Project Graffiti

Merdeka (National Day) is was only 3 days away when I actually wrote the title for this post. Now it’s already Merdeka and I’m still not done. It’s been a couple of grueling days with work and other activities such that my blogging has taken a back seat. To make amends here is a one of wrap on my supposed 3-day countdown to Merdeka!

August 29th

1. A big Birthday shout-out to my sister whose celebrating her 22nd birthday. She’s was in India, just a single day away from returning to Malaysia for her term break – she’s a medical student, fyi.

2. Heard on the early morning radio show that the worst air pollution index (haze) recorded on the previous day was non other that Muar, my beloved hometown. This is doubly bad as this year’s Johors’ state level Merdeka celebrations are scheduled to be held in Muar. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed in the hopes that everything will be fine on the big day.

3. Went to work. Got a bombshell. I have to work on Friday to deliver some last minutes changes my client wants. There goes my 4 days weekend trip to hometown plans down the drain. Not to mention my Merdeka celebration mood.

August 30th

1. Another Birthday shout-out, this time to my cousin Simran, whose celebrating her 13th birthday. Happy Birthday Simran!

2. Lack of sleep coupled with 2 days with hours spent on my feet and speaking non stop training my users has made it’s presence felt this morning. Got up late and the extra 20 minutes spent in bed did not make a difference.

3. Heard that the Hitz.fm "Merdeka Man" was back from his round the country trip, and I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Kavin Sothirasan for a job well done & not forgetting kudos to Hitz.fm just for being the best radio station out there.

4. Once again a slight dampener on the Merdeka spirit, todays’ news reported that yesterdays air pollution index showed Kuching, the host city for this years’ national level Merdeka celebration, to have the highest recording for the haze. Got my toes crossed for this one!

5. Uber pissed to find out that I’ll probably be spending a couple of hours at the office  – on Merdeka no less – tomorrow morning to solve some new changes the user requested. Shit I’m practically fuming at this point.

6. Came back home all hyped for the proposed steamboat Merdeka-eve dinner, only to find out that the plan was cancelled. Instead of steamboat, we had Indian food at Pandi for dinner.

August 31st

1. Writing this post to commemorate Merdeka! So to all Malaysian, young and old, Happy 49th Merdeka!

2. Update: Got up on Merdeka morning, to go for some dim sum, great way to start of the day btw. And then I got news that there was no electricity at my office, hence screwing my plan for a quick morning drop-in, do the work and escape plans.

3. Ironically I reached back home only to find our place also devoid of electricity. After concocting ideas of a national level controversy to suck all electricity from KL to Kuching for the national day celebrations, both Chong Yaw and myself manage to trace the faulty circuit that kept tripping the circuit breaker. Doubly ironic, it was the power socket in my room that was the culprit.

4. All in all my Merdeka celebration are not turning out they way I originally envisioned it to be. Still it’s the Merdeka spirit is still intact, and I’ll weather through it somehow.

After work went to SS2 with Sin for supplies from Kraftworld, an ‘arts & crafts’ shop. All said and done, it took us close to an hour an half to get there, praying for a parking spot to free up (congested due to the pasar malam), search out the stuff we needed before getting it. All in all it was a great adventure as we made the acquaintance of Mr Yee (the owner) of the above said shop. Now here’s a man that redefined my concept of customer service. Heck the man practically kept his store open an whole hour later than his usual closing time just to allow us to get our stuff. Not only that he provided entertaining comments and chatted us up really nice whilst we were waiting for Lim Fong to show up. He provided expert advice on the materials, gave his sound opinion and also took the opportunity to ask for our opinion (albeit we not being experts at all) in regards to his plans to redesign his shop layout. So anyone out there looking for an great place to get your arts & crafts supplies, head on down to Kraftworld in SS2 - it’s located a few shop down form the big Poh Kong jeweler shop.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’ve just spent the last hour or so on the net searching for one of those blogwares that can make my bloging experience more easier.

The past week I’ve been using a blogware called Blogdesk that’s been very helpfull in all aspects. So far it’s been a great experience and I certainly would recommend it to any aspiring blogger who like myself might be on the lookout for a blogware to help easy things up. However it does not include Blogsome as part of it’s supported services in the images uploading section and therein lies my one nit-pick with the blogware. Thus my earlier online excursion to search for another blogware that might just go the extra mile.

After an hour of searching, it comes down to a blogware  called Qumana. So I’ve installed it, and so far it’s great UI and easy of use is certainly appealing to me right away.  Hopefully I’ll spend the next week working our Qumana fully and once I’m satisfied that it’s truly the way to go, I’ll try my best to do a write up on it.

Sometimes if you take the time to recollect back to the past and review you opinions or standings at that time, you might just be surprise to find out how much you can change in such a short time.

For me it was reliving my claims, years earlier, on how "I don’t know what is it that people find so bloody interesting with things like Friendster and Multiply!" that has prompted this post.

Now fast forward 2 years, and I’ve already gotten a friendster account. Mostly I was prompted by the fact that I was losing touch with many of my uni mates since my graduation in 2005. So I told myself, with no less prompting by friends like Lim Fong (whose ulterior motive might have been to get me to join so that I would be able to view her multitude of pictures) it’s time I utilize friendster to get back in touch with the mates.

