Cute Code names

Now everyone of you who know me a bit well knows that I have been an Android supporter ever since I got onto the smartphone wagon. I resisted the temptation to buy the iPhone which was good thing and hopped onto the Android bandwagon when I got my first smartphone which is the HTC Desire. 2 years on I am still using it and mildly still happy with it.

Alot of people label me as an Android fanboy but in the end I am tech junkie and I will even recommend Apple products depending the requirement. However again I digress. This post is about how Google the makers of the popular Android smartphone OS names their OS version. They name them thing like Froyo (Frozen Yogurt) Donut, Eclair, etc. However that is not only it, each time a new OS comes out their front lawn gets a make over. Check it out....

Now we start off with of course the Android mascot which is the little green logo and the first Android Operating system was dubbed Cupcake which was version 1.5 and it came out in April 2009. Next was Donut (V1.6, September 2009) and followed by Eclair (V2.0, October 2009). The they were developing their software goes against the way Apple makes it products. Apple perfects everything before launching anything. They only make one upgrade per year but El Goog can released updates as they go. Some people like it some people don't. Being a tech junkie I love to keep having updates with new features and fixes.

Then came a long stint till May 2010 when they released Froyo (V2.2)....

When I got my Desire in June of 2010, I got the Froyo version which was soon upgraded to Gingerbread (V2.3, December 2010). These were all smartphone OS and when Apple launched the iPad, manufacturers who wanted to rival the iPad were putting Froyo & Gingerbread into their tablets. This wasn't going to be popular because the OS wasn't made for tablets. So El Goog had no choice but to release Honeycomb  (V3, February 2011) which was sort of the first OS tablet. Honeycomb never made it into the smart phone arena.

In October 2011, Google released Ice Cream Sandwich (V4.0) which was the OS that combines Gingerbread with Honeycomb with a heck alot of improvements. Everyone hailed Ice Cream Sandwich to be the great iOS beater then it was pretty close. Android operating system always had the best notification for any smartphones and even Apple which usually sues people for copying their ideas had to "copy" a similar Android notification style. 

Today hails the beginning of a new generation as....

a new statue of jelly bean has been installed on the front lawn. Jelly bean is suppose to be version V4.1 and while I was never really excited about the Ice Cream Sandwich update, reading about Jelly Bean makes me wanna go out and buy a new phone/tablet.

Yea  you can see I am a geek and a bit of an Android fanboy. Hehe

Once again we have to say Thank You to our neighbours

It is that time of the year again where for some unknown stupid reason, our neighbours feel the urge to burn alot of something and cause alot of smoke which in the end gets blown to our country. I mean seriously, if you want to kill yourself please go ahead but don't lar kill us too. They should make a law like smoking. There should be a no burning zone and it includes all the farm land out there in our neigbouring country and of course not to mention ours as well. 

We can debate about how they are burning their farm land but we have to look at our own arse as well because our arse is also on fire.

Those pictures where taken last week and it was super bad. However I think the event coordinators of the Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur Marathon must have hired a bomoh (witch doctor) to clear the haze because it was nice a clear on Sunday. However today it looks like the haze is back.

This picture was taken from my office at 10am and according to our good dear Department of Environment the API (Air Polution Index) at 7am is 67 which according to the scale that it is moderate. At 11am it recorded 67 again. I seriously thing that this is not moderate but it is considered at least unhealthy to very unhealthy. According to the DOE it is "Habuk Halus" (fine dust). I do not remember KL having any dessert anywhere nearby. So where this Habuk Halus come from ah?

Why Do I Do This Every Year?

It has been 3 years running that I have signed up for the Standard Chartered KL Marathon but of course only running/walking the 10KM one. I am still amazed that any human can actually run the half marathon and the full marathon. My body was never made to run anything more then 10km for sure. 

2 years back I signed up as a means to motivate me to jog more and in the end I managed to convince Ee Von and Michelle to join as well. Unfortunately, Amy was working overseas then and since she was coming back that weekend, I decided to spend some time with her. In actually fact I never trained and was thinking I am not gonna make it.

