Cough medicine

Item: Cough linctus, 100ml
Brand: Himalaya (Diakof)
Price: MYR 13.90
Date of Purchase/Survey: 21/04/2010
Place of Sale: MidValley Megamall (Watsons)

I really like Himalaya products. All herbal, all natural.

“Oh, we’re not friends with him any more”

I’m really curious how that conversation would go. It’s a hypothetical conversation of course. At least, as far as I’m concerned.

I once was married and now am not. I am also a few friends short.

Let’s start with two sets of friends, one mine (M), one hers (H). Then we’ll intersect them (M-I-H) for after we met. There are still members of the original sets outside the intersection. Due to the dynamics of sympathy, I have since discovered that it is no longer possible to identify the original boundaries of M and H. Hence, upon separation, we are left with {M} – {M-I-H} and {H} + {M-I-H}. There are a few rogue elements that do not obey this, but by and large, it seems to be the case.

Am I bitter about this? Once I was. Not any more.

Good thing my experience teaches me how to renew {M} as and when necessary.

This is why I don’t play sports

My mind, eternally youthful, seems to believe my body is 16 years old. My body, being at least twice that age, refuses to play along. My mind, able to imagine fantastical feats of physical prowess, is convinced what it can imagine, my body can achieve. My body, woefully untested in actual physical exertions, can barely keep up.

And so what happens when someone tackles me in a friendly game of futsal is not a graceful recovery, turn-around, and artful dribbling. Rather, the result is a tumble totally lacking in grace, and a scrape on the knee from the artificial turf.

*sigh*

All in good fun, of course.

At least I came away with a “door gift” just for showing up and participating in the club’s first sports activity of the year. I wonder how many such mugs I have. I wonder where they all are. Hehe.

Can’t get an IP address from the router

An odd thing to happen. All of a sudden, the PC only managed a limited connection. The PC is connected to the wifi router via Cat5 cable, while a laptop connects wirelessly. All connections are assigned a dynamic IP by the router via DHCP. Router was connected to the internet, and the laptop received an IP and working connection. The PC, however, was assigned IP address 169.254.154.171 (could be a different last number; I can’t remember, but it’s not important), with subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 (this is why the exact IP isn’t important).

The IP address on the network connection on the PC showed that it could not obtain a valid IP address, so it was assigned that IP by Windows.

Restarting the router and PC didn’t do anything. Assigning an appropriate IP to the PC resulted in it showing it was fully connected, but it could not ping anything. Not even the router itself.

I thought it could be a faulty NIC, or maybe there was something wrong with the cable. Could not find any other advice to solve the problem, so it was decided to have the PC taken to a shop to be looked at.

Their advice? After some fiddling around (not sure what they did), they advised my dad that it had to be reformatted. So they backed up the files in My Documents (and only those files; no program settings or anything else) and reformatted the hard drive. *sigh* At least the PC can connect to the router now, and there was no need to replace the NIC or network cable. But couldn’t there have been a better solution?

Things you’d love to say on the LRT

… but probably won’t. (Bukankah kita prihatin?) In no particular order:

• “That’s a lovely baju kurung, but I think you have way too many chemicals in your hair.” whisper: cos I can smell it from here


• “That’s a nice big backpack you have there; you could probably kill a dog with that bag if you dropped it.” whisper: I know cos I’m still reeling from that shove in the chest


• “Is there a water shortage in your area, or are you just allergic to water?” whisper: (yes, you guessed it) cos I can smell you from all the way over here

Would an “excuse me” prefixing those statements make it less caustic, or is it still overstepping bounds anyway?

Home before the Sun is down

This is a rarity. As a matter of fact, I can count on one hand the times this year that I’ve made it home before the sun has gone down. That would be ever since I started at this new job. At my previous workplace, it was rare that I left the office when it was dark. This is more like back when I was in Dubai. At least I still get weekends though.

It felt a bit strange stepping out of the office and crossing the road to go home, feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin. And the LRT was actually crowded. It’s not necessarily the holiday mood (school holidays just started), but that may have played a factor. The past few weeks my team has been really busy, and we’re coming into the home stretch now. Today was a bit of a slow day at the office, and we’re now just waiting for others in the process flow. So I took advantage of that to come home early.

Which reminds me, Amazing Race is on tonight... :-)

So You Think You Can Dance – Season 6

(Yes, we’re late a season. Season 7 is about to start, but Astro is only just now showing Season 6 on AXN.)

