50 Things you should eat before you die!

Posted January 6, 2005 at 11:38 pm in Food/Eating

Can’t remember where I saw this list, but it’s pretty cool. Those I’ve struck through are the ones I’ve had.

1. Fresh fish
2. Lobster
3. Steak
4. Thai food
5. Chinese food
6. Ice cream
7. Pizza
8. Crab
9. Curry
10. Prawns
11. Moreton Bay Bugs
12. Clam chowder
13. Barbecues
14. Pancakes
15. Pasta
16. Mussels
17. Cheesecake
18. Lamb
19. Cream tea
20. Alligator
21. Oysters
22. Kangaroo
23. Chocolate
24. Sandwiches
25. Greek food
26. Burgers
27. Mexican food
28. Squid
29. American diner breakfast
30. Salmon
31. Venison
32. Guinea pig
33. Shark
34. Sushi
35. Paella
36. Barramundi
37. Reindeer
38. Kebab
39. Scallops
40. Australian meat pie
41. Mango
42. Durian fruit
43. Octopus
44. Ribs
45. Roast beef
46. Tapas
47. Jerk chicken/pork
48. Haggis
49. Caviar
50. Cornish pasty

I think I’m doing pretty good, what about you guys?

EDIT have found the original article at the BBC – 50 things to eat, if you don’t know what any of the things are you can check there.

On another note the stupid Stimx light is still blinking so the line is STILL not synched and I STILL have NO broadband. Not much of note to report this week, but sofa should arrive tommorow and I have shit loads of work to do, hopefully be broadbandised before the weekend so I can get my work done, I work best (oddly) in the middle of the night, that’s when my inspiration comes. Something to do with biorythms I guess.

I have a lot to say about the politcal ‘who’s got the biggest penis’ contest the tsunami donations have become, but I guess I’ll save it for another day.

Keep commenting people, it’s all good.

Also considered reviving my beloved Darknet[/url] today as it’s been dormant so long it’s actually starting to smell funny. The phoenix will rise.

I have interesting topics to talk about soon, so watch this space.

Also am sick of all the political and pseudo-politcal blogs on BlogExplosion[/url], what’s with that!

Woo it’s the weekend!

BTW if you are using Blogger or something like that, GET HALOSCAN[/url] COMMENTS, no one likes to leave crappy Anonymous Blogger comments.

Continue Reading · 16 Comments · Food/Eating

De-Lurking Day, comment goddamn it.

Posted January 5, 2005 at 10:45 pm in General Nonsense

Today in the world of blogging is a speshul day, today shall be named De-Lurking Day.

That means all you lurkers out there reading have to post comments or face the wrath of a million horny midgets with syphillis.

First of all the etymology of lurking, it’s a proper English word for once as can be found in the Dictionary, but the meaning on the net comes from Usenet and the silent majority.

The activity of one of the “silent majority” in a electronic forum such as Usenet; posting occasionally or not at all but reading the group’s postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used reflexively: “Oh, I’m just lurking”. Often used in “the lurkers”, the hypothetical audience for the group’s flamage-emitting regulars.

So blogs have lurkers, stalkers, trolls and passers-by much like any other forum of web communication, be it a place like Security Forums[/url], a Usenet group or this blog.

Today it’s a call for all lurkers and silent stalkers to make themselves known.

As a blogger, getting comments is addictive, some people pimp for comments, some people are just plain comment whores hard selling their blogs and ramblings as something that everyone needs to read.

I am fairly well versed in the area of Internet traffic whoring and pimping being the co-founder of a forum that with the initial effort of just 2 people, now has over 20,000 members.

I haven’t been such a blatant whore with this blog, but I have put a fair amount of effort in pimping it.

Most webmasters and especially blog owners love comments, they check their stats and referrers regularly and find which search terms people use to find their corner of cyberspace, for me it’s often references to DOTA[/url], Tamakeri[/url] or recently a lot for Kung Fu Hustle[/url] Torrents.

So tell me you love me, tell me I suck, tell me to shut up, tell me I bore you, tell me I’m right, tell me I’m wrong, just post something so I don’t have to wander around thinking you are all figments of my over-active imagination.

For my faithful followers who regularly comment, many thanks, you make my life worth blogging 😀

Shouts to Kimberly[/url], FireAngel[/url], Suan[/url], TheGreatFaggot, God[/url], Letti, vad3r[/url], Ethan Hunt, Lillian[/url] and everyone else that has commented.

Apologies to anyone else I missed out.

While I am on the note of mentioning people I thought I’d give a lowdown of the people I link to and why I link to them..

Those I Stalk

Suanie[/url] – Suanie the great, Suanie the rambler. The one who first got me interested in Blogging, you bad girl. I helped her set-up her first proper blog and move her away from static HTML (which I also helped with). She’s funny, quirky and loves to rant, good all around blog. In real life she’s like my little sister.

Michael Ooi[/url] – This dude posts very regularly, one of the more prolific and entertaining Malaysian Bloggers. He rants, pokes fun and writes in a very sarcastic yet humourous way.