Last year I again signed up with Steph, Amy and Ee Von. This time was motivation for me to lose weight before our wedding. It worked pretty well and even Amy was really into the running and we did it every morning almost without fail. As luck would have it, a week before the run, I sprained my ankle really badly and instead of running I ended up walking the entire 10km. I did it in 1 hour 35min and 23 seconds which is kinda respectable since you know I walked the entire 10km.

This year as usual we signed up again and this time again I was totally not prepared for the run. Amy and I have been lazy at our jogging with all kinds of excuses not to wake up and run in the morning. I did some but definitely not enough to go the distance. I wasn't even confident of being able to better my walking time of 2011. The night before I was bitching about it and really not looking forward to it.

Come the morning, we woke up at 515am, got ready and picked Steph up at 615am. This time instead of driving all the way down to KL, we decided to take the LRT from Kelana Jaya Station. To my horror when we reached the parking it was totally full with people lining up trying to get in. Lucky I am a serial LRT commuter now and I know of the back parking which we ended up parking.

Once again, Steph made us breakfast fit for champions which consist of Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwich, Milo and banana. Look at the difference in size of me from last year to this year. That is the result of not training enough for 2012.

This time around, we didn't go super early like last year which we left my Subang house just before 5am. This time was around 515 and so we arrived to the starting line just in time for the start of our race. Initially it went pretty ok for me. I was jogging at a sustained pace of 7 min 30 seconds per km and at the 1st km mark I was thinking oh man only 1 km. However after persevering I thought I could at least make 5km before I died. However at the 4km marked, my legs were starting to hurt and I decided to walk a bit to cool down. I ran again after 5.5km for about 1km and then died again.

I was thinking OK conserve some fuel and then run the last 2km. At the 8km marked I decided to run again and then all hell broke lose. My left calf started to cramp and I had to stop. I couldn't even run the last 200m to the finishing line. I ended up finishing at a not so respectable time of....

It was only less then 5 min faster then my last year time when I WALKED the entire way. I think that is pretty pathetic. Next year must definitely train and go faster. Oh yea you heard me, NEXT YEAR. Talking to you Steph. Here is your proof. Haha

Lets see if I would get the certificate because Steph told me that if you finish within the 90 min mark they will give you a cert but everyone gets a medal. Since mine is 90min 51 seconds, lets see if I get a medal. Steph finished very respectable 1 hour 17 min, Amy in 1 hour 37 min and Ee Von 1 hour 38min. Ee Von had totally no training what so ever and she was travelling in Bangkok for 3 months. Respect to her.

Stupid Website

We have been hearing a lot of news about how a few MAS flights have been turned around due to engine troubles recently. Mei Foong was actually on one of the plane on the way to Sydney when it happened and I even told her come on you are on Boeing 747 and they have 4 engine. So even if one cuts out still got 3 mah.

Anyway I used to fly quite a bit and I have always liked to take MAS for work because well the company pays for it and also I do not need to stop over which reduces the travel time by a whole load. The timing for MAS flights are also much better most of the times. The service was pretty good compared to most but yea the planes are getting a bit old.

However recently I have seen a real decline in the service by MAS and it once again looks like it is going to shits. I always hail the time of Idris Jala as when MAS was really heading up. A lot of people actually said Idris Jala just played with some of the numbers, sold the planes back to the government and leased it back at a low price to make it look like MAS is making a profit. However at that time I was actually travelling the most and I really did see a big improvement of the service of MAS.

He made some changes for instance the meals on the short flight from being hot meals to simple meals like sandwiches, a fruit and a little snack. I think this is a very good idea and would save MAS a heck alot of money because they all came in disposable packing and are very small compared to the started hot meals.

Anyway I digress, the reason for this blog post was I wanted to head to Enrich website to see if I could actually redeem some of my enrich points before they expire. I forgot my enrich number so instead of logging on, I went to their travel planner to see how many points I would need for say a flight to Kota Kinabalu. I came across this....

