Ratatouille

Managed to resolve a big issue yesterday for a trouble shipment, which took almost half the day. I left office late and rushed back home in order to take a shower and to reheat the dinner leftovers. Yumz, yam cooked with spare ribs. It's been a while since I've eaten this dish. The way Yen's mum cooked it was slightly different, but tasty. We finished the dish to the last drop, cleaned the plate.

After that we rushed over to Megamall to meet Merv for the tickets to Ratatouille. Surprisingly for a Wednesday, the cinema was not crowded, neither was the parking. Usually it'll be packed. The road going into the parking was free from jam and it was smooth all the way. Is it because of the Hungry Ghost festival that most Chinese folks are required to go home early and not go out?

More on that another time, now back to the movie. I've heard great reviews of this show and all of it were true. Pixar and Disney, you can not go wrong with this combination. So far, Pixar has been well known for their "realness" when it comes to animating hair or fur. Pay close attention to the details and you'll spot that it really resembles the real thing. The fur on Remy and his clan, are so realistically done that you can not believe that you are watching a cartoon done with fantastic CG.

However, rats as cooks? It seemed ironic that they chose rats, I mean, who would eat the dinner? If I were the critic, I'd thrown up upon hearing that. No matter how you look at it, rats are dirty. In fact, three days ago, we set a rat trap in the house. At first, we ignored it as it was just running around the roof and around the back of the house. On Sunday, the little critter got a little more bolder and decided to venture to the living room, where Yen was working. She said that the rat just decided to walk and went galavanting around the house. Enough was enough, it started eating the food around the house and it just squeezed itself through closed windows. How the heck he did that? Apparently, the can manipulate their bones and go through the smallest cracks. Long story short, we caught it and I was the executioner.

Back to the morality story. In Buddhism, we are told not to kill or to make things suffer. So how do you get rid of the rat? My grandparents used to drown it in water, the least painful way to go. My mum used to leave it in the sun so that it'll die of heat stroke. One time, it was raining and sunny, the little critter just shivered and suffered. Yen suggested to let it die of hunger. Isn't that worst than killing it by drowning it? I've seen people taking magnafying glass and burning the rat to death. That's really making it suffer.

Somehow, I don't think this is a suitable topic to be discussed in this post. But rats caused the widespread of diseases and are usually filthy creatures. So, why did the makers choose the rat for this movie? Because, everyone can cook!

Lovely extractors on my Civic

Lovely extractors on my Civic. It's been a while since I've really modded anything in the car. This one was my pledge to keep it as standard as possible. However, due to unforseen circumstances, I had to replace my extractors. Since I was replacing them, why should I keep it standard?

Funny, when the extractors a.k.a. exhaust manifolds were installed, they were chrome and shiny. After a few days of use, they started turning gold. I'm still wondering about the phenomenon. The last time I changed the exhaust manifolds were in my old Wira with the 4G93T engine. The colour was again chrome, but once used, they turned bright red on one trip to Genting. Didn't manage to get a photo of the glowing red manifold. After prolonged usage, they started turning blue.

Saw this very interesting announcement by Nokia this morning in the Star. They have issued a nationwide recall of the BL-5C battery. Apparently a batch of these batteries made by Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd. of Japan between December 2005 and November 2006 were faulty. There were about 100 incidents where the battery overheats during charging and caused it to dislodge from the phone. So far, no serious injuries or property damages have been reported.

To check whether your battery is one of the affected ones, you may go to the following link:

http://www.nokia.com/batteryreplacement/en/

Here are the list of models using this battery:

Nokia 1100, Nokia 1100c, Nokia 1101, Nokia 1108, Nokia 1110, Nokia 1112, Nokia 1255, Nokia 1315, Nokia 1600, Nokia 2112, Nokia 2118, Nokia 2255, Nokia 2272, Nokia 2275, Nokia 2300, Nokia 2300c, Nokia 2310, Nokia 2355, Nokia 2600, Nokia 2610, Nokia 2610b, Nokia 2626, Nokia 3100, Nokia 3105, Nokia 3120, Nokia 3125, Nokia 6030, Nokia 6085, Nokia 6086, Nokia 6108, Nokia 6175i, Nokia 6178i, Nokia 6230, Nokia 6230i, Nokia 6270, Nokia 6600, Nokia 6620, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6631, Nokia 6670, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 6682, Nokia 6820, Nokia 6822, Nokia 7610, Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia N72, Nokia N91, Nokia E50, Nokia E60

The reason why I was alerted by this recall was because my company issues Nokia cell phones to a majority of the personnel, excluding management. Apparently, they get better perks and have a budget to choose their phone model.

So I alerted the managers on this and sure enough, today the whole company has been notified of this recall.

For those of you having the affected models, please go check the serial number on the Nokia webpage to determine if the battery was one of the affected models.

how hard could it be?

