Talk about this year, it's been like a roller coaster.

First half of the year was quite peaceful. Was still a helpdesk and life has not much of surprises.

I was addicted to drama series and movies - watching online - thanks to ppmate.

I once watched 10 movies in a weekend. 

Then visited Singapore in June. I thought it was quite meaningful - seeing the colleague at that time whom I've always been talking on the phone.

But in reality - I visited 4 Singapore hospitals, because they are working in hospitals :)

In July, it's a roller coaster in my life - I met a girl whom I got crazy with - it took us 3 weeks to get together but another week to break up.

But I took roughly another 3 weeks to recover.

Since then it was all about work work work work work work work work.

Yes, starting August, it was non stop working season. But i'm grateful that I could learn a lot!

This year it's the most inspirational year - I wrote no less than 10 compositions.

This year I met some new friends. Among them, I'd say it's lucky to get to know Yin Fong. She lives just 300m away from my house but she's going to Singapore.

Basically my life nowadays had settled back to the 'normal' mode (actually it looks more like 'loner') - like the one in the first half year - I watch movie and go shopping alone, but I feel fine cos I can do what I wanna do anytime and anywhere.

The reason why I said settled back was because - after the break up I had gone thru that 2-3 weeks of, well, suffering. Luckily I've got kitty to help me to get thru this.

Not to forget, Nicole a.k.a SanPo and Ron as well. They listened and chatted a lot with me during that tough time.

This year is also a year when I sort of discovered occultism - I become interested in Horoscope and Zodiac sign (western and eastern ;) ) 

My Malay speaking improved.

The last day of the year was sad cos my grandma passed away. 

But it's ok. It'll be 2008 soon, and it'll get us stronger.

New Year resolution? Hope everybody stays healthy and happy.

Here, referring to my mum's mum. Somehow, I found myself wordless while typing this - and sorry for the bad English.

She's a 大埔客.

According to my mum, she was one of the prettiest woman in her village.

And maybe because of that, she's serious about her look.

Even when my sis took a photo earlier this year, she asked my sis if she looks fat or bad in the photo.


According to my dad, when I was just born and took out from hospital, it was raining heavily.

He said that he won't forget the moment - When we arrived at granny's house, my granny took over me from my dad's arm.

According to my parents, my current Chinese name 焙元 was adopted with the help of her from the temple - my original name 禾粦didn't give me good health.

My granny was good at making the Chinese food.

It's a must to praise her Hakka cuisine :)

Yong tau foo and especially Abacus Beads (read an article HERE, I wanna try it next time when i'm in SG!!!)

Abacus Beads

It was quite some time ago when we last tasted her Abacus Beads, mainly due to her leg problem.

For festive season, she would make rice dumpling, Chinese mooncake (I particularly like the Shanghai version than the 'ice skin').

For my choosy mouth when I was small, she once advised me: 有得吃就吃，有得疴就疴 (Literally translated as "Can eat, eat. Can shit, shit" means don't be picky)

Another sentence that I would recall is "食屎疴飯" This is used when she jokingly scolded my aunts.

I like her soup. But it's partially my grandpa's help as well - apart from her really tasty soup, my grandpa, who is quite thrifty, would add in the instant noodle seasoning packet (chicken flavour, of course) instead of salt.

My grandma was popular among the direct sales persons. She could be easily convinced. And that's why, she had been spending a lot of money on those products - even though my grandpa was always unhappy of that.

Her Rheumatoid arthritis (it's easier to known as 風濕病 ) got worsen in recent years.
That constrained her mobility.

There's a photo earlier that I lost a chance to take, which I thought was very loving. - when coming out from the lift, my grandpa was holding tight of her hand to assist her in walking - just like those young couples

A month ago, there's some pus in her leg - and yes, she's a diabetis patient - my grandpa brought her to a clinic. The doctor took out the pus, but the wound had never recover.

Then few days later, the wound got worsen and she was admitted to hospital.

It was until two weeks back, my godbrother(who's a doctor) mentioned that her right leg need to be cut because the wound will never heal.

