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| Monday, 28-Nov-2005 00:00 |
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Last few days of Raya
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Last weekend of raya has passed by. A final frenzy of open houses were held (and attended by yours truely). Workload is unusually light though there's always something to do if I'm how can i say it, 'proactive'? We were supposed to have a 2 week training session for our brand spanking new 2 high powered dynomometers (Dynos) but it seems that the Jap contractors have yet to calibrate the whole rig so it has been postponned till Wednesday. In the mean time, there's a training session for handling of our also new welding equipment for technicians but i wanna learn to weld as well!! I shall need the skills for building my own single seater racer!!  dunno when that will be.... on a much less up beat note, I have to handle the tendering and purchase of 2 new equipment... pooooo.....Say welcome to the last month of 2005.... how fast has 2005 been?!!
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| Tuesday, 8-Nov-2005 00:00 |
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Hari Raya!!
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Celebrations are still on but I start work tomorrow!! Damn it's hard to get myself back in the working mood again!! Just thinking about it worries me!! but i'm sure i'll settle back into my routine in no time. I can resume tennis again!! I also plan to get back into Taekwondo. I'll try out this class for adults near work to see how it is. I just wanna retain as much of my flexibility as i can and maybe stay fit in the process.
Balik kampung was ace!! got to exploit my car's wonderful performance properly. I usually drive with fuel consumption in mind but when it comes to the open roads and over taking, it's just too tempting to rev the engune to the redline. The fact that the engine is still very refined at high revs just provokes you to idulge more often!!
On a more serious note, my grandma just had a minor stroke a few weeks back so she was still not feeling 100% when we were there. All of us family being there was a big morale booster for her and you can see that she was so much happier the more family she had around her. On the flip side of the coin, it was very hard to see her cry when we all had to leave. Which brings us to the dilemma which most children will experiance at one point: how to look after their parents in times of bad health. It's a fine compromise of diplomacy, time management and commitment. Get's me thinking about how life is indeed a repeating cycle - the circle of life if you want. Now i understand how people came up with the idea of karma and resurrection of the dead.
Anyhow, I hope you get well soon Tok Ma.
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| Sunday, 30-Oct-2005 00:00 |
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Selamat Hari Raya!!
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Eid-ulfitr, or Aidilfitri as it is called here in Malaysia marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan. It is accustom for people to ask for forgiveness on this sacred day. although its still a couple of days off i'd like to wish all of my Muslim Friends and those who read this fotopage a very happy Hari Raya Aidilfitri. I also humbly ask for forgiveness if i've ever wronged or hurt anybody. I hope everyone enjoys all the joys of Aidilfitri and to those dring bact to thier hometowns and villiages, please do drive carefully and keep safe. I will be spending my first day of raya at my granny's place (mum's side) in Shah Alam. The next four days will be spent in Kelanatan with my father's family. I've got a week off work starting Tuesday so i'm quite looking forward to this long break!! I've still got work tomorrow though quite alot of people have taken leave already so i don't see much getting done tomorrow. Anyhows, take care everybody and enjoy the festivities what ever creed you follow!!
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| Monday, 17-Oct-2005 00:00 |
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Head ache...
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Came down with a horible sore throat acompanied by a splitting head ache. I was running a high temperature... I tell you that nothing is more tourchering than being poorly during fasting. The deprevation of water just makes things 10x worse!!... Anyhow, feelin a bit better now. I hope I'll be alright for tomorrow.
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| Tuesday, 4-Oct-2005 00:00 |
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Ramadhan Mubarak!!!
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Putrajaya mosque at dusk
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Putrajaya mosque
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Ramadhan Mubarak to all my muslim friends!! Gosh... it's my second time fasting since i got back from England... I won't write much as i am quite busy there days... I had a bull s**t start to the day today as i spil my wole feshly mied cuppa coffee all over my desk and carpet.. Man... I cleaned it up the best i could (at the expense of one toilet role!!) but the place still smells of coffee!! not a good thing when it's fasting month!! Neeways, We get to go home at 4 throughout Ramadhan so yeah... I'm looking forward to tomorrow!!
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| Thursday, 28-Jul-2005 00:00 |
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Afew pics from the Open Day
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Open day is over... now i've been absorbed into the Family day committee!! Damn.. more stuff to do... But this one should be good fun. I'll be in charge of the games. It's been a brief 6 months but I'll be confirmed as a permanent staff next week. I'll need to complete my yet to be finished log book though...
Looking forward to the weekend. 1st Leeds Uni alumni meeting on Sat!!
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| Monday, 18-Jul-2005 00:00 |
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What a week!
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My cert!!
