Ruben Tan has severe brain damage after constantly hitting himself whenever he faces problems in his programming projects, and thus have a weird outlook on life which prevents him from being trapped in the surface of lies.
It seems that in this era of Information and Technology where everything moves at light speed, we as human beings begin to forget about values that we once hold true in the past. And because of the competitiveness that we all are subjected to in this urban life that we start forgetting the need to respect each other as humans.
What has happened to freewill and respect (for it)?
I called Lonpac Insurance Bhd just a while ago to check on the progress of my claim, and to my surprise they have already sent the letter to my house on the 18th of March! Talk about efficiency. Thing is I haven’t received the letter yet - gotta wait a few days more if our postal service is anything to be trusted with.
Guess how much I got from them? RM 33,000.00!!!! I was expecting at most 28k, as my car’s value is about 32k as of Dec 2007 (although the insured value is 39k). Isn’t this great news or what? My settlement with the bank as of January 2008 is 34k, and I have been paying 660 per month until now, so that 33k should cover all of the settlement.
This is great news indeed! After this episode, I’ll have zero HP installment to pay per month, meaning I get extra 660 to spend (ahem, to save), and this also means I can clear my debt with my dad with relative ease after this.
A final note - Lonpac personnel has been extremely efficient in this episode of my car claim, and unlike insurance rumors flying about they didn’t procrastinate and was even extremely helpful when I got into difficulties with the police on closing the case for my car. As a result, I’m a happy man to put the theft of my car behind me officially and move on, and Lonpac has been a great help in that matter.
It’s a great day today!
This morning was kind of funny. A sad kind of funny, but funny nevertheless. You see, I’m supposed to reach the office at 8AM to participate in an interview by the client that wants to know my skillset, and this meeting is supposed to be conducted via GoToMeeting. I’ve received the complete details, which includes the meeting ID and the call number, and attempted to connect to it.
Waiting…
So I clicked join meeting, and waited for the other party to reply. Wait wait wait… for 30 minutes before I realized something must be wrong. Okay, so a quick check via MSN with my colleague, reveals that they are waiting for me too. DARN! I then added the person in charge to my yahoo messenger, and she instructed me to call a number and gave me an access code.
Ok, so I clicked join meeting again, and realized that the access code was missing 3 digits. I messaged her again and told her that, and she insisted that the code was correct. I was perplexed.
The meeting ended by her rescheduling it. Sigh. So as I walked out of the office to makan breakfast with my colleagues, I realized that I’m supposed to use Skype to call in!!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK???? She didn’t mentioned it and I was too slow to realize that simple fact. But then the only consolation is that another team is using the company Skype account at that moment, and even if I had realized that I needed to make that call I couldn’t have called through anyway.
So what to do? Wait lor. How I wished there was a free version of GoToMeeting!
No I wasn’t gone from this blog, and neither did I break up with my girl. Rather, I spent this weekend leisurely, and obviously that made my girl happier than ever. That’s why I didn’t update this blog for so many days.
I’ve watched two movies in the weekend (which seems to be my routine now), Rule #1 and Gone Baby Gone. The former is a piece of shit - literally. Stinks, useless and basically pointless, and deserves to be flushed down the toilet but keeps boobing back up the surface. Avoid it. Like a plague.
Now Gone Baby Gone however, is much different. In fact, a world apart. First off, this movie is directed by Ben Affleck, star of various blockbusters like Good Will Hunting, Pearl Harbour, Armageddon and Daredevil. Never knew he had a knack for directing though, and I have been proven dead wrong that pretty faces can’t do anything but act, sing and model - I’ll be damned that this is one of the very few movies in this century that stirred my lethargic mind into a frenzy during AND after the show.
As we grow old, we observe more of this world and the more we see the better we detect patterns within the human behavior system, and it always come to a point where we can effectively classify different groups of people based on a generalized system of attributes.
For me, humans can be generally categorized into four major groups, and two minor groups. The aim of this article is not to examine the minority, seeking instead of address the majority of humans who are generally ignorant, does not self-monitor and are basically unaware of their own foolishness.
So what are the four groups?
Here’re some jokes I found from my email:
Pak Lah and Samy Vellu were in a helicopter looking down Kuala Lumpur. Pak Lah said, “Samy, if I throw two RM100 notes down, two people will be happy.”