FireAngel[/url] – The original ranter, after seeing her link from Suans blog, I thought hey this blogging business looks like fun. I read her whinging regularly and find it interesting, perhaps you should try it too.

vad3r[/url] – vad3r used to post a lot, I found him as he’s one of those blog stalkers, he hasn’t posted so much recently, but it’s still interesting to read him when he does.

Kimberly[/url] – Found this blog in a forum, she’s young but writes well, is hot and has a lot of opinions, likes to rant sometimes, vent sometimes, post pictures of yummy food and lots of herself. As I’m a visual person I dig blogs with photos.

Those I Read Regularly

Maddox[/url] – Possible the best and funniest blog in the world, some of this guys posts have actually made me laugh until it hurt. Not a prolific poster but definately worth reading the archives.

Hustler Diaries[/url] – This guy is outrageous, naughty, lewd, offensive and shoots from the hip, very entertaining and well worth a read. He tends to play on stereotypes but often brings a smirk to my face.

Bryanboy[/url] – The original new-moneyed classless bitch from hell, a gay male version of Paris Hilton, bitch, catty and funny. If he was a women he would just be plain annoying, but coming from a guy it’s amusing to say the least.

XiaXue[/url] – Probably the most famous blogger in Singapore, looks pretty good photoshopped up, writes well, can be very sarcastic and has a lot to say. Worth looking through the archives if you are bored.

Michele[/url] – One of the worldwide big name bloggers and a truly lovely person, always lots of interesting stuff and questions on her blog and has a huge community following.

The rest I link to I read at least once a day, but these are the ones that must be seen, the highlights of my blogroll so to speak.

Happy new year everyone, let’s hope this year is a good un.

Continue Reading · 25 Comments · General Nonsense

2004 – What happened and what we learnt

Posted January 4, 2005 at 11:22 pm in Deep Thoughts, General Nonsense

Well it’s been a long and winding year for me and the Earth in general. This in turn will be a long and winding post.

Here’s my personal year in summary..

January

Normal freezing cold winter month in the UK, a little different from normal though as I was quitting my job, selling my posessions, my car and preparing to leave the country on February 11th. My old job was kind of boring (System/Network/Database/Admin) and I’d automated pretty much everything, implemented proper heterogeneous backup, spam filter, a firewall and intrusion detection system, converted the file server and e-mail server to Linux and optimised the Windows server and Database.

I was saying good-bye to my friends and family and wandering around the quaint city of Worcester[/url] that I called home for so many years.

It looked something like this when I left. Beautiful but fucking COLD.

A memorable moment was when some pissed up Chav walking in front of my car decided to punch my bonnet 3 times and give me some nice dents about 2 days before I was supposed to sell my car. Seen as though there was 8 of them (fully grown daddy chavs with tatoos and sovereign rings) there wasn’t much my crazy fu could do.

February

Spent the early month packing my life into little brown boxes, which was an interesting and and enlightening experience and moving is always good as it makes you get rid of all that junk you don’t really want but for some reason keep hold of.

I didn’t manage to sell my car before I left (had the price too high), but I got everything else sorted, eventually managed to cancel my excellent ADSL from Plus.net…One of the first things I noticed here was the horrible Latency time Malaysian broadband and even leased lines have. Normal is considered 200-250ms.

In UK on my 512kbps, it was normal for me to have 60ms ping times to anywhere in the world, if it went above 100ms I would phone up and complain there was something wrong. Here it’s 250-350…that’s normal, above 500ms you might consider something wrong, that’s half a freaking second.

The few days before I left, because of all the snow and ice melting we had horrendous floods, the River Severn was full to bursting and a lot of Worcester roads were closed due to flooding.

Do you see were the swans are? That’s used to be a grassy bank, some benches and a path..

The river was up about 6ft.

February 11th I shipped my life off in the hands of a freight company and flew off to Kuala Lumpur, the city I now love and reside in, via Dubai. It was a long and tiring journey but I finally got here.

February consisted of living out of a suitcase and sitting on a cushion watching Astro, seriously that was about it. Will blog more extensively about living in a foreign country soon.

March

March was a quiet month too, met some new people and started looking for a car. It was also my first taste of SCUBA diving, I went on a trip with a friend to Tioman and following the divers round, I went snorkelling a few times and it was cool, but I really wanted to get down there.

Yes I took this picture.

Straight after I got back I signed up for the PADI[/url] Open Water course and got myself started, seen as though I had no job then, I had plenty of free time. My Malay language improved dramatically during this period as I spent a lot of time on the Islands and with my diving gang which were mostly Malay guys.

When my computer is fixed (should be some time this week, I have ordered the new motherboard), I’ll post all my diving pics 🙂

During this month I went, diving, did more diving, passed my Open Water and did more diving. It was awesome.

Towards the end of March also made a trip to Redang which was amazing! All the dive sites are nearby (5-15 minutes), crystal clear water and loads of aquatic life to see.

It was also my Birthday this month, which was a total non-event (I was diving the weekend before the Redang trip doing the last part of my OW course), which happened to be my birthday.

April

April I got my car finally! What a beauty it is too..