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Last Friday and Saturday was the PRSS Open day. The events held were pretty cool (Rugi to those yg I invited to come!!). I was in charge of the exhibitions for the product group. We had the two engines we used for the Syntium 5000 field trial on exhibition. That was a b***h to transport. That went quite well apart from a little mis management on my part. I had my BMI checked and apparently I need to gain another 0.1 KG in fat!! hmm... they say we need about 20% of our body weight to be fat!! hmm... My blood pressure was normal.. damn.. it's no longer Athletic!! Need to get back with the TKD!! The highlight of the Open day was the go kart race held at our very own go-kart track. There were more than a hundred entries but prizes only for places 1 - 4... winners were counted based on the best time. I clocked a bit over 37 seconds but the best time was just over 33 seconds. between my time and the fastest were quite a few more drivers so i guess i wasn't really fast... neverthe less.. i deffinately wasn't the slowest and i enjoyed the drive thoroughly!! Will deffinately do it again next year!!
Pickie for to day is the cert i got for my entry to the Automotive project's competition last year organised by the IVehE/SAE-UK. was pretty chuffed with the cert...  pictures of the open day will follow soon.
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| Monday, 4-Jul-2005 00:00 |
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Long week...
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My review of the week: This past week has been quite an eventful one. Lemme start with the weekend. Sent my car for its scheduled maintenance and for a few other tweeks here and there. My main grudge was the fuel consumption was worsening (by only about 1 Litre per 100km) – not much really and the gearbox felt rather clunky. I switched engine oil from the previous semi-synthetic one to the 2nd top of the line Petronas fully synthetic one. Well, I do get staff discount (about 30% off) on it but I genuinely believe that we make good lubes here at Petronas =) The numbers at the lab can never do justice to the difference in how different the engine feels after the lube swap. They did tune the engine a bit but I’ve felt similar differences with our family’s 2 other cars that switched to fully synthetic oil. Trust me, if you want good performance for a reasonably good price go for the Petronas Syntium 3000… ( a bit of promotion there! =P) In other words, I’m really happy with the performance of my car now ; )
Talking about cars, dad wants to get a new one to replace his Proton Waja (Impian in the UK). He does about 50,000 km in mileage a year so he reckons that before the car becomes unsellable, might as well get a new car and sell it off now. So, we’re thinking to hop on the Honda bandwagon based on the higher residual values of Hondas in Malaysia and of course the excellent customer service of the Honda Malaysia Staff. Plus, all Hondas come with 2 years free parts and labour so one can practically just put in petrol and used the car free of charge for 2 years! Great deal or what!! So we looked at the Jazz, Civic and Accord. Dad thought that the Jazz was too suited to women and young people for his liking. The City was not even considered because of it’s revolting looks, though technically it’s a very attractive package. So we’ve narrowed the line up to either the 2 litre Civic or the 2 litre Accord. The price difference is about RM15 grand but that money gets you a top of the line civic with all the gadgets but the Accord is the base, bare model without all the fancy electronic gadgets. In Malaysia, though cars are really expensive there is not much one can do in terms of customising the car one wants to purchase. You cannot specify any engine/trim combination; all of it is already preconfigured by the manufacturer. I guess the market volume is very small in Malaysia to get that degree of customisation. So any suggestions? The 2 litre Civic or Accord? The 2.4 Accord was considered but the road tax and insurance would’ve been too high. We have quite a few other cars at home so we didn’t want to add to the total car expenditure. The road tax for the 2.4 was more than double the 2.0 cars. Road tax in Malaysia is based on engine capacity. Once pass the 2 litre mark, the tax calculation follows an exponential trend.
Went to pay my credit card bill and claim a package from the couriers on Sunday. I just remembered that on the motor trader forums they announced that Jalan Tun Razak, one of the major roads in KL was to be closed for the day for maintenance work! Boy did that create major havoc on the street of the city centre!! Traffic in the city centre on Sunday morning isn’t normally bad. It can be considered the only day that one might consider driving into town. But it was a totally different story yesterday. The volume of diverted traffic was so high that even at 9 am on a Sunday morning the roads were congested. It shows how important Jalan Tun Razak is and also how much we Malaysians like to drive. I blame it on the very poor public transport… On a lighter note, I was pretty chuffed with myself cos I managed to navigate myself around KL to get to HSBC’s main branch – find Parking and then from there work myself through the confusing roads of KL to get to Jalan Tun Sambathan near jalan Bangsar… One thing I can say though. The signboards in KL are improving. I couldn’t have managed to get around had there not been any good signboards around. Kudos to whoever’s in charge of signboards at DBKL..