I missed Amazing Race earlier tonight (timing’s just not right, and I haven’t recorded any of the episodes), but I managed to get home in time to catch So You Think You Can Dance. Tonight was the top 18, and I saw some really nice routines. I was truly enchanted by Kathryn and Legacy dancing Stacey Tookey’s contemporary piece. It was magical. I think I’ll keep an eye out for Stacey Tookey routines. :-) Another good performance I thought was Ellenore and Ryan dancing an Argentine Tango. Simply brilliant, and to think she did it with her dress caught in her shoe! Hope I get to catch more of this show.

P.S. I’m not going to comment on the Oscars, since I didn’t watch them, and am not familiar with most of the movies anyway. I’ve been falling behind on my movies for some time already.

A’isyah’s first train ride

She’s been sending me to the train station in the mornings for some time now. Today I finally took her to the train (LRT) station, as I promised her. We just rode from Bangsar to KL Sentral and back. At first the noise of the train as it entered the station freaked her out. She’s never been too fond of loud noises. But then the excitement of being at the train station took over, and she was busy looking around, at the tracks, the signs and billboards, and the trains as they approached. Bangsar to KL Sentral is overland, so she hasn’t had a full subway experience yet. We’ll save that for later.

State of personal gaming – Feb 2010

I’ve got an RTS/Action itch that I just can’t scratch. I’m getting some light action with Diablo 2 (re-installed a ramp-up of Diablo 3 hype), but most of my gaming needs are taken care of on Facebook at the moment. Facebook has always been an app-centric platform, which – to me – was what really differentiated it from the likes of Friendster.

So this is what I’m playing right now:

Castle Age

(Level 189)

This has taken over my Utopia inclinations. Game with a fantasy setting, building an army through collecting units and items, but with the option to play completely cooperatively. I think the best change they made to the game was introducing Monsters to fight. It’s a much more social game as a result. In fact, I’ve added close to 400 “friends” to FB just to become more effective at CA. It’s about having enough people looking for Elite Guards, and having enough people to answer your Monster CTA’s.

I’m spending the most time on this game, and having the most fun with it too.

FishVille

(Level 33)

This one’s just as a stress reliever. It’s nice to have a few tanks of imaginary fish you can’t really kill through neglect. And cleaning the tanks is such a breeze. Hehe.

Country Story

(Level 30)

This is my CS. Not Counter Strike. Country Story. I’ve never really been a fan of shooters anyway. The only shooter I ever got into was Halo.

Restaurant City

(Level 32)

This is the first “game” that I really took seriously. Before RC were games such as Scrabble, or Boggle, or whatever the FB apps are now called (copyrights, people).

I still like it for the interior decorating aspect.

Crazy Planets

(Level 11)

A’isyah made me join this. One day we were gardening in CS when she noticed this button on the side. That’s good advertising. It attracted her attention, and she asked, “Can we play this?” So off I went to add the app, and we were playing soon after. A’isyah’s the one playing this; I help out once in a while only.


Outside of Facebook, all I’m playing is:

Diablo 2 (Asia Realms)

I’ve got three chars on the Realms right now. I’ve also got some old single player chars that I play when the Realm connection sucks (which still happens).

Level 39 Paladin – built as an Avenger, and doing some leveling before taking on Baal.
Level 12 Amazon – trying out a Javazon, still in Act 1.
Level 9 Necromancer – not sure what build, still in Act 1.


And that’s it. I haven’t been following game news for a while now. All I know is I’ll be there for Diablo 3. Before that? Not sure yet.

Meydan is open for business

Well, it’s done. The first race at the new Meydan Racecourse in Dubai was held on Thursday, 28 Jan 2010 (about 2 months later than originally planned). Fitting that the first race was won by jockey Richard Hills on No Risk Al Maury, owned by Sheikh Hamdan Al-Maktoum.

I worked on that project for almost two years. Never got to see the last year of it though.

I’m not surprised that the opening was low-key, and there was “relief among officials that the gigantic grandstand had passed the first test without any major glitches” (source: UK’s Telegraph).

Watch out for the end of March. That’ll be the big night.

Divorce statistics in Malaysia

It’s an oft-cited “statistic” (at least in Western countries): 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce. It’s a result of the weakening of the “traditional” family unit. People are more casual about their romantic relationships, which leads to lack of commitment to see through a lasting marriage.

How true is it though? Or more appropriately, does it apply to Malaysia?

