Wanted: Cure for Sore Throat

'Tis the season again.

It absolutely plagues and cripples you. You can't sleep, you don't feel like speaking, and you won't have an appetite even for the most tantalising of gastronomic feasts.

Have been drinking honey lemon (2 teaspoonfuls of Manuka honey in water, with 3 slices of lemon) the whole day and that seems to have been a great help. Well, at least the zesty lemon taste helps.

Woe to sore throats!

What's In Your Handbag?

I found out, after getting home, that I just couldn't zip my handbag close anymore. Stuff was just spilling out of it. Excuse to get new, bigger bag? Buahaha. Well, it's gotta fit:-

Phone - which is huge

Wallet - which is huge. And no, not because i have reams of currency or sacks of coins in it. More of accumulated payment receipts, actually.

Car/house keys - Kinda huge too. I don't know what half those keys do :-D

A tube of Mentos (Ice Mint flavour) - Perfect post-bakuteh fresheners, these.

Yellow Staedtler Textsurfer Classic highlighter (What's this doing here?)

Casio Scientific Calculator, Model fx-570s (What's THIS doing here?)

Laser mouse and its wireless receiver (No, I don't usually carry mice in my handbag.)

Thumbdrive, with lanyard - Nowadays, you don't leave home without your thumbdrive.

Black ballpoint pen, Cross - Someone gave me this before I left to study in the UK, all of 10 years ago. It's amazing how I haven't misplaced it yet.

Zebra Drafix Mechanical Pencil - Geeky-looking one. Had a similar one during my picture-drawing days, of course lost it along the way, and sis bought me a replacement ALL the way from the only Japanese stationery store in San Francisco, CA! :)

Lipstick - L'Oreal, Amazing Coral. Come to think of it, WHAT a name for a colour.

Minyak Angin Cap Kapak, 3 ml - Me is my name, headaches are my game. (Minyak angin is therapeutic, really.)

Piece of paper scrawled with access password to the students' common room - The lock on the door to that room used to be a little cranky. I once closed the door, from the inside, and somehow couldn't get it open again. I had to signal someone walking by (fortunately it was a glass door) to help me open the door from the outside. With the campus having just moved to new premises and all, she didn't know the password, so I had to mime the numbers to her from behind the glass, from memory, hoping that I had the correct figures, because otherwise I would be sitting on the floor throwing randomising devices (e.g. dice) hoping to obtain the correct combination out of 6.76 million possible permutations (26x10x10x10x10x26). Yup, that could easily have turned into a Really Long Day.

What's in your handbag?

2000-2005 In Retrospect

New year, new Chinese year, new clothes, new hopes, new resolutions.

And because I'm brain-dead from a designer's block on a web design job, here are 10 Milestones of the First Half-Decade of the 21st Century!

1. Learnt how to drive on KL roads

I only started driving after I graduated as I had all of 2 weeks between getting my licence and flying to the UK (and btw my driving-test session was the very last of the batch that didn't need to go thru P-licences!). My baptism of fire was having to drive from PJ to the Istana Budaya in Jalan Tun Razak, for a Carmina Burana rehearsal; my usual ride wasn't available that day. After having to go through the massive bits of construction at Jalan Damansara (the flyovers weren't ready yet!) and the even more horrible mess at the junction of Jalan Tun Razak and Jalan Ipoh, I got home with a stiff neck and even stiffer hands.. but that was it, I was a Certified KL Driver.

2. Got admitted to the bar

No, i don't mean the type that serves drinks.

3. Got a job

'Cos that's what graduates do when they come out into the job market. Doh. ;-D

4. Learnt enough about web designing (I hope!) to do it for others

Not that I felt I was so 'pro'. I was broke when I decided to give up comfortable monthly pay to do the MBA! :-D (Am still broke.)

5. Got myself a blog

The actual story (never revealed before!) was that, after a bunch of stressful months at work, I decided maybe I wanted to be an arts writer/journalist, and the idea of a blog came to mind as a means for practice. Well, I didn't become an arts journalist, but the blog stayed..

