begitulah acuannya

Seronok sekarang ni perhatikan perangai anak-anak.
Banyak yang sama macam mak dan ayah diorang.
Tapi bila tang perangai yang tak berapa bagus tu, jadi risau jugak :P
Masa tu kena lah muhasabah diri.

Agaknya itulah satu lagi rahmat Allah bagi kat ibubapa melalui anak-anak.

Semoga kita semua terus berusaha untuk menjadi manusia terbaik, insyaAllah.

Aussie T-Shirt

My friend Noraidalin went Down Under and bought me a t-shirt.
Okay, I asked for the t-shirt. For free.
:)

And sure enough, she gave me a piece. Quite nice. Very comfortable. Unlike the usual thin, low quality type. I like the color too.

The thing that makes it special is what printed on the t-shirt.

I'm a bit of a collector, and so it's nice to have a collection of Australian slangs in one piece of cloth.

Here's the list:

• wally
• gone walkabout
• chock a wobly
• stone the crows
• no worries
• bloody oath
• stunned mullet
• crikey!
• hows that!
• sheilla
• you beauty
• bonza!!
• down under
• fair crack of the whip
• turn it up
• mug lair
• too right
• amberfluid
• footy
• flatout like a lizard drinkin
• strewth!!
• onya
• yobbo
• she'll be right
• g'day mate!
• fair dinkum
• spot on
• tinnie
• flamin heck

I've heard a few, like the familiar "Down Under", "G'Day Mate!","spot on", "no worries" and "fair dinkum".
Totally no idea what the rest means.
Go and figure them out:
http://www.aussieslang.org/
google 'aussie slang' or 'strine' and you'll get quite a handful of hits.

Thanks for the t-shirt, Lin!
Where'll you be going after this?
;)

*updated 21 Feb 2014. thanks to Robbie and Michelle for informing me the correct link above :)

Ferrari II

Adam: Mak, nanti bila saya dah besar macam awak, saya boleh hantar Ayah pergi MMHE. Lepas tu saya boleh hantar awak dengan Marsya pergi Convent. Lepas tu saya pergi dekat Sekolah Sri Tebrau.

Naza: Bestnya...

Adam: Jugak saya boleh letak saya punya beg dengan baju sekolah agama dalam kereta.

Naza: Adam naik kereta apa?

Adam: Ferrari lah...

Akmal: Ferrari Adam warna apa?

Adam: Merah...

 

Cool...

Thoughtful, isn't he?

And right choice on the colour, my son. Other than red ain't quite a Ferrari.

Ferrari

Adam: "Kenapa awak tak beli Ferrari, Mak?"

Naza: :p

Adam: "Saya suka..." *dengan nada hampa*

I'm not quite sure whether he's referring to Shell's miniature Ferraris or the real deal.

Note: he refers Naza's maroon Avanza as Lightning McQueen

photo from here

Adam

A budding photographer.

Naza always find lots of photos taken by Adam whenever she 'lost' her camera for a few hours left lying around in the house. Sometimes with no more space for other photos. Most of the time, with exhausted batteries.



self-portrait, 2009




It is good to support his keen interest. Perhaps it's a good idea to buy him a Nikon D90 now.


While he learns to compose good photos, I could use the DSLR for other stuff.


Yeah, a good idea indeed.

Have I mentioned before that's he's a bit of a joker, too?

You would've guessed, anyway.

Man United is the biggest English football club

United was beaten 2-0 in the UEFA Champions League final in Rome this week.

What's the big fuss?

From the talks going on around my friends (who are against MU), it actually proves one thing:

Manchester United is the biggest football club

And naturally, people envy United. Their success, and even their existence. With winning seems to be a second nature, it would be a tremendous news to see a giant fall.

And they fell big time to Barcenola.

The talking point of the match result is not that Barcenola wins, but Man United's lost.

Here's my take:

In English football, either you are a Man United fan or you're not.

If you're not, choose among other 19 teams in the league.

Whatever they are, it didn't matter. As long as you could vent your envy and loath against Man United.

Simple as that.

In the CL finals, many football fans who hate Man United watched it to see Man United fall. It doesn't really matter if Barcenola (or any other team) wins, actually. As long as Man United lose. These sad people will be happy. And happy they were.

Good for them. They need that once in a while.

And it doesn't seem important that I spelled Barcenola correctly or not, right?

neglected stereo

These past few days I suddenly had the urge of listening back to Counting Crows. Can't really say my favourite band, but I do like their songs. Out of their eight albums, I only have two.

1. Their first album August and Everything After (1993).
2. Across A Wire: Live From New York (1998) - bought because it's a value package - 2 CDs for about RM40.

Okay, and also a few CD singles, mainly from their second album Recovering The Satellites (1996).

