When Visiting Alien meets Resident Americans

gafiL insisted to buy, made me really missed my old days in Texas...

busy

Dr Pepper

Some say it tastes like cough syrup, some say it tastes like cockroach poison, some say only cowboys drink it (well I would not blame them considering Dr Pepper did have Reba McEntire and Le Ann Rimes on its commercials) and some people can't even stand the smell and taste. But it is by all means, the BEST SODA EVER MADE in this world. This is the soda that people in the southwest drinks. We don't care about no coke, we just drink Dr Pepper.

Finally today I found it at the Supermarket section at Isetan. It's been more than 2 years since my last Dr Pepper and even at RM2.80 per can, it's worth every penny (can I use penny here or should I say cent? heh). Anyway is it just me or is it true that somehow our made in Malaysia soda is a lot sweeter than the soda made in the States?

Longhorn Gnome?

I stumbled into this at KLCC.... well not really. Eddy came down from Chicago (escaping the snow and attending a wedding) and would be in town for the week so we went for a Longhorns lunch at Sundanese. Surprisingly the food there is not that bad after all (I'm still wondering why it's a bit empty at lunch time). Anyway Eddy was carrying this fella in his bag all around KL taking pictures of it with the various landmarks. With the pointy hat, I should have left it on Ticub's chair so that it'll shove up his.....(sorry Ticub, just can't help it), well I'll leave that for you to fill in the blank :)

It's That Time of The Year

Yup, it's here again. It's Performance Review time and I'm wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy behind schedule and I need to finish everything in 1 week....Mission Impossible it is then....

Rockets on a Roll???

The Rockets has been on a roll lately. They have been winning 8 of their last 9 games. However, I would have to say I'm not particularly impressed with the team performance as only 3 are against winning team -Spurs, Warriors and Trailblazers- and they lost to the Jazz albeit that was without Yao Ming. The rest of the wins are against weaker teams and the Rockets doesn't seem to be able to blow out any of these teams.

T-Mac's return has definitely given the Rockets a boost in scoring and the Rookies namely Luis Scola and Carl Landry have been exceptional of late helping the Rockets to win games. However, I'm a bit worried lately that Yao Ming's scoring average has drastically gone down with the presence of T-Mac. The game against Golden State was the last that Yao scored 20 points of more. In today's game against the Timerwolves, Yao only managed 16 points to go with 5 rebounds and no block shots. Is Yao having some sort of off nights or is it that he's not taking as many shots? On some nights, Rafer Alston is taking more shots than Yao and for me that doesn't sound right. I mean the guy's averaging only 12 points a game and shoots only around 35% of his field goals. Compare to Yao at almost 50%, it's a no brainer to give the ball a lot more to Yao.

Or is it because T-Mac somehow with his current fitness has been taking all the shots? I'm really wondering and with the game against the Cavs coming right up, it would be interesting to see how well T-Mac match up with Lebron (obviously Lebron's going to give T-Mac a hard time) and how the ball distribution is going to be. Hopefully we can see Yao shooting much more as Ilgauskaus is definitely no match for Yao.....

NY Giants 17 - NE Patriots 14

A surprise result indeed that the Giants managed to beat the almost perfect Pats in the Superbowl. There goes the Pats perfect regular season record down the drain. But the Giants did make some headlines heading to the Superbowl by beating the Cowboys (who had their best season ever in many years) and the Packers (poor Brett Farve).

It would definitely be interesting to see how well the Giants are next season as so far, only the Pats have been a consistent winner in the past 5 seasons or so. But oh well, I'm actually looking forward even more to see how well the Longhorns would do in next season's College Football :)

The Dilbert Principle

Best management book I've read so far (well it's not like I've read that many). It really relates to the situation I'm having at my workplace. Highly recommended as long as you're not a manager or planner or anything in that line :)

Tagged by Ardy

I've been tagged by Ardy

The Rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List eight (8) random facts about yourself.
3. Tag eight people at the end of this post and list their names.
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving them a comment on their blogs.

List eight (8) random facts about myself:

1. I didn't know how to swim when I 1st took up Scuba Diving (and I was not even that comfortable in the water back then)

2. I'm Right Handed but Left Legged :)

3. I was born, grew up, lived and went to school in Terengganu until I was 17

4. Just like Ardy who tagged me, I don't mind eating other people's left overs. Hey, left overs are still food and I really don't like to waste all those food. And although it might sound gross, I do pickup food that falls on the table and eat them with the same reason as previously stated

5. I'm married to the person that I've known for 1/2 of my life and that turns out to be around 13 YEARS! (no I'm not saying we've been together that long, it's just that I've known her for that long)

6. I'm not good at sports that requires me to use my leg as the main tool (ie: football and sepak takraw, yes I'm a Kaki Bangku)

7. I love spending money on things that I don't really need and most of the time ended up selling them for cheap

8. I used to wear size 34 pants...(and that was only like 3 years ago) how I wish I can fit in those again

Now, I would like to tag the followings:
Ass-rif
Judd
Everybody else have been tagged...what to do maa...

