Direction to the Pot Luck House Warming

Address of my apartment:
19, Blok F, Tingkat 3A(essentially 4th floor.... its complicated),
Arena Green Apt, Jln 1/155A Bukit Jalil
57000 KL

As shown in attached map below, the apartment should be very easy to locate, its directly opposite the stadium nasional, just down the road from Technology Park entrance.... if u see apt blocks in front of stadium.... thats the one. There are like around 6 blocks of apt.... with an orange/yellowish color scheme.

Directions:

From Seremban H'way/Bulatan lumba kuda: Go straight to Tech Park, Go up the ramp which leads to tech park, take a right turn (towards stadium).... my apt will be on your left.

From PJ: Various ways.... you can either use kesas or fed-seremban hway or puchong bypass(via LDP sunway toll).... very hard to explain lah.... i think its easy.... just know where technology park is.... and my apt is down the road from tech park entrance, and opposite stadium....


Map of my apt 

Pot Luck Event

Pot Luck is on this Saturday,24/12/05 at my apartment, 2 pm. Confirmed people coming from elly's emel):

Elly
Hafiz
Jirah
Hakam
Matde
Chen

Everyone is invited... so feel free to invite anyone else....

PS2 aku dah modified.... tak sure leh main vcd ke tak.... For pot luck.... ill be providing drinks or ice cream and paper plates/plastic utensils....

Menara tan n tan here we come.....

My sister and my brother in law is coming this weekend.... I think im gonna spend most of the weekend with them.... the potluck thing i was initiating would have to be cancelled I guess....

Had my first ever futsal session just now.... and I think I managed to not make a fool out of myself. I am not blessed with athletic abilities.... the only sport that I can play decently is badminton.... and football is the worst. i have tried staying away from futsal at Komag.... now since other people are so gung ho about futsal... might as well join for the sake of getting together. As usual... it came to a point where I became the keeper.... when you become the keeper.... most prob ur the most useless member of the team..... looking at the brighter side.... i am so positive these days its not funny...I burned some calories. It has been months since I had any form of physical activities. I know tomorrow my whole body will be aching....

Next three weeks... we will have training at menara tan n tan. 1 more day of nothingness at the office, to go.... For the past 2 weeks at the office, I have not doing much... read all the blue prints, and tried all the coffee already.... it is time for free food again....

King Kong

It is very easy to dismiss the new King Kong as another "Godzilla" (hmmm... the trailer also looks kind of cheap and too cartoonish), but the difference here is Peter Jackson. He made 3 top grossing academy award winning movies that became instant classics.... hence I have faith in him.

So far... it has received raving reviews.... CNN.com calls it "an Instant Classic" and "In a class of its own". AFI listed it as one of the top 10 movies of the year.... and tomatometer gives it a 86% freshness rating, which is good enough.... I am definitely sure this 3-hour epic (yes 3 hours..!) is well worth 11 bucks!

Got my PS2 modified already.... the thing has become useful again.... been playing WE9. Its too early to say how good the game is, but one thing for sure, it is better than WE8.....

Jom lepak rumah aku this weekend.... have a pot luck or something. We got a fridge already... food is welcome..... anyone?

The constant gardener

Someone mentioned about wanting to watch "The Constant Gardener".... I thought no one would want to watch something with that as the title.... the title is just wrong. But actually, to my surprise the movie is actually really good... First of all it does not concern gardening.... its mainly about a group of people investigating the wrong doings of drug/pharmaceutical companies in Africa... and how Africans are used as guinea pigs and discriminated... whilst those companies continue to make huge profits.... I don’t know if this is what happening right now in Africa.... But it is believeable indeed.... and this brings me to this issue of whether it is right for me to work at a tobacco company.... This movie could be an eye opener to some.... tobacco is controversial, but at the same time, other mnc’s are no angels either.....

And I am really looking forward to watching this new soon to be released movie titled "Syriana".... its supposed to be about oil companies doing all the wrong things to make huge profits....

Narnia was such a dissapointmnt for me... Maybe it was me expecting too much of it. But it was still entertaining though... though more suitable for children. There was not a single drop of blood in the movie.

Free wireless internet??? .... hmmm

I am connected to some netgear wireless signal.... dunno from where, but it works and I am connected to the net...!!.... wireless free ke apa.....

Last weekend went back home for my sister's wedding. what wonderful event that was.... albeit a bit kelam kabut. Not too bad for us first timers. But the tok kadi was unbelievable. He was like one hour late, and everyone had to wait for him...... But nothing was gonna spoil no one's mood that day. The akad nikah on saturday was kelam kabut due to tok kadi, while on sunday the kenduri itself was mayhem bcause there were too many ppl and the catering ppl were so slow like theres no tomorrow.... our neighbor was kind enuf to open their house and let some of our guests in.....

