Blog Currently Inactive

Actually my sad little bitching spot has been dead for sometime, just posting a random post to help it stay online. Will I make a return? Hopefully, if I manage to pull thru my finals.!

Dear Levi Strauss

Dear Levi Strauss

I love your line of jeans.
they dont make me look like a wannabe rapper with my pants almost dropping off
they are comfy to wear
they protect me from artic breezes of Dunedin
i fell off a motorcycle and you did not tear
i slipped off my skateboard and u did not tear
i slipped on ice and fell on rough tarmac and u still refused to tear
they make me look slim, in a not so skinny way
i have 100 reasons to continue buying jeans from you
as i have 100 reasons to never buy perodua or proton

SO, please do not give me a reason to stop believing you
your prices have shot up the skyline since the last time i bought a pair of your good jeans 2-3 years ago.
they are good jeans
i do not want to stop buying a good line of products
as i have stopped believing in nike because they have resorted to selling shoes worth 20 cents for 300 bucks
feel free to breach the Hugo Boss, Prada, Armani market, but please leave ur layman line of casual jeans as it is.

thank you.

Dear Malaysia, This is Why We Still Suck Balls

Well, this article is not as offensive as the title sounds, but after 2 months of holidaying here, i just wanted to point out a few things that is still preventing malaysia from ever being a modern and successful country.

1. A decade ago, yes, 10 years ago my eldest brother applied for a MAS (Malaysian Airlines) Student card, known as MAS Grads. At that time, efficient computers and high speed internet were practically non-existent, and applications were made with pen n paper. My brother managed to submit an application to the MAS branch office here in Sibu, and a good 4 weeks later, he got his card.
10 years later.... I went to the MAS office here in Sibu, only to be told to go and download my own application form and print it out myself. Not only must i post all the forms and stuff myself, i found it bewildering that since they already made a webpage for it, why not give the service of accepting applications online? And oh, not only do they not accept visa, mastercard, or any kind of online banking method, they only accept postal orders. MY GOD, i havent used a money order since i was 12 years old.
Jeng Jeng Jeng! guess how long do they need to give me my card? 4 weeks. After 10 years, 10 bloody years of computer and internet advancement, they still need 4 weeks. Fantastic.

2. We all know that Sibu (and some other cities and towns) are likely to experience from mild to serious floods every rainy season annually. They had the whole year to prepare. Yet, they started a irrigation project known as "flood control" a few weeks before the rain starts. I am no engineer, but by the scale of the project, it seems to me it might take at least a few months. And When the rain STARTS, they start lifting road levels. Today u pile up some soil, rocks and sand. Tonight the rain washes half of it back into the drain.
What is this??

3. Satu Malaysia. I just cannot help using a line i've picked up in NZ. "YEAH RIGHT!" We have been fed stuff like this since we were born. I am no big racist, but i can say that by the look of things, it is bluntly impossible. Yes yes, non-malays and non-bumiputeras have less a share of scholarships, subsidies, etc etc. I have learnt to accept that fact a loooong time ago. But that's largely because i was never ill-affected by it in any way, i was lucky to have gotten a scholarship, although the chinese, indians and all the other races held only 30% of the share. I will finish my studies and come back and work as my contract says. What about those who deserved it but never got the chance? Wat about the multi million dollar companies suddenly told they were obligated to give a share of their company to malays and bumis? If u told them "one malaysia", i think they will tell you i want my money back. So Malaysia, i think most of us would agree if u stop focusing on all this unity shit, unless u are willing to provide equal rights to everyone (which i think will never happen). There are bowls to be filled, students to be taught, roads to be fixed, trains and buses to be bought.

