my Sydney trip, and got a blank look from the doctor. He said why would I want a diarrhoea medicine, and he said that with 100% confidence and authority, the look on his face was as if i was talking nonsense. Its just a case of clueless people who gets credibility and or noted just because they are confident. The drug does help with diarrhoea but with Sydney on the top of any swine flu list at that time, why would anybody going to Sydney ask about tamiflu?

The company man

During the days when I was still travelling back and forth to KL (then i took it for granted), I could always find the all out company man on the same flight. They would be wearing the company T-shirt, which they would have gotten a lot during good times at least. Sometimes the T-shirt comes together with a backpack with a huge company logo smacked on it. You could see the pride and arrogance sometimes, on their faces, mannerisms and body language, which was intended to be shown to everyone. They have this sense of entitlement that every confident, educated or worldly person seem to have, and sometimes that can be annoying. Usually my company t-shirt, regardless of from which industry, end up as the gym tshirt.

Then you have the polar opposite of the all out company man, the guy who complains about pretty much everything. The first thing that they complain about is of course the salary, of how low the salary is compared to other places. They would complain that their job is of little value and do not improve their skills, and if so happen that they leave the company it would be impossible to find a job outside. Dinner conversation sometimes revolve around salary and claims that a person can get double or triple of the current salary working for another company. I thought that I was a realisitc/pessimistic person until I sat down with such a negative person that talked about things so negative that they end up not making any sense.

Now that we are in the new world and nothing is ever gonna be the same again. It is interesting and sometimes funny observing how these different people react to the changes that are going on.

Benitez and Lucas Leiva

By now I think every Liverpool fan has had enough of this Benitez and Lucas story, at least I have. Its either Lucas have been seriously underperforming since he joined Liverpool or he is Benitez's favourite.

Lucas won best player of the Brazilian League and thats no mean feat. But seriously whenever he played for Liverpool he sucked except for like one game.

One more problem is I am not quite sure what kind of player is he. Is he a Mascherano type? or Alonso or Gerrard type? The way Benitez is handling it now is as if he is replacing Alonso, but most of the passes he make are sideways.

Liverpool is struggling because nobody replaced Alonso. Liverpool's winning streak last season ended against one of the bottom teams, if not mistaken Stoke City, when Benitez rested Alonso and played Lucas with Mascherano and the performance was total rubbish. They lost couple more games after that. So I can blame that to Benitez.

My theory is Benitez has gone too far this time and it is all due to his infamous stubbornness to prove everyone wrong. I think no matter how professional a player is, if he is not good enough he is just not good enough.

Benitez and his stubborness is not something new as what happeneed to Robbie Keane last year when Keane was not in his plan and ruthlessly kicked out of the team (regardless of what he could have contributed). I am pretty sure if Keane was still around there would not have been 3 losses.

District 9

I finally got to see this movie and after all that hype and expectations this movie is a dissapointment for me. It is not bad, in fact its entertaining but tomatometer gave it 90% so huge expectaitons. This movie has been on my radar since I first saw the trailer. The main concept/storyline alone convinced me that this was gonne be a good one. But it flattered to deceive and it was almost like another Cloverfield. I watched Cloverfield and I was already bored after 20 minutes.

The main problem is that I just dont buy it. Fantastic concept but the details are all over the place its almost absurd. I didnt like the documentary style that acts also as the narrative, not convincing and seem to be intended to be some kind of a joke or parody, but I do think the intention was to make a serious scifi thriller. The hero is stupid/eccentric/hilarious.... whatever the intention it was just confusing and evoke mixed emotions. Perhaps this is a serious movie but because the acting, screenplay and other details are so bad it was totally not convincing and could be mistaken for a joke.

Other details that bothered me when i was supposed to be entertained:
1. Alien fuel can turn human being into a prawn..what??
2. Why is prawn so secretive about the fuel? (Humans want them gone right...)
3. What is the big deal with alien weapons? It doesnt look superior to human weapons on the movie does it?
2. Stupid/psychopath/crazy hero guy....
3. Why are the prawns not doing anything? Dont they have alien weapons? I tried to convince myself that they are too stupid to do anything.... but failed.
4. Just have a genius baby prawn who can fly a spaceship and what not... thats just lazy
5. Aliens and cat food obsession...???(it makes the whole thing seem to be intended as a joke)

It is just getting harder to be entertained

The last grand slam of the year

I have been getting on average about 5 hours sleep a night for the past week or so and I think my body just cannot handle it anymore. I was driving back home and stopped at a red light and almost fell asleep while waiting for it to turn green.