Divorce as a topic has been in the news in the past few weeks. We have read about a growing concern about the local divorce rate. We discovered that one of the state governments has a small but successful program to sponsor a second honeymoon for couples thinking of heading to divorce. Based on the success of that program, they were considering expanding the program. Then we heard of another proposal for enrolling husbands in some sort of grooming course to better their appeal to their wives.

Strange and fantastic news indeed. So what feeds this fear on divorce rates? Is there some basis for this fear? Just how bad a beating is the institution of marriage suffering in Malaysia?

To do my research, I didn’t go for a primary source, such as the National Registration Department and/or Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (JAKIM), although my source did rely on those two sources. After searching online, I found a paper researched by Samuel Chan Hsin Chien and Mohamed Sarif Mustaffa, for the Faculty of Education, University Technology Malaysia, Johor. The paper’s main purpose was to discover the situation of divorce in Malaysia.

From the two primary sources mentioned above, the authors of the research paper have obtained statistics on registered marriages and divorces amongst Muslims (from JAKIM) and Non-Muslims (from NRD) for the years 2000 to 2005, with a breakdown by state. The authors reached two conclusions from the data gathered.

First, although the divorce rate has grown moderately over the five year period from 9.88% to 12.83%, this is still small compared to some developed countries such as the US (51%, 1998), Australia (49%, 1996), Canada (48%, 1995), and Germany (44%, 1997). I don’t know the source of their statistics for those countries, but it does fit the standard notion that 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce. Unfortunately, those are also old statistics, so the situation may have changed now. No matter. It’s not the direction I’ll be looking at.

The second conclusion the authors reached is that the divorce rate amongst the Muslims is keeping proportionate to the increasing number of marriages, but the situation is not the same with the Non-Muslims. With the Non-Muslims, the number of marriages actually declined, while the number of divorces doubled. This led to an increasing divorce rate amongst the Non-Muslims, from 2.63% to 7.19%. Whether this is a trend that continued beyond 2005 and still continues today might be worth examining in detail. Nevertheless, the divorce rate amongst the Muslims is still significantly higher, increasing from 14.71% to 15.51%.


Playing around with the data, I came up with a graph comparing the split between Muslim/Non-Muslim marriages and divorces. It’s instructive to note that demographically, the ratio in the population is roughly 60%/40% Muslim/Non-Muslim. Looking back at the graph, it appears that a larger portion of Malaysia’s Muslim population is getting married as compared to the Non-Muslim population. Still, more than 80% of the divorces in the country were between Muslim couples. Although the gap between share of marriages and share of divorces is shrinking, that’s still about 15 points higher than the ratio of marriages between Muslims and Non-Muslims.


An interesting side story arises once we examine the data breakdown by state. Considering the average rate of divorce over the years examined, we discover that the top three worst states in descending order are Selangor, KL, and Penang, all with an average divorce rate above 15%. The three best states in ascending order are Sabah, Kedah, and Johor, incidentally the only states together with Sarawak and Negeri Sembilan with divorce rates below the national average of 11.55%. So Sabahans have the best marriages, and Selangorites have the worst? I’m not going to touch that topic with a ten foot pole.

So what do the authors make of this state of affairs? What are the major drivers of divorce in Malaysia? Unfortunately, the paper does not delve into this issue, but instead cites “numerous foreign literatures” (sic) as stating that the top three factors that influence divorce are “1) infidelity, 2) no longer in love, and 3) emotional problems.” It’s very likely that those factors are inter-related, and possibly so with other factors as well.

Are these the main factors that play a role in the Malaysian context? I don’t know. I have not located any research that studies this. But if they do, does that mean those state programs we read about recently are on the right track?

I should take this opportunity to note that I, too, am now a statistic. I join the ranks of the many faceless ones people always hear about. Those supposed sad cases, or scandals. Now I know, there is nothing to be either proud or ashamed about. It just is. Adjustments are made. Life goes on. And no, I’m not interested in participating in a survey. Not now at least.

NaNoWriMo 2009 will have to take a pass

I had wanted to make time for NaNoWriMo this year, but other issues have taken on a greater urgency. I am now working more fervently on a non-fiction piece entitled “Curriculum Vitae”, as well as an accompanying fiction piece with a working title of “Handover Notes”. The fiction piece promises to be epic. :-)

Celebrating A’isyah’s 4th birthday

We had a small family celebration for A’isyah’s fourth birthday. I’m not really into big celebrations, preferring more intimate parties. So far, A’isyah’s getting similar treatment. Hehe. That might change as she grows older. I can’t say that I was never jealous of people having big, elaborate birthday parties as I grew up, and yet I grew to appreciate the smaller scale celebrations.


