will i am's delayed diary

Even though the DVD has come to replace the near-obsolete VCD, I've noticed that I've retained my VCD-watching habits even with the DVD. What I mean is that I tend to watch a movie over the span of two days. With VCD, one movie equalled two discs. If the movie is boring, we can always stop at disc 1, and revisit disc 2 tomorrow. No need to remember the time where we stopped. However, with the DVD, one movie is just one disc, but I find myself still needing 2 days to finish one. However, now I have to remember where I stopped (the scene function isn't very helpful at times), or rely on the player's memory (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't). I can't even finish one movie in one sitting, I'm wondering how some people can finish one whole TVB series in a weekend. Anyway, I finished watching two movies yesterday. Firstly, Date Movie . I found it very entertaining. Very good use of music. The use of Kelis' "Milkshake" at the opening dance seq...

I have come to the office unprepared today. Things took a different turn than I would have expected. There is unfinished business and I have a feeling it will come back to bite me in the keister. Why is it that when I go to site A, there will be nothing going on, but when I go to site B, people from site A will call and I have to do things via "remote control", which I hate. Ugh. My telephone etiquette is lacking. Or more accurately, my patience is lacking.

Pitcher Plant Originally uploaded by williamnyk . While I was at my neigbourhood landscaping one-stop shop (read kedai jual pasu, jual bunga ) the other day, I saw this pot of pitcher plants. It was selling for MYR26.00 per pot. It's called Pig Cage Enter Water in Chinese, I think, and thus has some Feng Shui application. Its supposed to bring luck, wealth, yadda, yadda, yadda because the plant retains water (Read $$$). Ditto for the price. "26" is supposed to mean "easy business" or something or rather And there was a guy who sedang borong 5 pots. Very typical. Say that something brings luck, people will buy truckloads of it.

Snow White Originally uploaded by williamnyk . I recently finished reading Neil Gaiman's "Smoke and Mirrors" . A collection of short stories in his signature style. One of the stories that I really liked was the one about Snow White, entitled "Snow, Glass, Apples". It's told from the view point of the Queen. In this version, the Queen is the good one, whereas Snow White is a blood-sucking little monstrosity who practically sucked the life out of her father, the King. The story is basically the same, with all the salient plot points, like the Queen's "magic mirror", cutting out Snow White's heart, the 7 dwarfs, the prince, and finally the Queen's demise. It's a refreshing change to the classic. I learnt something new too. "Ballock Sack" == "Scrotum" . Kewl. Do read it. Since I'm on the subject of fairytales and such, Hoodwinked is also a good rewriting of the classic "Little Red Riding Hood...

Watashiwa Tensai Desu Originally uploaded by williamnyk . Took this photo on the Star LRT. Some kid scribbled it on the advertising board with artliner.

Purchase this bottle of "Holy Water" for RM10. It claims to have 1001 uses. Can be used internally (say a little prayer before ingesting) and externally. What will they think of next?

The last movie from Takashi Miike (he's the guy from Istana Takeshi ) I watched was Zatoichi and I liked it. So the moment I saw Izo , I immediately bought it. The movie is confusing. I can't really put it in words. Here's a poor attempt at it: Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Weird guitar solo; Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Sex with a lady with bad makeup; Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Weird guitar solo; Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Sex with "Mother Nature"; Kill; Kill; Kill; Warning: Spoiler ahead! ; Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Kill; Weird guitar solo. The scenes are all messed up, ancient characters, modern settings; and vice versa. It got tiresome after a while. Memorable quotes: "We made love once, doesn't it mean anything to you?", "My penis stroked your hole and it felt good, nothing more".

Called to another site to solve a production problem which I know nothing about ( selamatkan api of sorts). But I guess, it's important for the company to have somebody there to "show face". Finally the author found a little bug in the code -- turns out that the code employs a double infinite loop (cringe-worthy is it not?) and the re-initialization of certain objects are unreachable. Took me a while to simulate the problem. The system was rolled-back and I think I will take much more testing before the clients dares to migrate again. Lunch was on YS today. A nice Vegetarian Thali from Buharry @ Asian Heritage Row. A posh area with restaurant like "Co Chine" and "Ye Chine". See the pattern? The set was great, not so overpowering like the one I had at Sangeetha @ Lebuh Ampang (also compliments of YS, :)). Standard stuff, dhal , yoghurt, dessert, curried chickpeas, etc. The service was good and organized. They use the billing and ordering system simila...

