MSN licks arse...

I was chatting with Jacq on the weekend and my home network + MSN decided to act like arse... wtf! I was able to view/send webcam but not able to send messages... to ANYONE!!! This resulted in a rather silly method of 'MSN' communicating...

Ya... this is no joke, you can see by the "The following message could not be delivered to all recipients" message that I was trying, and failing miserably, to send messages to her. WTF... I had to break out the lined paper and a pen...


So our 'conversation' went on like this for (easily) over 1/2 hour when I got fed up and tried to send messages to random people on my list... No dice, it was the same for everyone :'( BTW handwritten messages weren't sending either... makes sense, no?


By the end of it I did what I should have done to begin with... reset the router =p my cousin might have lost all his downloads, but meh =) after all, what's more important a harddisk full of pr0n Chinese Dramas / hentai Anime or camming with Jacq? keke. Sorry Jeff :D

Happy Belated CNY!!!

Hello all and Happy Chow Yun Fat! .. Er... Gong Hay Fat Choy... or Xing Nian Kuai Le :p Take your pick ;)

CNY for us was not such a huge affair this year and it seems that every year it's getting less and less festive :( Is it just me? This year I didn't even go to ChinaTown to watch the parades, I just sat at home and chatted with Miss Thien :). Perhaps it was the rain that also took away from the festivities. Or the fact that our skies weren't lit with fireworks that make all those wonderful sounds... As Kenny Sia so tactfully put it, "Peeeewwwww-la-la-la-BOM!!!"

We had a small family gathering, HOTPOT! With waaaaaaaay too much food! Wow! As you can see we had two pots going. The soup base was a simple chicken broth but one of the tastiest I've had in awile! Our choices consisted of: Beef, pork, chicken, fish, fish ball, octopus ball, tofu, tofu stuffed with mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, button mushrooms, some other mushroom :p, artificial crab, shrimp, spinach, sprouts, kale, and... some other stuff :p forgot what it's called. Our dinner lasted for the better portion of 2 hours possibly longer... It's a little bit of a blur as I got so stuffed from the food. Really got stuffed that night, I'm pretty sure I was done after the 1 hour mark... but it was so good I couldn't stop! By the end of it, we hadn't even finished EVERYTHING... there was waaaay too much, easily enough for 15 people :D

Ah well, with dinner done I headed downstairs to chat w/ Jacq again. The rest of the family wound down by watching some TV (Can't remember what was playing... some Jacky Chan movie). Oh, for those of you who are dorks like me and use the ZSNES emulator... have you ever wondered what zsKnight looks like? You're in luck :D he's married to my cousin :p and there he is on the couch! :D I've temporarily mosiac'd his face pending his approval ;)

During the wind-down period we also wound up playing with a Gov't issued spared-no-expense polaroid camera (Sis works for the Gov't) and for the life of us couldn't figure out how to get the flash going (?) WTH. It doesn't look too complicated, right? Ya... no. Looks can be decieving. This this is waaaay too technologically advanced for us... meh. We ended up taking a bunch of photos w/o the flash... most of them ended up looking a little disturbing.. Almost like spirits in the photos. The backgrounds were so dark and the only things you could see were our blurry faces :p. (I'll post a pic soon)

Well, we finally got to the DDR portion of the night and spent a good hour playing! Great fun! as long as you weren't sitting downstairs while we were playing :P You see, here in Canada, (when not made of snow) our houses are made of cardboard... as a result, anything that happens upstairs is amplified and sounds like a herd of elephants trampling overhead. No pictures or footage of DDR, sorry folks. Damn.. have to still post the other footage :(

Time to call it a night! Take care and may you all have a happy and prosperous New Year! Bow wow!

1000!!!...

Woo I've finally hit over 1,000 hits :D It took a little over a month but it happened! Woo Hoo! I'd say it's a pretty good start to the Chinese New Year!

One thing I have to do is to keep my updates more consistent! I've been so tired from work and stuff... haiz. Oh well.. I'll try to keep it up :p

Malaysia Here I Come!...

Hellz yea! My vacation request finally got approved! :D MALAYSIA HERE I COME :D Wow I can't wait! The last time I went back was 6 years ago... time to hit up the mamak and get fat :p (that last trip I put on about 10lbs in 2 weeks)

Hmm.. what do I plan to do when I'm there?
1. Eat lots of Roti Canai and Char Kuey Teow
2. Visit Petronas Towers again
3. Go to Genting Highlands ? (last time went to Cameron Highlands)
4. Go to Kuantan ? (Such a nice place, went last time too)
5. Find Kenny Sia =p
6. Buy stuff... don't know what I want to buy yet... but yea.. buy stuff.
... wah, so many things I want to do... I'll list more later.