She actually had a pre-birthday celebration with her grandma in Ipoh, the weekend after Raya.



A’isyah was certainly excited on her big day, dancing around, waiting to get her presents. When it came down to it, she almost opened her presents before anything else. I had to convince her that the cake-cutting wouldn’t take too long. We sang “Happy Birthday” to her, she blew out all four of her candles, cut the cake, then ran from the table towards her presents. Hehe. I helped her open her gifts while the rest of the adults went to eat. I managed to get her to eat a bit, and try at least a bite of her own cake (a design that she had chosen herself over the weekend).



In the end, knowing that she was happy was worth it.

NaNoWriMo 2009 is just around the corner

November is fast approaching, and that means the month-long writing “competition” is about to start. NaNoWriMo is really a competition against yourself, and in my past two outings, I have failed miserably. Hehe. Heck, I didn’t even manage to close out my previous efforts as I had previously thought I could do. To be honest, that was because I didn’t make the time. After all, that’s what it’s all about. If you’re serious about it, you’ll make the time. You’ll set aside part of your day to writing.

I had almost given up on that. I was going to avoid the disappointment with myself and not participate in this year’s NaNoWriMo. I’ve only just posted the sum of my efforts from 2007, over at Self-RW, a grand total of five (mini-)chapters. Yay me.

But I will not be deterred. This year, I’ve decided to put some planning into it. I’ll see if I can come up with a framework for my “novel” in the next two weeks. That should help with the writing.

Malaysian drivers and the rain

You’d think with all the rain we get year-round, Malaysian drivers would be better accustomed to driving in the rain. It’s obvious we haven’t adapted to the conditions though. Not when you still hear about all the accidents that accompany news of a downpour.

This morning it rained. And on the way to work, I heard the traffic reports on the radio. There was mention of quite a few accidents on the roads around town. We’re talking multi-car pileups, and it wasn’t even raining that hard.

People just refuse to adapt their driving to the road conditions. If it’s raining, visibility will be poorer. You’ll need just a fraction of a second longer to react to the brake lights of the car in front of you. The roads will be more slippery, with pools of water here and there. Even if hydroplaning isn’t an issue, drivers will still make sudden moves to avoid puddles. You could see abrupt swerving, sudden unexpected slowdowns, and all sorts of impulsive driving.

What should you do? Slow down! Turn on some lights so other drivers can see you clearly, but not your hazard lights, please. Come on, people! It’s not that hard to practice safe driving.

It’s not about you. It’s about the other driver. The one who’s not as good as you. The one who swerved violently when you expertly dodged that puddle of water, and who then rammed into your mother’s car, just behind yours. Think about it.

So it’ll be ready after all

I was starting to wonder about the fate of the Meydan Racecourse. As confirmed by DubaiRaceNight.com, however, Meydan will indeed be ready for the 2010 Dubai World Cup. The Winter Racing Challenge’s probably gonna be held at a different racecourse. The Dubai International Racing Carnival will debut at Meydan, with a more compact schedule due to begin on 28 January 2010.

Video tape

Yup, still buying them. I’ve got an old Panasonic NV-GS35 camcorder. It’s a pretty decent video camera, bought at a PCFair in 2006.

This is a PriceWatch entry, so I’m just entering details here.

Item: Mini DV video tape, 60 min, pack of 3
Brand: Panasonic
Price: MYR 45.00
Date of Purchase/Survey: 02/10/2009
Place of Sale: MidValley Megamall
Comparison: Dubai, 03/05/2007 (pretty much the same price)

Let’s talk about friendship

The October 2009 company newsletter – the newsletter’s second issue, following the inaugural September 2009 issue – will have a theme of “Friendship”. The Editorial Board has invited staff to contribute an article of not more than 300 words on the topic. I have two reasons for not submitting to the newsletter. First, I’d rather write to a wider audience anyway. And second, the deadline’s passed. Hehe.

It’s a good topic for the internal company newsletter, especially since the majority of the staff is in Dubai, separated from family. Friendships, especially workplace friendships, take on a whole new significance for them.

