Initial D... Love it or hate it

Managed to catch Initial D on the opening day. It was a mad rush as TGV is the only cinema showing the movie exclusively. Normally I'd choose to go to GSC, which has more comfortable seats.

I won't go much into the movie but the cinematography is excellent. I must admit, I had quite a high expectation of the movie since it was directed by the same directors of Infernal Affairs. The cinema was packed to the brim and there were no empty seats at all.

I caught Batman Begins on Wednesday but to compare both the movies I would prefer to watch Initial D again. It's entertaining and funny, but alas it's in Cantonese so most of the translated jokes would not come out the same. For the fans of Mr. Jay Chou, yes, he speaks Cantonese! It's a good effort by him since he speaks Mandarin all the time. The accent was a lot better than when I first heard Shu Qi speak Cantonese. I nearly fell of the seat!

Though I missed the drift events organized in Bandar Utama, I'm glad that I didn't miss the movie. The story has been changed a little so don't expect too much straight out from the anime. Most important of all, the drift scenes were all real! None of the CGI crap that the older car movies had.

Bottom line, Fast and Furious, take this in your face!

Hmmm, I wonder if they'll make an English version of the film?

Happy Birthday Rudy!

Should have written this yesterday, but all I could do was just hit the bed. It was Father's Day yesterday and it was also Datuk Rudy's birthday. Since my mum is still in Ipoh and my sis gone MIA with bf, me dad didn't feel like going out. I asked if he wanted to go to Merv's shop for lunch and he said he just felt like staying at home.

Ever since I've started working, I find it harder and harder to sleep in on Sundays. It's probably because I've been waking up at 6.45am every other except Sundays. This is really bad, and to think that I usually slept till like 1pm in the afternoon before waking up. Hey, it's 11am Brisbane time, so technically I'm still waking up before noon.

Anyway since I woke up at 9.30am yesterday, I decided to give the car a good polish since the paint work was starting to look dull. Even polished the tyres with some tyre wax and after that polished my shoes. Damn, come to think of it, yesterday was covered with a whole lot of shinning.

After lunch, watched the Interpreter, which was not interesting at all. Whole lot of drama and basically I lost interest halfway. I kept looking to see when the freaking movie would finish. If it weren't for Kidman, I think I would have shut it off after the opening. I nearly fell asleep watching it and find myself opening my eyes wide whenever Kidman came on the screen. Continued playing Revenge of the Sith on the PS2. Finished about half of the game, reaching the culling in the Jedi Temple. It's good to be on the Dark Side.

Dinner plans were decided by the birthday boy. Since the usual gang could not be rounded up due to Father's day celebrations / other commitments, it was just the five of us. Myself, Merv, Gary, Wan Yee and the Datuk himself. Gave him a choice of Roast Duck or Mud Crabs, and after contemplating for a while the crabs got to him. Mud crabs it was! Drove to Subang near Terminal 2 for the usual Lala Chong Restaurant but it was packed. It was slightly before 8, so the large crowd is normal for weekends. We drove a little further and found another restaurant. The food was good, nothing to complain about except for the Marmite (Vegemite) Crabs. Yea, to think that I hated Vegemite in Aussie, here I am eating Marmite Crabs. We ordered Sweet and Sour Crabs, a plate of vegetables, some clams and fried sotong (calamari). On the side we ordered some fried 'mantau' (sweet bread), though the ones that we ordered in a restaurant near Tropicana was a lot nicer.


After that, we headed to Starbucks Kiara for drinks and called it a night. The trip there wasn't all that dull. With Wan Yee and Gary driving, both the F1 driver wannabes decided to push their cars. Wan Yee's excuse was wanting to rev his car a little higher than usual and Gary's was more towards chasing Wan Yee. It wasn't all that uneventful when Gary nearly overtook Wan Yee when he maxed out at 140 km/h. Blame it on his 4-speed auto transmission.

Darn, come to think of it time does go by faster on Sundays!

De Pastry Chef

You know, I am a little wary when I'm trying out new places. Especially cafes. I usually have my coffee while I surf the Net in Starbucks. Not many places offer a good selection of cakes and pastries, yes, not even Starbucks. I had a Black Forest cake there once and it was not something I would call a cake. I honestly think Secret Recipe is over-rated. But I've gotta hand it to them, think about cakes for birthday celebrations, everyone thinks about Secret Recipe.

