Archive for September, 2005



13
Sep

-+= Movie Review : Dark Water =+-

This post was due on September 12, 2005

The movie is based on the same name novel by author Koji Suzuki and the original movie was directed by Hideo Nakata. The story is about a mother, whom is wounded and traumatized by a bitter custody dispute, moved to a run-down apartment building with the daughter due to the low rent.

After moving in, weird things started to happen. First, the ceiling in the bedroom started to leak, and sometimes they heard running on the upper floor. Well, the spooky part is that the room upstairs has been vacant for months. Mysteries finally unsolved itself and the ghost has been trying to send a message to the mother and daughter.

Finally, the director added some twist into the story and I am not going to give you the spoiler. Go watch it yourself to find out more!

Basically, this Hollywood produced ghost story based on Japanese original clearly has more budget, and it has good actors. The sound effect alone is worth the money. But viewer will be disappointed with the thriller-effect. The Japanese version is spookier than the Hollywood Dark Water, but at least the Hollywood version didn’t turn out to be another The Ring nor The Grudge. Personally, I’d give it a 3 stars.

Genre: Drama / Thriller
Tagline: Some mysteries were never meant to be solved.
Plot Outline: A mother and daughter, still wounded from a bitter custody dispute, hole up in a run-down apartment building. Adding further drama to their plight, they are targeted by the ghost of former resident. (view trailer)
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Ariel Gade

12
Sep

::: quick update :::

Ok. Just a quick update. More to come later when I have time to write. Today there’s a meeting, from 9am until 6pm, and this will continue for 2 days! Gosh, how I wish that I am not in the attendance list.

During the weekend, I went to watch Dark Water (more to it later), and I have ordered an iPod Nano! The unit will arrive this week and I just can’t wait to get my hands on it! (I am not sure when will it arrive at my doorstep, but I just can’t wait! And more details to come later as well!)

09
Sep

::: Rubbish :::

Well, it’s Friday and all the seniors have gone back, due to sickness and another one is on leave. So I am just sitting here, bored like hell. While surfing on the web, I came across my very own website, which I abandoned years ago, but surprisingly, it was still on the net even tho I haven’t paid for the domain name for like 5 years. Anyhow, I was reading back on the stuff I have done, and saw some of the fake “news report” I made years back. It was nothing, just saw some pictures and I just created some stories out of it. Here are some of it.

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10.08.2001
Up to date, thousands of workers have been laid off by various tech companies, like Hewlett-Packard [Website], Intel [Website], Yahoo! [Website] and others. After those former employees have been laid off, they gathered together and protested on the main street of Washington D.C., to show that they were unsatisfied by lack of government help in order to help them avoid being laid.
These angry protesters hold signs saying that they have been unfairly treated. An individual, whom name preferred not to be mentioned, said that at first he was so excited working for big company because they are big, hot, hard, strong , steamy, and well-known around the world. But after few years, the company was beginning to show signs of weakness and finally, he got laid.
Spokerpersons from Intel, Yahoo!, and Hewlett-Packard all remain pretty silent regarding the decisions to lay off the workers. Mrs. Henderson, spokeperson from Intel, said, “Intel is big, strong, hard, and hot. We can lay anyone we want and there is nothing they can do about it. Obviously they think it is unfair to them, but they never considered the fact that they were at least being laid.”
Mr. Lee, former employee of Yahoo! said that it was a bad laid. “Unsatisfied” was the word used by Mr. Lee to describe the feeling of being laid. He said, “You may imagine that the lay is good since Yahoo! is big, strong, and hard. But that’s not true. I totally feel unsatisfied. It was like a job half-done, and it was not even close to reach the point-of-no-return.”
So far there were about 20,000 employees being laid off by technology companies, except the software giant Microsoft [Website]. A spokeperson told us in a conference that “as you may see, we are micro and soft, so we can’t lay anyone we like or want, and our employees are very unsatisfied. But we are working hard on this. Time will tell.”
10.06.2001
Dr. Federick Simpson, professor of University of New York, made a press release today to reveal the mysteries behind the Easter Bunny. In his opening statement, he said, “4 years ago during Easter, my 3-year-old asked me about the Easter Bunny. He wanted to know why bunny lays eggs while they are mammals. I was totally baffled because I couldn’t answer him such a simple question. I clearly had disappointed my son. So I set off to investigate further on this mystery of Easter Bunny.”
He organized a 3,000 member search team which includes the FBI, CIA, Secret Securities and other members. His quest was funded by the government because apparently the government wants to know the truth about the secret of Easter Bunny as well.
After spending 4 years on the search of the true mystery behind the Easter Bunny, he finally found the truth near a small town in Mississippi area. He was driving through a small town when his assistant, Ms. Stephanie Scarpeta, saw something and stopped Dr. Federick Simpson.
Instantly, Dr. Federick Simpson stopped the car, took out his camera, and took the picture which will later be proved as the evidence of the key source to reveal the secret of Easter Bunny. [See picture on right] Once the bunny realized someone was around, it ran quickly and disappeared behind the dense wood.
Dr. Simpson then bought the chicken from the farmer, whom said the bunny has been around for years and all the chickens he got were made pregnant by the bunny. After some scientific analysis, they found that the chicken is pregnant.
In his closing statement at press release, Dr. Simpson said that he can finally tell his son about the mystery of Easter Bunny, and he hopes that all the schools around the world will tell the youngsters about it instead of just referring it to “its just a tale”.