The US Open which is reaching its climax now is not helping with my sleeping pattern. Just as I thought that I would go to bed early and have a good night sleep, all of a sudden one Melanie Oudin dug really deep and out of nowhere produce shot after shot en route to an amazing comeback. Or sometimes just finding out grandmaster Federer was playing would keep me awake.

Melanie Oudin is out now, i just saw a rerun of her quarterfinals against Wozniacki in which she lost in straight sets. It is so refreshing to see these two women players. It is not their playing skills that impress me most, rather its their mental toughness. There was one game in the second set where Oudin was on breakpoint, and Wozniacki managed to keep her composure and hold her serve. I am pretty sure Oudin would have won that game if it was, say Safina that she was playing against. I am rooting for Wozniacki, she does not have the killer shots; at least she did not show that agianst Oudin; but I was really impressed by her composure and tenacity.

I think all these stories of women tennis players with their emotional meltdown, crazy nerve, 40 unforced errors and what not are getting old. The mother of all emotional breakdown-prone women tennis players, Elena Dementieva, just cant seem to deal with this problem despite all those years on the circuit and being one of the top players in the world. She was also the one who was infamously quoted saying " I dont know how to serve". To her credit her serve has improved tremendously, but despite possessing one of the best groundstrokes in the women's games she hasnt won a slam and I attribute that mainly to her nerves (now that she can serve better and get her double faults under control).

Dinara Safina is another tragic story. She is, thank god, a milder version of Safin but clearly it runs in the family. She seems to be on the verge of breaking down and cry in every game, and its is not fun to watch to say the least. And is it just me or does Safina alwasy look like shes 4 months pregnant?

The other day Sharapove had like 20 double faults (also lost to Oudin) but in all fairness she just came back from an injury. But still if not for the double faults she definitely would have won. Against the Italian player Zvonareva was really winning but in the second set she somehow had a meltdown and end up losing the match. At one point she looked like she was talking to her bandaged knee, as if blaming it for the shot caught in the net or a backhand down the line that went wide.

Change is here

Slowly but surely these changes that has been talked about so much is finally taking place right here, right now. Sooner rather than later these changes, which started at the global level and logically travels top down, will finally reach my level the macai's. We will have to wait until then to see whats the impact like.

My guess is that the Mckinsey guys have got to have something to do will all these restucturing and cloud nine big ideas. Looking at how regularly things Mckinsey got featured in our intranet, it is easy for me to come to that assumption.

Having said that, having previously coming from an advisory outfit and a super lean cigarette organisation before that, it is quite obvious that a lot of things are done differently here, not necessarily in a good way. On the first day, I was quite suprised that I was served coffee by a tea lady, having getting used to bringing my own cup and make my own coffee, or in better times go to the coffee machine and choose one of them delightful coffee concoction on offer. It most probably is high time for major changes, and naturally that is discomforting.

Lala land

I left office early today hoping to get to the bulatan bazaar ramadan fast. The last time I went there most of the good stuff are gone. Today apparently i was too early and the place was really packed, so I turned around and was headed to the other bazaar which is nearer to town.

I was walking around and saw this familiar face manning a stall. I was trying to recall where i met this man and after 5 mins walking around I remembered that this guy ripped me off and charged me RM5 for roti canai. I was sending my car for service and his restaurant is just opposite the service center so i went there to have breakfast and kill time. On the menu hung on the wall the price for roti canai is RM1. I got charged more because my kuah kari got like 3 pieces of meat.

I walked around some more looking for yogurt or the thing called dadih and found the stall with quite a selection of flavors. The guy manning the stall was entertaining this customer and I was just standing there waiting for my turn. But for some reason he did not notice me standing there and then sat down on his stool minding his own business and i was still waiting there. For some reason I started waving at him. This older guy who was standing there, whom I think also a customer waiting for his bbq fish from the adjacent stall, started yelling at him telling him he has a customer. The stall guy gave a sheepish grin and asked me what flavor I want. It has probably been a long day but strangely this has happened to me before. What the heck is wrong with these people.

2 year olds!

I printed my boarding pass for my return flight to Miri the other day and put it nicely on the computer desk. We have got a new all in one printer which photocopies, prints, scans and does other wonderful things. Replace that ancient CRT with concave screen and we have a full function office.

We were enjoying our berbuka dinner when someone said
"Wheres Hakeem?". Hakeem is my 2 year old nephew, son of my sister.
My sister seemed to be not bothered at all... if anything she can finally truly enjoy eating without a hyperactive kid yelling every minute at her. Heck nobody bothered... food was damn nice.

I was doing my part washing my dishes when I remembered that I put my boarding pass printout and realized it was not a good idea when you have a hyperactive kid in the house. It was not a surprise that my boarding pass was no longer on the computer desk.