6. Wrestled enough time to take up my neglected second instrument again

And that would be the violin. And I don't pretend I can confidently say "I play the violin" without shivering in fear of someone asking for a demonstration. Whoops, I've got a class at the end of this week and I haven't practised.

7. Wrestled enough time to start tap classes

By the way, here's a recent article in The Star about the tap classes I was taking, and the instructors!

8. Dislocated a knee-cap, thus putting No. 7 on hold for more than half a year

There's something about orthopaedic injury that keeps hindering my efforts at doing something with dance. (Or maybe it's just mother nature trying to tell me that I'm clumsy :-D) Back in uni, I fractured my hip bone during a fall when practising a dance co-choreographed with Hall-mates for the Malaysian and Singaporean Society ball. I can't remember the other historical incidents but let's not bore ourselves with war-injury stories anyway..

Anyway, I'm still not sure my knee can take it yet. Dang. I wanna go back. It was the first dance of any type I attempted that I didn't have a screeching teacher yelling at me asking me to try and be more graceful. ;-D

9. Got an MBA

New knowledge, new outlook, new friends, new opportunities. Am terribly glad I did it!

10. Got married

Possibly the most significant milestone of all. And with it comes new abode, new family, new box to check on forms, new NAME :-D

(You know, the thing I like about numbered lists, apart from being structured, is that it gives the illusion that you've done a lot during the time-span under discussion..)

Anyway here's to another wonderful half-a-decade ahead (and hopefully the end of my mental block for this afternoon!)

YAAAM SENGG!!!

did you forget to feed your parking meter today?

today is a public holiday in KL.

today is NOT a public holiday in Selangor!

being PJ-dwellers and KL-workers, we forgot that the poor Selangoreans (or Selangorites, or perhaps Selangorees..) have to go to work today, and that the MPPJ officers could therefore be feeling mean today and decide to go on a parking-ticket-giving rampage on poor KLites who thought it was a holiday and forgot to put 60 cents in the pay-n-display machines. (got caught early this morning when we headed out for breakfast in Sec 14. fortunately we got the lower fine of 30 bucks as opposed to the (is it 300?) cos we happened to have a bunch of old tickets left on the windscreen - due to that the offence was categorised as "displaying expired ticket" instead of "no ticket displayed". thank God for loopholes, ha ha.)

so all ye gallavanting in merry Selangor today, DON'T FORGET to pay your parking, lah.

2nd chord sounds in world's longest lasting concert

HALBERSTADT, Germany (AFP) - A new chord was scheduled to sound in the world's slowest and longest lasting concert that is taking a total 639 years to perform.

The abandoned Buchardi church in Halberstadt, eastern Germany, is the venue for a mind-boggling 639-year-long performance of a piece of music by US experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992).

Entitled "organ2/ASLSP" (or "As SLow aS Possible"), the performance began on September 5, 2001 and is scheduled to last until 2639.

The first year and half of the performance was total silence, with the first chord -- G-sharp, B and G-sharp -- not sounding until February 2, 2003.

Then in July 2004, two additional Es, an octave apart, were sounded and are scheduled to be released later this year on May 5.

But at 5:00 pm (1600 GMT) on Thursday, the first chord was due to progress to a second -- comprising A, C and F-sharp -- and is to be held down over the next few years by weights on an organ being built especially for the project.

Cage originally conceived "ASLSP" in 1985 as a 20-minute work for piano, subsequently transcribing it for organ in 1987.

But organisers of the John Cage Organ Project decided to take the composer at his word and stretch out the performance for 639 years, using Cage's transcription for organ.

The enormous running time was chosen to commemorate the creation of Halberstadt's historic Blockwerk organ in 1361 - 639 years before the current project started.

That original organ, built by Nikolaus Faber for Halberstadt's cathedral, was the first organ ever to be used for liturgical purposes, ringing in a new era in which the organ has played a central role in church music ever since.

As part of Halberstadt's John Cage Organ Project, a brand-new organ is being built specially, with new pipes added in time for when new notes are scheduled to sound.

Cage was a pupil of one of the 20th century's most influential composers, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). Cage's avant-garde oeuvre includes works such as the
notorious "4'33”", a piece comprising four minutes and 33 seconds of total silence, all meticulously notated.