Ok so now I could get my ass out of the appartment and find my way around (or most likely, get horribly lost). I started to learn my way around, find good places to eat, get to know the country I’d chosen to live in a little better.

I went back off to Tioman to do my Advanced Open Water, which was a classic trip. My advanced course consisted of a Deep Dive (30metres), a Wreck Dive, a Night Dive (pitch black, scary!) and a module on Peak Peformance Bouyancy.

I also noticed my relationship started breaking down around this time, an impenetrable barrier was growing between us and communication was getting harder and less frequent. I also found out ‘she‘ was a workaholic. I think she had channeled all her energy into work during our long distance relationship to replace me, but when I finally got here she couldn’t switch back and ended up with no time or energy for her friends, me, her family or anything but work. I think she enjoyed the responsibility and power and forgot what the rest of life was about.

May

May consisted of a little less diving due to impending relationship pressure and constant moaning and whinging…this month a new hobby appeared, the almighty DOTA[/url]. In this month I got hooked to the WCIII custom map Defence of the Ancients.

I spent a lot of time in SS2 and in a cybercafe near my place, I hated going home, I hated seeing ‘her‘, deeply resented ‘her‘ and felt my relationship was in the process of completely breaking down….the real reason I had shifted to another country was turning out to be no reason at all.

June

During June I started seriously looking for jobs, pimping on Jobstreet[/url], sending out letters and resumes to local companies and using my network of uber contacts.

My mom also visited, which was cool as it ended up I started work in early July. There are some snaps of my moms trip HERE, but not many as most were taken with her oldskool 35mm camera. We visted Penang, Malacca, Batu Caves, Templar Park and a lot of places around KL like the Bird Park, the National Islamic Museum and so on.

By this time my ‘wife‘ and I were barely on talking terms, but we put on a show for my mother, which was kind of pointless. Our relationship was effectively over.

July

In July I started my new job, which for me was totally cool as it was my first dedicated information security role.

I have been wanting this kind of job for ages, actually doing Penetration Tests[/url], Security Audits and all those hardcore techie things that I love to do.

July was mostly spent settling down and getting to know what the company was about, getting to know people and so on. Other than that, playing a lot of DOTA[/url] and being happy that I’d finally gotten a job.

I gained a lot of good new friends during this and the preceding months, as you will see those that comment frequently here and are often mentioned in my stories, Suan[/url], God[/url], KY, TheGreatFaggot, Carol, Jimmy and so on.

August

Partially spent in Singapore teaching the police how to hack, that was an interesting experience. From what I remember, nothing really noteworthy happened during this month.

Apart from the fact by this time I was totally God-like in DOTA[/url].

Personally it was a sad month, as relationship wise, things were going from bad to fucking horrible. Thankfully my friends were around to support me.

September

A busy month at work, with lots of deadlines and lots of small projects and tenders jumping in here and there to get in the way.

This is month my marriage ended, thank you dearly to those friends that supported me, even though it was a horrible relationship, I was still shattered but thankfully you guys held me together and stopped me cracking. The month was kind of a blur..sad and desolate, but with 20/20 hindsight clearing the way.

Lessons learnt are in some form scribed here..Fate, Destiny and Bullshit[/url]

Don’t just sit there and let things happen, if you are in a crappy relationship, try and see it objectively, get the fuck out, don’t be in love with a memory of what a person used to be, get real and see what they are now.

Women marry men expecting them to change, they don’t.

Men marry women expecting them not to change, they do.

October

October was the important month where this blog started!

October 19th to be exact with this post – Finally I did it?[/url]

Other than that mostly spent it being sad, moping around, thinking wtf am I going to do, and started looking for a new appartment.

As you can see in the Archives[/url], I didn’t write much of interest in October, my mind was in other places.

November

November, the month from hell. I was in Brunei.

As you can see from the Archives[/url], I didn’t do much apart from blog, well what else is there to do in Brunei? Yeah exactly, jack shit. I blogged every day, sometimes twice a day.

It was in interesting experience, teaching again, but the students were fun and we had some good times anyway including a hacking style wargame thingy.

Some photos from the trip are in the gallery HERE.

It was a time for a lot of contemplation and pondering, I sorted myself out mentally whilst I was there, which was a good thing. I wrote a couple of meandering posts about what I discovered, Life…pain….hurt….teeth[/url] and gems and Face thy devil or he getteth stronger..
[/url]

December

Yay, finally back to civilisation, back to KL, my home. December has been filled with buying furniture, shopping, more shopping and sorting out the appartment, also made a new dear friend this month, which is great 🙂

The place is finally getting into some kind of order with the impending delivery of the sofa, just the fridge and office chair remain.

Having your own place is cool, it’s a first time for me, not sharing with anyone else, no living in someone elses place. Totally my own, if anything is there, on the floor/table/whatever it’s because I put it there. It’s a nice feeling to go home and pass out on your own living room floor ’til the next day 🙂

Had some awesome fun this month too and a lot of stress at work which I could do without, but hey ho what to do. Saw the Shaolin Kung-Fu show at Bukit Jalil which rocked.

