So yes, 2009 is here.... but is it any different? In some ways you can say yes. For example, train fare has gone up again. Unbelievable.... considering how terrible the train services are here in the UK.

The last week of my holiday (I took two weeks off from the 20th of December till today) has been surprisingly decent. I managed to pass the driving theory test on New Year's eve (That was to be expected really), so it's all good.

My cousin came over to my place for a week. I also met my friend (Aravind) who came back from Aberdeen and he was also on leave. I spend a few days during the week going to London to help my friend Gaurav in the office, and then visiting museums (British, Natural and Science).


An interesting shapes exhibition at the Science Museum

Apart from that, I also took my cousin to Bluewater and we watched "Yes Man" with Aravind there. Typical Jim Carrey movie really, but I thought it was good since it was stupidly funny.

There isn't much else more to say apart from that... so I'll end this post with a few quotes (Not 100% accurate but you get the idea... I don't have photographic memory) from 2008:

"I think you are suffering from Alzheimer's" - Jeetandra Patel on my ever failing memory, and to be honest there's an element of truth to his statement there.

"This is pure madness" - Muhammad Syed's reaction to my awesome MS Paint comics. If you don't know.... then I rather you not know.

"You, of all people ... don't use online banking?!" - Joanne Ooi surprised by the fact that I (As a Computer Scientist..) don't use online banking when I had to pay a significant sum of money to her...

"You CME people will end up working for BT in Ipswich!" - One of my friend's unintended joke... guess what, he was partly right, because one of them CME people ended up in Ipswich.

"You don't have any money? Then how can you afford to study in the UK?" - Singaporean salesman's reaction when I told him I cannot afford the Archos 605... yes ... I studied in London.. but unlike other people... my case is rather unique. So my point of having no money stands.

"This is my box.... the rest, you cover." - Mei (Peter's girlfriend) giving me her instruction when playing in a badminton doubles match whilst partnering with her. How we managed to win with that strategy remains a mystery to me.

"You see this sign (No U-Turn)?" - My close pal Derek Ho doing a U-Turn in KL, completely disregarding the sign. Of course, it was during late at night when he did that.

"Yes Man has a longer duration than Madagascar 2... therefore it is better and provides better value for money." - My rather clever deduction on which movie is better from looking at the movie's length. Even my friend thought I was a genius. In case you haven't figured it out yet (Or you're slow), my friend was being sarcastic when he mentioned that.

And last but not least.....

"I need to go to the toilet.." - Fu Wing... whenever he needs to do his business... classic. Enough said.

A few incidents have occured over the last 2 months while I successfully failed to update my website once again - no surprises there.

First off, I lost my favourite badminton racquet (This happened 2 months back..)... very bad news indeed, so I won't want to dwell on it too much. It's over, it's gone and I can't get it back.

I remember on the week after I lost my racquet, I had to work from 12am till 4.30am on a Thursday. Slept for 4 hours, then resume working in office from 9.30am till 8pm... not good. Not a day to remember with all the incessant calls from off-shore (India)... it was crazy! Be it on the bus reassuring them I was on the way to the office to sort the matter out, or on my way to lunch... it was hugely annoying whether they know it or not because I find it intrusive and repetitive. I don't have to be constantly reminded over the phone.... perhaps an e-mail would've been nice.

Very soul destroying day - I could feel my mind and body just about to separate when I got back. Had dinner, shower and of course went straight to bed. I've got to be crazy to be even thinking of staying up again. That said, it's been a long time since I was last made to work for such long hours (The only time I remember doing that was for my Final Year project in university and the POST project in India)... so it's definitely not something alien to me.

That aside, celebrated Fu and Nigel's birthday not long after that (Sometime in November) in London and we had hotpot (Steamboat to us Malaysians). It wasn't really that great, but it was okay I guess. The karaoke session towards the end was really crap though, and they even managed to force me to sing Tong Hua once....

Driving lessons have been going not too badly either so far, and I'm improving lesson by lesson.. although I have to control my temper a bit, as I blow my top off a bit too easy over mistakes I make. But it's a good thing (Not the temper bit, the lessons rather).

Not long after I went for a much needed break in Majorca, Spain towards the middle of November... I had a good and relaxing time with my family. For once I need not worry about phone calls from work (Gosh do you know how irritating it is to receive out of office hour calls?).

Which brings us to December now, and I managed to finish both of the company's internal certifications so that's a good thing. I'm also on target to hopefully finish off the driving theory test on new year's eve because of a stupid blunder I made. I forgot to bring the paper counterpart of my provisional license, so I couldn't sit for the exam (originally scheduled on last Saturday...).