04.19.2001
After the United State’s spy planed crashed in Republic of China, the Chinese government demanded an apology from the United States government.
To ensure the United States government will comply and apologize, the top players in the Republic of China government spent 7 days, 3 hours, 29 minutes and 52 seconds in the security meeting chamber located near the border of Beijing. After a long debate, they finally came up with an idea that can ensure their demand will be well received by the Americans and the President of the United States while not inflicting a war between the two biggest and most powerful nations in the world.
George W. Bush, the President of the United States, is well-known as a Chinese food lover. On April 2nd, 2001, Mr. President Bush went to a Chinese restaurant (the name of the restaurant will be withheld for privacy issue) near Washington D.C., and ordered Kong Pao Chicken Fried Rice. When he was done eating, he opened his fortune cookie and instantly he jumped up from his seat in surprise. The secret agents withdrew their guns and pointed at the fortune cookies as if it was a poisonous snake [See picture above].
After awhile, Mr. President Bush took a deep-breath and said to his fellow secret agents, “This scared the hell out of me.”
In order to show good faith, Mr. President Bush decided that it was time to send an apology message to the government of Republic of China. After all, the U.S. airplane did crash on the China soil and killed some insects in the ground (note: The Republic of China government announced that they found 3 roaches, 2 soil worms, and 3 mosquitoes were being killed by the spy plane). So he took the time to meet with his fellow Chinese translator once he reached the White House to help him to send a proper apology message to the government of Republic of China.
After spending a few hours trying to learn Chinese, Mr. President Bush finally got it right, he proceeded to write the Chinese manuscripts he just learned on a card and send it by FedEx Express to ensure the proper party will receive this urgent message [See picture on right].
The “top players” of the Republic of China government received the apology card the next day and they were very happy after reading the card written by the President of the United States. They then publicly announced that they are very happy with the decision of the Mr. President Bush and they are very pleased to find out that the Mr. President of the United States took his valuable time to learn Chinese manuscript to send them the apology letter.
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It’s just some story I wrote years ago and I hope I didn’t offend anyone :P

09
Sep

::: Going home :::

Early in the morning I was packing my stuff because today is Friday, and I can finally go back to KL! Yay! Anyway, there are a lot of people on medical leave today and some of them are sick (but not sick enough to go home, said the company doctor. Doh!)

Anyhow, since today is already Friday and there are a lot of people missing, no one here has the motivation to work. Most of us are just chatting away and even a senior manager was slacking and told me that his productivity is less than 50% due to the fact that he has finished the important work, and no one seems to be in the office. *LoL*

Now I guess you all can understand how I feel at this moment. I just can’t wait to get the hell out of here and go back!

Good news! The roadtax of private car is slashed by at least 50%! Unfortunately, the roadtax is not much and we only pay it once a year, so saving? Yeah, we can save around 10 dollars per month? Yet we have to fork out another 100 dollars per month extra for other expenses due to the inflation?

Another good news! Petrol price will not increase until the end of the year! That means we have 3 months of worry-free! 3 MONTHS! Wow! Now, that’s a lot! Trying to cover up those petrol subsidy issues, they announced that without the subsidies, we have to pay 3.30 per liter of petrol. Well, that’s about right, and basically it is very obvious that they are comparing the petrol price between us and Singaporean. Unfortunately, they forgot to compare one important issue; the average salary (converted to local currency, that is).

If the petrol price keeps increasing…

Anyhow, the senior managers invited me out for lunch yesterday as a farewell party for me because next week will be the last week of my training session. After that I will be back to the PJ office. Well, it’s always good to have a free lunch *grinz* but the problem is, I found out that I was the very first person to receive this kind of invitation. Normally there is no such practice in this organization. So I wonder what’s in it for me? Well, the answer came to me this morning and I found out there’s no such thing as free lunch…

Well, maybe I am whining too much about the inflation issue. I am just concern about the living standard of me and the people around me. But hey, who cares? This is my rant and rave page!