It's been a crazy week and now that my Regional Manager has left KL, life's a little bit more relaxed for the moment. He's approved the purchase of 3 Dell Inspiron laptops for the Marketing department. Finally, some decent work machines! The office computers are so outdated, I think the schools without government funding would have better computers than us! How can a company operate on dialup? According to the Accounts department, they have topped up the credit by RM 100 two weeks ago. Last week, they topped up another RM 200. What a waste of resources. The first time I saw the Regional Manager, I told him, "You've gotta get better machines, mate!"

My Regional Manager is from Brisbane as well, totally agreed with me. He brought his laptop and couldn't even log onto the Net from the office. I also told him, "Get broadband. The company is expanding and everything's just gonna get bigger." I had trouble corresponding with HK because the internet account went dead. Jaring, the ISP suspended the email account and we were cut off from the rest of the world for a few days. How can such an important communication media not have top priority when we have offices in HK, various parts of China, Taiwan, US, Phillipines and Thailand? He's also approved the application of Streamyx and the installation of a wireless 4-port router in the office.

Now, back to the cafe... I have been moved from the dry goods section to the food section. From next week onwards, I'll be in-charge of frozen vegetables, frozen seafood, frozen meat and various food items. This also includes the confectionary arm, which deals in cakes. So, after a long meeting on a Saturday morning, we went to a place called De Pastry Chef in Menjalara, Kepong. I was not expecting such a place in Kepong... but then again I hardly venture into that part of KL.

The cafe looked very nice, it felt like one of those Taiwanese cake houses. The atmosphere, the cakes, the pastries made you just want to stay and continue to eat and eat. Honestly, their standards are really comparable , or should I say better than Secret Recipe. Besides offering a good seletion of cakes and pastries, they also have a lunch menu. Tried the Fried Kampung Chicken with fried rice and it was delicious. Maybe I was hungry but nevertheless the food was good. Had a piece of chocolate cake, filled with walnuts and it was really nice. Yumz.

Would I return? Definitely!

Traffic Wasn't That Bad... But It's Better To Leave Early Than Late

So school's back in session. I made sure I left at 8.10 am this morning. I even decided to take the route that Wan Yee suggested, which is through Brickfields and off to Jalan Hang Tuah and heading towards Sungai Wang/Lot 10's Jalan Sultan Ismail. Strange enough, the route was pretty packed, but it was moving.

I was stuck at Jalan Hang Tuah right after Victoria Institution when I saw someone from the next car looking at me. I didn't recognize the Yellow Hyundai Getz, but I did recognize the bubbly person waving at me. It was Dawn! Of all the places I bump into her, it's in traffic!

She's on holiday before she starts her new job and her office will be located along Jalan Raja Laut. Good luck getting there in morning traffic! Managed to chat with her and updated her that I was already working. She's on her way to Penang and Redang. The person who owns that yellow Getz was her sister, Louise.

Amazing how you can just wind down your window and start chatting away in the middle of morning grid lock. It was fun chatting with her, but as soon as the light turned green I told her to enjoy her holidays and slammed on the gas. Didn't wanna be late for the first day of the second week. Rushed through traffic and it started raining. Thought to myself, now wouldn't it be nice if I was still in bed and enjoying the weather. Sigh...

I got to the parking lot at 8.40am and got into office by 8.55am. I would say, mission accomplished. So, it took me half and hour after all. Looks like Wan Yee's route does work! I think I shall be sticking to this route for the rest of the working days. Turns out, my senior was late, he only got to the office at 9.25am. All I heard him in the morning was, "Why so fucking jam? What the fuck is wrong with traffic? Why so fucking jam???!"

I was thinking to myself, "Duh! It's the first day of school, what else do you expect?"

Crazy Week!

At last, I've started back into the working world. Taking a long break from work has really messed up my body clock. I had no problems waking up, but looks like this week is going to get worst. Now I have to leave my house at 8am just to get to the office, Wisma Selangor Dredging along Jalan Ampang at 8.55am. It takes me 55 freaking minutes to get there. Yesterday traffic was clear as the banks were closed and it only took me 10 minutes to reach the parking lot!