4. There was a time when malaysian made cars sucked balls (in fact they still do). The government then decided to aid the local companies by issuing a heavy tax on all imported cars, in hopes of making malaysian cars cheaper and more appealing (but they were never actually cheap). After some years- excuse me, correction, after ALL these years, people are still willing to pay a taxed DOUBLE the price for brands like toyota, mercedes, honda and the like. What does this tell us? Malaysian cars suck. Yes, they suck that bad, that bad until ppl are willing to pay double the price for an imported car. Proton has the "longest" car factory in the world. Only to be called "some factory in a forest producing heaps of trash" by a car critique. Wat about Perodua? Well, i have nothing to say for the perodua, other than that it also suck balls. But that's not their fault, because unbeknown to most of us, Perodua is actually the malaysian version of Daihatsu, a company that produces low budget cars and also lorries. That's why their cars suck, cause they're meant to suck. A british channel showed the show host bashing up a perodua with a sledgehammer and then lighting it up with a stick of dynamite. yes, it's THAT bad. I thought that after years of collecting enourmous amounts of tax money from import cars, the money would continue to fund the local car industry, till they will one day provide us with good malaysian cars worthy of our support. I guess not. If u want our support, give us concept models that look good and feel good. DO NOT give us concept models that look like FUNERAL PARADE CARS (Proton Juara), DO NOT GIVE US 2 different cars that are actually the same, only one made longer and given a different name. (proton "gen 2" and it's longer brother "persona"). The speed limit is 110-120kmh. DO NOT GIVE US cars that starts rattling and vibrating badly at speeds of 90kmh. DO NOT GIVE us cars that are taller than they are wide, and looks like a freaking mailbox.

A very interesting quote

When religion was strong and science was weak, men mistook magic for medicine, now when science is strong and religion is weak, men mistake medicine for magic.

Syntha-6 update.

a brief report on my bulking with the syntha-6 supplementation. well, i think i've taken about 800g or syntha-6 in about 2 weeks. seemed to have packed on 500g of muscle. not a very extraordinary number, but i believe my diet here is the main problem. since i'm not cooking for myself, and neither do i want to shock the daylights of my parents by eating 100g of meat every meal, and have 6 meals a day, i suppose all is good. might be a psychological effect from drinking protein shake, but i will continue to go through one or possibly 2 more bottles before heading back to NZ. (and of course, intensive gymming is still ongoing).

IMPORTANT POST - AN ATM's Reverse COde Funtion, A Way to Counter ATM Robberies

I have just recently been checking up on all my previous forwarded chain mails, and found this title interesting, thus went to have a look.

This is especially for atm robbers who forces you to withdraw money from the atm (meaning, u have yet to key in your pin number). Unless you know what you are doing (special forces perhaps?) you should not resist, however strong or well trained you are. They might be armed, or have accomplices waiting nearby.

Instead, what you should do is key in your pin number in reverse. For example if ur pin is 1234, you should key in 4321. The atm will give you the money u requested, and gives a silent alarm to the police or security. I did some online reseach, some ATMs will dispense the money, and some will have the money stuck halfway out (the ATM "pretends" to have malfunctioned). If you are unsure of this function, ask your bank officers the next time you visit the bank. I bet even some of them are unaware of this.

No many ppl even know the existence of the ATM's security function. It might mean the difference between life and death situations sometimes. Thus, i beg all my readers to pass this on to their friends, and them to their friends.

Because i'm unhappy, i will now talk about food.

Under certain circumstances, i'm in an unperfect mood (not totally bad mood), thus i will now teach my readers how to make a good burger. (not the original burger, art picture taken from tastymealsathome.com)

You will need:
750g minced beef (you may replace with chicken or pork, but beef works the best)
250g sausage mince
2 big brown onion, sliced into rings or half rings
1 small red onion, finely diced
1tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
2 tbsp tomato sauce
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1 egg, beaten
salt and pepper
2 tbsp olive oil (or any cooking oil u desire)
burger buns
lettuce
tomatoes

sauce ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil (again, replaceable with cooking oils)
1 small red onion finely diced
3 tsp vinegar
1 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup tomato sauce
2 tsp Worchestershire sauce
2 tsp light soy sauce

Wash your hands, especially after you've just gone to a toilet.
Combine beef and sausage mince, diced onion, sauces, breadcrumbs and egg into a large bowl, and season with salt and pepper, or u might add flavours of your own. Mix well with hands until smooth and even. Divide into six portions. Dampen your hands and shape the portions into patties of desirable thickness and size. Put patties on a tray, cover or wrap, and leave to marinate for at least 30 minutes (in a fridge if possible).

