Shitty car...
Managed to snap this BMW 3-series while driving in KL (I've cropped it from a much wider shot):
The license plate reads 'TAH11'.
That's kinda like Malay for 'shit'. And I guess that's kinda cool... No?
21 June 2006
Weird dreams at night...
I've been having some very strange recurring dreams lately. Not that it's a problem, but it's kinda weird that it happens so frequently. Maybe one day I'll speak to a dream interpreter or fung shui expert. Maybe Lillian Too... And when she's not looking, I'll set her hair on fire. Hmmm...
Anyway, the dreams are:
1. All my teeth becoming loose / falling off.
2. One of my legs being much shorter than the other.
3. Being able to fly by simply lifting my feet off the ground.
4. Seeing my dead relatives alive and well.
5. Finding that I've not studied for an exam, only to realise that I'm not in school anymore - and finding it darn cool that I've realised it in the middle of a dream.
6. Having a real big urge to take an in-dream piss, unleashing a torrent of yellow rain in my dreams, only to wake up with a full bladder thinking, "My GOD!!! Luckily I didn't release in real life!!!"
7. Attempting to play some sport (usually basketball) only to find that I suddenly can't play.
8. Finding myself in a HUGE bathroom (more floor space than a football pitch), with many bath tubs, showers, places to crap and so on, usually with a ceiling that's over 30 feet high that gives the whole place a very nice airy atmosphere. Yes, I like to take baths.
And there you have it. If you can tell me what 4D numbers to buy from this information, please contact me. Thanks.
14 June 2006
Annoy your neighbour's dogs. And children too...
At this very moment in time, I've got a really wayang headache from listening to some ultra high-pitched sine wave audio samples. Thanks to this guy, of course.
Apparently, a female student in some other country heard about how some adults (read: old farts) can't hear audio frequencies at 16KHz and above. This student then decided to use a 16KHz sine wave audio sample as a ring tone, which is brilliant since she'd be able to hear her phone ring during lectures while her teachers won't.
Sure enough, Kit tried playing this 16KHz ring tone in front of all of us and most of the 'more experienced' people in the office couldn't hear it - even though it irritated the shit out of us younger people.
The human ear is supposedly able to hear frequencies between 20Hz (ultra low-pitch bass) and 20KHz (ultra high-pitch treble). This is also why audio CDs have a sampling rate of 44.1KHz, which results in a maximum attainable frequency of about 22KHz - just a bit higher than what humans can hear.
And so, we tried listening to various audio samples at the office to check our individual cut-off points at this website. 
Apparently, I'm able to hear stuff up to 18KHz. The other guys in the office could only hear up to 17KHz. So I guess that means I win... *yay!*
Try it out and tell me your frequency cut-off points! Do it now!!!
****
As a side note, you could burn an 18KHz or 19KHz audio sample onto a CD, drive up to a kindergarten and play it at full blast on your car stereo with the windows down. Imagine the extremely baffled look on the teachers' faces as their students go completely bonkers. *Insert evil laughter!!!*
13 June 2006
Why haven't I thought about it before?
Vol. 1
Been posing this question to various friends over the past couple of days:
- Why hasn't anybody invented powdered instant beer?
You know, like instant coffee? So we could all nip to the water cooler after hours and get ourselves completely pissed?
After all, I don't think carbonation is a problem, since you can do the same with vitamin-C soluble capsules and Eno. As far as flavour is concerned, if they can make Maggi taste like chicken, I'm sure some genius out there can create artificial beer-flavoured stuff too! As for alcohol, I'm sure there must be some sort of chemical reaction that hasn't been attempted yet between cow dung and hydrochloric acid. Or something else.
The reprecussions of such an invention would be incredible - it would completely negate the purpose of beer coolers, ice boxes and portable fridges! All you need to do is hop over to some kedai kopi / petrol station, buy chilled water, mix and drink up.