So two weeks ago her leg was cut.

Psychologically, we understand how she feels - for a person who's once very pretty and serious about her look.

She refused to eat and to drink.

And until last Wednesday, she suddenly spoke a lot, and was energetically scolded some people :P （now we know that it is 回光返照 [lightning  before death] )

After that, she can't speak anymore.

Few days back, doctor mentioned that many parts of her organs were infected - especially her lung.

That made her impossible to speak and in the past few days, we knew that she tried very hard to speak - but just couldn't.

She was sleeping most of the time. When she opened her eyes, she tried to look around anxiously for my grandpa.

Today, at 3.15pm, she passed away.

The whole case evolved a bit fast - it all happened within a month - which she had gone thru the painful process.

When I heard the news, I was in the meeting. Right after the meeting, I walked to the emergency staircase and cried for a while - I don't know why, I just can't help it.

Maybe it's not easy to lose someone close. Or maybe I'm happy that her suffering had come to an end.

I hope my grandpa can be strong on this.

Rest in peace, grandma. We love you and we will miss you much.

Created by a British artist + engineer

Looks cool and guess it'll be a hot gadget if it goes on sale next year.

While it's not cold in Malaysia, may the people in the North keep warm,

People in the south will likely to be sunbathing

No matter who and where you are, most importantly, Merry Christmas!

A 10-year-old song.

Some say it's a song about suicide.

To me, the music is soothing. Period ;)

Quite a good cover of The Beatles' I Call Your Name

It's a nice and simple song from The Beatles.

I'm sorry to hear the news of Brenda.

Wish that she'll be strong enough to get thru this hardest time.

Take care.

Composition: 2007

My granny, oh poor granny.

Her diabetic disease got worsen, there'll be an operation either tomorrow or on Tuesday.

She'll lose her right leg after that.

At the moment, she's quite weak, when we visited her this afternoon, she was sleeping.

When we were about to leave, my grandpa had to whisper at her ear, and touched her hair before we left.

I could only pray, that there'll be a lucky star protecting her - to get through all these.

And this Christmas, like my sis, I only have one wish - to have my granny recovered.

I hope, my composition can help. Dear God, please help her.

Download

Now, that's a cool good reason why to get a SmartforTwo, for a country especially like Malaysia :P

This one, laughed my ass off, and I kept mumbling "soh*i, soh*i!" when I saw what happened.

muahahahah

The starting of the movie was quite slow and boring.

While watching the movie, I kept recalling 28 Days Later as well as 28 Weeks Later.

But as the movie progresses, it's getting better in the middle and I'm quite satisfied with the ending - hence the movie title :)

While it's cool to watch, but I have to say, 28 Days Later is better, and even 28 Weeks Later is more action packed than this movie.

But after all, he's a legend, no doubt about that.

Rating: 3/5

I do find some simlarity between this movie and the Shrek series.

Shrek was being quite sacarstic to the fairy tale, Enchanted made the actor/actress bringing fairy tale into real life -_-

The movie was funny, that's no doubt. At a time I thought I'm watching Bollywood movie (you know, when they started singing and dancing on the field)

The ending was still "Happily ever after" but it's a twisted one ;)

But I thought it does carry(interpreted by myself actually) quite a good message:

"You can't be too realistic(pessimistic is the better word) about the life, neither you should be too naive about it."

Rating: 3.5/5

(explanation to the above statement: Robert insisted there's no fairy tale, while Giselle insisted there's something called "happily ever after")

It's been the stress-iest month,

maybe busiest is the better word cos me and my colleague had never been home earlier than 9PM, daily.

And perhaps the scariest month, due to the incident happened last Friday.

Quite sad as well, cos my granny's diabetic disease is worsen.

I'm glad that, this weekend, I have Epica Award winning adverts that cheered me up quite a lot :)



Some portion of the ads were featured in the Ad Day Issue#16

I hope you could enjoy as much as I did.

