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Last month my head office had to retrench some staff due to specific reasons.

I wasn’t there, since i’m not stationed at the head office, but i figure the immediate superior or the HR manager would probably call the poor guy into the office and say, “i think you better sit down first…” or “You know the company’s not been doing well recently…”

You KNOW it’s not going to be good news when your boss starts with those lines.

Or when your girlfriend starts with “I think we need to talk…”

Or when the headmasters starts off with “it has come to my attention that…”

Or when the doctor tells you “How is your insurance plan?”

Or when my wife says to my daughter “tell daddy what happened in school today”.

Nope. it’s never good news. Because if it was good news, they tell you straightaway, without all this small talk.

Well i suppose it’s a lot better than my doctor saying, “If I were you, I wouldn’t start watching any new miniseries on TV, get my drift? Heheh…”

***

Well, it wasn’t all bad news, my colleague got a decent severance package from the retrenchment. Nothing helps soothes the bad news like moolah. Lots of it.

It was some time in the mid 90’s, i was renting a room slightly bigger than a closet somewhere in SS2.

Everyday, i come home from work, plonk down onto my spring metal bed with the plywood-thin mattress (bought for RM22 at the pasar malam) and turn on my old 14″ TV sitting on the floor sitting next to my shoes (no money to buy TV stand).

Every weekday at the same time, i turn on the MetroVision (remember that defunct channel?) where they played Channel V’s Rewind, UK Top 20, with VJs like Trey and the fabulous Sophiya. It was on their UK countdown that introduced me to Suede and their song ‘Saturday Night’…

I immediately fell in love with that song.

Those days, i lived for weekends and Saturday nights in particular…

Listening to the song again brings chills to my body, Brett Anderson’s lilting, androgynous voice still sounds haunting, as he sings:

Today shes been working, shes been talking, shes been smoking,
But itll be alright,
Cos tonight well go dancing, well go laughing, well get car sick,
And itll be okay like everyone says, itll be alright and ever so nice,
Were going out tonight, out and about tonight.

today’s only tuesday, another 4 more days to saaaaturday…

Here’s an interesting Internet experiment if you’ve nothing else to do.

Out of the 70million blogs out there in existence, and millions more created each day, want to the special one million?

I’m at number 1271. Nice number.

Thanks to Silencers for the idea.

On another note, has anyone noticed how HOT the weather’s been these past 2 weeks? I dunno, which do you prefer - torrential rain or melting heat?

For most people, the last time they actually did some serious running was during the Tingkatan 5 sukantara at school. That’s when they made all of us run 100m, 400m, shot put and jump into the coarse sand to score some points for our sports houses (I was in Gryffindor, you leh?).

These days the only time you run is:

1. To be first in when the roller shutters open at the Isetan Sale at KLCC. 70%.
2. When you see the traffic cops issuing summons and you are triple parked outside Starbucks.
3. Stupid neighbour’s rottweiler chasing you down the street, mouth foaming (the rottweiler, not you).
4. Free food buffet at Mano Curry House, closing in 10 minutes time.

But seriously, if you are an runner or jogger, take part in the Borneo International Marathon 2008 happening on 12 October 2008 (isn’t that also when the aforementioned Isetan Sale starts?!). Shan is getting the word out, you can mail her at shandemon(at)yahoo.com for enquiries, or visit the website. This is the first proper marathon in Sabah for over 20 years and currently the only marathon to be held in Borneo this year.

The logo is an orangutan proboscis monkey running!! How cool is that?! And look at his arms, he’s got proper running form!!!

So get off your lazy a$$, book an el cheapo AirAsia ticket and join the run.

Me? can’t run for sh!t. I get leg cramps just standing in line at the starbucks counter. Besides, Shan can prolly outrun me on one leg…

And the moron of the day is …

Normal people like us who drive cheap cars only need one parking space, some people get more than one because they are probably too dumb to park properly… probably called in sick the day their driving instructor taught Parking 101.

While we are on the subject, here’s another example:

You DO know what the meaning of the word ‘WALKway’ right? Or does it translate into ‘FREE shaded motorcycle parking are while blocking people from walking’ in YOUR dictionary?

___

Don’t mind the negativity, I was actually just testing my new camera phone, this is one normal setting, there’s a higher setting with a larger file size. Looks okay for a 2MP cam, will try some indoor shots.

We were having a cup of coffee at Leo’s some weeks back, Boone and me, talking about cameras and websites and raptor watching at Tg. Tuan.

Somehow we veered to talking about taking awesome pics of the full moon, and he mentioned something about seeing the ‘rabbit in the moon’. What rabbit? Boone was surprised i’ve never heard of it. If you look at the glowing full moon, you can roughly see an image of a rabbit in the moon. He says when he was a kid his mother told him about, and most his friends also knew this.

Well, I didn’t. I’ve heard about the ‘man in the moon’ described by my Science teacher (it looks like a smiling face), but no rabbit.

Since due to pollution, we can hardly see the moon clearly anymore, Boone sent me a pic of the full moon he took.

Couldn’t really see it clearly, so he sent another clearer, whiter shot…

Anyway if you can’t visualize it, here’s some help…

I did some googling, and found this great article in wikipedia, about the Jade rabbit being a companion of the moon goddess Chang’E, and was mentioned in Buddhist stories… growing up in a Christian household, no wonder I never got to hear about this!