My job was mainly as the driver of the pengantin car, penyambut tetamu and to give out bunga telur..... I nearly lost my temper with those catering ppl.... guests waiting for tables to be cleared up, and there they were sitting around...

I think my sister looked really beautiful that day.... and apart from the tok kadi and catering everything went well.... One thing I learned from this, apart from what happens on a wedding day is that "bridal consultancy"(or more like bridal shop) is one freaking good business!!!

Personalize the experience.... managing expectations.....

Been attending trainings for the past 3 weeks or so.... but the most interesting for me was the business consultancy course. I never knew such a course can be so interesting. That was a really good course. But it made me worry abit. The course somewhat gave me the idea that consultancy needs so much communication and salesman skill.... and ass kissing. I dont have those talents, nor am I eager to posess such talents.... well just see what happens with this new job.

I have been assigned to a project team.... but training is still on.... until middle of jan. Im just thankful that I am not with teams going to freaking mozambique or zimbabwe and stuff like that.....

The most pleasing thing about this job is that I am surrounded by 44 people of the same age group.... that makes such a big difference. It feels more like college than work.... I have worked with old people.... and it was not easy at all.

I am back

Nope, this blog is not dead... yet....

Finally I am online after like a week+..... feel so disconnected.....

Had a wonderful raya holiday, after 4 years abroad.... reality kicked me when the takbir was on the surau loudspeaker.... what a good and wholesome feeling it created. Food was excellent.... gained a couple kilos along the way. Visited so many people... what a holiday.

In KL right now, still at my uncle's place. Should have moved to my apartment last night.... but there was still no electricity. Damn useless agent and owner... both blur cam cipan.

But I still want the apartment.... so I give them until Friday to settle everything. 750 per month at arena green bukit jalil, I am sharing it with lat fyi..... 2 rooms, semi furnished, with brand new nice furniture.... the furnitures are like 3 times better than those at home... Lol..... I feel like I cannot let this one go......

Oficially joined BAT GSD on the 14th... undergoing training for 2 months, first 2 weeks at parkroyal.... everyday fine dining... Lol.... add that with those raya rendang and kari... omg it is looking not good for my weight.....

on why Monday is a good day

I always go to this shop for whatever photo errand needed to be done..... and I have just found out that they do digital enhancement to pictures. For my case, passport sized photo..... maybe I have repeatedly gone to this place because those pictures looked good.... they do the sort of things done to magazine covers and stuff like that. But on this latest occasion, this digital enhancement thing made me look like I was wearing makeup and lipstick..... way too much "brush up" and pimple deleting....

I have one more exit interview to go, and this is the official one with the MD and hr.... I have talked to the manager and director. I am trying to avoid HR people.... whenever I bump into them theyre like "why the @#@ are u resigning? Now I need to dig out those resumes again and find a replacement. What the hell is wrong with you?" I also need to clarify that I have no problem with anyone.... for some reason it is easy for people to think that there is some "rasa tak puas hati"......

Why does a resignation result in a backlash?.... people get fired, people get retrenched... promoted and demoted.... people come and go.

I am on annual leave tomorrow.... is it time for NFL action? Hopefully there is a game tomorrow morning....

apartment to let.. anyone?

Greetings all,

I am looking for an apartment around the Bukit Jalil area.... preferably near an LRT station and/or near the Technology Park Malaysia.... anyone got tips or recommendation... kindly let me know.

Thank you and best regards.

Blue Monday...

Anxious about tomorrow.... I didnt quite hand in my resignation notice to my supervisor in person.... he was in a meeting last Friday.... so just left it on his desk and drop him an email. He usually comes down to our office in the mornings. He should be no problem, has always been diplomatic and open, but I am not sure about the director.... hopefully there will be no exit interview or anything like that....

It feels good, so it cannot be the wrong decision. Next two week will be interesting, I am not that involved, but still there are some handover to do.... I wonder who will be in charge of my "son"... the facility monitoring system project. quite relieved to know that I will be dealing with those contractors no more.... quite unbelievable people. Just last week, a 50K "engineering and project management charge" quotation sent to me.... very2 shocking and ridiculous. I am more willing to pay like 50 ringgit for that kind of work.

Djibril Cisse scored the decisisve goal vs Blackburn... hopefully this will get him going and rediscover his scoring habit. He finally started a game and lasted the whole game.... in my opinion, he was improving as the game went on, and the climax was the goal. Liverpool need him to hit top form..... I think he will be important for Liverpool.

Cigarrettes anyone?

BAT has offered me a job. I think I will accept it. I have no doubt about this apart from the fact that they sell tobacco products. But then again, like the saying of the wise men lol... petroleum companies, or other companies don't do that good a deed to the world anyway. Its all about profit.

