Inspiring Post...

Having recently heard about the Free Hugs campaign, I was curious and wanted to find out more. Google helpfully pointed me out to the Free Hugs campaign website, here. Reading about the campaign as well as its history brought a smile to my face. Seeing how a simple gesture such as a hug has the capability to brighten someone's day is really quite remarkable.

I wonder whether this campaign will ever be successful in Malaysia? Would you be willing to hug a stranger walking along the street? I honestly couldn't imagine doing so. Perhaps this is due to our cultural mindset that is instilled into us by our parents implying that we should respect each other's personal space.

Well, who knows? Perhaps it will be a success locally. Anyone brave enough to give it a try? ;)

About Friends & Acquaintances

*Dusts huge cobwebs off this forgotten part of the Internet*

To the sole reader of this blog, "Sorry I haven't been updating, would you believe that I forget the address to my blog? ;D"

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Its fascinating when your concepts of friendship proven wrong due to changes in ones life. What would have previously sufficed is no longer sufficient. It just goes to show what kind of friendship was there in the beginning. Perhaps they would be better classified as acquaintances?

If that were true, would it effectively mean that I have no friends? That is a most certainly a foreboding thought indeed.

Change Of Life Style???

I walked into the kitchen and was greeted by a huge pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

"Its your turn to do the dishes tonight" she said.

"Huh? Why can't we just use the dishwasher like always?" I replied.

"Because it finally broke down after 8 years of daily use" she retorted.

As I laboured to clean the mountain of crockery piling in the sink, I seriously could not remember the last time I actually manually washed the dishes at home. But doing it now certainly brought back unpleasant memories of why I preferred to avoid this most unpleasant chore.

--@--

Is it really human nature not to be able to regress in our life style? After one has ascended to the next level, is it really so difficult to go back down to the previous level? Perhaps it doesn't apply to all areas but I'm sure it certainly applies to many things.

Like what I mentioned above about doing chores. Once I had been spoilt by technology, doing a simple task such as washing the dishes now seemed like a tedious undertaking. But thats an argument for another day ;)

Another example would be relationships. I know many friends who are in their mid-20s and have never been in a relationship. They are happy spending time with friends and family indulging in whatever hobbies or activities they wish to pursue and hardly ever feel lonely.

On the other hand, my other friends who have been in relationships but are now single constantly are on the look out to regain their 'attached' status. They seem to believe they are happier in a relationship and now fervently look for a partner to complete them.

However, I think nothing is as big a hurdle than regressing on your financial life style. Having less cash to spend on your daily wants and needs seem to be the hardest to accept. I guess it can't be easy. I personally can't imagine how I ever survived on the salary that I initially received when I was a fresh graduate back in those days.

I guess its easy to say that we should live within our means but its quite another thing altogether when we've enjoyed certain luxuries in the past that we no longer have access to in the present.

Wow! Free Food!

I really should go on hiatus more often as I returned to my blog this morning to find lots of cheese littered around. Yum! ;D Anyway, it was good to take a short break from penning my thoughts here and just focus on my day to day mundane activities of sleeping, studying and working. *sigh*

--@--

My dad has officially implemented a new policy in our household where all working parties must contribute towards major expenses such as the replacement of our 8 year old dishwasher recently. Coupled together with some of the insurance back payments that I owe my dad resulting in the following conversation this morning...


At least I know where I get my lame sense of humour from :P

Its An Official Hiatus...

To Whom It May Concern,

Due to my lack of mood to blog, I will hereby go on a indefinite hiatus in search for more issues to blog about. I will return when I am rejuvenated. Take care all =)

Parents Showering Children With Luxurious Gifts???

I know people who have access to virtually unlimited funds via a supplementary credit card...I know people who go on overseas holidays every few months and stay in hotel suites and penthouses...I know people who get luxury cars as soon as they get their "P" driving licenses...

All courtesy of mum and dad...

Unfortunately, there is more often than not a significant price to pay for these material luxuries. Most of them grew up with only the hired help for company while their parents trek across the globe in the everlasting pursuit of wealth.

Many resort to attracting negative attention from their parents who would otherwise rather concentrate on enriching their own coffers. This is primarily why they are now chain smokers, heavy drinkers and some are even substance abusers.

After the parents have gained considerable success in their careers, they look back and find the family in shambles. They then resort to material compensation to alleviate their feelings of guilt.

Of course, this is not always the case and there are many families who are successful in balancing their careers with spending quality time with their families.

At times when I find myself feeling jealous over the luxuries available to certain groups of people, I just remind myself about the possible price they paid for those luxuries. It may not be entirely true all the time, but at the very least it makes me feel better ;D

As for me, I too am sometimes guilty of being too embroiled in the dollars and cents involved in running the rat race to take a step back and see whats truly important to me. I would prefer to have an average but fulfilling life with a happy family rather than a successful meaningless life where I'm like a stranger to my own children.