08
Sep

::: Nano. Nano. Nano. Drool :::

Wow! Just found out that Apple has revealed a new iPod, Nano, to replace the iPod Mini. Don’t it look so damn sexy? Unfortunately, checking into the Apple Malaysia website,there’sno news about this iPod Nano yet, and there’s no news nor announcementwhen will it be launched in Malaysia. As usual, we are slow like asnail and Singapore has already launched it at the sametime (almost) asU.S.

Fromthe way it looks, ultra slim (measuring 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27 inch),lightweight(about 1.5 ounces), 1.5-inch (diagonal) color LCD with LEDbacklight, capacity of 2GB (500 songs) or 4GB (1,000 songs), and mostmportantly,the look! Both the trademark white and the new U2 black areboth so sexy nd attractive! If looks can kill, I believe this iPod Nanois killer pod that it is the est design from Apple. This time, Applehas adopted a flash-memory instead of harddisk. I believe this willbecome another big hit from Apple.

Afterlooking at the photo and reading about the technical specs, I wassotempted to ask my friends in U.S. to purchase it for me and ship itbackto me since I don’t want to wait infinitely for the Apple Malaysiatolaunch this product. But again, this depends on a very importantaspect(for me, at least); the capacity. The maximum capacity of iPodNano isonly 4GB,whereas a normal iPod is 20GB. For me, I would like to havehigher capacity as I can use the iPod as a USB back-up device for myever-important files.

Ultra slim at only 0.27 inch! Can put into coin pocket of your jeans! Doesn’t it look sexy? *Drools*

Okay,maybeI am a sucker for Apple’s product. But one thing for sure is that theyhave better design and their system/product are much more stable thanthe competitors. So I don’t see anything wrong for liking Apple! (Justtrying to defend myself :P)

Alright, its time for me to go back and contemplate which one is more suitable for me.

(Note: All the imagesare courtesy of Apple.com and Wired.com. If the owner of these pictureshave copyright these images, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thankyou very much)

07
Sep

::: time.age.wrinkles.murder :::

I laid on the bed until 3:30am, couldn’t sleep. As a result, I woke up at 8am and I was like “OMG” cos I was late for work this morning!

Maybe it was because I was playing badminton for 3 continuous hours last night, so I had over-exerted myself that I failed to feel sleepy? Maybe. Well, if that’s the case, then that stinks like hell because that means I am getting older so my energy level is not like last time! To think about it, I am not *that* young anymore…

Or maybe because I was away from home so I just couldn’t sleep well? I think that’s the reason. The truth is that ever since I came to Kluang, I had problem sleeping every night because I miss my gf and Fluffy so much! But last night was a major case because I was so tired after the badminton game, yet my eyes were wide opened last night. It was frustrating trying so hard to sleep and yet you just know sleep is very far away.

Anyhow, I just cannot deny that I am getting older each and everyday. By January next year, I will hit the big 30 plateau! *sighs* (At least the consolation is that I do not have wrinkles yet!)

Lately I was contacted by the apartment management because during the warranty claim, the people downstairs filed a complaint about leaking bathroom, so they needed to hack the bathroom, applied the water-proof sealant, and then reapply the tiles on the next day. Well, why would they cheat in the first place? Now they are giving themselves more troubles, and they are spending more on the repair because as far as I know, the people downstairs are not the only one who complained. I was complaining about the apartment upstairs also, and so does it make sense trying to cut all these necessity cost in the first place? Blah!

So now we are making plans to stay at a hotel since we cannot use the bathroom at all from this Friday to Saturday night, and we have to send Fluffy to a pet hotel (Pet Safari: Ikano PowerCenter). Now we have to worry about which pet hotel to send Fluffy because we have two choices. First is Pet Safar and the other one is MamaDog,which is located deep inside Cheras. The price is about the same, but MamaDog is offering home environment because this is a home business. But I am skeptical because I haven’t met the MamaDog owner and inspect the environment before. I guess I will meet with the business owner to check her out, and also inspect the environment to make sure its puppy-safe.

Guess what? When I tried to find Pet Safari on Google, I found this article. Wonder World of Pets, which is renting under Pet Safari, let a sick puppy die near the fire exit. Here is the snippet of the news:
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The director Lewis Tan said, “I was not in town, and my staff tried giving it food and water. We were waiting for our vet who was unable to come.”