Hopefully I will not mess up again. I will go into the realm of SAP, six sigma and crap like that, and leave mechanical engineering. I am pretty sure I am going into the right direction. Anyone know about BAT GSD's office in Technology Park? (The one in PJ is BAT, whereas BAT GSD is a sister company in Bukit Jalil). Hopefully the place is beautiful with shiny glass wall and steel structures... lol.... and not like in some shophouse. Then after this, theres the not so fun part of tendering resignation(omg again), figuring out stuff like house, car, bills......

"Helena" by My chemical Romance, "All that I could...." by the Killers and "Your Beautiful" by James Blunt. My "troika" of fantastic tracks of the year. Can't get enough of these good stuff.

"El Bob"

There is no greater gift than the love of a cat...........Charles Dickens

You know my female cat that was going to be sterilised.... well she got flu that day and the vet's opinion was shes too weak for the procedure. We didnt get a second opinion, and she never got sterilised at all. And, yeah, she got pregnant again recently , and delivered 4 more kittens, and theyre not ugly, and they are all white; I would prefer more colours.

Her previous delivery produced 4 freaking ugly kittens; we gave 3 of them away(banyak sangat) and kept one. I thought of naming the kitten "Yoda" back then, because it was ugly and cute (almost) at the same time. It has got black fur with large white spots, much like the normal local tabby cat. "Yoda" was rejected, guess what my family call the cat: "Bob". Lol.... tribute to bob.

The Deluxe Containers

The rumour is that production people will displace us Facility Department people, yet again. This time, rumour has it that Facility Department will move into the so-called "deluxe containers", to be placed next to the main building. We all just laughed it off, laugh with a hint of sadness and despair, but I think its not that funny. We are 2nd class workers indeed. And this week, rumour has transformed into cad drawings. And just last week, we were supposed to have spanking new cubicles in a spanking newly renovated office...... all that dream down the drain.

I think that is the most feasible outcome. I think we will have "kontena" office. Space is running out, headcount increasing, building expansion on hold..... The Ironic part is, we ourselves are planning this, since we handle projects. Our motto seem to be "we must suffer to provide service to other people." The only thing that we can do is to look for the most luxurious containers, or the "deluxe containers", as the vendors say it. The only way out is if there is a safety issue....

Why Liverpool lost.....

1 Ramadan falls on oct. 5, Wednesday. So it was announced on tv, by the "penyimpan mohor besar...." It has been 4 years since my last penyimpan mohor experience.... it felt good indeed.

What can I say, the premership is turning into a 1 horse race. I predicted Liverpool to kick Chelsea's ass, a defeat that would see Chelsea lose 3 points, shatter their winning habit and give confidence to the usual suspects. It was bound to not happen...

Unfortunately, Liverpool have this player called Djimi Traore. Ive never liked him, I have written bad stuff about this guy. I wrote about him standing 6 feet tall, being outjumped by midget Fabio Cannavaro in Champs League quart final. He can do worse than that, as proven in last night's showdown.

I have no idea why he was playing. Heck, he should have never worn a Liverpool shirt, and the fact that Benitez wanted him to stay after last year's joke performance baffles me. I think Stephen Warnock was injured, but I would prefer Djibril Cisse playing at left back to Djimi Traore. By the way, Cisse is a good player and he is welcome at Anfield all the time.

Djimi Traore is a special player. He has this charisma. You look at his face and you think "omg dia ni mesti nak buat lawak". A quality he shares with players such as Mickael Silvestre, Philip Neville, Gary Neville(to a lesser extent), Jerzy Dudek..... you get the picture. Do not get me wrong, these players posess football talents. But the big problem is the membuat lawak part.

There is no way that Liverpool can match Chelsea if they do not rely on defence. However, defence only works if you dont commit mistakes, and after Traore's tackle, the floodgates opened. I dont know if Benitez changed tactics, but Liverpool attacked more after chelsea's goal. They should not have, and that's why they conceded 3 more.

Fantasy football

Lets play fantasy football: http://fantasygames.espnstar.com/football/football_index.do?operation=logoutuser_football

I have a team already, but I forgot about it and it was sort of neglected until they sent me an email as a reminder. So, my score is already screwed up. But this is still fun, playing team manager, though they give away prizes to top scorers. The astro pundits each have their own team.... and they have their own so called celebrity league. Surprise surprise... mr Paul Masefield is leading.

The other night, was clicking the remote away when stumbled upon a rerun of NY giants vs San diego chargers game, and that was my first american footbal game since I left ann arbor. Though didnt watch the whole thing, the giants were staging a comeback when I decided its running late and time to sleep. Also witnessed one awesome catch made by jeremy shockey.... omg what fabolous catch, and that reminded me of american football's greatness. But it is so sad to hear the wolverines are at 2-2 right now..... I mean sad but not shocking at the same time. For me, Braylon Edwards is to the wolverines as Theirry Henry is to Arsenal, and he left a humongous gap indeed.