We had a brilliant Xmas party (Photos HERE) and a great New Years party (Photos HERE).

Here’s to 2005 being better than 2004 in all ways.

Worldwide Summary

On a global scale it’s been a sad year in many ways, economic downturns, political blunders, wars, bombings, plane crashes, Bird Flu, lots of famous people dying, Thai Civil War and a disaster on Boxing Day[/url].

The US have been acting as normal an intervening where they aren’t wanted, they are becoming despotic in some ways and disliked by most citizens of most nations of the world, this may be disparate from what our goverments say (yes fuck you you Tony Blair) but it’s the way it is.

Religion is still causing many problems, as always, social control for the weak.

I have much to write about these two subjects and will do so in the future.

Popular people this year have been Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Harry Potter, Orlando Bloom, Eminem, Usher and Avril Lavigne.

On the tech side, the whole SCO case has been going on and on all year with full reports at Groklaw[/url]. There hasn’t been any huge innovations this year, but open source is getting more widely accepted, Linux is getting more refined and all of our open source buddies are getting stronger (PHP, MySQL, Snort, nmap and so on).

I tried to think of my album, book and movies of the year but I can’t really remember…perhaps will do those in another post.

As an end note, please remember to donate to the Tsuanmi fund in any way you can, the losses are inumerable and the death toll is over 150,000.

Continue Reading · 10 Comments · Deep Thoughts, General Nonsense

Goodbye 2004 Hello 2005

Posted January 3, 2005 at 1:29 am in General Nonsense

Well it’s the start of a new year, so HAPPY NEW YEAR to all, the first working day of the year, the first Monday of the year..it’s still like any other Monday..sucks.

Friday the Telurcon engineer came and sorted the phone out, which is good. I got a nice new blue phone.

The curtains guy came and fitted everything, place looks really different now, it’s suprising the amount it changes the look and feel of the place just by having decent curtains up, really feels like a home now. And I can finally open my bedroom curtains without having people peer at me, I have nets! Yay!

The Stimx guy didn’t come on Saturday but it was no big deal as I didn’t foresee me having any time over the weekend to go online anyway.

Left work fairly promptly, I was last in the office for once at 6.15pm everyone was gone..

Got home, had some dinner and bought some stuff, a jug, some bowls for the Satay and Chicken Wings..

Bought some Ice and beer for the fridge (A styrofoam box).

People were on Malaysian Time so we chilled for a while, had some drinks some food, some music, some Scrabble and Connect-4.

Did some hardcore drunken macho arm-wrestling

Quite a lot of people came in the end

Including God and Suan.

As usual we all ended up in a drunken mess, God also tried to give me a firemans lift and managed to fall on his face and cut his eye…NOOB.

It was good, lots of friends, food, drink and laughs.

The full gallery of pictures can be found HERE.

Saturday afternoon Stimx guy came and set the stuff up, broadband world should be arriving down my telephone line today (1MB woohoo).

We woke up, and went to eat Dim Sum nearby, then we drove off to Genting.

It’s a nice drive, and it was pretty busy but when we got there it was absolutely hideous..Windy raining and heavy mist.

It was that bad I forgot to take the camera when I got out of the car.

Most of the rides were closed due to the weather so we just wondered around inside and checked out Ripleys Believe it or Not Museum.

It was pretty interesting, should have had the camera though, was some cool stuff inside.

Then we watched the Haunted Adventure, which, well wasn’t really scary at all. We headed back when we were hungry..

The drive was kinda slow due to the fog…

It was really hard to see were I was going, and had to drive super slow

We headed back for the famous Asam Prawns, but the damn place had sold out of prawns (oh well it was new years day)..so we had Asam Fish instead, which was also great..

Along with some Tofu

Some veges (Which took forever to come) and some pork and of course Carlsberg 🙂

After that headed back, was pretty sleepy.

Totally cleaned up the appartment top to bottom, swept, scrubbed the floors, the bathrooms, the balcony, the lot!

Was funking out with some of my favourite albums from Cypress Hill (One of my favourite all time groups).

Watched a movie after that, A Tale of Two Sisters.

I think I need to watch it again when I am not so tired, I was like wtf…confused.

It’s a beautifully shot movie with good acting and a twisting story, but it takes some working out…it’s not a cheap shocker kind of horror like the recent emergences from Asia (Shutter, One Missed Call etc). It’s a lot more sinister and psychological. I’d say it’s a thriller more than an out and out horror movie.

It’s an extremely subjective film and can be intepreted many ways. It’s worth watching as it will provoke you into some interesting thoughts. Don’t watch it expecting to be scared, or you will be disappointed, it’s definately NOT as I said above, a horror movie.

There is a good comment on IMDB which I will quote..

So solid in construction, so consistent in tone and so beautifully disorienting

I will say it’s a very good movie, it’s just not what I was expecting. If you appreciate beautiful direction and screenplay watch this movie.

7/10

Sunday went for Segambut Seafood noodles for lunch, packed full of all kinds of seafood (Clams, Squid, Fish, Cockles, Prawns)

After that went and ordered my sofa, should arrive on Tuesday, good stuff 🙂

Only 2 things left after that, Fridge and Office chair for my PC room (Hardcore DOTA!)