Now if I’m not wrong the exact idea formed in my mind somewhere in January this year, wherein I did proceed to sign up for a Friendster account. However it wasn’t until the past 2 weeks that I finally got around to searching out old acquaintances ranging all the way from my primary school mates right up to those from my uni years.

So YAY! Step 1, a.k.a search out old & new friends, completed. Yokata!

Well then I told myself, onwards to Step 2. Do up my profile and make it interesting too. However since then I still have not gotten around to put in the effort as I’ve recently began blogging again and that takes up all spare time. Still I’ll try my best to get it done up asap.

Which then leads me to the portion I’m really looking forward to. Which is Step 2.5 i.e. the "I’m A Fan Of" stage. I’ve got a few nice ideas on how to write this up and with any luck I’ll be able to get this part up with minimum fuss. Though don’t say I didn’t warn you when I say that it’ll be long… very very long!

Step 3? I’m still working on it! So get back to me, in a couple of weeks, and I’ll see whats up aight.

Sayonara.

It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m all alone!

No I’m not reflecting on my insofar inactive and semi non-existent relationship! Instead I’m reflecting on my being physically all by my lone self here in the office.

Let reflect on my why I’m left as the sole caretaker of the office via dissecting the location of my other colleagues. Now first please take into consideration that my company is only a small one in this big big world of IT. So far I can count the total number of our workers with all my 10 fingers.

So lets start off the roll-call:

1. My boss (a.k.a. the head honcho) – Away on supposed vacation in Australia with his family.
2. Our HR & Administration Manager – Out of the office, as is usual in his case.
3. My senior (great guy, best senior ever) – Away at his clients place, today he’s working on his part-time project.
4. My Developer (another great friend) – Away for Friday prayers.
5. Our DBA (new to the office) – Also away for Friday prayers.
6. My other fellow colleague – She’s on leave to attend 2 weddings for the entire of this week.
7. Our Receptionist (part-timer worker/student) – Half-day as she has classes to attend to.

And then… there is myself … all alone as attested to by the pics, at least until they other guys return from their prayers.

(Note: Below is the display of my desk at the office. Notice how it’s right beside the door and that my boss can always sneak up on me, which he has a tendency to do!)

Yup it’s official!

I’ve demoted my non-existent co-blogger M.I.A from being a fellow administrator for this blog down to just a basic user. This action follows on the heels of his lack of commitment to this blog, both in the past and all through the foreseeable future. I’ll probably have to break the news to him offline, as I suspect he hasn’t been to visit this blog in a long long while.

M.I.A you weren’t the greatest of co-bloggers but still I’ll value any contribution from yourself to this blog in the future if it’s please you to do so.

Though I’m not exactly thrilled to be the only blogger and having just lost my so called wingman, I still am making a pledge of contribution to this blog and I definitely will try to do my best.

A special Birthday Shoutout to my housemate Andy, who just turned 24 this year, yesterday on the 24th of August.

After all the cake cutting, which btw Andy claims we shouldn’t have gone to the trouble of buy one in the first place, we had a celebratory game of Dota.

Definitely a good ending to a frustrating day.

PS: I’ll try to get a pic uploaded here asap. No promises though!

Yesterday was a supremely hectic and taxing day in the office.

First of all very early in the morning I get a call from my partner informing me that our client wants to conduct training session begining the coming week and most probably all the way through to slightly before puasa starts. Daunting as it may seem, I’m actually glad to finally get this over and done with and finally close the book on this project that I have been on every since Feb 2005.

Then my boss comes online on Yahoo IM and start issuing order regarding all manner of jobs for me to do or oversee. FYI my boss is back in Australia supposedly on holiday, yet he’s still always on Yahoo messaging away nearly every other day… jezz go get some rest for my sake at least boss!

Taxed as I am with all the backlogged documentation (once again not my fault as I’ve had to spend the past week clearing out a gigantic mess on another projects’ documentation, thus inherently screwing up my own project’s work timeline) , I then get this pile of new things to see too. So you see all in all I was super frustrated yesterday.

Malaysia Boleh! No More

Due to the sensitive nature of post under this category and the fact that all these issue really drive me angry or crazy and thus right now I find myself liking me less and less for this… I have decide to stop writing up on any current political issue.

So from now on Graffiti will be politically free and turn the focus whole about myself.

Which also brings up the matter of my co-blogger. Lacking the support and necessary commitment from him, I’ve decided to go solo on this blog. Though I haven’t ruled out getting another co-blogger as of yet. I think a female blogger would liven up Graffiti and then we can bounc around the old He Says, She Says bit around.

BTW any blogger or aspiring logger of female gender (beautifully hot, witty and charming would be a plus) out there looking to hook up – on logging, you know where to reach me.

Yep looks like I botched things up again. Somehow I once again managed to totally forget to blog.

I know the excuse get lamer and lamer everytime I mention it but… somehow I always fail to find the time to write a blog. After some deep thinking I present . . .

Enigma’s Top 3 Reasons For NOT Blogging!

So all in all, hopefully I will start to blog once again! Cross my heart and hope to die (touch wood, touch wood)