it pays to flirt (with sales-girls)

actually, the correct title should be -
my phone got fucking stolen!
BUT, i was having such a good time buying a new one, my mood's all good now.
anyway, i was in the office, my ipod and phone were side by side at the inner side of my desk as usual. i still remember checking the phone cos i got a miss call and some messages.
2 hours later, the phone's gone but the ipod was still there. grr.
i'm not very pisssed about losing the phone, although i only got it towards end of last year. it only cost me around RM250. what really pissed me off is that i lost over 100 contacts that were saved in my SIM card. it'll take me pretty damn long to get back those that i can still contact through other means. i dunno what to do about the others.
so, i went straight to get a phone after work. i've already suspended my phone account after i confirmed that i really lost the phone, not misplaced it. i can get a new SIM activated tomorrow at lunch, so all i need now is a new phone.
as usual, i looked through the few models that caught my eye the past few months. nokia N80 (RM2.4k), sony ericsson K800(RM1.9k), samsung D840 (RM1.5k+), samsung D900 (RM1.8k).
well, i didn't wanna spend more than RM2k. so even though i really really love the N80, that's outta the question. the K800 was around the same, cos adding in the memory card will bring it over 2k. D900 is just not that worth it, considering the only difference between it and D840 was a 3M-pixel camera. i don't need that.
so, i started bargaining with the sales-girl. asked for a memory card for the phone too, since the built in memory is 70MB. she was quoting me RM150 for the memory card. (she probably didn't know that i know that the card is selling for around RM80-90 outside...) so i started bargaining more. well, it ended up more like flirting and i got myself the phone plus a 512MB memory card for a total of RM1450. AND, i got
her phone number. :) kinda cute, so i'm thinking whether i'd call her out when i got my SIM tomorrow.
anyway, here's the phone. nice, eh?
specs

how may i be of service?

women in the workplace are actually more empowered than we are led to believe.

it's true. this empowerment doesn't just come from corporate or workplace policies (ie, harrassments n stuff), but from their male counterparts thinking more with their penises than their brains. of course, in most cases, this is subject to one or more of the following: 1)she's hot; 2)there aren't much competition around; 3)she's not butt ugly.

case in point, the place where i work. it's famous among the companies around there area for having lotsa chicks, and mostly hot ones at that. although i don't really agree to the second part, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, i digress.

now, here's what most people doesn't know - the abundance of the fairer sex is only limited to a few departments, with sales having the most, obviously. from my experience with them, i know they are used to getting their way with things and people. if wiles, charms AND threats don't work, you will get an email from their boss, or to YOUR boss, or worse. of course, when it's outside of work they have most guys by their balls, and this is only half metaphorically.

those in departments overflowing with male testosterone (mine being one of those) doesn't even need to grab anyone's ball to get what they want. guys will line up to lick their feet and ask to be of service in whichever way possible. again, this is subjected to the 3 conditions above, 'cos i can definitely see a couple of them in my department not getting any special treatment at all.

so, on and around valentine's day, christmas and almost any overly-commercialized holidays, flowers and gifts flood into the office, and cluttering the desks of (almost) every non butt-ugly chick. i still remember this huge ratan bird cage with a half-foot tall teddy bear holding a heart, sitting on a swing with flowers on the bottom from last year. the whole thing was probably 2-3 feet tall and this poor girl actually had to go downstairs to the employee entrance to collect it, then bring the whole thing up to her desk, going through probably half of the office's cubicles. actually, poor girl is probably a very bad adjective to use, seeing as she's getting such affectionate thoughts.

normal days, you got random gifts, cakes or other "designer" food on desks. extra help on work so that they don't have to strain their brains too much, in case of getting new wrinkles. help with sales leads, help with technical advise, help with taking weird hour shifts and almost anything you can think of. i think the worse part of all this is that this whole thing is being rubbed in as something guys should do to be more "gentleman".