Went to Ikea to check out the sale, pretty much a waste of time, nothing of interest worth buying.

After that went off home and watched one of my favourite alltime brainless movies, cheap entertainment.

Human Traffic

It’s so realistic, it’s the epitomy of British clubbing, seriously I’ve watched this film about 30 times, but if you’ve never been in that scene, you wouldn’t understand half of it…but truly a great movie.

I’ve started my Got Rice? gallery, with the first shot…

Classic Wira with GT spoiler..

Also found a great Tsunami resource here for all the info you could ever need https://www.waveofdestruction.org/

Other than that back to work today….next post, expect a summary of 2004, or something along those lines..

Continue Reading · 14 Comments · General Nonsense

Kung Fu Hustle and the New Links Page

Posted December 31, 2004 at 1:48 am in Movies, Site News

Hey ho, I’m back again. Just found out the Stimx engineer didn’t even bother coming, so I won’t be having any broadband loving this weeked. Oh well..So I thought I’d post now, get it out the way so I can enjoy the party tonight and the hungover weekend. My curtains were fitted today though, which is rocking, can’t wait to go home and see them 🙂

Probably as usual be back posting on Monday.

I have finally got around to making the Links Page, I have added all the posts which I think are more interesting, so if you are new or here from BlogExplosion, go check em out!

Also added a cut down version of my information security bible of links, get reading if you want to be a l33t h4x0r like me.

Have had a lot of SMS/E-mails yesterday and today from UK and various other places asking about my well-being and things like;

“Good job you weren’t in Sri Lanka after all, that’d be a hell of a swim!”

My Mom called me too. It’s a nice feeling to know people care 🙂

Found the most beautifully written article about the Tsunami incident, I’m not going to write about it any more…sad shit…but if you can, donate a little money, it will make a difference.

I watched Kung Fu Hustle[/url] last night. It was a Stephen Chow[/url] movie, so well I got what was expected. But I must say after Shaolin Soccer[/url] (I true masterpiece), I was in fact expecting more…much much more.

It turned out to be a very simplistic movie, spoofing a lot of modern films (Matrix 3, Spiderman 2, some scenes from Bruce Lee) and was pretty plotless, it was just an excercise to string together a bunch of CGI-enhanced fight sequences. The jokes were funny and it was definately and entertaining film, perhaps it was just overhyped and due to the uniqueness of Shaolin Soccer[/url] I was expecting more.

The BUTT is classic and got regular laughs through-out the movie.

The fight scenes were pretty impressive and the Iron-fist fairy was classic.

It’s worth a watch, but perhaps wait for Uncle Ho’s DVD.

I’d give it maybe 6.5/10.

Anyway better finish off the last work I’ll do this year so I get home early and prepare to PARTAY! Yah! Happy new year to Everyone. Let next year be better in all aspects than this one.

Continue Reading · 13 Comments · Movies, Site News

Inconsiderate Drivers & Road Hogs.

Posted December 30, 2004 at 9:55 pm in Ranting

Ok last night….it was a normal night in most aspects, a little worse for traffic as it was raining..but low and behold I reached Puchong toll (the start of the LDP) and it was jammed solid..

It then proceeded to be jammed all the way to the other end of the LDP (where I live).

The LDP is Lebuhraya Damansara Puchong, a big ass highway that runs through KL and PJ.

Unsurprisingly the cause was 5-6 inconsiderate bastards who had a crash (no one was hurt), it was just one of those stupid nose-to-ass collisions caused by an idiot who doesn’t fully appreciate their lack of driving skills. And this…this caused a 20+KM traffic jam, the LDP was barely moving, I had a movie date, left work on time (for once) and it took me like 2 bastard hours to get anywhere near home…I didn’t actually have time to get home, I grabbed a Ramly burger, made a U-turn and headed back down the LDP (the other side was normal traffic flow).

So let’s summarise, if you are a dickhead who can’t drive, has the reactions of a drunken amoeba or you drive a car without the capability to stop in 0.001 seconds flat…when it’s raining please dont..

1) Tailgate, it’s not big and it’s not smart and no it doesn’t make you look grown-up
2) Gas away on your shiny new mobile phone and put the world and their dog to rights
3) Flirt with your passenger to the point where you no longer look at the fucking road
4) Apply makeup/lipstick/brush your hair/shave
5) Any combination of the above.

If I do catch you doing any of these I’ll stick your Wajalution/Kancil/Kelisa up your arse with no lube.

While I’m on the subject, what the fuck is with you girls wearing those sock things on your forearms?? I mean don’t you know glass cuts out all U.V. rays, you can’t get a tan through glass..All dressed up in some sexy office gear with some dirty grey rags on your arms?? Nice..

And SUV drivers, go fuck yourselfs, you wouldn’t know what off-road was if it kicked you in the face. You are the bane of the roads, most of you don’t know how to indicate, cut lanes like no-one else exists, hog the outside lane going 20km/h slower than the traffic flow and various other prick-ish behaviour (especially those Harrier/fake Lexus drivers).