Putrajaya & Cyberjaya - The "supposedly" Smart City

Putrajaya and Cyberjaya are both billed as "Smart City" whatever that means. But seriously I don't really understand what so smart about both of them maybe somebody can highlight me on that.

Anyway, I've been to Putrajaya and Cyberjaya a couple of times and everytime, I ended up being lost. I mean these cities are supposed to be well planned and with modern layout and all. But unfortunately, I really found the signboards to be lacking and confusing. Heck everytime I tried to get to Alamanda I would get lost. I mean there're like 2 sign boards directing me to Alamanda then suddenly they all disappeared and I would get confused and ended making a u-turn like 100x before I can reach Alamanda.

OK, now to the main reason why I'm posting this. Recently I was driving to PD and in order to avoid paying any toll, I decided to use the newly opened KL-Putrajaya highway. I followed the route used by the SkyBus from KL Sentral to LCCT and once I reached Sepang I drove through the back road to PD. After the successful drive to PD using the highway without paying any tolls, I decided to use the same way back to KL.

So here is where the adventure begins. As I reached Putrajaya, I tried to look at signs leading me to the KL-Putrajaya highway but I found none and decide just to take the KL-Seremban highway back home. So I just drove along following any sign boards that's leading to KL and guess what? It led me to a ramp that leads to nowhere and still under construction. It was at night and there's not even a single road light along the ramp. I was lucky that the car in front of me must have also made a mistake turning into the ramp and decided to turn back to the main road. I followed the car but as we reached the entry to the ramp, a few other cars were entering it and god I was lucky that none of them were driving fast, if not they might have hit me.

So here I would like to pose a question? Where's the smartness in this Smart City? Putrajaya is supposed to be the administrative capital of Malaysia and the don't even have proper road signs and how come an intersection that's still under construction have no barrier preventing vehicles from entering it? Accidents could have happened by this blatant display of carelessness.

Just yesterday if I'm not mistaken, I read in The Star that people are complaining that they can't seem to find the entrance to the KL-Putrajaya highway from Putrajaya. What good is a highway if people can't use it because they can't find the entrace? I guess this is the problem that arises when you have too many highways leading to the same place but none are properly labeled....

Finally.....

A new member in our family, and he's a boy :) ...finally. As of yesterday I'm uncle to 3 nieces and my dad has always wish to have a grandson.

So his wish was fulfilled today as my sister gave birth to a healthy 3.3kg boy at 1.30pm :)... I'm really excited and I guess I would need to travel down south tomorrow and most probably take this Friday off as I would need to be my mom's unofficial driver... I'll post some pictures as soon as I'm allowed to heh...

I'm Back

It's 2008 and this is my 1st post after about a week into the new year. So what have I been doing lately? The answer would be Work, Work, Work, balik kampung, Work and Work again. Somewhere in between I've been tagged twice by SD. The tag is in Malay so here goes:

Bilakah saat-saat anda merasa boring dan bosan?

Bila membuat kerja/sesuatu yang berulang-ulang tanpa apa-apa yang baru untuk dibuat

Bagaimanakah anda menghilangkan perasaan boring dan bosan tersebut?

Buat sesuatu yang baru atau keluar makan angin

Pernah anda merasa hendak memukul seseorang?

Tentulah pernah

Jika ya, bagaimanakah caranya anda hendak memukul orang tersebut?

Tendang perutnya, siku mukanya dan lain-lain lagi

Pernahkah anda mengamuk dan membaling barang-barang di sekeliling anda?

Tidak. Kalau saya membaling barang-barang di sekeliling saya dan barang itu rosak, saya terpaksa membeli barang baru, semua itu menggunakan duit dan saya ini kedekut orangnya

Pernahkah anda mencintai seseorang? (termasuk sesame jantina dan berlainan jantina)

Tentulah pernah

Siapakah orang yang malang itu?

Jika kamu lihat blog ini kamu akan tahu

Berapa ramai orang yang pernah anda cintai?

Kalau saya jawab disini ada orang akan marah :)

Pernahkah hati anda dilukai?

Pernah dan lebih daripada sekali

Apakah cara anda untuk mengubati luka di hati itu?

Saya bukan doktor, jadi saya tidak tahu macam mana hendak mengubat luka di hati

Antara tortoise, eagle, tiger, elephant, kuda, yang mana satu pilihan anda?