Had chapati for lunch again today. Tarmesh @ Jalan Berangan. My colleague from Hyderabad says its quite authentic. I don't know about it being authentic or not, but the food is good. The thing that caught my attention was a cup of spices at the cashier. It looked like some strange mini alien pods. Ugh. My colleague told me to try it. Apparently it's a breath freshener. You put a spoonful on your palm, then you dump it all in your mouth. Then chew slowly. You know what? It tastes exactly like Hacks . After some googling, I found out that the spice is called fennel . Not bad, not bad at all.

World Cup Fever Originally uploaded by williamnyk . I took this photo at Brickfields, near Crescent Court. The flag of Italy and Brazil. I wonder if they're as zealous putting up the Jalur Gemilang during National Day celebration month. Another sign of the impending World Cup (in addtion to the Joga Bonito dome in BB). I couldn't care less about the World Cup. But I'm keeping my eye on the MyTeam Vs Malaysia match in Bukit Jalil on the 28th of May. With the stupid Lanter Festival using a big chunk of parking real estate and my previous experiences of soccer matches in Bukit Jalil (a story which involves a Swiss girl from Lucerne, money and the police, I'll tell it next time, heh), the traffic will hell with too many cars and road closures, the LRT will be congested and crowd will be like locusts. I'm gonna hide at home on that Sunday. ------------------------------------------- Update on 29/05/2006: MyTeam lost 2:1. Number of spectators: 70k.

PUJ Nights Originally uploaded by williamnyk . I reached home yesterday at 11:30pm. Mum tertidur at the sofa waiting up for me. I promised that I would eat a bit, so I had a quick supper with her. Work started late at about 8:20pm. Lotsa problems accessing the servers. Remote here, then remote there. A confusing arrangement. I was getting pretty restless by 9:30pm. Have you felt irritated looking at somebody do something that you could much faster? I felt like grabbing the mouse from the guy's hands. But I didn't. By 10:00pm, I'd pretty much resigned to my fate that it was gonna be a loooooong night. I was guiding the guy at the side, and I found that my voice had lost its vitality. I was in no hurry anymore. No more gritting of teeth. Luckily, the whole fiasco ended by 10:45pm. Quickly rushed to catch the train back. Luckily the parking lot at Bukit Jalil was well-lit. A stupid Lantern Festival caused a large section of the nearest parking lot to be closed. Had...

IMG_1333 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . I'm working late today. Hence the post at this hour. I came in at 09:00 today with nothing much on my plate. Waited around till 17:30. I have to wait another 1.5 hours for the system to close before I can do anything. Turns out that the activities can only start at 20:00 to accomodate dinner time and dusk prayers. Oh well. So I went off to have nasi lemak sambal sotong next door. Fantastic. However, It's already 20:15 and I still can't begin my work.... Argghhh.

Sorry for the atrocious formatting of my last post. I couldn't get the "valign=top" working properly for the table. And as to why the table is so narrow, I can't explain that either. I suck at HTML. So difficult to blog through blogger. Have to resort to Flickr or through e-mail.

wells-invisible-man Originally uploaded by williamnyk . TV3's cheesy cerekarama never fail to impress me in terms of sheer entertainment value. I caught just one episode of Misi: X-Ray and I'm totally hooked. Here's a transcript: (Danial drives up to Marissa's place, she meets him at the porch Marissa : Eh, Danial. Masuklah rumah. Danial : Tak. You beritahu I , betul you tak cintakan budak Aidel tu. You masih cintakan I kan? Marissa : Cinta?! Kalau maksud cinta you adalah seperti mana you cintakan ke-ego-anmu, maksudnya I cintakan you (What!?) . Sudahlah Danial, itu hal saya. (Marissa walks away, annoyed) Danial : Hei, kamu ikut saya! (Danial pushes Marissa into his car) Marissa : Eh, kamu gila ke! Ikut kamu ke mana! (Marissa gets out of the car) Danial : Kita ke hotel! Saya tunjukkan betapa saya cinta kepada awak! Kamu tu hak saya! (Sweet!) Marissa : Hak kamu! Hidup I adalah hak I sendiri! (Marissa walks away again) Danial : MARISSA! Kamu nampak batu ...

New Lifestyle : Lotsa standing around and waiting. Wondering why the trains going the opposite direction are always empty and much more frequent. Lotsa jostling and pushing into already packed spaces. The design of the monorail is just screwed up. Much real estate is taken up by the seats in the middle of the train (to cover up the giant tyre below) and a lot of people who take the monorail just aren't very considerate. They just won't file in to make more way for the other passengers and won't file out to make way for those alighting. They like to block the doors and block the area towards the middle of the train. The problem is so bad that the monorail staff have to herd us in. I once overheard a British tourist remark, "I feel like a cow..." (a word of advice, tourists should stay away from the monorail during rush hour). Yeah, the only thing missing is a cattle prod. New Mobility : They really shouldn't connect the monorail to the LRT lines if the monor...