And if you going camping or fishing, you can carry a whole 2kg sack of it and it'll last you for a whole month.
-----
Ok, I'm done.
09 June 2006
Another late Friday night in the office...
Ah well... haven't updated in a while so i thought I might as well.
It's 2 hours till kickoff in Germany 2006, and we're eagerly awaiting it (no, I'm not alone here - apparently none of us here have social lives to speak of).
Lot's happened in the past week. Jun Kit and Mei Hoon got registered (*yay!*), my youngest sis turned 16 (*yay!* *yay!*) and I had the runs (bloody teh ais... -_-). Actually, I still have the runs.
It's a bit depressing - all my friends are either married or dating someone at the moment. Or engaged. Or just having a blast at some club, no doubt surrounded by hoards of scantily clad women. Mmmm...
Come to think of it, what on earth am I doing here?
World Cup fever FWWWOOOOOoooo...!!!
01 June 2006
Shattered slumber
Thought I could have had a quiet, early nite tonight.
After dinner I watched some videos, did a bit of reading, took a shower, brushed my teeth and went to bed at about 10pm. Ahhh... how nice.
But then, a good friend decided to call about 30 minutes later and said, "Ah Chong, arr...? Come let's go get a beer."
"Dude, I'm sleeping...," I grumbled
"Oh, sorry sorry. So early wan arr, you?" he said.
"Sorrylah, next time. I had a long day."
"Ok, next time lah."
"Ok?"
"Ok! Ok!"
"...Ok. See you some other time lah."
"Oklah, goodnight."
"It's oklah."
"Ok."
So I went to back to bed - only to find that I was now wide awake. And that I really wanted a beer. And so I called Aloy back and went with him and another friend to the pub.
Which is why I'm writing this blog entry at 2:46am.
I could've been asleep for almost 5 hours by now... But at least I had a nice drink and nice company.
*Grumble! Grumble!*
The point I'm trying to make here is that when, erm... Yes, that's right.
ZZZzzzzz...
29 May 2006
Blast from the past
Been moping around the house all weekend and decided to look at all the random stuff I've collected on my computers over the past few years. Ahh... the nostalgia.
Came across a whole bunch of old photographs. These are all from a trip I made to Ireland in 2000 while I was still studying in the UK. They were all taken with my old Canon AE-1 film camera and scanned on someone's then state-of-the-art flatbed scanner.
No, these pics aren't really anything to shout about. I have been very much into photography for most of my life but I only really started to get serious when digital cameras popped up.
What's particularly sad is that most of the 'creative' pictures I've taken while using film were rubbish, thanks to my rather poor understanding of dynamic range and lighting back then.
In the past four years since I first picked up a digital camera, I've found my technique and knowledge has improved by leaps and bounds. All because I've been able to experiment without having to waste loads of film.
Now the funny thing is, I'm suddenly finding it quite tempting to go out and shoot in film one of these days - just for the sheer hell of it and to see if I can get the sort of results I'm getting these days with digital photography. I wonder if the old AE-1 still works...
26 May 2006
My new Ferrari
Been feeling a rather depressed lately so I bought a little toy to cheer myself up:
For the benefit of the not-so-geeky, the Bit Charg-G is Tomy's line of ultra small remote control cars. It's fully functional, with forward/reverse and left/right controls.
This one is an officially licensed Ferrari product, based on a Ferrari F40 (arguably the most kick-ass prancing horse ever).
It's REALLY small, which makes it rather cool. After charging it on the remote for about 45 seconds, it'll run for about 2 minutes before running out of juice. And it's pretty fast - a dining table isn't big enough to play it on.
It's only RM49.90 in Toys 'R' Us, so... buy buy buy BUY!!!
21 May 2006
Run... RUN!!!
Went for a jog today at the park in Taman Tun. Haven't done so in nearly 2 years. The place looks exactly the same as when I last saw it, only that there are even more people now and that the trees littered around the jogging track have grown quite big.