To make the sauce, heat oil in a pan over medium heat. Fry onion until they turn translucent or start to smell strong (about 5 minutes i suppose). Add the ingredients of the sauce and keep stirring until it comes to a boil. Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer for 3 minutes.

Now, on to the burgers! Preheat a pan or barbeque pan on medium until hot. Add a tablespoon of oil and cook the onion rings, until tender and golden. Remove onions and keep them warm. Brush both sides of a pattie with oil, and fry each side of the pattie for 6-8 minutes until tender and juicy. Arrange your burger as u desire, top up with cheese to make a cheeseburger. Top up with the bbq sauce u prepared.

There u have it. A burger kills stress like a ninja. I bloody need one.

Adventures of a Hard Gainer

As a kid, i was pretty fleshy, but as i entered primary school, my bad picky eating habits began to develop along with my river of ego. That, plus vertical growth, made me thinner and thinner. when things proceeded till form 4, things started to get really out of hand, when my raging hormones decided to take vertical growth to a whole new level, propelling me up to a height of 176cm and on the rise (currently i am about 179+). at that height, i was still in the midst of 48-49 kgs. after Secondary School ended, i decided to do something about it, eating lots of meat everyday, and went swimming regularly and lifting dumbells of which i had borrowed from my uncle. My mother encouraged me by providing a supply of Appeton weight gain. Then, i did not realize, my methods were incorrect, without professional advice from a trainer, or any research from the internet, my attempts proved ineffective. Managing to propel my weight up to about 50+. (on a side note, reviews of "Appetton weight gain" are mostly negative reviews, saying that it is ineffective and a waste of money)

As most of my weight sessions only involved bicep curls, triceps extensions and shoulder lifts, my arms grew the most, by the rest of my torso remained weak and frail. That was mistake number 1. Not understanding then how the human muscle system worked, i found it bewildering why i lost arm wrestling matches although i had packed on bulging biceps and triceps; chest strength is actually the number 1 factor in arm wrestling.
Mistake number 2, i did not do sets in increament, as in doing multiple sets with increasing weight, and finally a cool down set of lighter weight.

College life proved as busy as hell, plus the limited transport, my efforts were halted altogether. My good homeboy Ong and I decided to race each other by eating as much meat as possible each day, and doing some pushups, the efforts were nothing more than a speck of dust blown away. WOnder where all that beef went to. Time was the major constraint, and watever free time we had left were either spent resting (involves sleeping), or a little downtown trip to destress. obviously an addition of gym to our ridiculous college timetables and demands proved impossible.

Then, the big move to NZ, this is where my efforts started to show results. Under the influence and guidance of my friend Iswandi, i began to frequent the gym, and in my spare time, read up articles from menhealth magazines, and the menhealth website itself. Perfecting techniques, and putting time into was not easy. Uni life proved just as demanding, and in the second semester i found a part time job, making things harder, till a certain point during final exams, gym efforts came to a freeze altogether. Nevertheless, i managed to follow as strictly as possible. Gym a minimal of 3 times a week, and 6 meals a day.
Gym involved some pre-weight cardio (mostly running), followed by weights. I started with full body workouts, setting the base for more gains. Followed by more focused workout plans for each muscle group, eg, chest, back, arms, abs or leg, all the while making sure to give enough recovery time after each workout, so not to over stress myself.
6 meals a day u say? As i could not afford protein shakes which are direly important for hard gainers, i resolved to old fashioned eggs and milk. normally breakfast involved some bread with peanut butter with 2 eggs and a tall glass of milk. Lunch and dinner normally consists of rice with lean meat and veges. The 3 snacks spread out between meals are a mix and match of milk, fruits (i recommend bananas), peanutbutter sandwiches (peanuts are an excellent source of protein), and eggs.
In addition, I always took 1 tall glass of milk and 3-4 egg whites right after my workout (protein shakes have since taken over this old fashioned method). all in all, in a workout day, i would ultimately consume 7-8 eggs (only 2 yolks though). scary isnt it? but even a gym assistant advised me the same.
How successful was i? Given i could not give full commitment everyday of every week, i gained 10kgs over 1 year. But i have heard tales of really committed and dedicated guys packing on 8-10kgs of muscle in 2-3 months. Until i can afford to gobble protein shakes like water, i guess my progress will be at a slower pace, but i hope to continue working and keep it going!

