ringgit.me

One thing I realy like about blogger is that I get to choose the Archiving Frequency of my blog. Some people choose to archive weekly. I chose Monthly. That's why you see all the months listed in the header and footer of my blog (as opposed to the weeks). When you click a particular month, you get to see all my postings for the month. I like to do this at month end. Click on March 2005, for example, and see what had happened for the past month. Granted, I don't blog all the events or happenings but at least certain post will remind me of specified events. I'm a nostlagic person, that's why. Today is 31st March. It's the 1st quarter of the year. Wow. Time flies!!! Looking back, March is a very special month indeed. Niceeeeeeeeee! .

So today I was at mph 1 Utama looking for a card and this particular one stood out. The words are so meaningful that I was compelled to purchase it. Judge for yourself: I Promise I'll Be There for You - by Emily Matthews If the road ahead seems rought at times, we'll walk it side by side, And I'll give you whatever comfort and support I can provide. If you want someone to listen, or just sit with you awhile, I'll gladly keep you company or share a hug and smile. If you're tired of being brave and you just need a time to cry, You can let your feeling out and I will never question why - And anytime you're lonely or feel a bit of doubt, Just read this little card and know you're deeply cared about. . .

...to my Christian readers. Yesterday I followed a friend to witness his friend's baptism in a Catholic Church, St Xavier's Church in Jalan Gasing. I don't believe I have attended a mass at a Catholic Church before and I was pleasantly surprise that I feel very comfortable in a Catholic Church. All these times, I was under the impression that Catholic Church was very serious, rigid and unwelcoming. So I was very surprise that I actually feel comfortable in a Catholic Church. In fact, I find most other churches, expressive , in comparison. I was always invited to a Lutheran Church because most of my friends are Lutherans. The only other Christian gatherings I went was my sister's last Christmas. She's from Bethany church, I believe another Protestant sect. In these churches, I find that people are overly friendly, overly expressive in their service and overly aggressive. Nothing wrong with that - it's just a different cup of tea :) In the sermons, the people in ...

While I was thinking of a topic to blog today, I realize that I have not been talking about Bonnie for a long, long time. Perhaps the class we both attended have helped us realize that we are just incompatible in terms of our behaviour and we have to be flexible and versatile in order to adapt to each other. And really, we both have put in effort to be more versatile and life in the office has been extremely peaceful these days. Even boss observed and applauded her for the change. So, yay.. one less problem to deal with.

My handphone has the follwing speed dial: (( 1 )) Voice Mail - default.. cannot change (( 2 )) reserved for my "rib" (( 3 )) Home (( 4 )) empty because the number Four is unlucky (( 5 )) Anti Ringgit - for his birth month is May. I'm considering removing him out of slot 5 since he so lan si these days :P (( 6 )) Loochomus because his birth date is on the 6th of July (( 7 )) ZipD because his favourite number is 27 and the number 2 is already reserved (( 8 )) Kimmikanuyi because she begged and begged and begged for the prosperous number (( 9 )) My father, for no apparent reason other than he only have a handphone number last year and I called him quite often so 9 is as good as 1 (in terms of easy to remember). Number 2 is unoccupied for just too long already.... .

Reminder to self: GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER! . . .

Anti-Ringgit made a comment in my Chemistry blog . He said "how do you know when there is chemistry when one has not give it a chance? Chemistry can happened at a certain moment. Chemistry is not love at first sight! When you are younger, chemistry is priority, however when you grow older, desperations took over chemistry." I anticipated this type of comment when I wrote that blog. I have a nicely formed passage in my mind to answer comments like those. I never get to do it and I have forgotten what I wanted to say. Until today, that is, when I read odissi's blog which happened to link another person's interesting blog . One excerpt from the entry which I find meaningful (I doubt I can ever form sentences like that): "Ask yourself - are you living? Or are you *enduring* your life? If you are merely enduring your life, isn't that hard enough without having to put up with pleasing another person? When was the last time someone make you glow? When was the last t...

WTF is wrong with my country?! I don't remember having the word "Haze" in my vocabulary as far back as 10 years ago. In the span of 10 years, I have learned words like tsunami, El Nino and Haze. All these weather phenomenom did not appear until the last 10 years. What is wrong with the world? Can anyone imagining breathing in those smog everyday? Can you imagine breathing in ash? Can you imagine a tropical country like Malaysia having visibility of just 1km?? ONE Kilometer! It's unheard of! The funny part is, as I walked out of my building, the first thing I see is 10 people (men and women alike) standing outside puffing cigarettes, with the haze as their backdrop. I wish I have a camera to capture the irony of it all. So, the question is, do you see the world your children is inheriting from you? Gives me the jitters just thinking about it. Brrr.. Ok.. to be fair, Luxor is also hazy but it was due to sandstorm. Eating and breathing sand is better than ash and smoke a...

If you are a music lover and you use Konfabulator , you will love this widget called Sing That iTune! It displays the lyrics of the currently playing iTunes song so you can easily sing-a-long. The widget will auto hide if iTunes is not playing any song. All the lyrics that it downloaded from the Internet is saved into your hard drive so you still get the lyrics even if you are offline. Is that cool or what? .