After dinner just now, I decided to have an hour round of cycling around Seri Alam, for it has been more than a week without cycling. That decision was overthrown by the sudden thought of listening to CC on the stereo at home.

Popped in the August CD into the DVD player. What awful audio coming out of my floorstanding speakers! I made a quick check, and found the source of that poor audio quality. The left speaker's tweeter unit is not working. No treble coming out of it. Hence, the song doesn't come out right, losing it's balance on the high freq audio output.

Well, to think of it, my poor stereo system (we call them 'separates' in the UK, short of Hi Fi Separates) is neglected since a few years ago. Not really being looked at, a far cry from my student days - the time when I acquired the set. Used to check for dust and corrosion monthly (or weekly, depending on my mood). The funny thing was, the separates hype for me sort of ended some time after I came to Johor and started working here. A classic case of lack of environment filled with enthusiasts, diminishing the flame. Seems that I'm alone in the separates world over here.

It was very different while I was in Manchester (and it seems at that time, among friends across Britain). My peers are proud owners of separates. Wealthy people (like Shell and Petronas scholars) own high end systems, while those with not so deep pockets like me own entry to mid level systems. But yes, most of us would have our own separates. So a house with 3 or four students would have 3 or 4 different sets of separates.

Wherever we go and whenever we chat, there would always be an exchange of separates component models being discussed. Usually a blend of long alphanumeric codes decipherable only to the avid students of What Hi Fi (okay, other Hi Fi mags too) and Hi Fi store frequenters. Yeah, I can still remember a few: SL-PG 580A, CD-63SE MkIII KI Signature (that's a Marantz sweet CD Player - drool...), 733i, AE109, Alpha 7, Coda7, Talk4.1.

Back to my problem with the stereo. I have another pair of speakers, bookshelf type that I have not used since my days in KL with Technip. Took them down from the shelf, dusted a bit and propped on top of the floorstanders. Plugged the speaker cable leads into the speaker lugs. Hey presto, Adam Duritz and his band's music plays oh so beatifully coming out from the small speakers.

Time for a repair, that decade-old Mission 733i speaker of mine. I wonder how much it would cost me.

---------------

Here's my current setup for the home theater/stereo separates system:

• Amplifier: Kenwood KR-V6080 Audio-Video Surround Receiver. Basically a 60 Watt Dolby Surround amplifier that functions as a radio tuner.
• Video Source 1: Pioneer DV-366 DVD Player. Plays DVD, VCD, CD, CDR. Has dimmer function for the dot-matrix display (for ultra better sound quality when playing CDs - no apparent distortion or noise of electrical signal from the electronics. Kononnya).
• Video Source 2: Astro decoder set top. Well, for watching Astro.
• Display: Samsung LA32A450 32" Series 4 LCD Display. Okay, its an LCD TV. Sheeshh...
• Speakers: Mission 733i Primavera floorstanders, Mission 731i black ash bookshelves, Acoustic Energy AE107C center speaker.
• Cables - interconnect: Cambridge Audio Pacific (Yellow) for DVD Player, QED Qnect2 for Astro decoder.
• Cables - speakers: Cable Talk Talk 4.1 Bi-Wire (fronts), QED Qudos Silver Micro (rears), QED Qudos Bi-Wire (center).

The intention initially was to have it set up as surround home theater. With Naza always changing the layout of furniture in the house (used to, but not anymore now), it would be a problem to set up the rear speakers in the living room. Anyway, I have only a Dolby Surround amp. The rear speakers would only give mono quality audio output. Nowadays the minimal norm would be Dolby Digital 5.1 which would give independent audio for each speakers for that realism. The center speaker's tweeter dome was poked by Marsya when she was smaller and experimenting his hand-eye co-ordination skills. With that collectively, I settled for only stereo setup for video and audio.

---------------

Choosing other old CDs to play, I picked up Gary Moore's Ballads & Blues CD. And, found inside the jewel case the SRAM and Rock Shox small stickers that I've been looking for all these while. Woohoo!

...yeap, there's always something related with cycling, my world nowadays.

lower your taxes, give away books

April is nearing the end. Are you being a good Malaysian? Have you filed in your tax forms?

Among other things, we can lower our taxes - or at least get back our pre-paid PCBs, by buying books (and magazines). You can get tax deduction by claiming up to RM1,000 expenditure on books and magazines. That's a big sum, and could lower by quite an amount from your taxable income. When it comes to taxes, a ringgit is a hefty sum, isn't it?

Even if you don't enjoy reading books, once in a while you'd buy a copy or two of magazines to kill time while waiting for someone, school books for your children, yada yada yada...

Or, you could buy books as gifts. C'mon, you do give away presents to someone, right? While it may be nice to buy those small things your loved ones have been hinting on you all-year, giving away books would work for you, too. It's a win-win thingy. You'll not only enrich someone's life (great people reads, and leads), you'll also be doing yourself a favour. Everyone would be happy, because of you.