BTW if you want to read a funny thread about women drivers you can do so HERE.

Back to lane hogging, lane discipline in Malaysia is terrible, if not close to non-existent, there was actually an article in the paper the other day saying how we are losing 11,000km of highways due to bad lane discipline. I mean wtf, why is everyone in the middle lane, forcing some other slow pussies into the ‘fast’ lane who are going 40km/h slower than me, it’s not that I’m driving like a maniac, I’m cruising at a comfortable and safe 140km/h…that’s what the FAST lane is for.

You can see an empty highway with someone in the outside lane…or usually in the middle lane, not that this doesn’t happen in the UK too, and it pisses me off too, why are there huge traffic jams? Because of idiots in the wrong lanes, because of excessive braking (the red-light effect)..and people in Kancils driving like idiot-sticks. (This guy has a point[/url]).

Hmm, what else pisses me off. People in the wrong lane at traffic lights, you know the right hand lane for U-turns, when people are blocking that trying to squeeze into the second lane to gain a 3 car advantage, WHAT THE FUCK? Like making us wait another 10 minutes when we don’t need to is going to make your life better by getting 3 cars ahead, ignorant assholes.

Also people that wanna race me when there’s heavy traffic, fuck you. I’m not going to endanger my life or my passengers life or anyone elses life for that matter to race you in your fucked up turbo-charged Saga, I know I drive a car that looks like it likes to race…and yeah it does, but only when it’s SAFE to do so ok.

Ok some more…I’ve seen a few pricks lately with normal-ish cars like a Gen-2 with a GT alloy spoiler with a freaking flourescent strip along the back, are you trying to blind us when you brake or what? FUCKING IDIOTS.

Pic courtesy of Rkaru[/url].

I think I might make a ‘Got Rice?’ gallery soon with pics of stupid car mods I find. Ahbengs[/url] galore around here.

Enough ranting for now, lest I give myself a brain haemorrhage.

Continue Reading · 7 Comments · Ranting

The Asian Concept of ‘Face’

Posted December 29, 2004 at 11:44 pm in Deep Thoughts

Face, giving face, saving face, showing face, losing face..

These are foreign terms to many people, bring confusion to some and blank looks from others. It’s something that is at least partially ingrained into Asian culture, most noticably amongst the Japanese but also strongly with Chinese too.

Let’s start with a quote (my usual style).

To gain face, give face; to lose face, try to save face or take face away. Frydherik Eysenkopf

If we look at the dictionary definition of the word, the most applicable in this context would be:

6. a. Value or standing in the eyes of others; prestige: lose face.

So there we have it, face is the societal standing of a person from the perspective, this ‘face‘ thing is all about how others see you, how they percieve your value, status, credibility or social standing. The Chinese terms for face are ‘lian‘ and ‘mianzi‘.

By understanding face and how to ‘give face’ one can suceed in negotations and avoid conflict with all egos and relationships intact. As with anything it’s always better to give than to take, especially in Asian culture, they are a very respectful and honour based society, so people get higher social standing by ‘giving face’ left right and centre. It boils down to tread carefully and avoid humilating your opponent, in Western societies, we have thick faces, so we tend to be more sarcastic, less polite and a hell of a lot more open when we criticise..In Asia this is not acceptable, criticism must be done very gently, a lot of ego rubbing is required.

This is known as low-context and high-context cultures. Most cultures would combine the two in part, but sway more towards one side. Western countries would tend to be low-context, this means it’s an individualistic society, and believes in freedom of the individual. Due to this most verbal communication very often direct, and that there is very little concern about non-verbal cues. So in UK and US for example the right to individuality supercedes any non-logical duty to your family, clan, race, or country. People are direct, they “say what they mean and mean what they say.”

High-context countries would be those such as Korea, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, parts of the Middle-East and South America. These would be considered more traditional, hierarchal countries which are referred to as collectivistic, or interdependent.

The main difference is in low-context societies, conflict is normal, it happens, we deal with it, it’s nothing special. In high-context societies, it’s a big deal, group harmony is paramount. For example people from high-context societies will tend to avoid conflict and in general (Especially Japanese) will rarely utter a full-on ‘No’. For us barbaric Westerners, saying ‘No’ is not a consideration, it’s a normal answer to a request or question.

All these subtle societal nuances cause conflicts, I mean…how are people supposed to know?

Ok so now you understand what ‘face‘ is. Let’s get onto the others.

The most familiar term to most would probably be ‘saving face‘, which we can take to mean not being disrespectful to others in public, also it can mean taking preventive actions so that we will not appear to lose face in the eyes of others, or even helping out someone else in a situation where they could possibly lose face. Generally it’s meant as allowing someone to ‘lose’ with dignity and still allow them to be portrayed as a good leader/person/partner/colleague or whatever. Giving face can be said to be pretty much the same thing, to give someone face would be to let them come off worst but still look good.