Friends' requests. Bring back:
1. Ipoh girl
2. Roti Canai

no, really... Ipoh girl =p

Me: u want anything from there?
S.T.: mmmm not really
Me: where's the kampung w/ the pretty girls? during CNY
S.T.: ipoh?
Me: ya.. I'll bring one of them back for you ****
S.T.: uh.... if I really wanted someone like that, I'd wear my green card around my neck like bling
Me: LOL
S.T.: when are you leaving/coming back
S.T.: ?
Me: March 6 - 20something
Me: 23rd I think.. don't remember..
S.T.: ah...
S.T.: psh.. that's not CNY
Me: ya I know.. maybe I'll be able to catch some of the stragglers
S.T: ....
Me: some scraps for you =p
Me: LMAO.. shh
S.T.: i don't believe in seconds....
Me: what about thirds then?
Me: O.o
S.T.: uh... what about "no"
Me: damn
Me: why are you making this so difficult?
S.T.: =.=;;

**yes I know Ipoh is not a Kampung **
Ok, fine... he didn't really request it... and just ignore that 'no'... yar, Ipoh girl.
Are they really supposed to be that pretty? Well... there's Michelle Yeoh, but she doesn't count anymore, she's too old :p

BTW... added 2 more posts in Arts section. Click here.

Saturday stuff...

Saturday was not too eventful, went to the mall with some friends... it was packed as hell. Dunno if it was even worth it :p I came back with the Star Wars Trilogy but one of the cases is cracked :@. Must go back to exchange it.

Then went out for dinner w/ AK :) Original Tandoori Kitchen. Read about it here

Night at the Cac...

Hmm, yesterday was an interesting day. I woke up to find that it had been snowing during the night. I remember going out for a smoke last night and freezing my ass off in the process, but it didn't seem cold enough for snow. Then again.. what do I know? All I know is that it's been pissing rain for the last 4 weeks.

For the most part my day was like any other day during the week. I'm still adjusting to my new schedule which means that my body decides to go to sleep when it feel like it... which in turn means that I end up taking those stupid naps and waking up cranky.

Last night was different. I didn't get the chance to fall asleep because I didn't go home right after work. I ended up getting dropped off at Gilmore Skytrain Station and training it downtown. Wow, it's been a loooooooooooong time since I last took public transit. To tell you the truth, I don't miss it. AND the price just keeps going up.

I made it downtown and met up with JM at the Cactus Club on Robson... our old 2nd home. The occasion was his wife's 2nd ultrasound. They're having twins!!! Which means that I'm going to be godfather to twins! Crazy stuff :/ Where has all the time gone? I've known JM since grade 6... Imagine that, over 17 years...

Our night began at about 5:30pm which is fairly early by anyone's standards. But, beggars can't be choosers, and we don't often get the chance to see each other these days. Anytime that we can take just to chell together is welcome. The pair of us were already pretty tired from long days... I wasn't sure how long we were going to last :p JM was already sitting at the bar by the time I arrived, we weren't expecting to stay too long so we decided to just stay seated there.During our time at the bar it also occurred to me that I hadn't seen AK in almost 2 weeks. It had been quite awhile since JM had seen him as well so I called AK on my mobile to try to persuade him to come out. Our conversation ended with him informing me that he was going to remain at home because he had just come back from the gym and was spent. I filled JM in and he insisted that I dial AK back and, after using his powers of persuasion AK ended up at the bar with us :D.

It was nice to be able to sit around and catch up with each others' lives. We don't spend nearly as much time together as we would like to these days, it's rather disappointing. Also, since this is JM's old place of work, he was able to catch up with some of his old co-workers. That in itself is highly amusing for anyone who's fortunate enough to witness it (as you can see by the picture on the left). I's scared to imagine what went on when he used to work here :p

Of course, no night with JM is complete without at least one shot. We all gathered 'round and Kevo poured out 4 shots of Drambuie (if memory serves me right), yumm. I still can't get over the amount of alcohol JM is able to consume. That day wasn't like some of the other days that I had met up with him. On occasion JM has been on his 9^th-12^th beer by the time I've met up with him. Alcohol for blood? :P Here's a shot of JM speaking with AK, explaining that he wants to start doing more physical activity again, hehe. That's all well-and-good, but here's how some of the conversation went, "So, I'll start going to the gym with you guys, but you'll have to drag me..." How convincing is that? lol. We'll be all worn out BEFORE we even hit the gym! Anyway, JM, we have proof of your proposal ;).