I took 2 days off last week, much to the annoyance of my boss. We had the Volunteer’s Appreciation Day (VAD) on Monday which was quit good and Wednesday I went with my parents to send my sis to her first day at Uni. Her campus is a really new campus, the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Kuliyyah of Medicine campus in Kuantan, Pahang. She’s doing a degree in Nursing. Her flat room was really tiny rooms only being partitioned by wooden partitions – reminded me of my A-Level college in Lembah Beringin. The stuff there were all new so she should have no grudges about accommodation. The trip there took about 2 and a half hours from our house using the new motorway. Not bad. Far enough for her not to come back every weekend but near enough to visit…
Ah.. the VAD… all in all it was really good. In the morning we had an ‘Explorace’ type activity with lotsa riddles and puzzles at each checkpoint. We were to gather at the KLCC park at 8am ish but I miss judged the morning traffic along Jalan Ampang and arrived at 7.25!! So I ended up in doing a few laps jogging along the park’s jogging track and was drenched in sweat when it came time to gather. The morning event was very tiring, very hot and sweaty. We were divided into groups and my group didn’t get any prizes for the morning event. Fair enough, we all didn’t expect to win anything anyway. The afternoon event was better except for one critical error on the organising part – They had a TALK at 2.30… I didn’t take time off work to get a lecture from some Doctor!! That lasted an hour or so. The main event, the Volunteer’s Idol and the awards only started at about 4 ish… to be honest, I could’ve gotten off work early and make the best part of the day skipping the sweaty and boring bits but then again… I might not do this again next year… I’ve posted the pics that I have on the previous post. Still waiting for some other pics from Awa and the rest.
So what lies ahead for this week. Well… it’s all set to be a hecktic week. I’ve been assigned numerous tasks for numerous people. I’ve just been assigned a major role in the renovation project of my floor of my block. They want to re organise the labs and stores. It looks hard but I think it’s gonna be fun. I’ll just imagine that I’m on ‘the apprentice’ and this is one of the tasks, only this task has real implications if we go over budget or run off the schedule..  I’m also representing my group (product group) in PRSS’ upcoming Open day. A supplier is going to deliver some equipment to do a new bench test that I’ll have to learn this week. I have other tasks mainly sampling and rig test developing on top of that. But I guess it’s kinda exciting being involved in so many differing projects…
Younger brother coming back home after 4 years at Uni in the US of A. So will be meeting him at the airport and transporting all his belongings on Wednesday. It will be great to have another sibling back since the 3rd one will be going back to Uni this week. So lots to look forward to this week. There’ll probably be no tennis this week and the week after as the Petronas games start soon and most of my tennis gang will be away playing or training. Not fair.. they get 2 weeks off work plus they get allowance for it!! Have a good week ahead guys…
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| Sunday, 26-Jun-2005 00:00 |
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Volunteer's Appreciation Day
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Right... long absence on my part. Well, this can be attributed partly to my laziness and partly to my kinda busy schedule. Completed my 2nd skill group course on Thursday about static equipment. You guys don't want to know the details so lets just leave it at that.
Tomorrow is the volunteer's appreciation day. Seems that there's gonna be loads happening. Problem is tomorrow is a working day.... I've taken 2 days off already and am taking another 2 next month.. hmm... that leaves me with 9 Annual Leaves (AL) left... shall i sacrifice one for tomorrow? Hmm... I think i might just. All the ALs i've taken so far are for other people. So i guess i should let my take one for myself! Who knows that there will not be a next year for me at Petrosains!
Right... i hafta find a clothes that have 5 colours as the dress code tomorrow is anything with 5 colours!!! hmm... I had quite a fascinating time digging through my closet... I'll bring along a variety of clothes so that i can pick and mix as required tomorrow. I just might wear the communist hat Mon gave me! when else can I get a chance to wear it!? hehehe.. ok... sleep time.. nites everyone!! 
*update*
since i didn't have time to write about the VAD, i posted the Pics in this entry. talk about it later...
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| Tuesday, 14-Jun-2005 00:00 |
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Cranes (the type of bird)
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I came accross a breath taking sight on my drive home from work today. This was when i was passing through the flyover at Ampang going home on my usual route. There was a flock of about 20 cranes circling high up in the sky. from afar they looked like vultures circling a dying animal but as i got closer at was clear they had long legs and long beaks. quite an awesome sight i must say. They ended up perching on top of an ironicly named flaminngo hotel! hehehe.. but in the awe of the moment it crossed my mind that the habitat of these birds are quite quickly disapearing. that's why you see them perched on top of hotels and street lamps! When i was younger i always remembered these birds hanging out in sewage treatment pools!! poor things...
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... ahaha... really touched lah... so, di kesempatan nih... *tade kad raya nk balas*... aku jugak nk mintak maaf salah silap sume... selamat menyambut hari raya dgn girangnya... jgn kedekut duit raya... nnt lebih berkat gitu... hint hint... 