To Be A Good Sport Or Not???

In the course of one's life, there will be many occasions where one is thrust into the limelight with everyone's attention firmly planted upon him or her. I too have had my fair share of incidents when I'm suddenly put on the spot mostly as the butt of a joke or being asked to entertain a crowd.

In these kinds of situations, I could of course opt to get mad at being put into such a situation, thus spoiling everybody's fun and being labeled a party pooper. In fact, I do remember a time where I had a problem about being laughed at but thankfully I've managed to put that behind me.

I think it says alot about someone's maturity when he or she is able to laugh at himself/herself along with others when being made sport of.

Although its more natural for someone to get mad when being made fun of, we all should learn to take things less seriously and be a good sport! After all, life is too short to get mad over stupid things. Carpe Diem!

Really???

You Are 72% Gentleman

You are definitely a gentleman. You're very considerate and you have excellent manners. Occasionally, you slip and do something foolish... but usually no one notices!

Are You A Gentleman?

Perfectionist I Am Not...

Nothing irritates me as much as a stubborn perfectionist who always insists on doing everything perfectly and would never accept alternative methods of doing things.

Don't get me wrong, I admire people who have high standards. There are many situations that call for people who have zero tolerance for errors, such as overseeing the launch of a space shuttle or conducting neuro-brain surgery.

However, in many other cases, such adherence to a perfection as defined by oneself is not entirely necessary. I have been in many situations before where there were additional complications and increased complexity due to insistence in perfection.

Most things do not need to be perfect. I believe that we would all be happier if we adopt a more laid back approach to life. There is no need to frustrate yourself over the quality of something that most likely would never be questioned.

The important point I'm trying to put across is that one should never insist on perfection in every single task or undertaking unless it is life-threatening or a potential cause for disaster. Life it too short to harp on all the small things causing one to miss the bigger more important things.

TITG Calls In Sick...

After so many days of musings and ramblings, I've decided to post this video to lighten things up =P This is a prime example of how technology can make our lives so much harder ;) Enjoy!

People From My Past...

A few doors away from my house, lived a family whose parents did not believe in the Malaysian education system. Instead of sending their children to school, they sought tutors for home schooling at a very young age. My mother which used to teach at the kindergarden would spend every morning at their house teaching them basic arithmetic and the alphabet.

Every day, after walking back from school, I would go to my neighbour's house and wait for my mom to finish her classes. While waiting for her, I would begin on my homework or play with some of the children that had already finished their classes for the day.

Because of this, I grew quite close to some of the children that my mother was teaching. It came to a point where I remember the children would cry if I did not take the time to play with them or at least greet them whenever I was over at their house. Mind you, due to the 8 year age gap, these children were only 3 or 4 years old at that time.

When I started secondary school, my mother decided to stop teaching and began to do company secretarial work. Hence, I slowly drifted apart from the children that I used to 'hang out' with every day after primary school.

Today, almost 13 years after my daily visits to their house, these children have all grown up to be teenagers and young adults. I sometimes see them with their boyfriends/girlfriends and our communication has degenerated into a small smile or in most cases, just a nod of the head.

Most would argue that my 25 years of age could still be classified as 'young' but nothing reminds me more of how old I am than my memories of these children as toddlers crying for my attention and now seeing them as teenagers and young adults who hardly recognize my existence anymore.

Contributing To The Community...

Call me lazy but I have never been one to volunteer for work besides the minimum of what was expected of me. During school days, I would be either studying or attending tuition (Nerd Gila!) instead of participating in extra-curricular activities in an office-bearer position like my more 'sociable' friends.

During my undergraduate college days, I would be among those who only came to college for classes and assignments not sticking around for any college organized activities. The cycle is repeating itself at my present postgraduate college life where I find myself avoiding invitations for college organized trips and formal dinners.

I guess the simplest reason behind my hesitance to undertake more responsibility is I felt that I had already enough responsibilities both at work and at home. I certainly did not need anymore 'unnecessary' stress in the form of actively organizing events as would be required if I held any position on the committee.

Looking back at my life, I wonder what exactly I missed out on...

My dad is the Vice-President of the local Residents Association. On top of that he is also the chief editor of the newsletter published by the Residents Association 3-4 times a year and has been in that position for almost 10 years already.

During the few weeks leading to the publication of each issue, he would stay up to the wee hours of the morning painstakingly compiling all the articles and advertorials for the newsletter. He also is personally responsible for printing of the newsletter as well as distribution to all the households in my local neighborhood.