Speaking of last Saturday, it was Secret Santa. It was ok overall, although it got pretty drab towards the end..... I don't really want to comment anything more. The Secret Santa section was good though, and I got myself a gin and tonic from Lap's sister. Perfect to drown all my sorrows in Ipswich. Hahaha.

Which brings us to now.... Christmas Day. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. 2008, in my opinion is a year to forget for me unlike the past 2 years. I hate to say it, but I haven't really achieved as much as I would've liked. Hopefully 2009 will bring better tidings.

As this will be my last post for 2008, I present you an interesting bar chart that I've plotted on Excel... it's the amount of entries I've posted over the last 5 years (2004-2008):


It's horrible I know, not even an average of 1 update per month for this year. I'm so ashamed... I will try to rectify this next year.... I hope.

Ipswich. What can I say, having been here for 5 weeks now it's just another typical English town. Small, and quiet. Nothing much more to say.

A lot of my friends have expressed their support to me over the last few weeks while I try to adjust my life down here, and it just made me realise what a bunch of great friends I have. I haven't really found my 'top form' ever since my return from India, and have been at times really disorientated. The move to Ipswich has only piled on more unnecessary misery if I were to be frank.... as I've repeatedly stated my desire to remain in London. I've already been away from home for 7 months while I'm in India, and now I have to live alone again. At least I get to go home on the weekends.

Such is life, when I look around at the current economic situation I'm just glad to have a job to start with. It's pretty bad, with unemployment on the rise. That said, I'm not really enjoying my job if I were to be honest. But I guess beggars cannot be choosers.

So, back with the usual "what happened over the last 2 months" update again.... from my last post till today. Nothing much happened really... apart from me trying to get a project placement in London which didn't happen and I eventually moved on to Ipswich. In between there was Peter's birthday celebration which was good, but I was a bit too tired to be in a celebratory mood, and a karaoke session two weeks ago which I had to rush like a madman to get down to from Ipswich because my workplace is seriously far (Middle of nowhere) from the train station to London.

Other than that, I've also started my driving lessons. Had 4 lessons now, and it's going quite well. The car is incredibly good as well, it's a brand new Mini One. I hope to pass my driving as soon as I can so that I can drive home during the weekends rather than relying on the trains which is crazy and tiring. The instructor claims I'm making good progress, so that's good news I suppose.

What else.... Kusum visited me in the office yesterday (Somehow she had to attend a talk in Ipswich), which was really nice of her. Had a good 30 minutes chat with her before I walked her to the bus station for her to go home. Feels good to be talking to some familiar faces again.

Anyway, I'm running out of things to say. This is how boring my life is. There aren't many exciting events for me to mention.... *sigh*

Maybe I should make it a habit to start updating the website more often, to express my feelings and frustrations in life. And also to improve on my written English, it's getting terrible day by day. I need a new fresh start. I need to believe in myself again. Time to repay the faith that's been placed by a lot of my friends/colleagues/family on me. I'm surprised by how much faith they have in my abilities... I really am. I think they have been misled.... somehow. Haha.

The website could be down for a few days in the next two weeks or so, as I transition to my old host. Time for a new upgrade on the website? You bet! Inspired by Clifford's return to blogging, I've drafted a design on paper at present... hopefully I will get it done soon. Codename? I haven't thought of one yet. Let's call it..... Version X. Yes. The 10th incarnation of the website. About time maybe, seeing that I broke my promise of a new website visual upgrade every 6 months... then again, I haven't had the time or mood to really bother. But let's just hope this version will be a good one... I've learnt a lot over the years. Don't expect it anytime soon though, as I'm overhauling the coding side of things which could take time.

That's all for now.

Well if you think that I've stopped updating this website for good, you can be forgiven, but I haven't really stopped. It's just that ever since I return to the UK 4 months ago, there hasn't been any interesting or significant event to talk about... but I suppose that's just a lame excuse not to update this website.

You would also find that I haven't uploaded any more photos since 4 months ago, and I have a reason for that. A good one. I'm planning to shift my hosting elsewhere when my account expires this October, so that's a bit of good news for you for now..... I'm NOT planning to let this website just die like that.

Just a quick recap on what happened over the last 4 months...

April - I remember celebrating a lot of birthdays. I also splashed out on a new computer monitor to replace my aging Samsung 17 inch. It's the new Dell 2408WFP Ultrasharp monitor. 24 inches, gazillion of connections (HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, DVI again, VGA, etc...) and S-PVA panel to boot. Hooked my PS2 and Wii to it. Awesome stuff.