First I heard my sister yelling
"OMG Hakeem my credit cards... no wonder u are so quiet!"

I rushed to the scene and there it was on the floor, a crumpled piece of paper scribbled all over with red and blue ink. That is what is left of my boarding pass. I did not save the boarding pass PDF in the computer.... I will have to make do with that crumpled paper.

Thank god for speakerphone

I was preoccupied by this email from HR, which says that some money will be deducted monthly from my pay, as per directive from LHDN. That email set the tone for my whole day. Checked with LHDN Miri and they confirmed I do not have any outstanding payment. When you try to be a responsible citizen and pay your taxes... and they come and deduct your money for no reason.... that really pisses me off.

Pretty much got that settled through the phone(hopefully), then opened my MAS itinerary for my flight to Kuching, supposedly at 6.15pm. I looked at the date and it says 27th august Miri-Kuching. Not again. Thats yesterday.. thats another missed flight. And this is not the first time. All this waste is driving me nuts.

That also means my return flight to miri, on the 1st september, is automatically cancelled. Like I said I have gone through this before. MAS has this idiotic system, which cancels your return flight, if you missed the "first flight", and you booked the return ticket in one itinerary (huh...what is the term for the opposite of return flight??). MAS is cancelling seats that are already paid by their customers (if for some reason they missed the first flight) and open the seat to other customers. That makes absolutely no sense. And they make double profit from the seat, as it is sold twice.

The last time my seat got canceled "automatically", the MAS staff that I talked to that day at KLIA was definitely the more proactive type and customer friendly. He got everything settled for me and put me back on the flight, no problem.

After work I went straight to the MAS ticketing office at Miri airport. There I saw the course director from our Learning and Development, slouching on the stained sofa of the dated and gloomy MAS office, looking really stressed out and tired. Hes a China national and on his way back to Beijing, and apparently missed his flight to KL. He really looked like he could use a shower.

Anyways, i knew I will be getting nothing from the MAS guys at Miri airport, because I have dealt with them before, they just could not be bothered. Apparently the odds of dealing with the same people at MAS ticketing office is pretty high. Its like dealing with the SAP system... they talk like computer with all the codes programmed in their brain. I heeded their advice to call the MAS toll free line just because I felt like I was talking to a wall. I know for sure how bad it is to call that infamous toll free line, nothing is infamous for nothing. However I managed to get a ticket tomorrow to Kuching, albeit on Mas Wings which transits in Sibu.

After iftar called the hotline and immediately transferred to the IT department which handles internet booking etc. I never got thru to the IT guys, they put me on hold until the line went dead. Thats another record for me. I called again and the cycle repeated 2 more times until I have had enough. I called again, and I made sure thats gonna be the last call that will settle my ticket issue. The whole process took almost two hours!! But I managed to get them to put me back on the flight and that gave me that wonderful sense of accomplishment... but seriously thank god for speakerphone.

Panasonic Lumix TZ7

Also known as ZS3 in north America, this is my next big ticket item. Been browsing through photography blogs and sites and reading reviews, and apparently this is one of the leading models in the so-called "travel compact camera" category. Being out of touch with developments in the techie world, I would not have known that Panasonic makes pretty good cameras.

It has got 12 mpx, 12 x optical zoom and other "stuff". 12x optical zoom.... thats quite impressive. It will cost me around 1600.... not sure if its gonna be worth it.I mean no matter how good the camera is, if u just dont have it...

I have been surfing through flickr looking at people's photos, especially travel photos. There are some pretty impressive stuff in flickr. Other than flickr stuff on news websites like nytimes etc are really impressive too. One thing that I have never been able to acheive, whether due to fault of my own or cheapskate camera, is to capture the beauty of a place or moment in photographs. Hence, as a starting point... TZ7!

Cheapskate post

Malaysia airlines is on sale now and i am contemplating to buy ticket to go somewhere. Most probably its gonna be a second trip to Australia, Western Australia specifically Perth, to accompany my parents, as the ever dependable all in one tourguide. Not that I mind.

They somehow have this romanticised fantasy of this foreign land with rolling hills and mountains in the background, with acres and acres of vineyards and grasslands and what not. And the weather is just sunny and pleasant and the markets selling the freshest local produce like apples, oranges, grapes etc. So far for me the closest thing to that is Stellenbosch in South Africa. Such a strange place where you have outragiously photogenic landscape with a shantytown in the foreground.