“You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends.” Our friends, then, are a reflection of us. After all, if you choose your friends, then your selection must say something about your priorities and personality. Why would you choose a friend who is incompatible or only serves to introduce aggravation and grief into your life? And yet, we need variety. How would we discover anything if all viewpoints we encounter reflect only our own thoughts? Good thing then that we don’t have complete control over our friends.

There are many flavours of friends we collect in our lives. There are those long-term kindergarten friends, the ones we grew up with in the neighbourhood, and have maintained a relationship over the ages. It’s possible this friendship has morphed over the years, but some bonds really do last. The same can be said of all the school friends we make, from grade school to middle school, and onto high school. These are the people we spent the majority of our time with during our formative years, in a feedback loop as we formed our unique personalities. A select few will graduate with us to adult life, but most will fall by the wayside as lives separate, geographically, spiritually, philosophically, politically.

Friendship in adult life gets more complicated, and usually more fulfilling. Your university friends are the ones most likely to last your lifetime. These are the friends who slaved over assignments and reports with you, who participated in clubs and associations with you, who ranted against professors with you, who partied with you, who cheered at sporting events with you. For most people university was the first period away from home, so it was a big deal. You had to be independent, and were going through that experience with others who were also in the same boat. Some people were insular during this period, only making friends from those in the same course as them. Others threw the net wider, and made friends studying other disciplines. But your classmates from freshman year are most likely to be your closest friends.

And then there are the friend “also-rans”. There are the acquaintances at work, some of whom genuinely became friends and stuck around in your life even if you moved jobs. There are the friends you made online, some of whom you even meet IRL. This last group is probably the only group of friends you actively sought out, and not people who evolved into friends through circumstance. However, most of them would remain as acquaintances, or fellow hobbyists.

The other friends we have to ask ourselves about, to be certain they are friends, are the ones we meet through circumstance. These are from all those other groups; the friends from school, from work, and so on. Brought together by our situations, we sometimes find out that we’re only friends as far as we remain in that condition. Move schools, swap courses, move to another country, change jobs, and we may find that we no longer connect with our old friends.

“Friends come and go, but true friends always stay.”

True friends are those who stick with you, even after circumstances change. Don’t belittle “only friends” though; they’re valuable because they lend you a social life, and they introduce that needed variety into your life. Your circle of true friends is probably smaller though. The Internet and social networking doesn’t change this dynamic. Keeping in touch with your friends does not equate to connecting with them.

People change. People grow. Your true friends will grow with you, and accept you as you change. Treasure these people.

Typhoon Ondoy

The big news for me this weekend wasn’t Tiger Woods not winning The Tour Championship but still winning the FedExCup (though that was a great story; and lest we forget, Phil Mickelson had a great final round, winning the Tour Championship in style), or Lewis Hamilton winning his second F1 race of the season (and Jenson Button still edging teammate Rubens Barrichello for championship points). No, the big news for me was Typhoon Ondoy, internationally known as Tropical Storm Ketsana.

Ketsana started attacking the Philippines on Saturday morning, 26 September 2009, but people were as yet unaware of how bad it would get. Consequently, business went on pretty much as usual. It was only later that day that it became obvious that this storm was going to be more devastating than normal. Ketsana was historically the worst storm to hit Metro Manila in recorded history, and dumped more rain on the city than Hurricane Katrina did on New Orleans.

I only found out about it Saturday night, and I immediately turned to the net for news. Electricity was out in many parts of Manila, and the phone lines were mostly down. SMS’ took awhile to reach, but at least they made it through. Calls were difficult to place, but at least the Internet was up.

Clean-up’s gonna take awhile, that’s for sure.

Reminds me to be thankful that Malaysia is safe from most natural hazards. Sure, we still suffer from floods, and landslides, and even took a hit from the Asian Tsunami. But Malaysia doesn’t get anything on this scale.

Who? Sara. SARAwho?

Well, looks like I’m now showing up on the SARAwho blog aggregator as well. Thanks, boringest, for the add!

I had earlier written about my search for local blog aggregators, which took me to SARAwho. Of the ones I reviewed, it was the only one with a regional reach, although how regional is up for debate.

I’ll admit, even though when I do visit the site, I don’t click through most of the links, it’s still useful as a snapshot of the current conversation. There’s something appealing about the simple presentation, with only posts within a set timeframe showing. It focuses your attention only on what’s current, instead of sending you scrolling through post after post until you notice that you’re reading posts from a couple of days ago.

Only wish there were more regional blogs on SARAwho though. That would make it more interesting.