May - Well it was finally my birthday, and it was a rather low profile one... didn't really celebrate much. Just had lunch with my colleagues (Who are all now in different locations... most of them). Special guest? Praveen, I didn't really expect her to come but yeah her appearance (plus she even bought me a box of chocolate and card... really nice of her) made my day. Also had a rather quiet family dinner that night.

June - Lap's BBQ at Abbey Wood. Had a good day out again with Lap and co. Though something (kinda) freaky happened but I'll leave it there, because I don't think it's appropriate discussing that sort of issue (Other people's problems) here.

July - Dinner with Lap, KCL people and other people. Was really cool meeting up with people (Joanne, Nicola, Simon) again after not seeing them for a while. Thanks to Lap for organising it. Also watched the Dark Knight at the last Saturday. Awesome film... didn't disappoint and lived up to its expectations.

August - London Motorshow!! Yes, the bi-annual motorshow is back in London. Saw a couple of cars that I wanted to see such as the new GTR, Bugatti Veyron, Top Gear cars, supercars... and more supercars.

Here are a few pictures from the motorshow:

The new 2008 GTR. Awesome.


Me testing out the new GTR. I queued 45 minutes for this, but it's worth it.


The 1001 BHP legend. Need I say more?

That's all for now. I will upload more photos when I transition to the new hosting in October... so you'll have to be patient with that for now unfortunately.

Well, it has been a while since I last updated, I've been back in the UK for almost a month...

First off, the Malaysia and Singapore (again!) trip for 10 days was pretty good, but we had a really rough start at Bangalore airport. Thanks to my insistence that we need not bring our police documents because we have a Business Visa, we almost couldn't get out from the country (India). It was probably the most tense period I've ever had with airport immigration, but thankfully my friend had a brilliant idea and he conveyed the police document information over the phone to the police officer, which really saved us from missing the flight!

The trip was a bit short, since part of the trip was spent traveling to KL and Singapore. Nevertheless, felt very good to meet up with old friends and family again.

I don't think I need to write much more about Malaysia or Singapore - I've been there enough times - I do wish I had more time though, because I couldn't catch up with some of my friends (I mean, it was almost impossible to catch up with everyone given the insanely tight schedule) or eat as much as I could have (Too much food, too little time). And also being treated like a celebrity during my meeting with relatives (Some who I have never seen for years) was really unusual for me... the fact that everyone wanted to have a word with me really made me feel good and happy.

It was also the General Elections when I went back - unsurprisingly, the Opposition gained a lot of ground this time round (I mean, who isn't fed up with the way things are being run at the moment). Hopefully things will be for the better for Malaysia's sake.

Soon enough I was back in Bangalore - what a transformation from Malaysia and Singapore. The blaring horns, crazy driving... it all seemed normal to me. I was only back for a week, as I prepared to go back to the UK on the 25th of March.

Again, Bangalore airport is the culprit of sheer incompetence as we (Nigel and I) had to spend around 2 hours just to sort our excess baggage and get ourselves checked in. Phew. That was harder than you think. We stopped over at Dubai (It was an Emirates flight), and then went back to London! Back in the UK, it was really cold. Unusually cold in fact, for this time of the year. But it feels good to be back.

Have I learnt anything from the Indian trip? Hell yes, I think India has taught a lesson or two in terms of appreciating what I have now. Rather than complaining, I should be grateful after what I've personally witnessed there. It's definitely an eye-opener and good experience overall. Not to say that it was great all the time, but there were ups and downs. Will I go back again? Personally not, due to my bad experiences there plus the fact that I have seen quite a lot of the country already, so there's no point in me returning again.

Right now (for 2 weeks already) I'm working in Canary Wharf, London temporarily. It's great, but I might be put into a real project from next week (Hopefully), which should be good I hope. I'm crossing my fingers now. I'm currently working on other prototyping developments and a bit of training.

Apart from that, I've also bought myself a new computer during my trip back to Malaysia. Yes, the temptation to build a new desktop is always there when my previous desktop is clearly aging. I've also converted myself into a Razer user by buying a Razer keyboard, mouse and mousepad (Thanks to Jeet's recommendation!). Pretty sweet.

The amount of games I am yet to play (Not taking into account the Nintendo Wii and DS yet!!!) and movies to watch means that my timetable is pretty much packed for the next few weeks at least.

That's all for now, I need to get into office tomorrow. It gets tiring because I wake up at 7.30am and get home by 7.00pm, but I guess that's how it goes! Good night.