Loved the smell of fresh Sunday afternoon air too. It drizzled a bit, but the upshot of it was that a rainbow appeared as the sun set. Veeeery nice.
And no, I didn't carry my camera.
In any case, jogging in a public park is MUCH better than running on some treadmill in a gym with a 21-inch TV stuck to your face showing some scantily clad women waving their very pert backsides at you in some music video on Channel V.
...
Erm, actually the treadmill doesn't sound too bad, does it?
20 May 2006
This is Japan...
Ah, Tokyo. Unlike my previous trip to Japan, I actually had a day to walk around on my own this time.
Basically I visited a shrine, went shopping for camera stuff at Shinjuku, ate some cheap udon, returned to the hotel, went to another shrine, went back to Shinjuku for more shopping and ate more cheap udon (at the same restaurant, no less).
Yes, it was a blast. Well, sort of. The problem was that it was raining every day I was there - and the sky was always white/dark gray, which meant it was hard to get some nice photographs. Plus, it's really hard holding an umbrella in the rain while trying to operate a Nikon D70.
Here are some pictures to tell the tale (in chronological order, of course).
Started off the day at the Meiji Shrine with some Singaporean journalists. Unfortunately, I was the "tour guide" and got everyone to get off on the wrong station (which was about 5km away). Eventually we got to this gate (via taxi), which is about half a km to the shrine itself...
After that, I said goodbye to the Singaporean journalists and PR lady (since they had to fly home early) and I headed for Shinjuku (otherwise known as "that place in Tokyo where you buy cameras... and Japanese porn")
I made it a point to find a whole bunch of camera accessories that I couldn't find in Malaysia. Not that they're expensive or anything - they're just not imported into the country. Plus, it's kinda like an RPG, wandering around the labyrinth of stores and alleys of Shinjuku looking for obscure stuff for my camera.
I tried this place first:
- Note: And just to clear up some confusion, some major electronics chains in Japan tend to have names ending with the word 'Camera' even though they sell other stuff like PCs, videogames, toys, televisions, home appliances and so on.
Here, I got myself a new ultra-portable tripod (you can never have too many tripods...):
I also got myself a Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu HG version, but more on that later... ^_^
Unfortunately, the camera section in Bic Camera wasn't well stocked. Or rather, it's probably better stocked than all of the camera shops in Malaysia put together (they've even got equipment for developing your own film!). I mean, they had an entire BUCKET of Nikon DK-21m magnifying eyepieces for the Nikon D70 (something which took two months to arrive when ordered from Nikon Malaysia).
But they haven't got certain harder-to-get accessories, such as colour gels for my flash (if you don't know what a colour gel is, you probably don't need one).
For obscure stuff like that, I had to go here:
Unlike Bic Camera (which is housed in a huge department store), the Shinjuku outlet of Yodobashi Camera is made up of several shoplots joined together, spanning entire blocks and going up about six storeys high. This is quite confusing as, when you're walking around the alleys, you'll see several stores marked "Yodobashi Camera' and all of them seem to sell the same stuff.
However, the building pictured here is their specialty camera 'section'. The first floor has mostly cheap pocket cameras, the second floor mostly DSLRs (and a huge array of lenses and - *yes!* - colour gels and filters), the third floor with expensive medium-format cameras and lighting equipment, the fourth floor just tripods and other accessories and the fifth floor is just for bags. I think there was another floor somewhere in the middle that specialises in film, but I can't remember... -_-
They sell really cool stuff here, such as a portable camouflaged tent that's tall enough to house a tripod, a camera, a big zoom lens and a photographer in it (it's meant for nature photography, apparently).
Here, I got some diffusers for my flash, the colour gels and some neat plastic-bag case that lets me use my D70 in the rain. Yodobashi Camera ROCKS! (Note, you might remember me mentioning something about the Osaka outlet during my previous visit to Japan).
