Tuesday, April 25, 2006

WiFi Hunting...

Here I am inside Blenz on Robson and Bute on their open wireless network :) It's the first time I've actually come out in search of an open wireless network with intentions of just sitting down, relaxing and... sipping coffee(?). Ya well, I'm sitting down and relaxing.. but I'm not sipping coffee. I'm actually sipping on a Bolthouse Farms (Since 1915) Strawberry Banana Fruit Smoothie with Apple Juice drink (that's a mouthful).

Earlier today, x-tension caught me on MSN...

x: hey sam.
me: w/sup
x: nothing much. trying to figure out what to do on a sunny b/ windy afternoon
me: fly kites :D
x: i got no kites.
me: blading
x: no blades.
.
.
.
(about an hour later)

me: I just thought of something...
x: ?
me: if we can find somewhere with a WAP then we can go blog :P
me: hehe
x: like a coffee shop?
me: something like that
x: i'm down. LOL
And here we are :) BUT.. I forgot to bring along my Camera :'( I'll just have to steal pictures off x's Photoblog

So our adventure began on the way Downtown. Apparently today is the day where all the crappy drivers in Vancouver come out and hit the road... I had people slamming their brakes in front of me, weaving in and out.. and people who drove as if they were the only ones on the road.

I brought along my power inverter so that we could plug a laptop in while we were riding around in the car. The last thing that I wanted to do was end up walking around aimlessly (carrying our laptops around) and not find a wireless hotspot. My plan was to drive downtown and poll the area for potential WiFi hotspots before parking and getting out. This would require us to drive around looking like UberDorks (passenger) with a laptop in his lap :D Lucky for me, I was driving :p

As I suspected we were able to find an open WiFi network @ Blendz on the corner of Robson and Bute, right off the main drag.


After leaving the car at the underground parking garage in Pacific Center Shopping mall we slowly made our way back to Blenz. It was quite the walk, but it was a nice day and it was nice to see all the different people walking around downtown. It was a beautiful day, and I wish I had remembered to bring my camera... X had his... and he was even tempted to start taking random pictures of VanCity's bums (transients, not backsides) :p

As I was writing this I had a look at X's post on this day :p and funny thing. He mentions something about his Apple Laptop and Widgets... SEE X?! Even PC users can have Widgets! :D

Damn you x you're right :p I have a weather widget set for Singapore weather, but I don't have a clock set for Singapore time ;) Don't need it hehe.

Well, the day was fun, and we're definitely going to do this again hopefully sometime in the near future :) We'll have to plan a day just to do geekstuff ;)

Yea, I read over this post and realized that it's pretty mish mashed as well... sorry :(

Monday, April 24, 2006

WoW - The Internet Is For Pr0n...

On a light note ;) and this is in good taste btw... just some suggestive language.

Malaysia Trip... First Leg...

Finally... for the few people who are reading this... I'm posting about my Malaysia/Singapore trip. Again I have to apologize for the delay :(

Just a !warning! : I've been having trouble gathering my thoughts lately so the following posts are not going to contain much wit and might not even make that much sense... O_o. Bear with me
We arrived in Vancouver International Airport on the morning of March 5th. (I realize that it's been over a month since I arrived back in Vancouver.. so i'm going to do my best to recall everything that transpired, again, my apologies) I decided to take a snap of this sculpture because (since I left everything to last minute) I though this was a prefect representation of how I felt! BTW taking this picture was almost an adventure in-and-of itself... let me explain.

I actually wanted to take a picture of that particular sculpture from the other side (which would make it look like he was dashing to the right)... good thing I didn't. As I was about to snap the shot... I heard someone yelling at me, "Hey you can't take it from that side!" or something along those lines. I looked up and it was security... thank God they didn't tackle me O_o The reason behind everything was (and I realized this afterwards) right behind it was the security checkpoint where everyone comes through before moving on to their respective gates. That being said, no, they do not want people taking pictures of their security checkpoints (metal detector, x-ray machine, security guards) because then people would be able to study them and blah blah blah... anyway, back to the story at hand. (I'm pretty sure I could have gotten away with a pic facing the other way if I had taken it w/o the flash... the guard didn't even check my cam to make sure that I hadn't taken one).

Ah, yes.... now I remember where we were going when I took that picture. We had actually passed that point but came back to go to the Maple Leaf Lounge :) One of the perks that my dad has. I wish I took more pictures of the Lounge.. it was really nice. The only piccy that I have is the one of the network drop that I was at. Very impressive, it felt like I was back at work :) The facilities were really nice, and if I remember correctly it was free to use the internet.


I was hoping to catch a flight on one of these contraptions :D
Our journey to Malaysia had 3 legs:

1st leg: Vancouver - Tokyo
2nd leg: Tokyo - Singapore
3rd leg: Singapore - Malaysia


1st leg: Vancouver - Tokyo

This portion of the trip was with Canadian Airlines I believe we were on a DC10. My seat was an aisle seat towards the back of the plane. interesting thing was that since this was a flight to Japan I was surrounded by Japanese people, mostly students... some elderly folks. I was hoping to have a cute Japanese student as an aisle mate :p but no dice, keke. I ended up sitting with some homely looking Japanese girl who spoke almost no english at all. Mind you, I didn't make much of an effort to converse with her... I'm not much of a conversationalist when I'm on planes.

