Random thoughts 29/10

Well, my one week holiday is coming to an end. Nope, did not go anywhere except around KL. Sort of a lazy holiday. You know, the kind of holiday where you don't go anywhere except to sort of personal items. Sorted out some stuff in my condo. And yeah, manage to do some outdoor climbing today after the lousy haze disrupted weeks and weeks of potential climbing days. Oh yeah, not to mention the man-made rain which wreck havoc every evening. Comon, I know it's man made. On the brighter side, the skies are clear.

Today's climbing was good. Did mostly simple ones. Just to get back in form. Met up with a friend of ours who brought a New Zealander to join us. It was certainly great to be climbing outdoors again. However, the rain last evening made some routes a bit damp. When the rocks are damp, slime gets stuck on your hands. Ewww... Anyway, I manage to complete some routes before it started to rain again. It rained really heavily. In the end, decided to make a dash to the car and head back home.

So the holiday is ending and tomorrow is Monday. Monday blues. I look forward to brighter and better days ahead.

Oh yeah, decided to create a section for people who climb. I don't really know these bloggers, but some of them are familiar faces. Sort like people whom you have met, but never knew their names.

Yea baby!

PS. Boy..am I gonna "screw kau" TMNET tomorrow. Having problems with the connectivity since last week which coincided with the DeepaRaya holidays. Am boiling now as it takes me ages to connect to the internet. The darn adsl link is up but no IP address. Bastards Streamyx. Makes me blood boil.

Week long holiday

Yup. I am on holiday. Spent a few days at my new place. My very own condo unit. Guess what? Found a defect in my unit. Water from the outer wall is seeping into my inner wall, leaving a water mark. Arrgh... these people. Lousy workmanship.

Anyway, I went climbing at Camp5. Ever notice that when you meet a familiar face at Camp5, it would only mean one thing. THat is "I am out of shape, that is why I am here in the indoor gym, trying to recondition my body again." Hahaha...and that's true. My body hurts like hell after climbing. On the positive side, met a lot of friends at the climbing gym. Exchanged hellos and what's happening. It's certainly great to meet peole whom you know. Err..only thing is..you realized you have forgotten their names. Haiya.. have to do this memory map, etc, etc to remember people's name. OK. In the future, I will write down all of your names.

Will be back at my condo tomorrow to sort of somethings. I'm waiting for the Interior Designer to come to measure a ledge which has been done wrongly twice. Actually it's my partner's job. But she has to send her car to the workshop to replace the fuel pump. On yeah...the good thing of collecting workshop numbers is that you can call them in case of emergency. My partner's car couldn't start yesterday. Thank goodness we have a workshop contact to help us out. Managed to get the car started, but the guy said the fuel pump needs to be replaced. 200 - 300 bucks. There goes this month's budget.

CHerio.

Bad roads in the city

Ever wonder why the roads in Kuala Lumpur normally breaks and cracks and sinks and you name the defect and you'll find the defect on our roads especially during the rainy season? Don't they know this is the tropics and that there are wet seasons over here? I have no idea.

I went through a bad road today. Bang! Because there was a huge gap between the joins on the elevated part of the road. It happened to be a busy part of the road at Jalan Tun Razak. No one fixed it since lord knows when. I hate this. I hate these freaking holes and gaps. The other thing that doesn't make sense to me is, each time a hole on the road is fixed, it sinks. It bloody sink. Look at the roads around Bukit Bintang especially the road along Wisma Cosway. It was fixed and fixed and fixed. But the holes keep appearing.

And what freaks me out it..it is hurting my car. Bang...each time I hit a hole. I avoid one, there will be another 3 in front. I avoid 3 holes, another 6 will appear in front.

What the fug is wrong the the engineers in charge of the roads.

Darn..have to check at my alignment again after today's holes.

Random thoughts and deadlines

You know, deadlines are like flies near a shit pile. They never seem to go away. I am already behind 4 days in my original schedule for an assignment. Sometimes, when I look back at an assignment on how the situation could have been improved (hehe ... find out more about Deming's quality methods and continuous improvements), I always end up thinking, why and what was blocking my flow of thoughts during the fact finding period of the assignment. Was I dreaming? Or was I caught with the usual "the deadline is still far away, let's take it easy". And also the various distractions that happened during the period of the assignment. I need better task managment skills and not time management.

Well, that's about deadlines anyway. Next in the agenda is music.

Have you guys listened to the latest single by Jordan Knight and Deborah (aka Debbie) Gibson entitled Say Goodbye? Fug...those guys are still alive. Wasn't Jordan Knight part of New Kids on the Block? Wasn't Debbie Gibson part of the teen pop era of the 80s and early 90s??? They're back singing. OMG.

"YOU KNOW YOU ARE OLD WHEN THE NAMES OF THE MUSICIANS WHOM I HAVE JUST MENTIONED SOUNDS FAMILIAR"

Hahaha ....

Yea baby!

And the debate goes on...

This row over the bumiputera equity is still raging on. Check out Lim Kit Siang's blog at :-

http://blog.limkitsiang.com/?p=771

I am not a hardcore fan of politics, but I certainly know when to take attention of the situation when I see one. Still, after reading it, the first thing I did was....dig up my finance notes and check what actually is the definition of par-value. Many questions are still unanswered. And I am still awaiting the response from our government.

So far most of the articles and responses seems fair (well, most of them actually if you minus of those comments made by certain extremist groups). All have their valid points regarding the findings, the study and the issues the study is trying to bring up. It is a sensitive issue and certainly care must be taken.

Still, I am awaiting for the response from our government. It better be darn good one. And not the usual "rubbish" comments made by our government officials which certainly make you think ... are these people actually "educated" in the art of reasoning?