More often that not, its a thankless job. Due to the non-profit nature of the Residents Association, financial reward should not be expected. Never mind that, the actual percentage of readership among the local residents is also extremely low. Most of the time, the newsletter would get thrown into the rubbish together with the junk mail.

Nevertheless, my dad still insists on upholding this responsibility of maintaining the newsletter. I have often found it peculiar that he would still persevere given the relatively low amount of positive feedback he has received.

Perhaps the reasoning behind him continuing to sacrifice his time and energy into this is the satisfaction of being able to contribute to the local community that my family has called home for the last 20 years. Or it could be pride in his desktop publishing skills believing that no one else could ever do the job as well as him. (No one else has ever volunteered, apparently)

Regardless, his involvement in the Residents Association does have its own share of perks. Due to his communication with the local businesses for advertising as well as his participation in the event organization, he is quite familiar with most of the local residents as well as the local authorities.

I wonder whether I'll ever be in a position where the local police officer greets me when I'm passing by or a shopkeeper waving at me upon seeing my car drive by.

Perhaps I too should start to make a contribution back to the community...

Musings On Online Dating...

Undoubtedly, school and college provide the biggest opportunities to meet your romantic partner. The abundance of people of all shapes and sizes from all walks of life together with a wide range of personalities allow a significantly higher chance of finding someone that you are attracted to.

However, the truth is only a small percentage of relationships involving high school and college sweethearts end up in marriage. When working life begins, finding time to mingle and socialize with potential partners will become a luxury that few people can afford.

Thus, many resort to alternative means of finding romance in the form of online dating websites, Internet forums dedicated to singles, etc. From a convenience standpoint, these online sites provide a wealth of information from photos to personal information and interests as well
as partner requirements without having to even leave your computer desk.

For the busy, huge amounts of time can be saved by filtering out the 'weeds' based on their online profiles down to a select few that share common interests and fulfill their requirements. For the shy, online dating serves as a first step to familiarize yourself with others without revealing too much personal information.

Also, I think that meeting people online has the advantage of bypassing the physical attraction phase and allow people to discover each other's personality and character without the prejudice sometimes caused by perceived physical unattractiveness. This is provided both parties are not shallow and insist on an exchange of photographs even before the pleasantries have concluded ;)

In this way, the Internet allows 2 people to communicate to each other on a personal level allowing them to form a more solid opinion about each other without having to meet up in person. If either party find themselves disinterested in continuing the conversation, a mere polite goodbye will suffice to terminate the relationship immediately. You probably could never do that in a coffee date or a dinner date without appearing extremely rude. :D

Nevertheless, regardless of its many benefits, I would like to emphasize that the Internet is at best, a good place to meet people online and should never be the place where the entire relationship exists. The only way a relationship can progress is for both parties to meet up in person.

When this happens, one must take all the necessary precautions due to the high potential of danger involved. There are unfortunately a large number of individuals who abuse the Internet to seek their prey and thus everyone especially women should take extra care in meeting up with people they met online.

All Colours Of The Rainbow...

Warning! Bimbo Post Ahead ;)

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My mom really knows how to make a complete colourful meal! =P Due to my constant complaints of having to consume Chinese dishes everyday, she decided to prepare a Western lunch instead. =)

Mushroom chicken with cheese soup with garlic bread for the appetizer =P~

Look at the wide range of colours! =P Green "Siew Pak Choy" with zuchinni together with purple cabbage and red carrots with coleslaw as garnishing and a great big chunk of yummy baked dory fish with herbs. Super YummY!!!

My 5AM Breakfast...

Its that time of the year again where I wake up at wee hours of the morning to attempt to put chapters and chapters of boring facts and figures into my brain where I hope it will stay until the moment I have to regurgitate it out in a high-pressure environment with lots of evil menacing people walking around trying to catch those who are up to no good. *Phew*

A chunk of blue cheese on crackers together with some sweet delicious grapes

Not forgetting the appetizer and dessert ;D

TITG recommends Mozilla Firefox!!!

I have been using Mozilla Firefox for the past few months and have nothing but praises for this fantastic software. Not only is it faster and more user friendly than the big bad IE, it also has many super duper useful extensions that allow you to do so many things from the Firefox interface. WoOTs!!

The extensions I find most useful are:-

1. FoxyTunes

This nifty utility allows you to control all the basic media functions from a small taskbar located at the bottom right of your Firefox browser thus you can immediately see the name of the song currently playing, skip to the next song in your playlist, increase/decrease the volume, etc all from the comfort of your browser while surfing =P

If that isn't good enough, it also has a built in search engine that immediately displays the album cover of that song together with the capability to search for lyrics and even to purchase the album!!

2. Video Downloader

There have been many applications that feature the capability to download videos from youtube, google, etc to your hard disk but I've always found it a hassle to use them. Now there's Video Downloader, featuring auto-searching for the videos embedded on the website.

