Five times a day...

I've just moved from Rantau Bukit to Kampung Baru Kerteh yesterday. Still exhausted and still unpacking.

Last few weeks were hectics. The next three weeks will be much worse. Then, comes the performance appraisal season.

This is basically my excuse not to update this blog for a while. Not that it matters since my readership has significantly plummeted since I got Syifaak.

Besides, there's nothing much to tell. Life is pretty much boring and issues are pretty much the same nowadays.

So, don't miss me.

Four Cities in East China...

Just came back from a week-long vacation to China with my wife, Syifaak and parents in-law. We went to Suzhou, Wuxi, Shanghai and Hangzhou.

It was freezing cold. Winter.

The tour guide service in China is interesting. We were accompanied by a 'national' guide throughout the whole visit and a 'local' guide at every city.

These guides, however, are obliged to bring tourists to the Chinese government's tourist centers where they give you some briefing on their specialty products and virtually force you to buy something. Eventually, the products they sold are very expensive for something 'made in China'! But of course, the products are really worth it (or that's what you'll start to believe after all the propaganda they feed you with)

If you want to buy anything from the street shops in China, bargain. And if you want to bargain but you can't speak Mandarin, bring a calculator. The Chinese shopkeepers understand numbers.

Halal food restaurant seems abundant but the dishes served tasted almost the same at all the restaurants. Most of them are oily and salty with soy sauce. I have no problem with them of course. However, the rest of the family lose appetite after the third day.

One thing which bothered us the most throughout the visit was the toilet... or to be specific, the absent of water source to 'cebok' after the call of nature. You know us Malay - wiping with toilet roll doesn't feel... erm... satisfying. So, we always carry a bottle of mineral water with us just in case.

Suddenly, I don't feel like writing the details of the trip. I don't know why. Do you?

Three in one? Nescafe?

I open my good old Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (Students Edition) in the office this morning. The only definition for 'Allah' in that thick book of words is "the name of God for Muslim".

I wonder how the Catholic daily won the case...

Anyone who is using the same dictionary may get confused, o 'learned' judge of the high court.

Two makes a couple... or a baby if they ain't gay.

A couple of days ago, I thought I was going to restart blogging again, actively this time. Kinda like a new year's resolution but something interesting came up and may jeopardize this resolution.

No, it's not another manga title. It's not any new PC game either.

I was intrigue by Excel 2007 formula and functionality.

How nerdy can I get?

It all started last week when I was trying to figure out how best to manage the record of an 81 x 47 x 3 training matrix for 1129 staff. Boring work stuff, so I started experimenting with Excel's formula and functions. A week later, I'm reading Excel 2007 VBA Programming for Dummies.

There's a sense of dejavu.

When I was in my final year in UTP, I spent countless hours writing mIRC scripts. The programming language obviously are different, but the syntax, logical flow, functionality are about the same.

Writing mindless codes somehow excites me. If it was not for my father, I would have change my course to IT instead. Studying mechanical engineering was not that fun, except when I was in the Automation Technology workshop and the Control System lab where I got to play with robotic arm and PLC. By just writing a few lines of code, the thing moves and twists and blinks and rocks and moaned. Just orgasmic!

It's like I have some kind of coding-pervertism. Writing scripts and codes to me was more exciting than watching porn. That's why I spent more time with script editors than in #rocco. LOL.

Anyway, unlike programming and scripting, blog writing may not move anything, yet. I hope it will someday. Else, this number two may slowly die like the first one due to the lack of excitement generated.

And people, please don't ask me to start with CSS or HTML or PHP or whatever. Else, I will not have time to give Syifaak her second sibling. Her first is on the way, btw :)

One. Why not two?

Effi complained when I don't blog anymore nowadays.

I'm not quitting. I'm just occupied with something else.

Besides, there are so many blogs and bloggers right now that the death of one blog will go unnoticed.

Or the birth of a new one.