I am not sure if I can afford all these travelling. It certainly is not sound financial planning. But all these airfare deals are really working for the airlines. I have been buying cheaper tickets, but at the same time Ive been traveling around more, so that sort of evens out. Air asia had a huge sale a few weeks back, and all of a sudden I was buying a return ticket to Hong Kong. No planning what so ever. Who needs planning when a return ticket to Hong Kong is 200 bucks?? And a return ticket to jakarta costs 75 bucks. Thats like buying a bus ticket to penang or something.

I have my tickets booked for this whole year, since two months ago. If not for MAS's "Get the Deal" scheme, I would have booked tickets for half of next year on Air Asia. ("Get the Deal" offers last minute cheap but limited weekend tickets)

Not sure how these airlines do their accounting, but I assume their current cashflow includes advance purchases. I remember not too long ago buying ticket 2 months in advance is considered early. Now people are buying one year in advance! And I notice airlines are selling tickets much further in advance of the actual travel date. Not sure if thats ok, but for me it just does not seem right, even if I cannot explain why.

Ramadan feast

Ramadan is here again and this means a lot of feasting to do. Its not supposed to be that way but what do you expect when you have people who are really hungry, and you have this proliferation of bazaars and buffets and all this food.

We have our fair share of ramadan bazaar here in Miri but I really miss those in KL. I have yet to find nasi kerabu which I have been craving for, found one yesterday but I was certain that the seller was not from West Malaysia and her Nasi Kerabu looked kinda funny. There was this stall claiming to be selling authentic kuching kolok mi, but it did not look like kuching kolok mi, at all.

Today decided to go to a buffet. I chose to go to Parkcity hotel Miri, just because I have never tried it. We had the Dynasty hotel buffet last year, it was cheap and decent. Marriott was RM85.... unlike in KL, if u pay 85 here u dunno what u gonna get, for me unless lobster is in the menu I will think twice.

Parkcity buffet was dissapointing. It is cheap at 32++, almost the same price as Dynasty hotel but Dynasty have so much more variety. It definitely did not look like a feast. Well when u pay peanuts u get peanuts.

There was seafood with a barbecue station near the pool area. I did not have any fishy aftertaste, but it is not necessarily a good thing because the prawns and squids are tasteless and rubbery. Bad seafood is usually fishy, but in this case they are tasteless. I have had "farm" prawns... and they are not as tasty as sea prawns and leave weird aftertaste. I suspect they use farm prawns, but one thing for sure the flavors of the sea are all sucked out of all the shellfish and fishes on display today.

Dessert was nothing much... just some sponge cake and fruits.

What a dissapointment... should have gone to the Dynasty buffet.

On the wonderful city of Miri

I am still suffering from backpain and looking to short cut my way through everything. This evening that meant going to the infamous Thai restaurant in Lutong Baru, 5 minutes away from office, to tapau dinner.

Since its not even 6 and I was tapau-ing dinner, no customers in sight. This place is infamous for making customers wait till the cows come home. One time I had lunch there and had to wait 1 hour plus.

And there are only like 5 tables for sit-in customers. Half of the total space occupied by the kitchen at the back, and half of whats left is occupied by a huge chiller and 2 huge stations in front of the restaurant complete with Thai wood carving, ornaments and what not. They have a whole load of stuff in the chiller like frozen green curry paste, tomyam paste etc. Its one of those type that have glass doors you can see through. And the two huge "stations" or stalls, thats for packaged snacks like potato chips, spicy nuts and a stack of menu, they have like 10 books of menu.

So I stopped by earlier, flipped through the 20 page menu, at least, looking for dinner. It is thoughtful of them to include pictures of the dishes because some of them have long and exotic names; so much easier to just point to the picture and say "I want this".

So I ordered spicy fried rice with fried egg, of the seafood variation. So I reached home, vigorously unpacking the dinner. In the polystyrene is the plain white rice with fried egg, sunny side up, on top. Separated in another plastic bag is the lauk, some sort of Thai style stir fried prawn and squid. It was actually quite delicious. LOLOLOL.

Why am I not surprised?

It is reported in the star that the Bakun dam developers are planning to burn an area roughly the size of Singapore (!!) to clear that area from debris before they flood the reservoir.

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/8/17/nation/4532291&sec=nation

It is mentioned that there is no burning permit (yes... open burning is still legal in Sarawak as long as you get the permit) applied YET for this. I do not think anyone in the right frame of mind would apply, let alone approve of a permit to burn an area the size of Singapore.... thats just MADNESS.

Where are the tree huggers, environmentalists, greenpeace et etc....

It is raining

I think they are doing cloud seeding here in Miri. It was drizzling earlier today for about 5 minutes. Obviously that didnt help the haze situation at all. But it was really dark with storm clouds everywhere... probably thunderstorm elsewhere or intended to target the hotspots ie near brunei border where it was reported that controlling the peatfires is a struggle. Now that would be impressive.