Funny thing is, I've been flying for as long as I can remember (dad used to be a chief stewart on Malaysian Airline Systems) but I still can't stand flying... I guess that's not an accurate statement. It's not so much that I don't like flying, but more the fact that you're stuck in that tin can for x amount of hours and nowhere to go. Everything inside there is so confined as well. I wouldn't say I'm claustrophobic, not by any stretch of the imagination, but unless you're in business/first class you're not going to have much room to yourself, expecially if you've got your carry-on luggage stowed under the seat infront of you. There's no way in hell I'm going to put my laptop in the overhead bin. Plus I have more than just my laptop in the bag. I have my books, etc... anyways back to the topic at hand.

Since this was going to be a long flight we had a couple of meals planned. First, we had a choice of Salmon or Beef. I chose beef... it was damn salty. I remember we had another meal... I can't quite recall what the choices were but I'm pretty sure I chose the Chicken.. I'm also pretty sure that it came on a bed of rice (?) :p or risotto or something :D The chicken was actually not too bad. It was edible as airplane food comes, so I guess that's saying enough of it already ;)
Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it. I was too hungry and forgot :(

Also, anyone who's been on a flight to Asia will know that it's a damn long flight. This leg was over 12 hrs I believe. That being said, I think I recall there being 3 feature films... all of which I slept through. There were a couple of news broadcasts as well as a documentary (I think) :p

On the approach to Japan I was surprised to see that there were Windmill generators along the coast! I'm not sure what area we flew over bud it was a really beautiful sight. The crop fields looked like patchwork, and I could see little vehicles running along the roads. I was half-expecting Godzilla to come out of the water and start battling it out w/ Ultraman :D.
On the approach I also overheard a couple of (younger) Japanese passengers say, "Choh inaka!" Which, if my Japanese serves me correctly, is a slang term meaning "boonies", "countryside" or more appropriately "rural".
The other thing that threw me for a loop was the fact that when we flew over another section (a little farther inland) there were golf-courses as far as the eye could see... seriously... it was whack.


My mom was just as awestruck as I was... I'm sure we counted at least 8... then again, that was over a month ago... and the mind tends to embellish things, right? :p

We finally arrived at Narita airport and after a near-perfect touchdown we taxied to our gate. After we disembarked, those who were transitioning were greeted by Narita airport attendants... I was very impressed with the effeciency of the Japanese system. Apparently there are almost NO incidents (passengers/baggage getting lost, delays, etc...) in the Japanese airports (I could be making that up as well :p) regardless of the fact that Narita is massive compared to Vancouvers piddly airport. I wish I had the frame of mind to snap a shot of the attendants that greeted us *sigh* They even had our names printed out on a large signboard :p

After the attendants confirmed who we were, they also verified that we had our tickets so that we could get our boarding passes at next check-in. We all did... that is, all of us except my dad O_o The Check-in lady in Vancouver tore off the wrong coupon when she issued his boarding pass in Vancouver. My parents had to catch their connecting flight in the next 1/2 hour or it would leave without them. Crappy. This was Narita's chance to shine... and a perfect example of how systematic and effecient they were. The Attendants immediately took out their ticket books and drew up a manual ticket with the proper details. Within 10 minutes, they (mum & dad) were on the way past the security checkpoint making their way to their gate (along with me) in one of the shuttle busses. On the bus... we looked around and saw this...


ya... I'm not sure what to make of that either...

Anyways... more to come ;)

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Moving on...

Well... here I am, back from the dead. I know it's been over a month since I last posted (a real post) and now I can explain what was going on. First, yes, I have attempted to post in the past... but the two times that I was about to update the blog 1) blogspot crapped out and I had not saved the post as a draft... and 2) my laptop crapped out before I saved what I had written over the 2 hours. Now on with the show :)
Apart from the above mentioned... here is what has been going on since I have landed back on Canadian soil...

I am happy to say that I am no longer single. As of March 7th Jacq and I are officially a couple :) There isn't much to explain apart from the fact that she's brought an immesurable amount of happiness into my life. Our relationship is great so far, and she and I are working to see what we can do to come together :)...

On another note, before I took off on the trip, I had already been contemplating resigning from my position at the IBM CSC. To be honest, I had not thought too much about it over the trip (being on vacation and all) but when I went back to work again my mind went into overtime, driving me nuts trying to decide whether I was going to stay there or not. Those of you who are observant will realize that I'm speaking in past tense, so yes, I finally decided to resign.


On Friday March 30th I went into a meeting with my HR rep.. followed up on all the things that we talked about before I left for Malaysia/Singapore, and at the end of the meeting let her know that I was going to tender my resignation on Monday. To my surprise, she was actually expecting it:
"Yea, I could tell from the moment you got back into work. Your attitude had been different all week."
"Really? But I'm always very impartial :)"
"Yeah, but you've been even more impartial this week."
That's not exactly how the conversation went that day, but it's pretty close.

For those of you at IBM who may be reading this, it was not an easy decision... There were even tears shed during the exit inverview, and I have to say JM is a great guy, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. My decision to leave was a result of a culmination of many different things, but mainly to come back and help my father w/ his business. :) Though that is the main reason, I am not ruling out other options... That would be another post in itself ;)

Accept it or not, those are the main reasons I have not posted in such a long time... that and the fact that my laptop mobo/vid card is slowly crapping out :(

On w/ the show...