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| Sau Theng's brother, Kin, got me this book for Christmas. I'm halfway through and it's a pretty interesting read. I wonder how good the musical is. I like stories discussing good and evil and politics. If anyone is familiar with the Oz series, this book seems to discuss the Oz political landscape prior to Dorothy's arrival in munchkinland as well as the origin of the Witches (North, East, and West). I just got to the part where they were "assigned" areas to oversee inorder to keep Oz from destroying itself. That's as faras I got so far.
Christmas has just passed. Malaysia is an interesting country in that it is primarily Muslim, yet it recognizes and celebrates 4 different cultural holidays: Hari Raya (Muslim New Year related to Ramadan), Deepa Vali (Indian celebration), Christmas (something about Jesus being born), and Chinese Lunar New Year (self documenting). They give days off and everything. To me, this is an incredible feat in terms of tolerance and a model for other countries.
This sentiment came about when listening to the radio on teh way to work today. A head official took over the airwaves and wished everyone a merry Christmas. He also went on to reflect the same sentiments I had written above.
2006 is coming up soon. I'm 27. I hope to live for at least another 73 years.
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| Well now, that is new. It lets me pick a currently gaming
selection. It is the 1 year anniversary of the launch of World of
Warcraft.
EDIT: World of Warcraft is NOT by Vivendi Universal. It is by Blizzard Entertainment.
I've been playing WoW since last February. I've moved to many
servers. I started on Warsong(PvP) as a Human Priest (Curunir) and got
him to level 38. Sadly, no one i knew joined me there. My
cousin plays on that server, but we're never on at the same time.
The people I knew that played got me to go to their server,
Darkspear. There I played an Orc Warrior to level 20. The
people I knew also played tonnes more than me, so I actually had no
hope in catching up with them. They are also fickle.
They moved to a new server, Spirestone, when blizzard first released
new servers. Again I moved and started a new character, the Gnome
Warrior Patellabane. This time I got him to level 58. The
cap is 60. Why not play to 60? Again, all my friends left
and I just don't play enough. Also around this time, my
girlfriend decided she liked playing WoW. She tried a few
character classes and decided on playing a Warlock. I challenged
her to play on a Role Playing server because I had the silly notion
that it would be amusing to watch her try to communicate with all the
role players. She chose Feathermoon.
Disappointingly, it turns out that almost everyone is normal. At
this point, we were sharing accounts (sshhhh, don't tell
blizzard). By the time she reached level 20, the inevitable "I
wanna play" argument came up and it was time to buy her her own
account. One of my friends stopped playing, so I bought his
account off of him (again, shhhhh) to give to my girlfriend. My
girlfriend did not want to level up to 20 again, so I had the
unenviable task of leveling her character to 20. Now that she was
enthusiastically playing, I saw it to be a waste that I was not playing
on her server. So I did what any normal male with a girlfriend
(that actually likes to play the same video game) would do, I moved
over to her server.
I created a Dwarf Hunter, Maegras and caught up to her Warlock.
We duo'd many quests and had a decent time. We were a pretty
stong team; both classes have pets so, we can take down almost
anything. We got our characters up to level 44. All was
well. Soon after I also got engaged! (not related to gaming, see
previous post). Our playing time diminished as we started all the
planning for when to do the legal registration, and the actual
celebraton, etc.
I'm legally married now.
Actually, it was November 7th, 2005. Strangely, I feel the same
as before. I guess I've already been living with my wife for the
last 3 years. I guess it's because I only did the legal part of
marriage. I guess the cultural celebration part has yet to
come. I guess I don't have kids yet. I guess a lot; I need
to be more sure of things.
Where is the fear? I know I am not fearless, although I strive to
be. Maybe I'm just ignorant about what is supposed to happen and
what is coming down the pipeline. At least we can both face
things together head-on.
Right now, we're planning a wedding dinner for my wife's family and
friends in Malaysia. I think my parents will also want a party of
some sort when I move back to the US. I'm in chrarge of hunting
for a photographer and getting a wedding cake. Not too tough,
right? It seems like weddings are one of those things where you
can just throw money at it and then it will sort itself out. If I
had the cash, finding those two would be easy. Money isn't
everything, but it sure helps to grease the wheels of life.
Prior to the engagement, my girlfriend had planned a trip to
Japan. At that point, we did not plan when to do the marriage
solemnization. It turns out that the best time would be the
Monday before she left for Japan (she left on the Friday of that
week).
She's been in japan for over a week. I pick her up on Sunday from the airport.
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| Blog, blog, blog... oh btw, I'm engaged!
blog, blog, blog... I don't like how blog sounds. The word sounds
like it means 'big log' or 'black ogg' (whatever an ogg is).
Oh! So I won this phone two weekends from this post. Very exciting. I went on a treasure hunt sponsored by one of the
country's (Malaysia) biggest telecoms, Maxis. At the end, they were
giving away a whole bunch of (old) phones as lucky draws or prizs to the
top hunting teams. I was fortunate to win a motorola A768i. It seemed
like an ok phone, but the speaker wasn't working. I went to the event
sponsor and they apologized because they ran out of A768i's. Since they
were out of those, they instead gave me an e680! I wasn't too impressed
until I found out it was a mini computer with linux!