I've been having this problem with the Civic for the past few months. Everytime I take a left turn, there's a clunk noise from the front. Since it was a public holiday for me yesterday, I decided to get a few things done. Firstly, I scheduled for the aircond units in the house to be cleaned and chemically washed. One thing, my aircond in the room was starting to form ice on the coils. Everytime I switch it off in the morning, the ice would thaw, causing it to drip onto the floor.

Woke up early yesterday to send Yen to her training course in Mont Kiara. After that I rushed back to wait for the aircond servicing people. He turned up alone, which made me think that this was going to take a long time. Sure enough, he started at 1000hrs and finished at 1430hrs. I was really hungry and tired, had to help him out a little since his worker did not turn up for work.

So took a quick lunch and headed down to Peter's at SS3. Comes highly recommended by Jason. Since Kam Seng has moved up north, I really didn't have a regular mechanic anymore. I had a bad experience with Peter once when I bought my Mazda. It took him forever to change the fuel tank due to manpower shortage. Yesterday, I got there around 1520hrs and his worker diagnosed the problem. Turns out the CVJ (Constant Velocity Joint) has given way, and worst case scenario is that it would have worn out the drive shaft. Luckily for me, it was still in it's early stage and I would just have to replace the CVJ. They told me, when they get the spare part, it'll be an hour's job.

So the CVJ was delivered by the dispatch boy from the spare part shop. The worker finished his lunch and started to remove the drive shaft from my Civic. Since there were only 2 models, the 1.7 litre and 2.0 litre ES, how hard could it be?

Once the drive shaft was removed, they found that the CVJ did not fit. Great, here I am expecting the job to be done by 1630hrs so that I could pick Yen up. After that, Peter said that they would need to reorder the part, the shop sent a different one. So again I waited, the dispatch boy was no where to be seen. He finally came over and took the unit back. He returned much later, around 1730hrs. Again, it didn't fit. That was when I told my wife that she needs to take the cab home. The Civic was in no condition to move, they've drained all the transmission fluid and the whole right drive shaft was removed.

To top it all off, I was having the worst headache from the lack of sleep and heat. I can't remember the last time I had to stay in a workshop for so long. I used to go to a shop in SS2, but due to the inconsistent charges, I gave up after the 3rd visit. So I've switched back to Peter and yet again, it seems that I have the waiting problem here again.

It was bad enough with Kam Seng, that he'd take his sweet time to fix things up. But at least you'll have a good time there and he'd give you funny stories to cheer you up. If you couldn't wait, he'd point you to the right tools and you do it yourself, which was what I did last time. Learnt quite a lot of things from him, at least he'd teach you if you really wanted to learn.

Looks like finding a good regular workshop is quite difficult.

Sufers Paradise Meter Maids

It's interesting you know how they have these Surfers Paradise Meter Maids. Actually, it was an eye opener when I was in Gold Cost between 2003 - 2004. Every interval, you'll see these meter maids in their inline skates patroling around Surfers Paradise filling up the parking meters for the patrons who's meters have run out. Very recognizable, they will wear a cowboy's hat and dressed in gold lycra.

Latest news is that the authorities are going to introduce meterless parking for the whole of the Surfers Paradise strip. So looks like the girls would be rendered useless. I think it could be like the coupon system that we have here in Selangor.

Yesterday, there was an interesting article in the Star's Metro section. There was a write up about this guy who runs around with a bullhorn informing people that the municiple council officers are about to come give you a parking ticket. Though I think every now and then, even if you are in a coffeeshop, if there are officers out issuing tickets/summons, the coffeeshop operators would still give a good shout to the patrons announcing their arrival.

I always pictured these officers to be vultures, eyeing your cars a.k.a. the dead carcass and they'd swoop in for the kill. In this case, tag you're fined! I can understand that they are doing their job to stop those from parking for free. But there are times when your meter or coupon just runs out and you don't get back in time to top it up. Imagine being stuck on the dentist's chair and your meter runs out! Tough luck? They should have Bangsar Baru Meter Maids. Now that will come in handy.

It's just good to know that there are still good people around doing good deeds.

A Lost Hope

Good lines:
Yoda: "Sigh... Warned you we tried... Listen you did not...Now screwed we all will be".

Vader: "What now my Master?"
Emperor: "Well, I've been working on this for quite some time..."
Vader: "A boobie?"

new rumored Hachiroku

Here is the new rumored Hachiroku that is being developed by Toyota. The powerplant is a 1.5cc and it will be lightweight below 1,000kg. The engine is codenamed 2NZ-FE good for 120hp, how true this will be remains to be seen. Judging from the looks alone, it does remind me of a Celica, but Hachirokus are supposed to be rear wheel drive.

It'll be good to see if Toyota can revive this little feared monster from Initial D. It's more than 20 yrs old and I believe it's about time they worked on bringing a new AE86 to the masses.