Its 11pm and its drizzling again... hopefully its a thunderstom at the border area and tomorrow I will wake up to smoke-free air and sunshine. It has got to the point that it is so bad that the air literally smells like smoke. The fires are not too far away... about 1 hour's drive.

Open burning is not banned in Sarawak. Apparently people can apply for open burning permit. I dont know the details but that just do not make sense. To my knowledge this is still in effect? And open burning is banned, at least in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah I am not sure.

Anyways... open burning is still legal in Sarawak. Most if not all of the hotspots are in the Miri division.

This evening, I was home from work and went to my backyard. That is my routine now, go home, go thru kitchen to the backyard and go see my backyard fence. About a month ago someone disentangle the chainlink and made a huge hole. Neighbours saw secondary school kids hanging around in the backlane. Sometimes i feel like I should get a gun... it seems easier. When my house got broken into it took them almost 2 hours to find my house. Sometimes I can have compassion for the Americans.

Went to the backyard and saw one of them neighbours burning stuff in his backyard. Unbelievable.

I could not be bothered... this place just sucks.

this is so weird

Don't know what happened.... but somehow I kind of forgot that I had a blog. Having no internet at home has got to have something to do with it. Well I remembered just now and logged in for the first time since like chinese new year. The message box is gone.... the banner gone. Heck I have no idea how i got to customize the original homepage... where did I put the banner? It has got to be hosted somewhere... I kind of looked at the codes for like 2 minutes and just couldn't be bothered.

Now I start to worry about declining cognitive ability, alzheimer and what not.... how the heck did I forgot i had a blog. Cant get over it. Gotta have coffee....

The banner is gone. The layout is practically gone. I created the banner using photoshop just after graduation, while hanging out in ann arbor doing nothing, waiting for the free ticket home. The layout is just html. Got to find time to customize the layout.

Man i like the banner... I consider it my "artwork". Since my old laptop got stolen... the banner together with loads of pics post US gone....

First entry of the year....

Chinese new year

It is more than a week after Chinese New Year and here in the Miri suburb of Senadin people are still playing firecrackers. On New Year’s Eve quarter to midnite, the firecracker supernova started and it lasted for at least 20 minutes, non-stop. Complete with fireworks, those BIG fireworks they usually have during big events like Independence Day. And those produce the cannon-explosion like sound, the loudest of all. Children, who couldn’t have possibly stayed asleep with all these things happening, went out to see the fireworks, parents tagging along. Senadin was like a war zone. I have never experienced anything like this….

The dinner

As per previous years, the office had the New Year dinner for the project team. We were in KL that time for the kickoff meeting and teambuilding…. So included in the agenda was the new year dinner. As usual it started with the tossing of the yee sang. I could see the sudden explosion of pure happiness and delight as people started to toss the vege-raw fish-crackers mixture as high as they could. Every year (and seemingly at another new company…) people are happy at a CNY dinner. What is with tossing food that make people so happy?

Easily amused

It is a given that as you age it gets harder to make yourself feel happy. I remember how happy the anticipation of getting on the plane made me when I was 10. Now I go to the movies and its getting harder to be entertained because I will be bothered by over acting, weird facial expressions, unrealistic plot, or stupid dialog. As Oprah would say, true happiness comes from within you, when you are at true peace with yourself, with God, etc etc and all those Dr Phil crap.

Slumdog Millionaire

Got a copy of this movie from Hafiz and probably had too high an expectation of it. This is like the ‘darling’ of critics now, dominating the oscar nomination, winning the golden globe best picture and basically capturing a lot of attention from moviegoers, perhaps helped by all the attention to Mumbai; where the film was set; when the terrorist attacks happened.

Five reasons why I think this movie is overrated:
1) Fairy tale. Guy from slum, got separated from pretty girl, wins Who Wants to be Millionaire, reunited with girl, girl likes guy… oh come on!
2) Poor justification. Guy can answer all those questions from his own life experiences. Very not believable.
3) Plain bad acting.
4) Sometimes Hindi, sometimes English, I got confused at times; whether the characters are actually speaking English or they were speaking English just to make it easier to the audience, when in fact they were communicating in Hindi. And then, they were actually speaking English, kids from slum speaking perfect English. How ridiculous is that?
5) There were many lines that bothered me, but this one I remember the most. This was when the older gangster brother talking to the hero, which goes something like this: “This is a city of 19 million people….”. I bet you that no one in any slum in Rio, Cape Town, Jakarta or any parts of the world would even care about that, let alone talk like that.