Espionage

Been wanting to change my mobile for a while. Somehow, after 1 and a half years of being with me, my Nokia 6230 seems to eat up its full battery charge in less than a day, with less than 2 hours' worth of calls. A new battery didn't seem to help.

I've been eyeing the new Sony Erricson W800i, not because of its bold orange tones, but because hey... it has a 512M memory stick, a walkman and 2M camera. So, scouting around, i found that its RRP was RM1,999.

Ask around harder, and it's RM1,790 for a local warranty.

Go to www.lelong.com.my and you can find "parallel imports" for RM1500++.

So that's where I got it. Yah yah... I hear you saying I'm kiam siap, kedekut, skint flint... what the heck! 2 of my old phones, 3 phones ago, old Siemens phones were all courtesy of Lelong.com.my!

So I called up this guy. His name was "Rock". Met him outside Mc Donald's benches in 1 Utama. He brings up this huge bag with many phones inside and a black plastic bag with my new phone. We chat, check the phone out, it's all cool.. and did the transaction. He even took my old 6230 for RM500. Other shops offered RM400! And my phone only had the original 32M card! This guy, he reveals, is a supplier for mobile phones, and "I got many sources", so says he. He guaranteed his phone "U got problem, you call me!"

So far so good. The only problem I had with the phone was that the manuals were in Polish. That's what you get for "parallel imports"!

Reflex

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, so, had some time to lepak as the US folks were on holiday. Took the opportunity to visit Aquaria. It was nice, but nothing beats the Sydney aquarium.

My son had a ball! He was on that walkalator that took you around the sharks for 5 times!

That's not the only had thing. Recently, I've been introducing 80s songs to my son, courtesy to the MP3 player in my car. He's so hooked on the Reflex that can u imagine, all the way from KLCC to Sungai Buloh, we were repeating the Reflex by Duran Duran!

Nak muntah!

Wireless

The joys of this job! I'm now in 1 Utama working wirelessly, right in front of a perfume shop where there's this short skirted chick manning (or womanning) the store.

Barring the times I have to fly (which is often), the times I get to spend at home is a joy! I get to see my son growing up, so fun.

I dropped him off school today, bored waiting at the canteen, so here I am at 1 Utama working away wireless.

Yesterday, my son told me his teacher asked him to come up to the front of the class and he had to pull his ears! He said he was talking to his friend... tsk tsk.

My son's best friend in class is this boy he calls "Invisible Boy". "Invisible Boy calls my son "Spider Boy". There's also another chap in his class called "Flash". Hmmm.... I don't remember such vivid imagination during my time!

Spare

Today, after school, my son said his teacher was very upset with the whole class cause the class was too noisy. So the teacher asked "Haiya, you all, so naughty... anyone here at home as rotan?"

My son, for once, put up his hand and said "I have two at home".

So the teacher said, "can I borrow one?"

!

DOH!

My son's exploits in school nowadays can be quite funny.

On the 2nd day back from school, my wife was asking him whether he had any homework. He said no... so she checked his schoolbag and had a fit when she found homework. So my son, the power ranger, had an earful on the need to pay attention etc etc.

So on the 3rd day, I had to accompany my wife to my son's school. She went to speak to his class teacher, cause she wanted to stress to his teacher that my son's Mandarin a bit half past six and he's very playful. His teacher asked
"who's your son?"
"here he is"
"AiYA! I just punished him just now!"

My son apparently was asked to stand beside the teacher's desk for not paying attention!

Back at home, I quizzed him
"what happened?"
"daddy, i was talking to my friend, then teacher said ahh.. not paying attention, come here. So I went up and had to stand there lah. But after a while, my legs tired, daddy, so I sat down on teacher's chair. But daddy, I made sure I did not crush her handbag"

DOH!

Primary

The last few days, my son started his Pre- Standard One schooling at SJK (C) Damansara. All these while, I've been worried about my poor baby (and I'm not talking abt my wife or my ex- girl friends here) because I used to remember the times when he used to struggle just go get up and go for his kindergarten... and the times he used to hate going to kindy..

I was a bit worried because now that he's going to Standard One, his school has 10 Standard One classes, with 40+ students each class! Last time, my old alma matter only had 4 or 5 classes with 30+ kids each class!

But the last 2 days have been pretty good.. he's started to tell me
"hey daddy, today, you just wait for me in the canteen.. don't let me see you waiting outside the classroom ok?"
and...
"hey daddy, can I take the bus home today".

My god, my kid is truly growing up.

He's kinda like some ang moh fella in this Chinese school. Totally blur in Chinese, I'm worried.

But besides that, he's like some big tai kor. During break, and whilst waiting for the bus after school, he quickly makes friends and he asks his buddies "hey, can you jump like this!"

Brings a tear to the eyes...

Reflection

I'm back from India.. and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the nasty racist thoughts that I used to have about this place.

I bet you, more than once, me or colleagues have had funny thoughts about
"do they smell?"
"how come they always shake their heads?"
"everything also can"

But coming back from India, where the food was great, I was nicely surprised to see that the smell isn't really that obvious, the folks there are actually quite smart and eloquent (maybe the bunch they ship off to Cyberjaya are the ones that fell off the back of the truck) and it's quite a pleasant working place.

So, from now on, no more evil thoughts about India. I'm sure you reading this will still have some... shame on you!

Phone

The last few weeks, I've been toying around with buying either the Sony Ericsson w800i or the Nokia N70... so someone today yahoos me:

wtmunch : u bought the w800i liao ar?
karipap: no lah
karipap: still thinking
karipap: i damn kiamsiap one, la
karipap: either that or n70
karipap: n70 more biz like
karipap: but more expensive because of 3G
wtmunch : aiiijoooorrrr....job upgraded, pay upgraded, at least your best fren shud upgrade mah
karipap: my best friend?
karipap: that one how to upgrade one?
karipap: :))
wtmunch : phone
wtmunch : phhoonnneeeee
karipap: ahhhhhhh....