The organisers of the John Cage Organ Project say the record-breaking performance in Halberstadt also has a philosophical background – to "rediscover calm and slowness in today's fast-changing world".

From Yahoo News

More at BBC News

Website of Organ2/ASLSP:
http://www.john-cage.halberstadt.de/new/index.php?l=e

what keeps you sane?

what keeps me sane?

- instant messaging programs - ten years ago i downloaded the first version of ICQ which changed human communications forever (as far as i was concerned anyway).

- mamak or coffee with friends! - requires no explanation.

- music - listening to it, producing it (an exception would be violin music, in that, right now i still prefer listening to it played by someone else..).

- Calvin & Hobbes comics - the best thing to read in bed. lets you think happy thoughts in your sleep :-D

- Appendices to The Lord of the Rings - next best thing to fall asleep reading. (Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that the Appendices are boring. Really.)

- Making things - in school i hardly ever bought a wallet or a pencil case cos i made them all. haven't had time to do much these days but i should get that bag of sewing things out of the cupboard and make something!

what keeps you sane?

lazy tuesday afternoon

it was real hot and humid out there, and the bag of apples i bought 2 weeks ago would be making cider in the fridge if i didn't do anything about it, so i made an exotic (or so i think) drink out of red apples and ginger, topped with a stick of lemongrass (bruised on the thick end) and a bit of lemon juice. it actually tastes quite good, there's a refreshing whiff of lemongrass and a tangy lemon aftertaste.. except that i think i overdid the ginger (my throat is now seething with heat), and unless you're into sour drinks, a bit of syrup may come in handy.

i'd take a snapshot of a glass of the potent potion and post it up but i can't remember where exactly the camera is after the moving-of-stuff-around over the last week in preparing for the festivities..

speaking of which, i'd better start packing up the stuff i need to move over to the new digs. there isn't much pressure to pack quickly cos the two places are 10 minutes apart in good traffic.. nevertheless i think some stuff HAS to go over today.. since i'll have to get out of the post-vacation vegetation state and do some real work soon :-)

me the nomad.

bali hai

bali was great. the after-effects (well, two for now, cos my brain is still a little veggied):

(1) having to get used to the absence of strange road habits

(i) the balinese use car horns like there's no tomorrow. they honk at passing motorists to "alert them of your presence" (this was from a guidebook). yup. when a motorcycle emerges at the upcoming junction and your driver goes *honk*. in fact you would honk at virtually every junction. your driver changes lanes and while passing the guy who was in front of him, *honk* (and i don't think this was cos he knew the driver of that car). when they're stuck in a traffic jam, when it's obvious nobody's moving, *honk*. car accessory shops and mechanics must have a good life there.

(ii) they hardly use their brakes. going up a mountainous road MAY be an exception.

(iii) officially, they drive on the left side of the road. but more often than not, they seem to prefer the right side. (overtaking-lah)

(2) it's such a RELIEF now that you don't have to bargain every time you step into a shop!

i don't see why bargaining is such fun. it's an awful chore. every time you approach a shop they probably think Ooo, here come rich tourist, we must sell everything at sky-high price because tourist don't know better. for goodness' sake, do you seriously think i would purchase a pair of wraparound pants from a side stall in Bali at Suria KLCC prices when i can get the same thing at the Thai Fair near Carrefour's at RM10 without even having to bargain? and i'm sick of the i'll-have-to-say-take-it-or-leave-it-and-walk-away-but-you'll-come-after-me-anyway-yelling-the-last-price-i-wanted.. look, i just wanted to quickly grab a souvenir so i can move on to a bit more sightseeing and and you KNOW you'll sell it to me at that price anyway (and i don't look anything like a gwailo so i don't have any coffers filled with so much Rupiah equivalent the number of zeros will bust your calculators) so how bout we quit the whole charade? (i later found out that at the new Sogo store in upmarket Nusa Dua, you can get little batik-lined souvenirs at less than RM10 each. all in comfortable air-conditioning and no pesky salespersons and no bargaining necessary)

and speaking of Sogo bags, i should have left them at the hotel before venturing out into the stalls outside the Nusa Dua entrance..