After that, it was about 2:30pm and time for lunch:
And then, I had to rush back to the hotel to drop off my things and take orders for more Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu HG version toys from certain people at home. (More on this later... ^_^):
And then, I went off to the highly controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Yup, this is the one which honours some of Japan's WWII class-A war criminals.
It's also the one that Japanese PM Koizumi's been visiting annually - much to the dismay of China, which is apparently still officially bitter about the Japanese invasion of World War 2 more than 60 years ago. On a rather ironic note, they seem to have officially forgotten about Tiananmen Square 1989.
Politics aside, the first thing you'll notice about Yasukuni is that there aren't any tourists there. There are no signs in English leading to the place either (you can walk right past it and not know what it is). There's a supposedly fantastic war museum next to the shrine but I missed it - it closed at 5:30pm and I had only arrived 10 minutes later.
Having had my fill of history and old wooden buildings, I headed back to Shinjuku to buy more Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu HG Version toys.
HG, of course, stands for "Hard Gay"
We've been watching this guy's comedy show (subtitled) in the office recently. We like. A lot.
And this is a Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu HG version:
If you're not entirely sure who Hard Gay is and why I'm so enamoured by some silly child's toy, take a look at the videos below.
Click on the links below for the Hard Gay TOMY videos:
FWOOOOoooo...!!!
After that, it was back to the hotel and into bed. After a nice hot bath, of course.
And that was my day out in Tokyo. Really wished I had more time. I like Tokyo. It's mad.
10 May 2006
It's official: Munich is a boring place
This is my second trip to Munich, Germany. It's a really boring place. For example:
In truth, it's a lot nicer during the Oktoberfest. Munich: city of boredom and great beer.
07 May 2006
Italian cars, bungee cord and tow trucks...
For a while, my Fiat Multipla sort of forgotten that it’s an Italian car, and remained problem free* since the start of 2006 (the longest problem-free stretch ever).
- * Note: If you have an Italian car, your expectations on what constitutes a ‘problem’ will eventually sink. Rattles and squeaks? No problem. Faulty electrical wiring on headlamps? It’s fine. Melting plastic fittings on dashboard? No worries. Shagged shock absorbers? I’ll live with it. Leaking sunroof? Well, a little water never hurt anyone. As long as I can start the engine and proceed from point-A to some other place within 500 metres of point-B, there’s no problem.
A couple of nights ago, the Multipla finally came to its senses and became it’s old self again. Which meant I had a problem.
After a long day at work, which was the end of a bloody long week, I stumbled out of the office at 1AM and into my car, turned the key and heard a loud “CRUNCH!!!”.
Engines normally go “Vroom…!” (Or “BRAMmmm! Bum bum bum bum bum…!” if it’s an Alfa Romeo).
“CRUNCH!!!” followed by “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” should only happen during breakfast.
The battery sure-as-hell wasn’t dead since I’ve just changed it and I don’t think electronics make bone-snapping sounds so something must’ve broke in the engine. It was late, I was completely knackered, I was bloody hungry and everyone I knew was probably sleeping by then so I walked home (I can now confirm that the office is only a five-minute walk from my house).
And cooked some Shin Ramyun, which I promptly ate. Yum.
The next morning, the scale of my problem started to become more apparent with each sip of Brand’s Essence of Chicken (some Chinese placebo, if you’re wondering).
My car was parked in a basement car park. It needs to be towed to a workshop.
Tow trucks don’t fit in basement car parks – they’re too tall.
I called AAM (the Automobile Association of Malaysia) and they sent over a mechanic to see if he could fix my car on the spot. He couldn’t.
The problem was that the little gear that connects the camshaft to the timing belt broke! It’s a shame that I didn’t take a picture of it. You see, normally the timing belt would break first (since it’s made of rubber). The reason this happened is that, unlike other car manufacturers who’d have a solid metal gear, the one on the Multipla's diesel engine looks like a sport rim, hollowed out with thin spokes. Ah…
At least it looked nicer than a solid wheel. Gotta love those passionate Italians…
The dude from AAM told me that my car couldn’t be fixed on the spot (which I already knew), that a tow truck wouldn’t be able to come down to the car park (which I also already knew) and that the AAM only had one pickup truck with a tow hook that could pull me out (which surprised me, quite frankly).