Die Chelsea, die!

I think I have been very prudent with money since started working, because I value it more. But in college, I bought some useless things. On the top of the list is the sony discman that cost me like nearly 200 bucks. I cant believe I bought that crap, in freshman year. It is a quality product, but the problem is that its overpriced and I bought my ipod like a few months after I got the discman. So, never used the discman since. The motorola walkie-talkie is quite useless too. It is there on my desk collecting dust. I think I only used it like twice, when I called epol/jun to come over to my apartment to "winning". Yes, they bought the talkie also, but it was on 50% off, quite hard to resist.

But the other day, while strolling around in a bookshop, killing time, waiting to pickup my sister from school, I decided to buy a FHM. Wah, the stuff in the magazine would make anyone drool(this is open to interpretation). I think I have been so disconnected to the gadget world. I only knew ipod nano is out like today. I think my prudent spending is largely due to a disconnect to product marketing. I think I also have a watch fetish. Man, I wish I could have one of them tag heuers...

I predict chelsea's first loss tonight to Liverpool, the team that last beat them. A romantic prediction, isnt it? Another sleepless night it will be, and tomorrow morning I am off to KL for bats interview. Hopefully I can get some good sleep in flight. Anyways, the three favourites for the champs league in my opinion are chelsea, liverpool and juventus. Liverpool because they have that "mombok" aura(luck, european champs blood running in them, the kop and bla bla)... and the other two because they are simply good.

career path

If I can turn back time, I would do this whole career thing differently. If only I was more optimistic and patient, I would have waited for a good offer instead of jumping into an offer and not drag myself into this whole jobhopping mumbo jumbo mess. I wish that I had the guts to reject job offers. I envy people who get many job offers all in the same time, and have the luxury to pick the best choice.

I wish that I applied to companies that I actually want to work for, instead of mixing them up a bit. But thats a good strategy for me considering my CGPA, pawe lain citer lah. And the not so interesting offers came first.... I think I had no choice but to accept, because I was such a realist. And once I had actually accepted offers, things would get complicated when more interesting companies came calling.

Anyways, I think I need to get out of my current situation. I think the whole place is in a mess, my department is in a mess, and I do not want to drag myself into this mess. I want to escape from the problem, sort of. I dont know about other companies or factories, but here it is chaos. Every request from production to us in Facility dept. is urgent. When every request is urgent, there is chaos, and something is not right.

I am in charge of energy conservation, every week they want me to update. And yet, they dont even have sufficient data of all the facility equipment, or any kind of documentation, or any kind of facility monitoring system. Can you believe it.... such a huge plant with no facility monitoring system? All the facility equipment monitoring is done manually, because the monitoring system broke down like 3 years ago.

Sometimes, when these people ask me to give updates, I fee like telling them " are you freaking stupid.... we dont have data, we cant analyse the equipment's performance... how on earth can we improve them?".... but the bosses are NATO's... No Action Talk Only, and they only want results.

I need more annual leave

I think I am taking this BAT (british american tobacco) seriously. Although it would be really ironic if I do end up there. Me working for tobacco company, hmmm.... and family opinion so far are reduced to comments like "haa nak jual rokok kah".

I guess I will be going to KL again, for the next and final stage. A few more hundred bucks gone... just like that. The final interview format for bat is similar to that of shell.... proposal, case study, group discussion and final interview. Shell's was from 8 to 5. Bat's is from 1:30 pm to 7. Hmmm... I have no idea how they are gonna do this.... everything crammed together.

The position is not engineering related, which is interesting for me. (no engineering=interesting). It is also a trainee position, management trainee, though to be exact its called business technology associate. I have no idea what that is.

Anyway, I am looking for a trainee position, because I want to get proper training. I think I will be better off that way. Currently I am huffing and puffing, and there is no one giving me directions. Everyone including my supervisor is too busy, and no one is willing to help. I am treated like I am not new and it is frustrating. They give me projects and no directions, and I am held fully responsible. Due to my lack of experience, I have overlooked some fairly important things while executing work. My worst nightmare is that I would mess up critical things, and be removed from the project. Now that will be a blow to your self confidence and ego.

Boiling point

Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.

I just cannot stand dumb drivers. Dumb drivers are those who hog the fast lane, and think theres nothing wrong with it. Plenty of them in Kuching. They think they are safe drivers. But they are actually selfish and single minded, and dumb. There are 3 lanes, and they go driving 60 km/h in the fast lane. Maybe they are just dumb and actually dont know traffic law. Sometimes, I feel like stopping these people and give them a slap in the face. Worse are cibai drivers, and these people actually deserve a slap in the face. These are people who for some reason drive slowly in the fast lane, and when you are about to overtake them, they speed up. Just because they dont want people to pass them, because kiasuness and/or cibainess and/or dumbshitness.