One single click brings up the entire list of videos on the page together with a link to download them directly. Once its downloaded, you can use any FLV player to play them from the hard disk. Cool! =)

3. gSpace File Manager

Of course, I left the best one for last! ;D This has to be the best utility around since WinZip was invented!!! I can't stop raving about it!!

I have been looking for free fast hosting on the Internet for so long now. There are quite a few hosting services available but all of them seem to suffer from one problem or another such as lack of FTP support, slow to mediocre performance, problematic interface, etc.

Then I found one that uses your Gmail account to store your files!!! How about that??? The interface looks exactly like a FTP client so you can create a directory structure to manage your files neatly. Bundled together with Gmail's storage space of around 2.768 GB, I'm sure it will be a while before you run out of storage space ;)

What's even better is it supports different modes such as the Photo Mode that allows you view your uploaded photos in a gallery view as well as a Player Mode to listen to all your songs directly from your gSpace Firefox interface without the need of downloading to your harddisk!! This has to be the best thing around since Swiss Cheese!! =D

So there you have it, 3 fantastic reasons and more describing why you should switch to Mozilla Firefox today! =P

Do You Believe In Karma???

I'll admit it. I am a firm believer in karma especially on the road.

Anyone of you who has driven on Malaysian roads would agree with me that some drivers really have no sense of responsibility with the way they are endangering themselves as well as other motorists. However, everytime I meet such people, I just smile to myself and let them have their way. I console myself in thinking that they have some emergency and thus must resort to extreme measures to get to their destination faster. After all, I believe in karma.

I'll come right out and say that I'm not exactly the most law abiding citizen on the road either, although I have become more patient lately due to someone's positive influence ;) But sometimes when I'm in a rush, I still bend the rules slightly to get to my destination quicker.

Hence, my belief in karma extends to allowing people to commit those violations against me because someone else will probably allow me to commit those same violations when I absolutely have to due to various reasons. =)

TITG The Conversational Shapeshifter...

I have several groups of friends that I still keep in touch with. When I converse with them, I can't help but noticing that I adopt different speech patterns depending on which group.

Among my friends who speak better English, I mostly speak at the same level without including any of the local Malaysian slang where as amongst my Chinese educated friends, I catch myself using more 'lah' phrases in our conversations. We even go to the extent of using romanized chinese words in our MSN conversations!

I guess I instinctively do this so as to make the group feel more comfortable when everyone is able to speak at the same level. It would be rather awkward if someone in a group of many persists in speaking at a higher level.

Anyway, it would be more difficult for someone to speak at a higher language level then for the others to 'dumb' their speaking level down so as to put everyone at ease.

Sometimes, I can't help but wonder whether my Chinese speaking friends are doing the same for me when we speak in Chinese due to my half-past-six Cantonese and Mandarin vocabulary. =)

Musing In The Park

Communication In My Household...

My family consists of my parents, my younger sister and I. Due to work commitments and personal activities, even though we all live under the same roof, we hardly find time to spend with each other.

When I return from work, my sister would still be working late at the office which has now become a daily affair. I normally go out after dinner and when I return, I'm so tired that I head straight to bed to crash.

I have dinner with my dad as my mum would have already eaten earlier due to her having line dance sessions in the evening. Dinner with my dad will consist of us eating while watching the Chinese serials playing on the television without much conversation.

However, my family still successfully keeps in touch via the medium called the Internet =) Throughout the working day, my Dad, my sister and I will always be reachable via MSN Messenger keeping us in constant contact.

Occasionally, my mum would pop online to check her emails and chat with us if there is something to discuss. I have attended many family conferences that were held in the virtual world.

Thus, even though we may not have the opportunity to communicate much in person, we are able to utilize modern technology to talk to each other. I wonder how many other families can claim to do the same...

Bah...Filler Post!!!

Had no mood to blog whatsoever this week but decided to post something so that I dont lose my readership of 1 =)

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Your Seduction Style: Fantasy Lover

You know that ideal love that each of us dreams of from childhood? That's you! Not because you posess all of the ideal characteristics, but because you are a savvy shape shifter. You have the uncanny ability to detect someone's particular fantasy... and make it you. You inspire each person to be an idealist and passionate, and you make each moment memorable. Even a simple coffee date with you can be the most romantic moment of someone's life. By giving your date exactly what he or she desires, you quickly become the ideal lover. Your abilities to make dreams come true is so strong, that you are often the love of many people's lives. Your ex's (and even people you have simply met or been friends with) long to be yours. No doubt you are the one others have dreamed of... your biggest challenge is finding *your* dream lover.

What Kind of Seducer Are You?