Err... here's a list of books that I want this year. Well, at least one of them.

http://www.bike-maintenance.com/maintenance-books.htm

Make my day. Save the receipt(s) for next April (and make your day, then).

who's your favourite painter?

I like Vincent Van Gogh's paintings, although not all of them.

Why?

Because his brushstroke is unique. I'm no art buff, but I know what I like when I'm looking at it.

My favourite of his all must be 'Irises'. There's a mystery to the single white one, amongst the other 'normals'. The overall colour blend is nice - blue/indigo and green, the accompaniment of oranges on the top left corner, dashes of yellow, and earth on the bottom left corner.

On the subject of art, my kind of art is more towards geometric and definite. No wonder why among my past ambitions was to be an architect. Well, I guess a mechanical engineer suits me too. Once in a while I get to draw, those geometric and definite lines with Autocad. If I really have the time, I'd go old school: pen, paper, ruler, stencils and geometric stationeries.

I remember during art classes through my school years , I'm more keen towards letterings/typesets, logos, posters and such. I guess that's why I'm into XS - because of the definiteness, while offering a work of art when it's finished.

Some time ago I attempted to convert Irises into XS sheet so that I can make it a major project. However, it turned out to be quite massive and requires many, many different colours. Well, having the painting as my office PC desktop wallpaper is okay too.

Earth Hour 2009, and beyond

I'll switch off the lights in the house tonight, in support of Earth Hour this year.

However, let's take our 'votes' for earth beyond that, beyond tonight. Let's rethink our impact to the environment, and take steps to care for our earth more.

I borrowed Jafa's copy of National Geographic magazine March issue, and a lot can be learned in it.

Search online for ways to reduce energy usage, so you can know how to do your part. Well, borrowing (instead of buying another copy) is one way for reducing energy by itself, too.

Related entry:
recycling has its perks - eventually

How Fast Can Your Fingers Dance?

If you could send SMSes without having to look at the keypad of your handphone, kudos! That's a skill that many are still trying to learn, and not all could master. I am one of that many. However, it's only using one thumb. So, not an all-fingers-dancing there.

Touch Typing (TT) is an essential skill modern people should have. It uses all your fingers. Well, I'm using only nine - my right hand thumb is spared from the keyboard dance. Most of us who work in the office would have a computer on our desks. The means of communicating with the computer is via the mouse and the keyboard.

There are many associated health risks related to the usage of these two. Essentials for our work, we can't do without them. The risks can be minimised, by taking steps to make better the ergonomics. The physical design aspect is one of them. Another step that we could take is to minimise the nodding movement while typing. That is, to minimise the eye (and head) movement when we have to glance at the keyboard every now and then to make sure that we're hitting on the correct keys. With TT, this is minimised, or eliminated altogether (if you're an expert).

Reduced health risks aside, it is much more convenient to TT. Lunchtime is a lights-off period in my office. So, the ability to TT is essential if one is to send emails (not work related, of course...) or chat online during that period.

Old school Autocad users are familiar with TT, but not to the full extent. Give them a mouse to work with, they'd prefer a QWERTY keyboard instead. After all, the numbers are still on the keyboard, right?

That being said, TT also includes the ability to key in numbers without looking at the keypad. By the way, that set of numbers to the right of a full-sized keyboard is called a keypad.

I could only TT at about 45 words per minute (WPM) at accuracy above 90%. However, throw in symbols in the sentences or words to be typed, my accuracy (or speed) would drop a lot.
I learnt how to TT when I was 15, using my cousin Azizi's PC. Those days, the OS was MS-DOS (no, I'm not old), so the graphics was not as awesome as nowadays. Still the essence is the same. After finishing school, while my friends were attending driving classes, I sat at home learning TT on my brother Amri's PC (Windows based already by this). Four hours a day, for three weeks, I finished the basic lessons - not that hard, eh? Well, the PC was not with captivating computer games(solitaire, pacman) that I could play with, so I took the challenge of TT.

The intention was for me to be able to type efficiently, knowing that I would have to hand out reports and assignments for college and university. So, I started 'early' learning how to TT to prepare for that, and I guess I set the goal right back then.

The only bad thing about being able to TT is that my eyes would stay fixed on the computer monitor for a long period of time. Oh, and me learning to TT and forgoing the driving lessons, that's another story.

Google for 'touch typing' (or here), and you'll get enough help to get started. There are many sites offering free online tutoring. Have fun, and may your fingers dance gracefully, and faster.

jemput makan?

While having his nasi lemak in the office one morning, a colleague invited:
"Makan?" ("Eat?")
It's a shortened question for "come and join me with my meal".

It is a courtesy invitation, practiced by Asians. We politely offer to share our meals with others. This is so as not to be rude, enjoying the sumptuous meal alone while others would be left watching enviously and trying hard to ignore the tantalizing aroma floating around the area shared by those around.