"Oo, sir, ma'am, shopping?"

"Oh, So-go!"

"So-go shopping!"

"Eh, So-go!"

"So-go, ya?"

"You want shopping? Oh, So-go!"

"So-go!"

if i stepped into any of those shops then they'd probably be trying to sell me wraparound pants at the price of Benetton cos i'm bloody Japanese and i shop at Sogo (hubby does carry a bulky canggih-looking camera anyway and i lug a tripod around, so of course we're Japanese-lah). never mind that my Sogo carrier bag which attracted so much attention just contained stuff the stalls would sell me at twice the price.

the balinese are a friendly people, they really are. i wish they'd stop trying to make use of their charm to give me the "please ma'am pity me, i'm not even breaking even, i haven't sold anything today" pitch. i'm glad nobody this time round in Bali has resorted to "i've got kids to feed" thing or i'd have imploded (i'm too nice to explode, so i implode). hey, i'll do charity when i wish to, to a cause I feel like donating to. and after all i'm only a millionaire in Rupiah terms..

and voila, the hand-made guestbook! :)

just finished making my wedding guestbook! it took quite a bit of glue and some pressure screwing the fasteners tight, but it's done! here's a photo of it (sorry it's not a very detailed pic) entire thing made from scratch (ok, i bought the paper and ribbon, lah. not patient enough to make my own paper..) the pages inside are A4 sheets bound to the covers with metal fasteners. the covers are made of 2 layers of A4-sized hardboard cut out from a giant piece. a small window is cut in the middle right section of the top piece of board to reveal our names printed in silver. the gold ribbon ties the book close for storage.



that was fun! anyone interested in having guestbooks made? :-)

pounds of pain

i had my first experience of a migraine headache yesterday afternoon.. and boy was it a bad one. i had been having a mild throbbing headache the whole day and was treating it with paracetamol and medicated oils, but it got worse in the afternoon and the throbbing had turned into pounding towards early evening. lying down and resting didn't help as the pounding continued no matter what i was doing. the Ponstan pill didn't help either.

in the end i decided to ask my dad to drive me to the doctor's as the headache was getting quite unbearable. i think being in a moving vehicle exacerbated the condition as i was holding my head in my hands and literally crying and screaming out of pain all the way to the doctor's. it didn't help that there was a massive traffic jam - it was the evening rush-hour after all. i think we had to wait out two traffic light sequences at the junction outside my house.. i must have been quite a sight to other motorists, gritting my teeth and tearing my hair out wishing i could be sedated there and then.. i had never known a headache so exceedingly torturous.. stories in past issues of Reader's Digest of aneurysms were running through my mind with every paralysing throb of the veins. heck, i was even thinking of which hospital was nearest if i had to be admitted! each pounding pulse was an excruciating inward burst of pressure from all sides of my head; it felt as if my skull would implode any moment. and have you noticed that time seems to pass slower when you're in pain? to add to the pounding, a tinge of nausea had developed, and i was holding a plastic bag in case i had to throw up.

i was still holding my head in my hands and gritting my teeth as i described the pain to the doctor, who was himself gritting his teeth, possibly in an attempt to show sympathy. having been prescribed sandomigraine, feldene (a painkiller), an anti-nausea med and a sedative, i still had to endure the throbbing pain till i got home cos i couldn't take the medicine on an empty stomach. i stayed at the doctor's still grabbing my head as if my brains were falling out, while dad went next door to tarpau teochew porridge. the trip back through the jam was another clutching-head-and-crying-and-screaming ordeal.. finally, back home, i gulped down the porridge as fast as i could (the pain was getting ridiculous, and it was difficult to even eat) downed the pills, and i think i collapsed immediately to sleep on the sofa without even needing the sedative. i woke up this morning miraculously feeling quite all right, realising only after a few minutes that i had a major headache the night before, and vaguely remembering that at some point of time my family members were sitting next to me on the sofa with their theories..