SGH-N620 VS SGH-X700 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . I'm sorry people, but gonna jemur nyawa a little here. A finally changed my phone!! Compliments of of SK and JM. Kind of an early birthday present of sorts. Love you guys! Now the only thing's that's left is the PSP... haha. Anyways, I've never actually "bought" a cellphone before. It takes me ages to actually decide to buy anything. Call it fickleness (I'm a Libra), call it kiam siap-ness . It took me a year (one year of nagging from SK and JM) to buy my Canon A80. I was convinced after being told that my phone looks like crap (secondary concern), the buttons starting acting up (way annoying) and the other part supposedly can't hear me (I have yet to confirm this, but I'll take SK's word). Here's my cellphone chronology: 1) Nokia 6150 - Compliments of my brother. Still in my drawer. It needs a rubber band to keep it alive. 2) Nokia 3210 - Compliments of my brother-in-law. ...

Red Originally uploaded by williamnyk . The newest addition to my street: a) A Taoist temple b) Balai Bomba c) The Stadhyust (relocated from Melaka) As you can see from the pic, the whole colour scheme of my street is *really* screwed up. A little sky blue, a little pale yellow, a little white, and whole big chunk of red. Welcome to Kindergartenland.

IMG_1089 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . I just found out that my colleague passed away last night. She just discovered her illness last week and it was too late for her. She did not survive the surgery. Kýrie, eléison Christe, eléison May her soul rest in peace...

quidditch Originally uploaded by williamnyk . In yesterday's newspaper: The German Quidditch team preparing for the Quidditch World Cup. PS: Read the caption to learn the truth

IMG_1472 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . 2 years ago in Jakarta, I found this in my post-dinner fortune cookie: "Idleness is the holiday of fools" . I still have it in my wallet. Do I look at it. Nope . Do listen to the wisdom its trying to impart on me? Nope . After bouts of frantic rushing and meeting deadlines, I have begun to savour the times when there is nothing much to do. But sometimes, the hours just go by so slowly... Perhaps I should stop procrastinating and update that document...

Warning. Boring stuff ahead. You have an MSSQL server table with text, ntext or image columns. You wanna apply triggers on it that employ the use of the inserted and deleted logical tables. You're soooo screwed.

While having breakfast on Wesak Day, one guy came up to table asking me to show my support for a recycling campaign. Apparently, they go around asking people to sponsor recycling-awareness books for primary school students. Their target is 50,000 books. One book costs RM8.50. You do the math. The guy showed me a sample. It was quite thin, with glossy paper and full-colour printing. I bet the books will just end up in the landfill, unread, leaching its multi-coloured inks, dyes and bleaches into water table. If you want to promote recycling, by all means use recycled paper (even WWF pandai enough to do so). It's an educational book, not some fancy product launch booklet. Goodness. I told him to shove off, nicely.

I've finally gotten around to trying out the food at Nippon Yatai Mura, the restaurant with the Tanuki (Japanese raccoon-dog, can also be seen on Kameya near Federal Hotel) as its logo. A quick Mother's Day lunch. The food's really quite good. The soup bases are very good. Had Kyushu Ramen , Kimuchi Nabe and a soft shelled crab temaki . The crab was a tad too oily. Strangely, they don't serve Tanuki Ramen . Still, I would like to try out the other ramen on their menu. I kinda miss Jakarta's Ajisen Ramen. But then, not quite enough to wanna go back there... Overall a very nice dining experience except for the fact that there was this little girl sitting 2 booths away from us who kept on playing peek-a-boo with me and yelling "UNCLE" at the top of her lungs to get my attention. She was so cute with a big mop of hair on her head, but not cute enough to make me not cringe at the call of "Uncle". C'mere, I'll wring your little neck. Heh.

tai-chi Originally uploaded by williamnyk . What you see here is a poor attempt of trying to write down the lyrics to the theme song of Tai-Chi Master (a 2 in 1 DVD related to my previous post ). This is what I get for skipping P.O.L. (People's Own Language) classes on Saturdays during my primary school days. Always ending up at my classmates house nearby playing "Bare Knuckle", "Sonic the Hedgehog" and "De-Cap-Attack" on his Sega Genesis. All the strokes are wrong, and the characters are just... I remember having to write my Chinese name on the blackboard and the teacher remarked, "Are you writing or are you drawing grass!". The idiot. I hated that guy.

My brother found this in Endah Parade, Seri Petaling. Really had a hankering for lemang since raya . The rendang tok was wicked too. Too bad the palas was a let down. I gotta haul my ass back to the East coast for some decent Malay food. It's been 6 years...