The first day started with a small introduction to the company's products and clients. It's a good way to get us acquainted with the company and all, but the fun part was when we actually visited the different Jusco outlets in the Klang Valley. Taking walks in shopping centres, now this is one job I can really get used to. This week, I've been to all the major shopping centres with Jusco outlets in them.

Highlight of the week, we had not much to do. The first day ended with us drinking at a pub in Damansara Jaya at 5pm. We got there at about 4.30pm, parked the cars and headed for the watering hole. 4 jugs for 3 people, enough to make us a little tipsy as we didn't have dinner. Ordered a plate of roast pork a.k.a. 'Siew Yuk' and some otak-otak. That was our dinner. The funniest thing was, before we left my senior told us to be early for work the next day. Strangely he was on MC the next morning!

Other than that, the week's been pretty relaxing. My CEO, director and regional manager are all down in KL for meetings with the clients. Was out at Rum Jungle yesterday night with the regional manager and the rest of the marketing team. It's just mad that he's informed us, Saturday night is just the preview. We still have Monday night, Tuesday night and Wednesday night to worry about. I'm getting kinda worried about being late for work the next morning. Hmmm...

O2 XDA Mini

www.GSMArena.com 


It's been a while since I've posted anything up on the blog. It's mainly because I've been busy attending interviews and also managing to find the time to complete God of War. I had a job offer last week, a company selling photocopy machines. I thought to myself, "I know I've gotta start work soon, but selling photocopy machines???"

Anyway, I attended an interview with a Hong Kong based company on Monday. They have an opening for someone in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods division. Since that's the field that I want to get into, this is the job that I've been waiting for. The first interview went very well. The manager informed me that she'll need to forward my particulars to HK before they can arrange for a telephone interview. Now this is going to be my frist time having my boss interview me over the telephone. Since the HQ is based in HK, I think I may be required to speak Cantonese. Ain't a problem, I think...

Decided that it's been two years since I last purchased a phone, and seeing the gang switching phones one after another, I decided it's high time that I do so. Was going over a few models, but I narrowed it to a PDA phone. I wanted a Pocket PC, and there was no doubt about that. The IPaq phones are pretty impressive but I don't think I wanna be spending over RM 3,000 plus on one of these babies. Next in line was the O2 XDA range amnd lastly the Motorola A780. The Motorola actually caught my eye, but the price of this phone has changed 5 times over the last few weeks. It originally retailed at RM 2,480. I went to the shops again and they told me that there was an offer and that they have reduced the price to RM 2,150. I returned a week later and now it was retailing for RM 2,088. It's falling like a rock. I don't know the reason why, but the design didn't really catch my eye.

I've been eyeing the O2 XDA mini ever since it came out. I was always complaining that the older O2 XDA units were bulky or just plain huge. A friend of mine was using the o2 XDA, and it was huge! I don't know if it supported Bluetooth cause everytime the phone was used, there was a huge oily face print on the unit. It wasn't huge on battery-life either. Now, on the looks department, the O2 XDA mini is really like one that has undergone a slimming program and it actually looks sexy. It's shaped just nicely to fit your palm and it doesn't get too bulky when you put it in the pocket. Now, that's what I call a Pocket PC! Not some huge thing like the older O2 XDA.

I also bought an SD Wifi card for wireless connectivity. What's the point of having a PDA if you can't go online? But at the end of the day, the phone and the card set me back a total of RM 2,930. For that price I might as well paid a little more and gone for the O2 XDA IIs. Oh well, the mini's sufficient for the time being and like I said the size is just petite.

However, I've found a few set backs after using it for a day. The cellphone reception is really bad, especially if you walk around the room and talk. There are times when I have no reception at all, that's the worst time ever. I was walking around the living room and there was no cellphone reception. With my other cellphones, there were no reception problems in my house. Somebody's gotta get a booster for the cellphone signal on the mini.

Looks like I will be starting work on Friday. The telephone interview is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon and the KL side is pretty happy with my credentials. Looks like I'll have to get used to waking up early in the mornings again. Back to the work force!