Not wanting to be outdone, Samy said, “If I throw 200 RM1 notes, 200 people will be happy.”
The pilot heard the conversation and said, “If I throw the two of you down, 27 million Malaysians will be happy.”
One more dedicated to Samy:
Three guys were arguing as to what race Adam and Eve were. The Malay guy said they must be Malay as they are so good looking. The Chinese guy said that they must be Chinese as they are so calm even with a snake.
The Indian guy said that they must be Malaysian-Indian as they have no shelter, no clothes, no money, share one apple, advised by a snake who told them that they are living in paradise!
Specially dedicated to our politicians’ level of IQ:
Barisan wins the election. To celebrate, they decide to send more angkasawan to space. Najib calls together a group of Umnoputra cosmonauts.
Saudara saudara sekalian, we successfully sent our man Muzaffar to space using tax payers’ money the last time. Since we have more than enough tax payers’ money, the Cabinet has decided that you will all now fly to the sun.
But Datuk, we will be burnt to crisp.
Jangan takut, the Barisan government has thought of everything … you will fly at night!
ARHAHAHAHA. These made my day.
In this century, wisdom has given up its place to a new concept called escapism. Let’s face it - all of us, to some extend, tend to run away from troubles rather than facing them head on. I am guilty of it too, and here I shall share some of my stories.
The first shot was taken indirectly by Tun Dr. Mahathir, our “beloved” ex-PM, and the direct shot was delivered by his son Mukhriz Mahathir, in a letter to the PM and a press conference that almost turned ugly had not for the last minute change of venue and the diligence of the police keeping non-reporters out.
And recently, the situation has taken a worse turn. Despite the mass media’s reports that UMNO still stands behind Pak Lah, photos of banners raised in various parts of Malaysia says otherwise.
What The Fuck happened?
Well actually, I’m glad that UMNO is finally breaking down. Did the elections break their unity? I doubt so. I believe the main person that brought UMNO’s downfall, is our PM himself. Khairy Jamaluddin also might have played a role, as stated in this article.
But then I realized something. Khairy seems to be a person with bad judgement. He seems to think that control of the mass media is enough to ensure the public is kept in the BN’s propaganda machine. He seems to believe that the BERSIH rally is just a farce, as well as the HINDRAF rally a week after. He seems to think that being the PM’s son-in-law he has the right to manipulate pretty much every darn thing in the office, and that other UMNO members are just yes-men who goes by all the PM’s wishes.
Heck, even his choice in his wife seems… err… well, eyes of the beholder I guess.
Ahhh Bioshock. Wrench on my right and frost on my left, big daddies BOW to me! Well, at least after a couple trips to the vita-chambers before that but… I enjoyed it, totally. I still remembered my brain going DING-that’s-a-fucking-nice-twist when I finally met Ryan, and realizing something that changes the way I perceive the game’s story and its characters. Oh the memorable characters… but mostly, its about me gunning down splicers Quake-style.
Yes, it had been years since I’ve played an FPS that allowed me to fire while running without having my bullets sprayed all over the place. I kind of hated the current genre of FPS that penalizes accuracy when firing while moving, all in the name of realism. And the irony is, though they call themselves “realistic”, I don’t see any realistic bullet dynamics or realistic enemy AI at all. Heck, if you want realism, take away the fucking health bar and make it one-shot-game-over. Heh, too hard eh? Compromise between gaming experience and realism eh? My ass. Give me a gun and let me strafe and fire it at the same time, and I’ll give your game a chance to stay in my computer. The only “realistic” shooter I actually enjoyed was STALKER, and that was AFTER I got the scopes for my T301 rifle. Or after I got the G37.
Anyway, Bioshock was a good game - not much compared to its spiritual predecessor System Shock, but much more than the plethora of shooters that the game industry shoves down our throats nowadays. And, the unique environment makes it all the more memorable. If only it had sexy babes in thongs running around… ahem. Sorry Duke, I kinda missed the strippers after so many years.
Stop ranting and get to the point dammit!
Okay okay. Bioshock 2 is announced! It’s official! The news had been anticipated by many games for a long time since the release of Bioshock, and I’m not exactly surprised at the announcement. What irked me is the fact that Bioshock 2 is going to be prequel to Bioshock.