As usual, our night ended with a shot. This time it was something nice and fruity (Hpnotiq and Alize, if there's a name for it, I don't know it :p).


JM left with his wife while AK and I took a stroll down Robson towards Burger King. Apparently alcohol to AK is like marijuana to everyone else :p he got the munchies LOL. On the way there we came across this (not sure what to make of it... it had a fountain... WTF):


Welcome to Vancouver! :p

Ctrl+A is fun... (only in Internet Explorer)

Hmm... I'm just wondering how many people will figure out how to read this post, hehe.

Anyways, ya, so I'm sitting here at work doing training with my work buddy and I decide I'm going to start taking some calls today. Surprise, surprise... I get 2 of the crappiest calls of the day :p oh well.

Blah blah.. I'll write more later :) BTW if you DO end up reading this, leave a comment ;) Cheers

Chicken Tracks...

I decided to finally add a Writings section to share some of my own works. I haven't written anything in ages, but I'm hoping that this will be excuse enough for me to start again.

Check it out here

Oh yeah, I know this comes a little bit late, but we missed the record for consecutive days of rain by 1 day. That day the sun decided to pop it's head out for a bit just to tease us all. Not to my surprise, it's been pissing rain again since then.

Laptops hate me...

Those who know me also know that I am plagued with a curse when it comes to laptops. When I was attending BCIT I enrolled in the laptop program which meant that each person in my 'set' was issued a laptop and we had access to a private 'lab' complete with a network drop for each of us. That year we were given a batch of IBM ThinkPad T30 (I think) and lucky for us we got a whole batch of defective MotherBoards too. Something to do with the video memory... way to go IBM! Now look, I work in the Services division for IBM... wth... must be some sort of punishment for something I did in a past life.

So anyway, out of roughly 20 laptops I get the LEMON (read: an artifact (especially an automobile) that is defective or unsatisfactory [syn: stinker]) of the bunch... there's got to be a better word than that. How 'bout: Shitty-useless-giant-6lb-MoBo replacement x6-paperweight. Ya, that doesn't even cover everything but it'll suffice for now. You see, it's not that I don't like IBM, in fact I think they make some nice looking reliable products that aren't waaaaaay overpriced.

So, you have been warned, be wary when I am around and your laptop is nearby :p. If I touch it... it's game over.

My Toshiba Satellite is slowly dying as well, I'm very happy with it overall, but the curse is still with me. From Day one, the OS would randomly freeze up. Not so frequent, but enough that it prompted me to send it back in while still under warranty. Upon return the problem seemed to go away.. for about a week :@ then came back. Meh... I lived with it.

Woo hoo! Successfully booted!
Now it's a different problem alltogether. The HardDrive motor seems to be dying :'( which means that I'll have to go out and look for a new one. *sigh* I've been too lazy to go look for one, and I'm not exactly up-to-date with computer stuffy stuff :$. Ah well. I first realized that the drive was dying when data xfers would be displaying the status.. and the estimated times were going up :/... you know there's something wrong when something that should take 1 minute to xfer starts counting up to over 200 minutes and there's not scan/other cpu activity going on in the background. Another hint that things are going wrong would be ... BSOD 3 times in 3 attempts to start the OS.


** OUCH **
Today I managed to backup the last of my data :p the 7.2 GB of songs that I had on my drive... and whatever other entertainment I had as well. I was quite pleased as I didn't have to hold the laptop at a funny angle to make sure the drive would keep spinning. It was, however, still doing some funny stuff albeit not as often as before... who cares I suppose :p I managed to get everything xferred before it crapped out again! I was expecting BSOD again.. but nope.. it just locked up and looked like Vid Mem went... uh... crap. This post wasn't about my Video Memory going.. was it? Shit.

BTW... ignore the name of the file that's being xferred in the picture O.o... it's uh... not mine? :p

I hate naps!...

Argh! Yes... I hate naps! I don't know how people do it, take a cat nap everyday, it's beyond me.