this past valentine's day, i thought i'd do something to give the ones that seldom/never get any presents a little suprise. well, just the ones i know personally. so i made cards and buy small packets of chocolates, then left those at their desks before i went home the night before valentine.
two hours later i got a call from a co-worker on night shift that night, asking whether i saw anyone leaving the chocolates and card on this chick desk. he's been going after this girl on my team for quite a while and hasn't been able to get anywhere near her pants, let alone inside them. i don't think i want to detail how "psycho" (word used to describe him by her) he gets when it comes to anything that remotely concerns her.
an observation: he's still one of her best resources at work.

that's the power women hold at work nowadays - our balls.
no, wait. your balls, probably. 'cos i definitely don't give a shit.

i'm concerned, n i invent. (apparently)

now THIS, is some cool-ass personality test.
10 pages long, professional looking way to rank stuff. very interesting. anyway, after about 20 minutes of going thru the tests, here's my personal DNA report.
how the hell did i end up an inventor, i have not a clue. it seems like however i grow or change i can never get away from artistic stuff.
oh, n here's cute lil color map of my results. not very flattering, but hey...

Concerned Inventor

it june already?!

update: this car is in malaysia since last yr, selling at almost RM100K at a size of roughly a perodua kelisa. extremely over-priced. as of now, rumors of the 2007/08 vios, which is actually a yaris sedan, will be around RM60-80K is abundant. - 28/03/07

moved to more advanced product support partially, n gotten myself some extra mgmt responsibilities at work lately. still the same team, still the same grade, still the same pay.
things already gotten pretty hectic. extra long working hrs, with OT, luckily. it still gets very tiring at the end of the day. everyday. the only that really lighten me up with all this is that i get to learn quite a number of new things, just when i'm getting really bored with what i was doing.


the extra money from the extra hrs should come in handy. yaris is finally launched in malaysia, although a bit pricey. i'm still gonna check it out n see if i can afford one. need to get myself a car. sick n tired of the sun n the rain.
since the sedan version is not available (at least i didn't see it in the toyota malaysia site), it's probably gonna be one of these. now, i just need to find time n visit one of their showrooms to check it out n see what price i can get it at. i bet it looks pretty damn nice in a city. :)
anyway, nearest prices i know if around RM100k for the yaris, about the same for a honda jazz vtec, and the 2006 honda civic at around RM117k. *sigh* money, money, money.

and then, there's the upcoming price hike for petrol again...

blew some money on a 24" wide screen monitor. haven't got my hands on it yet, but it seems i might have to go all the way to the mainland to get it during office hrs. not an option. hopefully i can get it arranged to be shipped to the island or something. cheap things usually doesn't come without problems, eh?
well, if everything goes well with the monitor, i'll be running dual wide screen displays. then my current 19" analogue LCD will be brought back to ipoh for my mom. she's using this pretty dated 17" non-flat CRT for movies. i tried it out n it pretty much sucks. mom deserves better.

shaved

OK. i haven't drawn anything for a long time, so the drawing looks pretty strange.
still don't think i wanna take a pic n post it here.

i've been looking kinda like that for 1 1/2 mths now. shaved cos i finally made up my mind to do it. thanks to my bro for the first shave, he actually did it better than the second one done here in penang in a salon that cost me RM18.

currently i'm keeping it at probably only about 1/2 inch in length. feels good. my mom says i look like an old man with this, so did +2 when she first saw me. everyone else was shocked. general consensus was that i got dumped. haha. james n a few others think that i look scary. a couple of engineers from taiwan who are over here for training said that i look like taiwanese mafia. (woohoo!)

the rumor that having such short hair saves on shampoo is not entirely true.
all the while i've been using my shower gel instead of my shampoo to wash my hair after shaving, but my hair just doesn't feel the same to touch. plus, i kept feeling that my scalp is not clean enough.
so the other day i just wash my hair with shampoo n voila! my hair feels much cleaner. well, probably i dun have to use as much as having longer hair, but i damn well need it.