“The puppy was suffering from a genetic virus attack and its antibodies could not overcome it. There was little chance of it surviving. “

“Being Buddhists, we do not believe in putting animals to sleep,” he added.
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Now, what a stupid excuse is that? There’s a damn vet clinic INSIDE the Pet Safari, so how difficult is to call the vet (for whom I met before, very experienced and nice vet) to walk 10 meters to attend the puppy? This is clearly an abuse case the government should rebuke the license of Wonderful World of Pets. They deserve to be suspended, those murderers!

Anyway, the stupid apartment management is the one giving us so many troubles, I wonder if I should claim them or something.

06
Sep

::: technology? pfft! fuck off :::

Okay, this is utterly frustrating. I ditched Internet Explorer (IE) for FireFox becoz stupid IE was popping up when the page was fully loaded. So at the end, whenever I am typing something else, the IE window will just block me. So I switched to FireFox, which is better and it supports Tab Browsing. Unfortunately, I seems like I am the only one with this problem; the FireFox will not work with few websites correctly, including Yahoo! Mail and Blogger website (which is ironic becoz Blogger was recommending FireFox).

And then I downloaded Maxthon, which is a feature-rich browser base on the IE engine. It looks good and it supports Tab Browsing. The so-called PassCard was a feature that will save all the login name and password for you, so next time when you load up Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, you don’t have to type anything anymore. Yet, it won’t work well with Gmail so can you see where I am going from this?

There is a lack of standard platform where people can basically browse through some websites without a hitch. Unfortunately, due to the advancement in technology, our requirements are getting higher and higher. Nowadays there are ActiveX, Java Runtime, etc and sometimes those web developer just had to add in a lot of things, so now I use IE for certain websites that I know won’t work well with FireFox.

Browser is not the only thing that seems to be lost in the standard. DVD and the new format is the same. There is a DVD-RAM, and then DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-R, and DVD+R. So what the fuck is the difference? For those movie type DVD, there’s BlueRay (from Sony) and HD-DVD (or so-called Hi-Definition DVD). A quick tour at the Google site found this: DVD Format Explained. I mean, I am glad there’s a definition, but why make things to confusing in the first place? All these technologeek things are suppose to make our live easier, but it seems like the intention was completely off. Now we have to ponder what the fuck is DVD+RW, and which one to choose. Too much time are spent on doing this pointless research and figuring out which one is better.

In Hokkien saying, Lanpa Palan, and it means “basically it’s the same thing”.

Some standard, anyone, please?

05
Sep

::: Oooops! :::

It’s 5:26pm. Almost time to leave work, and I can’t help but feel relieved. I woke up too early this morning so for the whole day, I felt like a zombie, and I almost slept on my food during lunch.

Was reading DEE’s blog and found out that someone else beside me is playing Diablo 2 as well, and it’s good to know at least someone is still playing it so I won’t feel that old and outdated. We chatted (exchanging comments on the “Comment” page) a bit about playing D2 on Bnet. Oh well, I should do it myself one day but my stupid apartment don’t have a phone line yet so I can’t apply the DSL from Streamyx/TMNet.

I forwarded a junk mail to a colleague of mine some time ago, and just now she forwarded it to the whole Technical Department (she meant to send it to Lab Assistants), so her supervisor, the admin and the IT Dept admin all received a copy. Worst of all, my name field is still clearly shown at the very end of her attachment! So at the end, because of her blunder, both of us got some kind of warning from the IT Dept and some lecture from her department head. Oh well, what’s done is done, so… fuck it.

05
Sep

::: diablo. revisited. :::

During the weekend, I was playing Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. Maria (my girlfriend) was watching the Desperate Housewives DVD because she needed to return the DVD to her friend. I didn’t watch the beginning so I decided to play some games. After turning over a few boxes, I finally found Diablo II and the expansion CD.

It has been years since I played this game. Basically I was still playing this game when I was in Dallas, Texas, but I have since stopped completely when I came back to Malaysia 4 years ago. After playing it for few minutes, the memories flashed back and I do recognized some of the map, thanks to hours and hours of playtime previously. It took me awhile but after 3 days, I finally defeated Diablo and now going into ACT V. Baal is up next. It was an old experience being refreshed and became new experience. Next thing I know, I was searching for the Rune words on the Battle.net website.

It’s always good to visit an old friend again.

05
Sep

::: Yay! New lappie! :::


Yay! I got new lappie! But it belongs to the company…

I still prefer an Apple. As the doctor prescribe; an Apple a day keeps the dorks away.




 

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