Come to think about it, the current episode seems to be a lesson of economics and politics to me.

Let the education begin !
Cheers.

Monday but no blues

Today was an ok day. However, I didn't meet my expected level of productivity. Surely and hopefully, things will get better this week. You see, I shall be on a long overdue leave. Am already feeling very exhausted from work.

Not to mention, I have been browsing the daily career oppportunities alerts and weekend job appointment sections. No progress so far. Feeling stuck as usual. To tell you the truth, the brochure which was sent from Eneos, which is a car workshop chain which sells lots of stuff seems more exciting than the career opportunities that are available.

Man..that's really depressing.
Keep on searching I guess.

No climbing today ...

Today I woke up feeling really exhausted. Have been working on my condo. Grouting specifically. Actually, it was my partner who is doing the grouting. Yours trully had to...clean it up. Man..my back aches like hell. My kness felt as if they were bent for ages. At first I thought I can go for some climbing. But the haze was still there, so that rules out outdoor climbing. Then there's the indoor climbing. Being so cost consious now, I pulled out. Why? Not worth climbing because given my current condition, I would be only able to climb just a few routes before giving up. Not to mention that tomorrow, which is Monday, the dreaded first working day of the week.

I guess that was the weekend for me. Feeling really better now.

I added another entry or replaced an existing entry in my Blogs I spy. Haha...just felt funny reading that new blog. Deja vu..i thought I read it somewhere last time. THe same blog. Anyway, I like reading blogs which are easy going.

Man..I really need to work on my writing. Looking at this piece of entry is totally shameful. So much for the plagarizing during my uni days.

Darn it.

Wednesday 13 Oct 2006

I guess the title describes everything. Dullness and frustration. Hahaha...
Well, to start off with there were some problems with the kitchen plumbing. The water outlet and the kitchen outlet are not parallel. Darn it... someone didn't measure properly. Then, the mistake made with the kitchen hob. I thought it was running on natural gas. After checking with the gas supplier, found out that it is actually liquified petroleum gas. Darn....have to pay money to get the gas inlet change to be able to take the LPG supply.

Sigh...all these things really get me down. So tired from office work.
Sighhhhhhhhh.....

I'm slogging now.

Car Maintenance Part II

Well, I tried but didn't succeed. Took my car back to the workshop. As usual, before trying to find the problem, the mechanic wanted to test drive the car first to understand the problem. As expected, not possible to reproduce the sound. The conclusion....wait till the sound gets louder and clearer. Darn...so I left and hope that the problem and worries will go away.

The haze is back. It seems like an annual thing. I remember the first time I encountered the haze problem in Malaysia. It was back in 1997. During my college years. So...since then, the haze has been coming back again and again and again.

I couldn't climb today. I fell ill yesterday. Had fever and body aches. Ok..the body aches came from my home DIY also, trying to re-grout the floors so that they would look nice. Well, they do look nicer now..except that...it will take me a bit more time to finish the whole flooring. More back aches and more knee aches. And maybe I can improvise on the tool I am using. Home-made tools. I got the tip of how to grout the floor from the contractors when they were fixing the floor tiles. Muahahaha....

Well, no climbing today. Guess it's back to the DIY activities later.

Yea...

Car Maintenance

I sent my car for the routine service last weekend. I did some alignment and balancing since I felt that the car's handling was really out. Wow..the bill was high since I opted for the authorized service center. You know, up till today, I am still asking people if they know any reliable workshop. Actually I found one quite near my place but since I am going to shift soon to my new place, I didn't make the effort to try it out. As most of you have guessed, you will never know whether a workshop is good unless you have already tried it.

So, I got some problems solved. One of them was the squeeling sound coming from the belts in the car engine. The solution ... change all three belts. One was for the fan, one was for the aircond and one was for the steering. Costs me a bit on those three belt. The end result, no more squeeling sound when doing a cold start in the morning. I guess it was ok. You see, nowadays, most of these workshop would recommend changing the parts rather than just figuring out what the heck is wrong. I did gotten the belts tighten but it only solved the squeeling sound temporarily. After a while, the sound came back. One the other hand, sometimes if you don't solve the problem in the car, it might cause other problems. Something like the spill-over effect, except that it's a bad spill-over effect.

Well, one problem solved another crops up. After having my car's alignment and balancing done, I had a funny feeling while driving. There is a feeling of a slight "tud" while driving. I did check. The road was even and eventually, I felt the slight bump when driving in the parking lot. Darn...something must be loose or something must have broke but I certainly hope it is not the latter. So back to the workshop tomorrow to have it checked. I thought it could be my imagination but in the end, I just can't ignore that slight feeling of a bump. So I solved one problem and try to solve another problem and eventually got them problems fixed. However, a new one cropped up.

I guess owning a car is like that. Especially locally made cars which tend to be a bit .... sissy. They're just not durable. I certainly hope i can describe the problem to the supervisor. I've even checked with the local auto forum and most of them say something must be loose when they did the alignment.

Oh yeah, not to mention the lesson learnt. Don't do your alignment and balancing at a normal workshop that does everything. Do it at a tyre shop. Why...tyre shops do what they do best....tyres and wheels. Man... this kinda hit me. Because prior to the car service, I was pondering on whether to get the alignment and balancing done at the tyre shop nearby my place. Well, like they say...if you don't try, you won't know. Idiot !!!!

So...what do I need to do?
Simple, find another workshop which is convenient and reliable. And of course, most would probably charge less than the authorized service center charges.

Man...I really need a beer. Oh..i just had one. Hahaha....

Ya Baby!!!

Yawn....

Time passes fast. Things are piling up and I have not blogged for some time.
This really sux. I need more pix too.
Yawn ....