There's this guy at the office who carries around a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin as his water bottle. I know it's not good to use mineral water bottles, but hasn't this guy ever heard of Tupperware ?! It's so freaky.

IMG_1470 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . This has been growing out of a palm tree in my garden. It looks freaky. It's most probably seeds, but who knows, maybe I'll get some Thumbelina variant.

My mother was invited to the launch of an "anti-snatch theft handbag" a few months back and this really piqued her interest. So, my sister recently bought her one for her birthday. This "innovative" handbag features a detachable strap. So if some guy comes along and grabs the strap, he'll only get strap while the bag falls to the ground. No points for guessing that the design is useless if the guy snatches the bag and not the strap. But that's besides the point. As one can guess, the bag must be designed so that the strap is strong enough to withstand everyday use, and on the other hand must be weak enough to detach when snatched. Unfortunately, this is a another case of "good design, bad material". After less than one week of normal usage, the strap is now perpetually in "snatch-theft" mode. It comes off every now and then (unless perhaps it's a orang halimunan snatch thief that we are not aware of). After inspecting the stupid thin...

Dinner compliments of SK and HP yesterday. A celebration of sorts since they've both finished their Master's Degree viva . I think I know more than friends with a Master's degree or in the process of getting one. But no feelings of being left out, just wondering what I'm doing to go forward. Back to the glorious food. Some establishment by the side of Old Klang Road near the Taman Desa turning. Everytime I pass by that stretch of road I would curse the people who park their cars and hog the road (OKR is a highway now, no less). But as fate would have it, I had to park there as well. Oh well. Had a nice dinner of steamed chicken, sweet & sour pork, kailan and steamed egg (way too salty). For some reason, my tummy was not content, so we headed over to Sri Petaling for mamak food. Another round of cow's milk pulled tea, milo, ABC, thosai and naan . Fantastic. Oh yeah, and SK got "molested" by the Indian waiter after asking if the bananas on the table we...

I've noticed that I'm getting grumpier and grumpier. I snapped at an elderly classmate yesterday. And I didn't even notice. I really should tone down the sarcasm a bit. I resolved to be calmer starting from yesterday evening, and yet, first thing this morning, I was grilled in the office regarding some UAT logs. Hated the guys insinuation that I didn't do any unit tests before handing over to the users. I smiled the whole way, but my words were dripping poison. Heck, I could feel my lips quivering. Arggghhh! I help out testers by doing a workaround and 'jalan pintu belakang' and they thank me reporting it to the management and sending out e-mails... Kena makan belimbing and celery to reduce my blood pressure.

IMG_1080 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . Can someone tell me what's wrong with Blogger?! Can't post through their interface, but it works fine through Flickr! I'm getting sick of "404 Page not found".

IMG_1432 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . Mum's birthday bash started off at Amarin Heavenly Thai, MidValley Megamall. The big SIX ZERO . When we were young, we often think of aging as a distant process that doesn't really affect us. But recently, I've recently admitted that I'm really relatively "old" and with this fact, my mum would definitely be "older". She has really aged, but gracefully. Really should spend more quality time with her. Back to the food review. Amarin's a nice place. Never crowded. Lotsa wood, ambient lighting. Simple decor. Managed by S.E.A Cuisine Sdn Bhd . They operate more than 10 different Thai restaurants around town. Had a shock when I looked at their business card. I for one over-ordered. The waiter wasn't very helpful in telling me that we had ordered too much. But then, it was a table of six and there were four guys. Apparently we all had small appetites. We forgot to factor in the mixed appetizer pl...

IMG_1314 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . Labour Day : Spent the day watching Flight Plan and some episodes of Gantz . Flight Plan is OK, but Jodie Foster has really aged. After watching 3 consecutive episodes of Gantz, I have found that it is starting to annoy the hell outta me. Not even heaving chests and gratuitous violence could save it. Too little happens and the script is fluff and repetitions. Lotsa screaming at each other. Lotsa standing around. ?!?!. Dinner : Ate at Jogoya . Compliments of SK. Celebration dinner. RM88++ per pax. Ouch. Found on the back of the moist towelette -- Jo - A place to go; Go - A place where the king goes; Ya - Shop. One has to pay up front. Pengz. After paying, then only one can expect to hear greetings from the staff. As one is ushered into the dining area, you can see a giant projected clock on the carpeted floor. Probably a time slot reminder. Lots of wood, dark, marble-like materials. The floor is cement. The food counters are all spr...

So, what did you do to commemorate 01:02:03 04/05/06? Well, I had three choices: a) Sleep b) Sleep c) Sleep As you can see, it's a tough choice. But then, I went out of my way and chose option d) Sleep. How about you?