Everytime I take a nap I feel like crap when I get up. Today when I got home I felt like the sandman had taken his bag of sand emptied half into my eyes and then proceeded to empty the rest into my throat. Yeah, I know, that doesn't make much sense... but ya. Fek. My throat hurts. I'm so parched and I think Im sure it's because I joined a friend of mine for some fine dining at the local McDonald's =p and they decided to secretly replace my fries with a box of saltlick. For some reason, at that time it didn't occur to me that I could have just walked back downstairs to the counter and ordered a fresh batch with less salt. For a short time I used to order McDick's fries with no salt (I like taking them alone anyway w/o condiments) this also ensures that you get a fresh batch (as they're guaranteed NOT to have fries with NO salt in the bin. Blah blah blah, I'm tired and I'm rambling... here are some fun facts:

It's rather curious how the Trans Fat row has nothing in it...

Where do they come up with this stuff?... :D

Had to post this just cuz it had me busting a gut :p funny shit...

Triumphant! Petronas Conquered...

Finally... I'm done with the Puzz 3D Petronas Towers!

I don't recall exactly how many hours I spent but I'm positive that it was over 13 hours of sitting on my ass tring to figure out what went where. If you want to see pictures of different stages during the building process, you can check them in the original (updated) blog entry here.

Below are some shots of the finished Puzzle ;) Enjoy!

Zephyr in the Sky

This puzzle has had me sitting on my rear for far too long. I feel my mind slowly getting numb. The puzzle is a challenge, but it's not rocket science so when I got a call from DC to go for bbt I was relieved.. hehe wow, I still have friends after all :p

DC finished work and stopped by my place to pick me up.. note to self: don't put cel phone in pocket when you're wearing velure track pants. She called me multiple times AND sms'd me but I missed everything. By the time I got back to her she was almost in bed :'(

I was still in the mood for BBT, hehe, so I forced persuaded her to get out of bed and come with me :p Anyone who knows DC will also know that she loves BBT in Richmond. That's exactly where we ended up... at No.3 Rd and Alderbridge Way.

Zephyr in the Sky:
It has been a couple of weeks since I last came here... mind you, it's been a couple of weeks since I've done anything at all. I believe this place is Taiwanese owned just like the rest of the BBT places in Vancouver. I remember a couple years back it used to be a drinking spot, can't quite remember the name. The atmosphere is nice (I should start taking pictures of restaurant interiors :p) though on occasion they play too much Jay Chow for the likes of me. I suppose I can't expect anything more from a place like that. BTW Chinese rap is soooo wrong.

[rant] One thing that I don't understand is the fact that EVERY CHINESE RESTAURANT IN VANCOUVER has ENGRISH somewhere in their menu. The picture on the right is kinda blurry but it says 'Deep Ried Fish Cake'. Now, this one isn't as bad as some of the other menus I've seen, but it baffles me because... we live in Canada. Right, our national language is French (for some reason) but the main language spoken in this country is English. Do these restaurant owners NOT have any English speaking friends? I severely doubt that is the case, yet they can't seem to put forth a menu without any mistakes (in English). WTF.. come on man! You people can do advanced calculus in Junior high but you can't figure out how to get someone to proofread your menu before printing it??? [/rant]

Suffice it to say... we ordered a few snacks, which turned out to be a little more than we were expecting to consume :p but managed to polish it all off. Here's a snap:

Vanilla Milk Tea, Deep 'Ried' Fish Cakes, Spicy Cucumber, Passionfruit Green Tea & Deep Fried Squid.

Puzz 3D - Petronas Towers...

Awhile back I had this hankering for a 3D puzzle. I can't remember exactly why, I vaguely remember watching an episode of "How It's Made", I think it was an episode on how 3D puzzles were made. Makes sense, no? That resulted in me going on a search for a nice 3D puzzle. I trekked to different stores in different malls but was also deterred as it was sometime in December and X-mas shopping was already in full swing. Eventually I forgot about it :p

Funny thing is, I received the Puzz 3D Petronas Towers as a gift from AK :D. For the last 3 weeks it's been sitting in a lonely corner in my room, almost forgotten but tonight I looked over and thought, "hmm, I need a break away from my computer." OMG... I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. I opened up the box and WTH, in no time my room was a mess.

The pieces are all over the floor... it's not even the regular pieces that are bad... there are so many little extra bits I guess this is my excuse for vacuuming my room. At first I was thinking that AK got me this gift cuz he was being nice. Now I'm thinking that he probably put more thought into this gift than it seems. AK just wants to see me suffer :@ bastard.

4+ hours of suffering later...
** UPDATE **

8+ hours later (there are actually more pieces, just didn't snap them).

10+ hours later...

12+ hours later...

FINALLY!!! Success! After a smackload of hours and a sore back/neck...