Anyway, Boon also sent me another picture of the moon, taken on the same night (12 hours later lah, i suppose), by a professional photographer somewhere in Texas…

Beautiful, ain’t it? Reminds me of the opening scene in the old movie ‘Clash of the Titans’… remember that one?!

Simon has a spanking new toy to play with - i just bought the Sony Ericsson w660i.

I was mulling over a few options, and finally whittled the choices down to the Nokia 5310 and the super-slim Sony Ericsson w880i. A friend of mine bought the Nokia 5310 (red one) and i was very impressed with cool look and free carrying pouch. But I wanted a 3G phone, and the 5310 didn’t have this feature.

The Sony Ericsson w880i had all the functions i wanted, but it was a little pricy (about RM760) and the buttons were very small (is it meant for ladies?!), so finally lowered my expectations and got the w660i.

So, after nine years of using Nokia phones, what made me change to Sony Ericsson? Actually my very, very first phone was an Ericsson, but every one since then was Nokia. I was surprised by their speaker and camera quality. And probably the biggest deciding factor is that Nokia phones are slightly more expensive compared the similar features in other brands.

Of course, getting used to their interface and the ‘back’ button takes some getting used to.

I got the black version. The ‘Lamboghini’ red one is slightly cheaper, probably due to lower demand!

Anyone has any recommendations for a good website to download cool ringtones and games?

Technorati Tags: Sony Ericsson w660i, Nokia 5310, Sony Ericsson w880i, Nokia 5310, 3G phone, Sony Ericsson

Back in the hair-metal days of the 80’s, most of the mat rocks I knew were all into the bands like Motley Crue, Poison, Bon Jovi, LA Guns, and a whole load of ‘em poodle rock bands.

But the serious metal fans (as paradoxical as that sounds), well, they were into Whitesnake. I dunno, in the whole hair metal scene, Whitesnake were quite different. Maybe because they were British, but so were Def Leppard, but there was something that set them apart. In retrospect, i can guess it was because of David Coverdale, the lead singer (and leader) of the band, that was the driving force (and only member to remain over the years). Coverdale, as many would know, was once from Deep Purple.

The band hit big time around 1987-88 (altho they were around since 1978) with the Whitesnake album, at the height of the hair metal craze sweeping the world. MTV caught on with their videos (especially on Headbanger’s Ball) like ‘Still of the Night’, ‘Here I Go Again’ (featuring a very hawt Tawny Kitaen dancing on a car), and ‘Is This Love’.

Next came the ‘Slip of the Tongue’ in 1989. I remember buying the album and after listening to it, went “what on earth is this?!” It was a very disappointing album for me.

By the early 90’s, the meteor named Kurt Cobain and grunge had killed all the metal dinosaurs, so it was also pretty much downhill from there for Whitesnake, too. But looking back, Coverdale had always been an excellent singer. And their music, though slightly dated, still held up much better than their contemporaries… Yeah, try listening back to Crue’s ‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’ or ‘Nothin’ But A Good Time’ by Poison and you’ll see what i mean.

And thanks to Youtube, i had a great time reminiscing about Whitesnake… below are ‘Is This Love’, ‘Here I Go Again’ and ‘Still of the Night’.

Technorati Tags: metal, Whitesnake, David Coverdale

That’s right, folks, you read it korrectly.

It’s kambing. And here’s the preview video. Turn up your speakers to the MAX.

(sorry for the bootleg quality video, i dun have any awesome video editing software, k?)

For my post on the last year’s bash, read here.

So, there. Get ready for TGG2. More details soon, from the man.

I’m joining the MSM (mainstream media) boycott.
(For the background to it, you can read it all here)

But beside the fact that they print lies and blatant propaganda, i have another reason to wean off buying it. Our newspapers are basically crap.

Let’s look at NST and the Star. Look, the local news about politics and stuff are not worth reading, besides, both papers tell the same story, different writer. As for the sports pages and international news, they all come from the same syndicated foreign news agencies. Unless you one of the 5 people who actually read local sports news, but let’s face it, the day Astro came on board with their live telecast of EPL and F1 and ATP tennis and endless golf tournaments, final nail went into the coffin of local sports.

So the only way the papers can make an impact is in their lifestyle section and regional pullouts. In the Star, the former is called StarTwo and the latter (in Klang Valley) would be Star Metro (Their NST counterparts are “Totally Shite” and “I Couldn’t Care Less”). Here’s where the Star is miles better than NST, and this is the only portion most young people i know read in the papers. NST is utter shite in this department, i sincerely believe their writers can’t good and entertaining articles even if their lives depended on it. Just look at their comics section and their un-funny local strips. I’m all for supporting local talent, but not if they are so pathetic they insult our intelligence.

And here’s another thing - RM1.50 is bloody expensive for a daily newspaper (Yes, the Star, I’m talking about YOU). Don’t give me the spin about rising paper prices and it still being the cheapest in the world, yadda yadda yadda. Look at the amount of advertising and the obscene rates you charge.

The good thing is that as young people spend more time online reading blogs and social networking websites like facebook, the influence of MSM on them will be less and less. And with that, hopefully so will the advertising dollars also follow suit, and that would make the ultimate difference.