"aiya, she was staring at the computer the whole day, that's why."
"it was quite bad, she was in this horrible pain all the way in the car."
"yeah, probably bogged down by too many things to do lah."

all i have to say is, man, that was one scary headache.

intoxed, detoxed

i was fed a slew of --OH* last night - a B-52, a flaming tower, a Cosmopolitan, a malt whisky and a Slippery Nipple, and was still all right until i started seeing spots after laughing too much (i never learn.. i almost always end up woozy cos i laugh too much after drinks). got driven home by sis with me navigating (it being her first attempt at driving on the left side of the road, with my senses still lucidly yelling "oi, go to the right a bit!" every few yards as the barriers/pavements on the left started looking too close for comfort), and now i'm awake at 8.00am and running errands. wonderful! ;-D

*alcohol, lah

quotable quotes #387

"Wah, ni keyboard bukan main besar..."*
- Cititel bell-boy who helped me unload the 88-key Yamaha Portagrand out of my car into the lobby for yesterday's Christmas carolling.

"Er, maybe next month lah, it will reflect."
- Jaring Wireless Broadband customer helpdesk officer, in reply to my query on why the change in my contact email in their records, while having been reflected in the "Account Information" section of my online account details, didn't seem to have been updated in their internal systems as I was still receiving Jaring notifications in the old email address.

*Translation: "Man! This is a freakin huge keyboard..."

the pensieve

i just started a blog which will act as a repository of useful web links i come across while browsing or doing research on web design, or just doing research in general! inspired by toomanyhatz's blog. this will come in useful when you can't remember where you wrote that link down, or which bookmarks folder on which PC you saved that oh-man-this-is-an-awesome-site URL...

... head over to The Pensieve at www.lightblog.com/member/wreckademik and have a look! :-) (used LightBlog cos it's got a nifty Widget tool that lets me post a link conveniently without having to call up a browser to log on and post!)

why Pensieve? what's a Pensieve? Harry Potter fans will know why. if you haven't read J. K. Rowling's famed series, go read 'em! ;-)

for starters, i'll probably have links categorised into "music", "design", "legal research", "academic research"... it'll get updated as it goes along. you get the picture. do drop a your comments at the postings if you have anything to add to the collection!

this blog will, of course, still be up and running.

join in some xmas cheer - mid valley cititel & boulevard hotels next week!

The Choir of The Philharmonic Society of Selangor will be performing Christmas Carols at the lobby of the Cititel and Boulevard Hotels (at Mid Valley) next Wednesday! (wth yours truly on the pianoforte). Open to the public. No admission fee. Come join in the fun!

Date:
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

Venues:
Cititel Hotel Lobby - 7.00pm
Boulevard Hotel Lobby - 8.00pm

stuff it!

need to put a stop to:
the stuff people would like me to do;
the stuff i think i can do but which if taken up would be pushing my limits;
the stuff i all too readily volunteer myself to do;
the stuff people hint i could or should probably do, because, apparently, if you're still on sabbatical, you wake up every morning and sit around sipping tea watching the world go by;
the stuff everybody else won't do because it's taken for granted that i will somehow see to it.

sure, having the initiative to do things and being the all-obliging all-round do-it-all person earns some brownie points here and there, but people have to learn to stop taking others for granted...

cartoonist's block

just noticed a few days back that The Star is accepting cartoons from readers on issues of the day, etc. (and each cartoon published gets RM50). i've been sending emails to The Star for ages (since i was in school, i think) asking what I would need to do if i wanted to get a cartoon strip/single panel published in their paper.. finally here comes something and guess what, i've got a cartoonists' block. come on! come on! must.. think.. of.. something!

oh, so you're a lawyer! great, cos my mind is bursting with legal questions on my rental agreement, my sister's marriage and my company's HR policies!

one of the irritating things about being qualified in my field of work is when random persons you meet ask you for your thoughts on something 'legal'. and because they expect you to be well-versed with law in general, they don't quite understand when you say you're not familiar with that particular area and that you will need to check/can recommend them someone who is.

many legal issues involve a lot of common sense. sometimes when you respond logically to queries on such issues, you get the skeptical "are you really a lawyer? i expected legal jargon from you but you seem to think like a regular person" look.