Bangalore

I'm here already. Arrived here yesterday around midnight... short 3.5 hour flight from KL... on economy, dammit.

Anyway, I slept most of the way because the previous nite, I was trying to install Vpn on my notebook and the evil VPN software somehow failed during installation and totally shafted my wireless! But that's another story.

Here in Bangalore, I noticed that in the head office, the CIO, CEO equivalents all sit on the ground floor! Totally no no in a Chinese culture.

Secondly, the driving in Bangalore is chaotic! There are Indian equivalent of Thailand's tuk-tuks here. Tons of folks riding motor cycles, scooters... kinda like back home, but totally no rules! At intersections, there are no traffic lights, so the way to cross is just to step on the accelerator and hope the other guy avoids you! No shit! Very unnerving!

I was back at the serviced apartment.. there, another bad experience. Firstly, my apartment had no hot water! Tried explaining it to the guy in charge, but he insisted "5 minutes to wait for water". I kept trying to explain that I turned the hot water button on overnight! Finally switched over to another room.

Secondly, the apartments all come with internet connections. But the port, get this, is located at the same level as the wall lamp! My god.. I had this short UTP cable which made me able to surf with my pelvic thrusted at a 45 degree angle towards the lamp. No more erotic poses for me!

Then, surfing thru the different channels, almost all Indian channels was showing some Hindi movie and you can imagine the dancing, singing, prancing around in a garden that greeted me on almost all Indian channels!

Shift

Been blogging too much about work.. so today's short quip is about my son.. my funny little boy. Turns 6 in December. December 19,1999... that's when he was born. A whole lot of 9s.. but he's a rabbit.

Sometimes, my wife and I think he should have been a monkey. Honestly, he's so cheeky and mischievious. Sometimes, when I ask him to do his homework, he'll be smart enough to go to his mom and ask if he could do something else...! And if he gets away with it, he gloats "hey hey, I'm lucky man..."

Me being at home has not been a good influence on him.. he's starting to end every odd sentence with "man.." He tells me, "hey daddy, can you go upstairs and get this for me?" And when I say "why can't you get it yourself?"... he says "because I'm the boss, man..."

Watching too much of Nickelodeon, he sometimes speaks like a black american kid.. he uses terms like "jeepers!" (taken from All That http://www.nick.com/all_nick/tv_supersites/display_show.jhtml?show_id=all), "Tartar sauce" (from Spongebob http://www.nick.com/all_nick/tv_supersites/display_show.jhtml?show_id=spo), "Holy Makerony" (from that Hillary Duff show http://psc.disney.go.com/disneychannel/lizziemcguire/index.html) and "Cheese and Pickles" (from Higglytown Heroes)

He used to have this fascination about Power Rangers. Had a lot of toys from the Ninja Storm (http://www.rangercentral.com/data-prwf.htm) and the Wild Force Era (http://www.rangercentral.com/data-prns.htm). Recently, he's suddenly interested in Transformers. Last count, he has about 15 transformer toys! He's been bugging me to get him this Optimus Prime toy..(http://www.hasbrotoyshop.com/ProductsByBrand.htm?BR=496&SBR=56&ID=16532). Sigh.. half my salary goes into his massive collection..

Yesterday, while we were out, he spotted the new Power Rangers season - Dino Thunder. Oh oh... http://www.rangercentral.com/data-prdt.htm

India

Next week, I have to be in India. So what I did this week was to make my way over to the Indian High Commission to apply for a Visa. Now, they had this one obnoxious, overweight guy manning the counter with an Indian Bandit like moustache (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2219574.stm).. and he was one total bastard. He kept yelling
- "stand in line"
- "if you don't give me proper documents, i won't give you your visa"
- "hey, where's your number"
And he doesn't explain his actions or what he wants you to do. He shouted at this one China person for his receipt. Such a rude bastard. But we had no choice but to take his abuse. Worse... had to pay him to get abused some more.. nahia...

Then when collecting the visa, it was a different issue altogether. I went over to the High Commission a good hour before collection time. About 40 fellas were all congregating around the hall.. all dono what to do. Then struts in this Chinese woman, and she parks herself right in front of one of the counters! Immediately, a line suddenly formed behind this woman. I was lucky, I was No. 3...

Now then, in comes this one overweight Indian fella with a sling bag. When he walks in, the line was already about 50 fellas long. So this dude struts right up to the counter next to ours (there were 5 other counters) and he parks his fat arse right next to us! Immediately, a 2nd line formed! And then this Indian joker takes about 29 receipts (I know because he boasted out loud..)... and straight away I knew this fella was an office boy on a passport run. Niama.. his "pirate line" was full of other office boys. Mostly Indians, they then started chatting to the young Indian girls in charge of passing back the passports. Worst still, this tactic worked! There I was, in the original line, and this office boy gets served first! Niama! What total chaos at this place!

Movies

Man.. you know you've been travelling a lot when you're on the flight back home and you realise that almost all the movies being shown on the plane, you've watched! This month itself, I've watched on the plane
- Bewitched
- Batman Begins
- Mr & Mrs Smith
- Initial D
- Kung Fu Mahjong
- The Longest Yard
- War of the Worlds
- Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
- Hitch
- Dark Water
- Austin Powers (ya.. desperate.. so had to watch this rerun!)

this is not counting the tons of Frasier, Friends, CSI, Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond, Sex and the City, Scrubs....