Best defined as such:

“When one party states their needs and wants in an honorable manner, taking into consideration the notion of mutual face-concern, this is called face-assertive behavior. When one side purposely takes action to enhance the honor of the other, especially in regard to national face, this is called face-giving behavior. As can be expected, low-context cultures tend to engage in more face-threatening exchanges, while high-context cultures will focus more on face-honoring exchanges.”

Source: Face – Sarah Rosenberg

Showing face, is acting repsectfully and not causing yourself or others to lose face.

Losing face can happen under any number of circumstances that cause a damaging social event such as being humiliated in front of your peers, exposure to personal insult, failure to achieve goals, damage to a valued relationship, being belittled or losing your temper. Meetings often exist solely for the purpose of giving face to one another.

Some tips:

1. Don’t show anger, don’t lose your temper
2. Avoid saying no directly
3. Try and make everything win-win wherever possible
4. Apologise if you think you offended someone
5. Defer to those ‘above’ you (Age and seniority)
6. Address people using the Honorific
7. Be mild in giving criticism
8. Follow what others do (e.g. if someone hands you something with 2 hands, take it with two hands)

References:

[1] Culture’s Influence on Managerial Behavior
[2] Face – Sarah Rosenberg
[3] The Mediator as Face-Giver
[4] Revelations of Face and Self

On another note I also re-organised my side bar, added some new blogging widgets, some new links and removed some stale “blogs. It looks a bit tidier now.

Played some hardcore DOTA last night, mostly noob games though. Can’t wait to get my Stimx at home then I can pound some noobs every night (should be coming on Friday, along with the Telurcon engineer, the curtain guy and a lot of drunken folks).

Continue Reading · 4 Comments · Deep Thoughts

BlogExplosion – The Lowdown

Posted December 29, 2004 at 4:13 am in Hacking & Infosec, Site News

BloxExplosion? What the hell is that you ask…well it’s a way to generate meaningless guaranteed pseudo-traffic for your blog, by reading other peoples blogs.

You can sign up at https://www.blogexplosion.com, click lots of blogs and earn me more credits so random people get to see my random crapola, yay!

Pimped from BE:

The concept is very simple. You read other blog sites and they in return visit your blog. Blogexplosion is the internet’s first blog exchange where thousands of bloggers visit each other’s blogs in order to receive tons of blog traffic. Imagine how many other people out there could be adding your blog to their blogroller and how many people would be reading your blog every day with this sort of attention. It’s free to use!

Pros of BlogExplosion
1. You will get more traffic to your blog
2. You will find some really interesting blogs to read/blogmark/blogroll
3. If you are bored it’s a great way to pass time and find out some interesting stuff
4. You will gain a handful of new regular readers
5. You might get a few link backs if your blog is any good

Cons of BlogExplosion
1. You will get totally meaningless traffic (30 second sessions on average)
2. You will have to trawl through endless boring drivel about politics, how god is great and peoples pets
3. If you have important stuff to do you might find yourself having wasted 2 hours surfing BE instead of working.
4. You might run into some weird stalkers/trolls
5. Some nasty men might write a review on your blog and give you an inferiority complex

Some of the good blogs I’ve found:

1. Bryan the Funny Faggot[/url]
2. ZeroBoss[/url]
3. Some others which I forgot to blogmark..I will add them later, promise.

If you haven’t checked out Xia Xue[/url], I also suggest you do so, bitch is funny (Not found on BE).

Anyway BlogExplosion, I think it’s worth it, give yourself a little press, find some other interesting souls to stalk, perhaps make a couple of new friends (I did), Hi Letti[/url]!

Here’s my stats:

It’s pretty hard to find blogs from this region, the large majority seem to be American, with a few europeans and people from other parts of the world.

My BlogStreet is finally working too, yehhaaa (although I’m not entirely sure what it’s supposed to ‘do’ yet), maybe might add some other geekish random bloggery stuff soon, Suan[/url] did an update today and added more crap.

Getting excited about the new year party, hopefully my TV will stay in one piece and more than 4 people will turn up. Rock on.

On a sadder not, the Tsunami/Quake disaster[/url] death toll is over 61,000

Sri Lanka: 21,715 dead
Indonesia: 32,828
India: 4,371 dead
Thailand: 1,516 dead
Maldives: 52 dead
Malaysia: 44 dead
Burma: 30 dead
Bangladesh: 2 dead
Somalia: 100 dead
Kenya: 1 dead
Seychelles: 3 dead
Tanzania: 10 dead

Now toted as one of the worst natural disasters ever.

I have some pictures I received via e-mail, but they are not nice so I don’t think I’ll post em.

Stimx called today aswell said they’ll be coming on Friday, Woo! Broadbandalised at last.

Which is good as my laptop is still totally b0rked, with no sound nor modem…time for the dreaded re-install..need to get my other PC working first though so I can back up all my shizzle.

I called Canon about the dreaded E18 thing…but well I didn’t understand a word he was babbling about. He’s somewhere in Subang apparently..

Ciao for now dearies.

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Continue Reading · 5 Comments · Hacking & Infosec, Site News

Random Crapola

Posted December 28, 2004 at 3:25 am in General Nonsense

Well Monday yesterday after a heavy weekend…ouch. Typical Monday blur kinda day.