That's right, linux... running MontaVista version 3.0 using linux
kernel 2.4.20. Linux phone, big deal right? Exactly. What do you
think of when you hear the word linux? Not many apps? Maybe, but it's
got Java so apps are easy to come by with time. Command line? ls?
top? ps axw? swapon /mmc/mmca1/swap/swapfile? Shells? Shell
scripts? Total control of your phone? SSH-ing into your server?
Fixing a server problem while in the car or waiting for your girlfriend
to finish trying on some clothes? piggy-backing an internet connection
using bluetooth? 1GB SD card enabled? Upgrading to the next phone
model when Motorola is too cheap to upgrade the hardware? (I flashed my
phone's memory except the bootloader and installed an image file
containing the OS of an e680i) After being able to upgrade to
virtually a whole new phone... getting a full HTML browser called Opera
and a pdf, word, excel viewer called picsel. Not mention that it
increases the SD card capability from 1GB to 2GB (not tested... who
really needs a 2GB SD card... it's not like i can watch movies on this
phone... oh wait.. I can!)
Obviously, my warranty is probably voided by now. Aside from that,
the only downer to this phone is that I cannot EDIT MS Word or MS Excel
files. I can view them perfectly, but no changes can be made. Oh and
it eats batteries like they were wheaties(TM)... although no one
really likes, you find that you just eat them and don't notice that
you'vefinished your bowl. Wheaties taste gross, and so do batteries.
I don't usually post this much. I'm strangely inspired today. I think I'll repost this on my friendster blog also.
Btw, have i mentioned that I'm getting married? Why not write about
that you say? How much can you write about marriage? Sau Theng is a
great girl and everyone has been to at least one marriage. If you are
reading this, you most likely know much about both... but you don't
know much about this great phone :)
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| Well, it is October 3, 2005. It has been a few months since my last entry, and a lot has changed since then.
Let's re-cap for those not in the know:
1. I proposed to Chong Sau Theng on August 27, 2005. She
said, "yes" on the same day. Here's a good illustration of how it
went down:
http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?im6mny1ld9m4
You need flash player. It draws a bit slow, so you might want to speed it up by moving the top right slider to the right.
2. I got a promotion. So now I make a little bit more money
than before. The better to pay off loans with, I guess.
3. hmmmm, I won a Motorola a768i pda-phone from a treasure hunt I did
last weekend. Winning the hunt and winning the phone are not
related (lucky draw). Unfortunately, the external speaker doesn't
work, so I'm going to try to get it replaced. The phone still
vibrates and you can talk with it and the sounds can work through the
headphone jack, just no speaker for the clicking noise you expect from
pressing the screen. You are also spared the sound of my annoying
ringtones.
Any experiences with winning lucky draws and then getting them
fixed/replaced? I find that getting a defective door prize is
most confounding...
I should be lucky to get it and shouldn'tbe so picky...? on the
other hand, it is a poor reflection on the sponsor (Maxis) and would
make me dislike them even further (no broadband and no internet at home
make Kevin go something and something...)
Hmm, three things in the span of 3 months. Not too bad i
guess. You'll have to live with "burst news" instead of a
constant rate. Burst news is better for PvP, anyways.
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| Ack! Many moons have passed since I've blogged. Why is that
you ask? Busy i guess. Forgot is more likely. The
trend seems to be:
1) blog for a while
2) stop: probability that you continue - 20%... i seem to be beating the odds
Hmmm... seems like some of the pictures don't link properly on this site.
In other news, diamond shopping is somewhat challenging, but
interesting. Lots of little details aside from the 4 C's. I'd
like to think I can go and do it all my self next time (the first time
I had the help of two very nice ppl... one of their names is
Yen. I mention this only because she said she likes seeing her
name), but I don't think I can get into the level of haggling that my
friends can. From a 3rd person view, it seems almost like
intimidation. I suppose that's just the way business is handled
here. Nevertheless, I think I came out with a decent rock.
I can't mention the specs here.
It's the 4th of July!! I don't have any patriotic songs on
my computer... lesseee... I have "America, fuck
yeah!" from Team America: World Police Original Soundtrack.
I also have "Real American" from Hulk Hogan's entrance music back when
he wrestled in the mid-late 80's. I even had some "Pomp and
Circumstance" by Elgar (not surprising since his music is used by one
of Hogan's contemporaries). I also tried looking up a few
national anthem samples on LimeWire. I found Mariah Carey singing
at the 2002 Superbowl. That was a mistake to play. Pretty
sad when our national anthem sounds worse than a song with lyrics like:
America, fuck yeah! Coming again to save the motherfucking day, yeah!
America, fuck yeah! Freedom is the only way, yeah!
Terrorists, your game is through cuz now you have to answer to,
America, fuck yeah!
I haven't tried any other national anthem samples. Perhaps I'll
try again later. On that note, go see Team America: World
Police. Not because it is a really offensive movie, but because
it is an obscenely offensive movie... so obscenely funny that the
sarcasm and irreverence hits you like a freight train. Parker and
Stone's creativity are still pretty amazing to me. The sets are
all done really well as well as using live animals. The voice
acting is somewhat limited as a few of the characters sound like Eric
Cartman , but the creativity is pretty good; for those who can overlook
the potentially offensive things done in the movie (some scenes have
TONNES of offensive potential). If you can't get past the
language and listen to what is being said and admire the scenery, this
movie is not for you. Living away from the US makes me appreciate
the freedoms my homeland offers, ie: movies like this.
Happy Birthday America! Fuck yeah!
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