This courtesy is practised almost anywhere, even with strangers. If you're on a bus for a long journey and about to enjoy your food, it is deemed to be normal (and somewhat expected) for you to extend this courtesy to the person seated next to you. Even if it's just a plain slice of bread. It's the thought that counts.

Almost all the time, this 'obligatory' courteous invitation will be welcomed with a smile (absent all the while before that), and replied with one of these stock answers:
"Silakan",
"No thank you, enjoy your [whatever]",
"Bismillah" (I like/prefer this one),
"Eh, takpe, takpe",
and et cetera.

I said 'almost', because sometimes I'd like to tease my friends (and strangers) with this unexpected answer:
"OK, leave some for me that chicken wing and the ice cream", while rolling my sleeves up.

That begs a question:
Do we offer our food to be shared with others around because of mere courtesy, adab berbudi bahasa, making it as cliché; or doing it out of pure sincerity and kind thoughts?

During college years, a close friend of mine usually would enjoy his food by himself quietly, and never would offer the courtesy to people around. His take on it is that he wants to eat it all for himself (food on his plate is just enough for himself), and would never be a hypocrite. I agree with him on this.

There's a hadeeth about sharing your food:
"Food for two is enough for three, while food for three is enough for four"
(Abu Hurairah r.a.)

Rest assured, I'll always be sincere while being courteous whenever I ask you to join me with my meal. Though I'll keep mum if I'm only a spoonful away from finishing my [whatever].

cousins

I received these photos from my cousin Liza 2 days ago. The exact date of the photo taken is July 19th last year. It's from her elder sister Lin's (Kak Long) camera, who is technologically challenged :)

The occasion: Nubhan's fan club inaugural meeting cum get together.

I was around KL at that time attending meeting; and so were Ibu, Ayah, and my elder brother Amri's family. Amri fetched me from Crown Princess hotel upon checking out and we went to Low Yat to buy a laptop for Ibu.

Ibu were at UTM Jalan Semarak attending IT related course. We fetch her and had lunch together. Little did I know that they came to KL also to attend NFC's function. I followed them anyway, to Bora Ombak near Ampang Sports Planet.

Although there was a long table reserved for 'family', I still felt uncomfortable to be there. I didn't pay anything, while members have to fork out a certain amount. Another reason being: I was the other person besides Auntie Bong wearing green in that occasion. Really felt so out of place :).

The way out: took Kak Long's camera and went to shooting frenzy mode. Hahaa... Win-win for her and I. Problem is, it took this long for me to get the photo of myself with Nubhan from her. Perhaps Kak Liza could teach Kak Long the simplest way ever to download photos from her uber sophisticated camera someday? Using a card reader is a simple way to do it.

Ayah, Ibu, me, Kak Lang, Kak Long

Of Nubhan, I didn't quite notice how lanky he is. Upon seeing the photo, well, he's a lot taller than I am, and a lot slimmer than I remember when he's younger. And little did I know of his hidden talent, for he's a quiet guy all the while.

be the boss?

Anyone would be perplexed whenever I tell them that I don't have any desire to be a boss, head of department or the like.

I would ask them back why would anyone want to be a boss. The common and usual answer would be 'better salary'. Ahh... the very reason why people are busting their delicate bottoms everyday at their workplace.

$.
Not just $, but $ if you're the boss.

Yes, it is bigger but not necessarily always. Once a former boss of mine said that it is also not unusual for bosses having lower wages than their subordinates. This of course depends on the industry and the line of work. You don't have to be in the management ladder in order to have a big salary. For technical companies, if you have the right technical competency, your salary would be upscaled accordingly. Unfortunately for me, my company doesn't have that. Thus the only path to have better salary is to be the boss.

Does it have to be that way? The boss is the leader, period. That's how companies would flourish, and people get better. When people wants to be the leader because of the $ factor, things could go ugly. Corrupt politicians are examples. Naturally, a leader is a leader not because of the benefits for himself. He should be focusing on others, beyond self. Improving the lives of others, for example. Hence making the $ factor not the prime motivation, rather downgraded only as a side benefit.

You would always also hear bosses say that 'money is not everything'. Well, if you already have tons of it, and that's completely another topic altogether.

summer meadow update

Last Sunday Naza requested for me not to go offroad, and have a recreational activity with the family instead. I obliged, and as usual they enjoyed the extension of last night's sleep. Meanwhile, after Subuh I picked up my XS project and continued on.

This morning I took a photo of the project so far, and it is showing very much progress since my last entry about this. The white daisies are starting to show up between the spots of green & khakis.

It would finish very much soon, if I'm willing to trade it with my offroad rides. Well... the project can always wait.

:)

And yes, we went to Hutan Bandar for the family activity - after the brunch.