He said that I’d have to wait until the truck was available, which may take a few hours.
“A FEW HOURS?”
Oh dear… I had originally woken up at 7am so that I could get the Multipla to the FIAT service centre by 1pm – before it closes on Saturday. It was now about 10:00am, which wasn’t good.
Thankfully, I happened to know someone else with a pickup truck and a long cord for pulling other cars:
Yup, Paul Si came to the rescue in his Ford Everest and brought along one of those elastic cords used to pull other 4x4s out of a sticky situation.
“It’s a Saturday morning… So I thought ‘What the hell, I’ll give it a try…’”, he said.
First, we tied the two vehicles together at their tow hooks.
After pulling the Multipla out of its parking spot, we had to connect the cord to the front so I could steer it. However, Paul’s Everest only has a tow hook at the front, so he had to reverse all the way out of the basement.
Now that the car was at surface level, I called AAM to tell them that I had already pulled the car out of the basement car park and didn't need their pickup truck. They said "Ok!" and that they'll send a towtruck in about an HOUR. It was about 11:45am, now.
...
Right.
So I had lunch with Paul and after wishing him many thanks, he went off to continue the rest of his Saturday. Meanwhile, I waited. And waited. At about 1:30pm, there still wasn't any sign of the AAM tow truck. "Fine... I guess I could leave the car at the service centre over the weekend," I thought.
I gave the AAM office a call to see how my tow truck was doing and, for some reason, they seemed completely surprised. Apparently, someone said that my problem "...had already been settled!"
WHAT???
So why the hell did they say they were sending a tow truck? Gee... thanks for wasting my time. The lady at the other end of the phone told me to contact the tow truck, and she gave me his number but I said, "NO! Why the hell should I call YOUR tow truck? Can't you call him yourself???"
She grumbled and spurted a few noises which vaguely resembled a "yes".
- "How long?" I asked.
"About an hour" she said.
...
Great.
I waited till about 2pm and received a phone call from one of the AAM's staff. He said:
- "I apologise for the delay, sir. We're still trying to get a pick-up truck to pull your car out of the basement carpark. You see, a tow truck won't fit and..."
"BUT I'VE ALREADY PULLED MY CAR OUT OF THE BASEMENT!!!" I said in a very loud but calm manner.
"Eh? You did?" he asked.
"YES! I got a friend to help me, and I've already told your staff... TWICE!"
"Erm... ok, I'll send the tow truck, then"
"How long will it take?"
"Erm... about an hour"
So I had some tea. And some Coca-Cola. And more tea. And then I looked at my watch and it was already pointing at 3:20pm. No tow truck in sight, I called the AAM again.
- "Hi, I've called about three or four times earlier - since 9:30 this morning - and my car still hasn't been towed," I said.
"Oh, that case. The car in a basement car park?" replied the operator.
"No, it's already at ground level," I said again.
"Is it?" he asked.
"Yes. For heaven's sake can you send me a bloody tow truck."
"Sure... but it'll be about an hour."
"Thank you."
Eventually,the tow truck appeared at about 3:45pm (which was the first time the AAM had ever come earlier than they'd said they would).
Now, I guess it's their way of making up for their blunders all day, but it was kinda cool that AAM sent the biggest bloody tow truck they had in their arsenal. It wasn't so much a tow truck than a lorry which you could put your car on top of. Cool.
Finally, at about 4:30pm, we arrived at the Fiat service centre in Jalan Hulu Klang.
I'll have to go to the centre to sort it all out tomorrow morning, since the staff had already gone home that day.
Malaysia BOLEH!!!
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