Was some kind of company dinner last night aswell, it was ok, food was good, some steak and lamb chop and great potatoes wedges all smothered in oodles of black pepper sauce. Might post some pictures if I can be bothered, feeling kinda sleepy…all that beer and Chivas I guess.

Had some fradulent charges on one of my UK credit cards too, so had to call back there and sort that out. Also phoned Telurcon about my super quiet phone line (I have to semi-insert the phone inside my ear just to hear anything the person on the other end of the line is saying), and the intermittent crackles. The technician phoned me today, fucker couldn’t speak a word of engrish, I asked if I could speak to someone that understood English….he said “I don’t understand” and put the phone down. Nice!

Still haven’t paid my summons, not through a lack of trying…useless bastards.

I want to buy myself a portable USB powered 2.5″ hard drive for carrying round various ISO images and h4x0ring tools…have to check out some prices, sofa and fridge would be better first, seen as though I have a stove but no fridge..

Will call the curtain guy today aswell see wassup…I can’t stand the damn granny curtains any more!

Hmmppphh…totally fucked up my laptop last night, lesson…don’t do computer stuff when you are drunk.

I tried to install an old USB webcam (AverMedia Elite) I found lastnight in a box on my WinXP Home laptop with disasterous results.

I had the drivers on a CD somewhere so I used those, not realising how old they were…the laptop promptly bluescreened during installation.

The cam didn’t fully install, so I couldn’t ‘remove’ it.

After this my CD-ROM stopped working along with my soundcard and modem.

I managed to get the CD-ROM working again by removing it a couple of times and re-installing, I’ve done the same with both modem and sound card to no avail.

They both show up in hardware as installed, working with no errors.

But if I try and open volume control for example it says there is no mixer.

If I try and dial the modem I get a 633 error, but if I run the modem diagnostic check it works fine..

I have removed them both numerous times, downloaded the latest drives and reinstalled them.

They are both now installed and apparently ‘working’ but well they aren’t functioning at all…which is frustrating to say the least (after rebooting about 25 times)

Argh!

It’s offical writing documentation sucks.

Saw this too which was pretty funny, Tara Reid with her boob hanging out..

The whole series of pics is here https://www.big-boys.com/articles/reidslip.html

You can see a close up of her disfigured, mouldy, ugly ass frankentit HERE

Made some fake ass new years resolutions..

1. Smoke less

2. Excercise more (Hardcore sex included)

3. Get everything for my appartment I need

4. Don’t WHS (Wai Hai Sei)

5. Start saving

6. Get another phat pay rise

7. Use my time more efficiently

8. Call my mom more often

9. Don’t drive so fast on NKVE (Get less summons)

10. Get some mad mods on my car and a big ass dustbin lid subwoofer

Will be having a party at my place new years eve, probably a bit quieter than the xmas bash, just a few friends, drinks, dancing etc..

Hopefully will get the Sofa I found by Thursday.

On the Tsunami etc, there is a blog here with all the info you need about relief and aid efforts https://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/

The SEA-EAT blog for short News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts.

Anyone taking exams now, good luck.

Enough rambling for today I think..

Continue Reading · 10 Comments · General Nonsense

Natural Disaster Sweeps Across Asia

Posted December 27, 2004 at 2:27 am in Deep Thoughts

It’s a sobering thought amongst all the jovailty and celibrations that disaster can strike at any minute. Yesterday more than 14,000 people lost their lives (at the last estimate). It’s a sad time.

My condolences go out to all the families and people that lost loved and cherished ones.

Thanks to all those that enquired, I am fine here. There were tremors in KL, but they were minor, apparently one condo cracked. It happened around 9am yesterday morning, it was quite bad in Penang, according to Michael Ooi, bad enough to wake you up.

Lives were lost in 7 or more countries, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and as far as Somalia.

Region summary from the BBC HERE.

The epicentre was nearest toIndonesia’s Aceh province on Sumatra. It is estimated to be 8.9 on the richter scale.

8 and above is classed as:

Can cause serious damage in areas several hundred miles across.

There is 1 average anually of this scale, almost reaching 9 this is the strongest quake in 40 years.

The earthquake caused a lot of damage, but most was done by the Tsunami caused by the quake, as seen by Penang beach below.

In Thailand the effect was the same, a lot of divers are still missing..

Latest figures and disaster toll here: https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4126971.stm

Sri Lanka: 4,850 dead
Indonesia: 4,440 dead
India: 4,270 dead
Thailand: 430 dead
Malaysia: 44 dead
Maldives: 32 dead
Bangladesh: 2 dead

I’m so glad I’m not in Colombo now…bombings, natural disasters..not a great place to be.

Latest news from The Star here: https://thestar.com.my/news/latest/[/url]

Videos pictures and information at BBC https://news.bbc.co.uk with a lot of info also at CNN

I have some other stuff to post..but I don’t think now is the right time.

Let’s just reflect upon what has happened, and be thankful we escaped with our lives. 15,000 is a hell of a lot of humans that just got wiped off the face of the earth.

Continue Reading · 8 Comments · Deep Thoughts