Children's world are always funny

A peaceful ad. Looks like an utopia world but it's a environmental disaster if to use that much of flowers :P

THIS AD LAUGH MY ASS OFF!!!

The 2007 part is the key.

LOL!

Cool. I like the ad because it uses The Beatles' tune - Come Together :)

It's amazing that The Beatles is still influencial after 40 years.

Nice idea, using a past perspective (sort of) to look at the present technology we have.

Thus conclude one thing: Nothing is impossible :)

A nice follow up to the last year's Epica Award Winning ad.

BUT, what about the burp..??!

Kinda cool Guinness ad.

Breads that keeps you fit :)

Hehe, but it's kinda thoughtful, IMHO :)

The dog is always to blame.

Poor but cute dog! :)

I can quite understand the advert, but I'm surprised that, this could be an Epica Award winner.

The winner last year (Coke) was a lot more better

Hmm...

So happened that the car plate is WKT as well.

Nothing to do with the previous post but... just look at the two photos.

I'm sure you'll feel speechless as well :)

Something happened last night, which made me feel that living in Malaysia is NOT safe.

I was on call - server at my client side had issue. So I had to go out at 1AM something.

What happened was on the highway, I didn't realise there's a fast coming car from my left, when I was about to turn left.

That car managed to have emergency break, so I continued driving.

Then that car tried to overtake from the right, I had to make emergency break and it was so close that my car was gonna hit their car.

There were two Indians in that car. The one sitting on the front left made the hand signal to ask me to stop at the road side.

I thought my car really hit theirs,

I stopped my car in front of theirs and two of them came down from their car and approached my car, one on my left the other on my right.

They straight away tried to open the door of my car.

Luckily they were locked.

The guy on my left shouted "KELUAR!!!" ("GET OUT" in Malay) and I saw there's a beer bottle in his right hand.

Without hesitation, I turned to first gear and quickly drove away.

That guy threw the bottle on to my car.

At a time, I drove at 140km/h.

I was scared, apparently.

Once I had arrived at the client side, I checked on my car - there's no 'wound' on my car - it really makes me wonder if that two fella were trying to create 'accident'

I could only recall their car plate's alphabet - WKT, a kelisa, and that's it.

Imagine if i stepped out of the car at that very moment, I could have:

1) Lost my laptop (there were so many work related, important data inside)
2) Lost my car
3) Lost my handphone
4) Beaten up
5) Hospitalised

I really lost faith in this country, after the incident. What happened was so real, and I do feel for those victims featured in the newspaper, for the similar incidents.

Few 'luckily' things I did in this incident:
1) I didn't step out of the car
2) I initially wind down a bit of the window, in order to talk to them, after seeing their intention, i close the window straight away
3) I stopped my car in front of THEIR car, which made me easier to drive away
4) I stopped my car but didn't turn off the engine
5) I stopped the car and temporary ended the possible 'chase'. Then they approached my car and they needed time to go back and drive their car(which didn't really seem to be the case cos when I left them, they were standing there), in case they wanted to chase after me.

What's next? I think it's really time to plan for my future, wisely. I must admit, I feel hopeless about the safety of this country.

She's been forwarding a lot of interesting email, and helped me a lot during the stressed out or boring time in the office :)

Thanks and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

He is Best British Competition Driver, Best International Racing Driver and Rookie of the Year - the award presented by Autosport. 

When he talked about the lost to Kimi Raikonnen (by just one point), he mentioned:

"You have to lose to learn how to win. We'll be right there next year."

That's the quote of the year in F1 I reckon.

Bravo, Hamilton!

The communication part has hit me hard this time :) ( it's actually T_T ) 

The worst part is, on top of the weak communication I've established, I've made assumption.

Those assumptions caused confusion, delay, frustration, dissatisfaction and most importantly, a massive stress burden on my shoulder.

I'm a person who has a lot to say than done - that's another fatality as well...

Moving forward, three things I've gotta always keep in my mind

1) Communicate as much as possible
2) Don't make assumption
3) Walk the talk. (especially the two items I've mentioned above)