my third shave will be this wkend when i go home. it seems like my hair is just growing too fast.

graveyard shift ramblings

work has so much ups n downs lately. not a day of easy sailing for the past month.
changes are coming though. some of the seniors are moving up, new people coming in. major re-organization ensured. i'm just hoping that what was promised for me comes true. too bad there isn't must black n white on that to guarantee it.

bought myself over RM400 of books the other day. out of the blue, i just thought to visit MPH cos my day of shopping was going without any success. the only pair of shoes that i wanted to buy was out of my size. the sales person (i think she was the boss of the branch) was very helpful, even called up other branches in the peninsular to check stock. too bad they didn't have any left.
so, anyway, stumbling on that many books i wanted was pure good luck. although they did not have everything in stock in the gurney MPH branch, the books were all available at other branches. at the same time, the 4 dan brown books were on 20% discount, so i ended up getting them too.
MPH called me up in 3 days time n told me the books were all ready. when i went there, they handed me a whole box. the cashier was pretty damned suprised that i was buying so much.

so far, i finished da vinci code, started on angels and demon.
i was really hesitant on jumping on the dan brown bandwagon. it's like everyone's talking about the book, how good it was etc. then there's the moving opening later this month.
honestly, the book was really good. good not just because of the story, or the suspense on every corner, or the nicely paced rhythm on how the story progressed. (the story actually happened in the short span of about 2 days!) the best thing about the book was how it painting a visually stunning n convincing picture of the famous da vinci paintings n frescoes n the museums.
this poses a challenge for the upcoming movie. i have yet to see the movie stills, but i bet it probably couldn't reproduce the stunning visual effects in the novel that dan brown has painted, especially when the movie is probably modified to fit the story into a 2-hour duration.
oh, i really dun think i'd like seeing tom hanks as robert langdon.

fights

i hate fighting with ppl. it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, n always makes me think back n somehow think that i could've handled things better. somehow.

just had a, well, pretty huge fight with susi the other day, thru emails. started with a puppy. haha. ended up abt me being insensitive n her being too sensitive. or something like that. how sad can i be.

i still remember the last 2 fights i had besides that, maybe because i really avoid fighting or aggressive confrontations if i could. the one before this is mid last year, a fight over the phone with a very arrogant sales person in my company. someone who was notorious for bullying everyone else into doing what she wants, how she wants. i just refused to give in. :)

the one before that, was with my ex, a mth before we broke up in ... hhmmm... april 2004. i think it should be april, cos i was in the hospital for the last part of march.

and again, i'm thinking whether i could've handle all these situations better. :)

betrayed

i just found out this morning that i got shot in the back in front of my team lead, by someone i considered a friend.

it all started last wk when, during my last 1x1, my team lead told me that someone complained about me not handling some cases properly. of course, i asked for some kinda reference so that i can check. i've been doing things by the book all along, so i was suprised when this came up.

finally, i got an email with the references this morning, n i checked them out. turned out it was this fella whom, for the past year, i've helped both professionally n personally. the cases were going sour, with possible escalations. i handled them exactly as i should when they passed thru my hands, it was quite obvious that he put the blame on me to protect himself from possible hot water that might be pouring right at him later.

this got me really pissed off. a very unexpected betrayal, n it further proves that even if u think u're friends with ppl at work, u'd better think again. anyone can just suddenly turn around n step on u, or empty a few rounds behind ur back.

i dunno how i'm gonna handle this with that fella yet. whether i should talk to him directly, or just bide my time n push him down a spiked pit when one comes along. i think i'm gonna spend the night to cool myself down before i make a decision on that.