Saya akan jadi elephant sebab elephant besar dan kuat jadi boleh buli orang yang lebih kecil

Berapa ramai orang yang pernah menyukai anda? (termasuk sesame jantina dan berlainan jantina)

Ada orang sukakan saya kah?

Pernahkah anda meniduri orang lain selain daripada isteri/suami anda sekarang? (juga selain daripada mak bapak, atuk nenek, pakcik makcik, adik-beradik, anak-beranak dan sedara-mare) – anda boleh tinggalkan soalan ini sekiranya anda rasa pernah berbuat demikian dan berasa segan untuk menjawabnya hehehe…

Jawapan untuk soalan itu adalah sulit dan persendirian

Anda hidup untuk makan atau makan untuk hidup?

Kalau saya tidak makan saya akan mati

Apakah falsampah hidup anda?

Saya tidak belajar sastera semasa di sekolah, saya jugak tidak mempunyai ijazah doktor falsafah jadi saya tiada falsampah dalam hidup

Adakah anda berasa menyampah dengan tag ini?

Saya rasa sangat menyampah membuat tag ini tetapi kerana saya sedang boring dan bosan, jadi saya membuat tag ini

Jadi apakah yang akan anda lakukan sekarang?

Saya akan membuang masa sehingga waktu makan tengahari dan terus membuang masa menunggu pukul 5 petang untuk pulang ke rumah

Hope

What is hope, ask a bee in cold winter days,
she hangs around the pruned rose bushes,
with the hope that someday the spring will come,
and the flowers will bloom again in the garden.

What is hope, ask the blue bird pair in early spring,
they work diligently to bring every twig and grass,
to build their nest in the corner nook of my house,
I see the hope in the eyes of this lovely pair,
They are dreaming of a happy home for their family.

What is hope, ask a lonesome soul,
When the uncertainties linger around in mind,
hope is the only refuge to calm our fears,
When the loneliness sends one in depression,
the hope of a companionship overshadows the despair.

What is hope, ask a human being,
our life is a sand castle of hope on a sandy beach,
with the lingering fear of drowning in occasional high tide,
our destiny, our future, and our own survival,
hangs around the magical hope,
the hope that is the eternal inspiration.

Longhorns @ TGIF

It's been quite a while since us Longhorns gather outside KLCC (well to be fair, all of us do work at the same place), the last time being the "Buka Puasa" session @ Hussen's place, so yesterday we decided for a change

In conjunction with Nurhi coming back from Veitnam for the holidays, we decided to have lunch somewhere not around KLCC and the place chosen was TGI Fridays at OU. Turn out was OK as most attended except for Yus and Bapak. We were suppose to meet at 12pm there but I only left the apartment around 11.55am as I waited for gafiL to finish up some work that she need to submit this week. Around 12.05pm, I got an SMS from Nizar saying that he's already there (well he live closest to OU anyway these days since I moved out of Mutiara Damansara) and a few minutes later I got SMS from Nurhi saying that she's already there too. I told them both to meet with each other and wait for me at Parkson

Around 12.15pm Hussen called but I told gafiL to answer and around 12.25pm as I reached TTDI, Nizar SMS'ed me again saying that they're all there and gonna go to TGI without waiting for me. Traffic was fine outside OU and I thought that finding a parking would be a breeze. Unfortunately I was so wrong and it took me almost 20 minutes trying to get a parking spot. I finally reached TGIF around 1pm and they already finished the 1st part of their 3 course meal by the time I got there


I ordered the Chicken Mozzarella Quesadillas but the serving size was too small and I wished I had ordered the 1lbs burger instead. But anyhow, it's still good food and got my thumbs up. In comparison to Chili's, all of us do felt that the food at Chili's are a bit better so maybe next time we'll eat at Chili's :). I tried to temp Nizar and Hussen into trying some Carl's Jr burger but both are too full already by the time we finished eating

We ate and chatted until around 3pm and then everybody went their own ways. Nizar and I had plan initially to play bowling but I can't do much with a sprained ankle and sore wrist from last saturday's fall. gafiL helped me buy an ankle support sleeve, and it costs me RM40!, and then we went home

So that's it for our final Longhorns eating out day for 2007 as nobody's working today except for me and Nizar (should've taken a leave today as the road would be rather busy with the closure for the new year's party and all). I'm currently making plans for 2008 Longhorns holiday and I'm hoping it would be a blast just like this year's Redang trip and hopefully more would join this year so that it would be just like the old days...

Happy New Year guys and hopefully 2008 would be a better year for all :)

Singapore on Foot cont'd Part 2