on the other hand, there are also some who think lawyers are gods, and will listen and take notes on every single word that you say, even asking you to pause so they can write it down (presumably so that they can repeat it later to impress the party they are having a dispute with). you could be spouting nonsense and they will take it as the gospel truth. it's like you actually wield a power to set people's minds at ease. what a huge responsibility.

totally useless trivia (a.k.a. side effects of an MBA)

on math

• there are 65536 rows in an Excel worksheet.
• the last column is in an Excel worksheet is IV (not ZZ).

on music

• certain brands of water dispensers burst into a rousing honky-tonk chorus of (i swear it was Beethoven!) when they need refilling.

on geography

• there is a remote but quaint and picturesque village situated on the border of Negeri Sembilan and Selango. so do residents get to celebrate public holidays of both states? or do the holidaying people stand at the border marker and laugh at the people on the other side who are toiling away while the people on the holidaying side get to lie in? or maybe they just have houses/offices on both sides of the border so they can lay claim to both holidays.. ok this discussion has got to stop.

on systems integration

• if an organisation shifts premises, the new and old systems will not be integrated such that you get to print reams and reams of draft dissertations for free in the old campus [now wait a minute, this is NOT useless info!]

(by the way, yes, i'm still taking suggestions for the previous post on Flash ActionScript :))

ActionScipt experts.. 'elp!

the hazards of learning advanced design tools as you go along is that you become an expert CPA (i.e. copy & paste artist; term courtesy of my former colleagues in consulting..) and understand only the bits of code you use for that specific effect you wanted to create.

a site i'm working on needs to have certain images rotated (randomly) every time the home page loaded/refreshed. using Flash, i incorporated a bit of ActionScript to get the images to load randomly, based on what was recommended here. that worked like a dream. however, when i added in the bit of script for a preloader like this one here, the randomiser script didn't work no more, i just got a blank space where the image was supposed to be.

yikes.

didn't have time to figure out what the conflict was, so i left the Flash movie without the preloader for now.

any pointers?

(one day.. one day.. i will program an entire site with bells and whistles without having to google "free script" or consult a manual! har har har)

the amazon jungle (hint: it's dense)

today has been an accummulation of very long queues, being caught in the middle of other peoples' inefficiencies, slightly dim-witted salespersons ... and some very very dense system administrators.

dense administrators are funny if it's happening to other people, but not when it's happening to you (though they do make good party jokes.. sorry, my tech support friends! :P ).

i figured a virus/worm must have found its way into the network when i received a delivery-failure email from Yahoo about an email that was allegedly sent from my account to some fake (Yahoo) email addresses (which, on closer inspection, were manipulated versions of emails in my address book). the alleged email sent from my account had the looks of the doings of a virus/worm - the typical subject, content, etc. typical stuff. me no computer security expert, but there was some malicious program lurking somewhere which probably meant that i should drop a short note to the IT guys to let them know about it.

so i emailed IT, requesting them to look into the matter. after all, these things can obviously be potentially embarrassing .. (well, i guess it's more acute in professional firms where sometimes attachments broadcast to the rest of the world by the worm could be partial contents of a confidential document - once received one such message before containing partial contents of a court document saved in the virus victim's hard drive).

righto.

the first email that came back from IT told me that because the message was from yahoo.com, i have to contact the Yahoo administrator.

hmm. did the system administrator write that, or did he have dart-throwing monkeys in his room that day?

anyway, poor guy had obviously somehow misunderstood my email, so i mailed back with a clarification. i even offered a description of a similar situation encountered at my office. i must have written too much. the next email that came back somewhat defensively told me that oh, then it could be spam, which is beyond his control because spammers' machines don't belong to our organisation, and started giving me a lesson on how i must be careful about spam.

ow. ok. no, it's really, really, not spam i'm talking about (yes i think i am aware of what spam is). no, nobody needs to check anything with the Yahoo administrator, whoever s/he is. no, no, no. what's with the defensive front? was it an attempt to avoid work? i think i can identify with a LOT of Dilbert comics today... (e.g. "hello, this is tech support, how many I abuse you?")