Bahija, Miss Peace and I met up with 3 rich ladies who were in the same tour as us when we went to Egypt. We met in this nice restaurant called Bakerzin in Bangsar Village. I have not seen them since our trip 5 months ago so it was pretty nice to catch up and look at the photos from their camera. All of us agreed that the trip was fun and a success. I am surprised to hear that as I thought Bahija and myself were the only staunch supporter of a great trip - the rest saying that it was just "so-so". Looks like we were not alone. Miss Peace nodded her head in agreement too. Looks like my suggestion of going Egypt instead of Nepal went well then. Yay! The odd one out is anti-ringgit but who cares about him anyway. We talked about the tour, exchange some notes on certain events and generally enjoyed ourselves that night. We promised to keep in touch and sent each other the photographs that we didn't have. I have sent some of our photos to Miss ICI and Jessica. I hope they keep...

I've been pretty quiet lately. In fact, seems like everyone is. Any particular reason? For me it's coz I'm not feeling really myself and I get tired after work and have not been sitting in front of the PC for along time. Can't really explain it but perhaps it's the weather.. or some happenings.. stuff... that is beginning to cause this behaviour.... hopefully, I'll be more talkative next week :) .

I'm still pretty mental about EarthView . I have installed it in my notebook which has higher resolution and thus able to a bigger area. Take a look at this background - it's morning in Middle East and just hit dawn in Egypt. Isn't it a beauty? The best thing about EarthView is that your background updates in real time.. so one can really feel the world moving. You have the option of zooming to one part of the map or zooming out to see the whole world. You can choose to fix the camera at one continent or have the camera follow the sun. The latter means that as the sun rises from Japan to Europe, your background will show Aisa Pacific and slowly changes towards Europe. You get to choose what city to display, whether to have cities lights showing at night, the cloud density and opacity, Globe view or this paranomic view. Lots of things to configure. Amazing software. .

I discovered this new program called Earthview , an amazing realtime "Earth map" that changes every 10 minutes. Take a look! .

I went to Mid Valley at 10am for a haircut today. My hair is just too long and I can't imagine going through another hot weekend with it so I have decided to haul my lazy ass up earlier today for the haircut. The hairdresser told me that I am his first customer for the day. His exact words were "I opened my 'door' and I have a customer. This will be a lucky day for me". As a Chinese, I can appreciate what he said as we are kinda superstitious folks and having a customer the minute you start your business is an auspicious sign. This reminded me of a couple of incidents where I was told that I was the first customers: In 2000, when I was in the popular market in Camden, London. I bought shampoo from the Bodyshop. The pretty girl told me I was her first customer. My automatic response was "is there a special discount for first customer?" which resulted in laughter. I didn't get my discount, but I received a very pleasant smile. Last year in Luxor, Eg, t...

My old pal, Droolman, stumbled upon my blog today when he searched for his nickname in Amazon.com's search engine, A9.com . He was surprised that I keep a blog and that it went all the way to 2003. He told me via IM that he's motivated by my blog and has started one himself. Visit him . Add him to your Blogliner or Newsgator. Go. DroolMan always have some very interesting things to say, so I am sure you won't be disappointed. I know I'll be looking forward to reading what's going on in his Gray Matter . .

It's not uncommon for people to ask me when I am going to finally settle down. When will I get a girl and get married. Will I ever want to settle down? Most often, I'd dance around the question. It never ceases me to wonder, however, why people love to ask such question. The people who asked these questions are married people. Don't they know realize that meeting the right person is the most difficult thing EVER? They must have.. since they have went through the ordeal. Why, then the question? Firstly, there has to be the meet. I have been to a few, well, dates, set up by friends. Mostly it is a group of 4 outing to make things easier. Usually it just end there. They would say, why not and I would not know how to answer. How do you answer a question like "Is she suitable? Why not?" Again, it never ceases to amaze me that married or attached couple would ask such a question. Had they never met someone un-suitable? I am sure they have had their shares of unsuitabl...

Back in 1989, when I played Apple // computer games, one particular game stood out from the rest of the collection. The game is called Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar . In this game, you role-play an unknown person called Stranger in a medieval world called Britannia. Britannia is a huge world with many towns and cities. The objective of the game is to become the Avatar, a person with extreme virtues so that the citizens of Britannia can look up to and follow. Basically, the objective of the game is to become a Messiah or Prophet and to show the people of Britannia the way to enlightment. What's interesting about that game is that to become an Avatar, you have to live the 8 virtues: Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Honor, Sprituality, Sacrifice, Justice and Humility. Any interaction with the citizens will add points or deduct points from one of the virtues. For example, when approached by a beggar, you are expected to give him some gold coins. This will increase your Compassion virtue. T...

Yesterday, while reading a murder novel I came upon something interesting... Everyday, we are like a clown juggling a few balls. The balls are family, work, friends and spirit. The work ball is a rubber ball. If you missed it, it fall and will always bounced back. The family ball, friends ball and the spirit ball are made of glass. If you failed to catch it, it breaks. Another food-for-thoughts session brought to you by ringgit. .

A couple of things that caught my interest today: 1. I am hooked to a blog written by a Canadian lady who lives in Egypt . I have always enjoy her writing style. I sometimes wish I could write as well as she does. In her blog, many people have requested her to publish a book about her lives in Egypt. She has been putting this off until today when she said that a publisher has shown interest and wanted to know who are her potential audience. If you like her work, email her and tell her. Hopefully we'll get a book to read by the bedside. 2. A Malay colleague is getting married this weekend. She's taking a two week vacation starting today. At 3pm, we had an urgent meeting. In this meeting, my manager presented her a gift and some money which the team generously contributed. While this is a pretty normal incident, what was unusual is the short "speech" that my manager gave when presenting the gift to her. She said love is a verb, not a noun. And verb means action, somet...