"eye-scorching screen candy"

Glenn Gaslin described the movie as an "eye-scorching screen candy, a
gorgeous effects driven fantasy flick" in E! online. the movie in questions is Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's Mirrormask. he is absolutely right.
i've been waiting to get my hands on the DVD since i knew of the movie going into production. since it's one of those small company, low budget films without any famous stars, i was sure that it will never reach malaysian cinemas, and i was right.
well, not even that, none of the DVD shops that i asked at, since september last year, even heard about the film. so when i bumped into this in a DVD shop earlier in the evening, i just bought it and hurry home. :)
so. it really is eye candy right from the DVD menu to the ending credits.
as what i've mentioned in a previous post here, the movie is really filled with tons and tons of weirdly creative and brilliant ideas, both in the storyline and the audio visual presentation of it. if i'd not known beforehand that this movie was done on a very limited budget, i wouldn't have believed that this film actually only had a budget of four million dollars. just as a comparison, the first lord of the rings movie had a budget of 137 million. the acclaimed fantasy film labyrinth, from the same company as mirrormask, had 40 million.
seeing dave mckean's designs brought to live is a shocking experience. i'm talking about designs with similar color schemes and psychotic feeling as those from sandman comic covers. cats with human faces, fishes that swims through the air, orbiting giants... mixing that, with all the crazily original ideas from neil gaiman - flying books, a dumb sphinx, monkey-birds with beaks that keep falling off, shadows that turn into eyeballs with spidery legs... this is fantasy film at a whole new level. (which also kinda make me wonder what kind of movies will the sandman series make)
it's too bad that this film did not reach cinemas here.

mirrormask@sony pictures
traliers@apple

more pictures, which doesn't really reflect how marvellous things actually look in the movie:

what a way to start the year

a friend of mine killed himself the friday before valentine's.

it came as quite a shock when another friend informed me about this over the phone. i have never thought that any of my friends would really do something as drastic as taking one's own life. (killing another, maybe. ) all i could react to when i got the news over the phone was to agree with pooling together money for the family.

i'm not very close with this friend, so this is not some kinda orbituary or memorial post. just me, not understanding why people would wanna take their own lives.

i still remember him being a very active student back in high school. the fella's always somewhere among the top 20% of the class, did very well in public speaking and singing contests, ok in sports. he was in the school band, and was even the head prefect in school.

he didn't really get far after high school, from what i heard. family didn't do great and he couldn't get a good enough scholarship to get through college, since he was never anywhere near the top 5% in class.

the last time i heard from him was mid last year at another friend's wedding. a few of us car-pooled to KL for the banquet. he came across as a lil depressed, lacked confidence and pretty much tried to hide most of his feelings.

then came the phone call about him jumping off the top floor of the place he was living in.

come to think of it, i didn't do much better than he did, even in high school. even though i was a nerd and basically ended up in the top 3 in class every year, i was never very active in school activities. well, that's mostly because i hate the school's discipline. deliberately failed the prefect exam twice cos the diciplinary master's a bitch. after high school, i never really pour myself into studies anymore until i got back from the states. most of the time, i'm just enjoying myself by indulging in whatever fancies me at the time.

i probably wouldn't be suffering where i am now, if i'd lived paying more attention to my future. compared with most of my friends back from high school, i have really done much for a career.

so, i'm at a point in life where i should already be somewhere, but i'm still way behind on schedule. but i haven't lost hope yet. i still think i can hurry up and get back on schedule if i work hard enough.

one thing about playing games, especially RPGs, a lot is that it really made me realize that real life is not that kinda game -- you can't die and reload from a previously saved game; nor do you have extra lives to play with.

life's just a complicated one-way maze with more branches at every turn. you don't have a map, you can't go back and you're not sure whether you're headed to the correct exit (or if there really is an exit instead of all dead ends). kinda sucks if you think of it that way but i still think that there's always an exit, even if you came to a dead end, you might find a hidden door. :)

i guess that's what's interesting, not knowing where the path will really lead. that, and the other thing i learnt from games -- the bull-headed, stubborn insistence to make it all the way to the end.