Bringing you enriching experience like never before? Oh yea I have to say it is quite enriching because I do not know what the heck the selections where. It asked me to select where I want to travel to and they are all in short travel airline form. I mean what the heck is KIX and KHH? Even the KUL one had 4 freaking selections. I am guessing the person who did this site thought hey everyone works for the airline company and should know that LHR means London Heathrow and LAX-TPE is a flight to Los Angeles via Taipei.

For a company as "prestigious" as MAS, I think this is a very piss poor effort and especially so when they say Bringing You Enriching Experiences Like Never Before. Yea if you tell me what KIX meant it would be very enriching.

Getting My Lazy Arse Working

It has been many many many months since we decided to start printing some stuff to decorate the walls of our very bare walls. I think it has been close to 4 or 5 months since we first got our first canvas printed and I always said we won't hang them until we got more. Lo and behold a few months back I saw a good deal on canvas printing and put in the order. So our bare wall......

Initially we wanted to put the canvas on our red feature wall. However we never used the 3M command hooks before and I was worried that if I messed up the measurements and we needed to peel the hook off, we are going to ruin one beautifully painted red wall.

These 3M Command hooks by the way are super awesome. We got some of them from Steph and fate would have it, it did mess up in one of my measurements and I had to remove the hook. I just followed the instruction and it just popped out without even the slightest damage to wall. If you ever need to stick anything to a painted surface, I recommend to use one of these buggers.

So after decided on the style of the hang, I put on the command hooks, waited an hour for the command hooks to set, made a mistake, took out one of the command hooks and then put it back and waited another hour and finally we got.....

The measurement wasn't gallery accurate but I think it should work for our purpose. By the way this is the first time ever I had any of my photos printed ever. I must have taken a couple of thousand photos and posted it online but never printed. The 2 scenery photos on the left are the ones I took and the wedding photos are by Joshua from Inlight Photos.

Smoking Meat

Since we "borrowed" for long term a BBQ set from Jack, I have been wanting to smoke some meat. We first tried it with chicken wings but I wasn't really prepared for it. In the end it took like 4 hours to smoke and it wasn't fantastic. Second time around we were more prepared and the first step to smoking meat is....

Get the smoking wood chips and the meat to smoke. This time around we decided to try something simple which is lamb shoulders. Why lamb shoulders is because lamb doesn't need to be 100% cooked through and it is quite thinly sliced.

We marinated the lamb shoulder over night with some recipe online with onion, mixed herbs, orange peels, etc. The next day the first thing we did was to soak the wood chips to ensure that the wood chips do not burn when thrown next to the fire....

When the time came, we started the fire...

The most important thing is to ensure that the charcoal is burnt right through with a layer of ash on top to ensure when the lid goes on top of the BBQ that the charcoal will continue to burn without too much oxygen.  The first time we did it we didn't know about this and had to relight the fire a few times. Once the fire was nice and burning....

The wood chips are put into a smoking pouch and holes are punched into the top to ensure the smoke can escape. Then the wood chips are put on top of the charcoal and finally.....

Along with the meat we also had some vege to smoke which will go in half way through....

Unfortunately, again the fire died once and I decided instead of putting the pouch on top of the charcoal, I put it on the side and it will still smoke. So that is what I did and put everything in for another hour and hope for the best. After 1 hour of getting the fire ready, 2 hours of smoking....

The results still a bit of a failure. It took far too long to cook and even after 2 hours of smoking, some parts of the lamb shoulder was still a raw. It taste ok but not as good as it should be.

Next time we must try it again but this time with the smoke pouch on the side to ensure that the fire keeps going and maintaining the heat in the BBQ. I also need to get a freaking meat thermometer which is surprisingly hard to find here in Malaysia.

Today Marks the Date

Today marks the date that one year ago this happened.....

First The NORMAL Group Picture

The Some Angry people picture

Then Start Crazy picture number 1

The Then Paul Frank pose

Now alcohol kicked in so crazy picture No 2

Alcohol Full swing already so crazy picture No 3

Cap things off I kick Sharon Chan for the fun of it

What actually happened was a bunch of crazy people went back to where my parents grew up, mainly to makan as much fuchow food as they can stuff in and as a side line also attend a....

I actually can't believe it that it has been a year now since I signed my life to the devil I signed on the dotted line to get married. I think till today it is still one of the best decisions I made and I would not regret it yet. It was a good weekend we had in Sitiawan with loads of food, laughter and I hope everyone enjoyed themselves and had a taste of what my parents grew up with.

Funny story was that 2 weeks ago we were having drinks at Royal Oak Jaya One and I got burned big time. We met a new friend Chris and he asked Amy and I how long we were married. Amy said almost a year and I said almost 6 months. Why the difference? Well it is all about perspective and in my mind I always thought we got married on the day we had our official wedding dinner which is 11th November 2011. However Amy thinks it is the date I signed my life to the devil we signed on the dotted line to be legally married.

To my uh detriment I found out yea it should actually be the date of our ROM. So we have been married for a good 1 year now and man time has flown really fast. It has its ups and downs but most up and I shall cherish this moment 1 year ago when I legally changed my marital status from Bujang to Kahwin.

How long has it expired?

Over the weekend while heading back to Sitiawan, my mum was talking about her boss is driving around town without insurance and also an expired road tax. Before you go all "Why would he do that?", let me explain, he waiting for his new car and hence being penny wise pound foolish he thinks just drive a few more day and he gets his new car.

Well this conversation made me think, wait when is my drivers license expiring. I took it out and lo and behold it has been expired for a good 2 months.

So today I went to post office, paid 152 bucks to renew my license for 5 years and now got....

Can I throw the previous expired on away?

Steph Call me a GEEK!!!

In the previous post I was called a GEEK by Steph. I have been working recently on doing info graphics for my company and decided to spend about 20 min if office time to do...

Enjoy.......

Geek enough for you Steph!

What Economic Downturn?

Yesterday I was driving to work on the NKVE heading towards the Subang exit and out of the corner of my eye on the fast lane I spotted a nose of a car which was weird. I turned right and saw this....

It was the only shot I got as it was a jam and I know the slow lane is faster, I was waiting for him to catch up but he didn't and I turned off to Subang exit. If you do not know what car is this, it is a Mercedes SLS AMG. If you think eh it is just another Mercedes, think again.

This is the same car that is being used as the F1 safety car. It has a 6.3 liter V8 engine putting out 420HP at 6800RPM and 660Nm or torque at 4750rpm. If that is mumbo jumbo to you then basically it goes really really really fast. If it is the safety car for an F1 car, it must at least be able to drive half as fast as an F1 car right?

Not interesting enough, well according to the Mercedes Malaysia website this car cost RM1,983,083 and roadtax is a whopping RM16,566 and with the registration fee and ownership fee it comes up to a cool RM1,999,999. The RM1 is for you to tip the sales guy. This is not including insurance on your RM2mil car. To put things into perspective that same amount can pay for 184+ years of roadtax for my car. Hehe. 

Checking online if you want insure you RM1,983,083 car will cost you a cool RM51,966 per year. Then again if you bought a RM2mil car RM52k is nothing. I was also told that even 2mil sounds like a lot of money for a car, there are more expensive cars like the Lamborgini Aventador (RM2,900,000) and the Ferrari 458 Italia (RM2,000,000+). The rich gets richer.....

LRT Adventures

Since I think the LRT so often, I think I should start a LRT adventure blog post going. Lots of people loath the LRT because they say got too many people on board and people stink and all that. However if you know where to stand usually there is no one around you. People for some reason like to crowd the entrance. I stay far way from it.

On the LRT you get to take pictures such as.....

The other best thing is you can shop on the way to work or on the way back. Once in a while when Amy and I car pool, she will drop me off at Kelana Jaya station instead of Taman Bahagia. The good thing about Kelana Station is there is a lot of shops there to buy stuff. There is a Guardian, 7Eleven and even the famous Kedai 1Malaysia. 

One day I was trying to be healthy and decided to have tuna and vege for lunch. 

So decided to give Kedai Raykat 1Malaysia a try.....

It wasn't exactly like super cheap as I expected but then again it wasn't the 1Malaysia brand. It was Ayam brand. They didn't have the 1Malaysia brand, if not I would actually buy it and try it. Haha.