Hope this story proves to be inspirational!

What everyone should do to their D-Link Modems

Okay, the internet is a very important part of our lives, thus making the Lan Router or Wireless Router a very marketable item. but for the unfortunate few of us who bought the D-link routers (eg D-link 2640T, and it's brothers), we are bound to get disconnections or u like them "line breakages". then u'd have to frequently reset your modem which kills the point of wireless. I dont like walking downstairs, pushing a stupid button, and walking back up every so frequently.

What's the problem? bad casing design, providing poor ventilation, causing overheating of the components inside. There are a few solutions to this, but for those who are not good at handling heat sink components or doing wiring, this is the simplest.

Here's your lousy modem, open up the screws at the bottom, and crack up the top case. This voids ur warranty, so i wouldnt do this if it's brand NEW.


Cheap laptop coolers provide extremely lousy and weak fans, but some of them are adequately functional. So, my suggestion, u need three components. A usb - wall plug adapater (as above) (this is a device that allows u to charge usb devices like ipods using a wall socket), second a cheap and lousy laptop cooler (u are going to disassemble this), and a good strong casing fan that will fit snugly in your router (ALways Measure before u buy).

Now, what you have to do is

There will be wires connecting the laptop cooler's usb plug to it's fans, what u need is just the usb plug + the wire. so cut off the fan(s) saving as much of the length of the wire as possible, then strip the end of the wires to expose the copper insides. Next cut off the three pin power plug off from ur casing fan. Do the same here, strip the ends of the wires.

Now, you should have two exposed wires from the usb port, and 2 exposed wires from ur casing fan. Now u dont know which to connect to which dont u? Try them out, dont seal them permanently with duct tape yet. There's an arrow sign on the casing fan, indicating which way the fan should spin. When u get it right, seal it with duct tape. make sure u tape each wire separetely, not together.

Now, for me, i just attached the fan to my modem with sticky tact. if u wanna do it more professionally, i suppose u could get some hard tools and drill a hole in the casing, but it's hard pro work.

here's how it should look (this one is done with the original lousy laptop cooler fan only)

walah, so much for ur heating problems. U can now enjoy more hours of endless onlining. if u wanna go pro, u could google up some insane mods to modems, using various heatsinks. for those of u who dont know, heatsinks are metal components (usually made from aluminium or copper) which provides a larger surface area for heat dissipation).

Operation "Fat-Man" Continues with Syntha-6

In case you dont know, Fat-man is a historic atomic bomb, or in the game "Fallout", it's a portable nuke launcher.

But in my case, it comes in the form of stacking up more flesh on my frame. Lotsa meat, lotsa gymming, lots of eating, and lotsa staying at home doing nothing, i hope will help me stack on some pounds. The process has been going on for a year now, albeit some disturbances to the plan from late nights at work, late nights studying for exams and the like. Of the 10 months in New Zealand, i could say the operation has been commencing for around 6 months (disturbances to schedule included), i managed to stack on almost 10kgs.

Now, hopefully in this 2 months of pure vacation, i will hopefully add on more results to brag about in operation "Fat-Man". With no supply of good milk and cheese or spagetthi, i shall employ the help of another source, it's called "Syntha-6". It's a highly rated protein shake that's marketed in the US and also Asia. And i've heard good results from the guys at the gym. I also heard it's not as disgusting as the rest. Well, most of the shakes taste like vanilla, choc or strawberry ice cream, but at the end of the day, you'll pretty much get sick of it all, and just swallow it whole.
There you have it, the lean-mean (it's mean red, but i think it's not so lean), Syntha-6 bottle of which i will experiment myself on. If it works for me, i think it's gonna work for any skinny people out there. It seems to work just fine for those who want to cut down fat, and put on some lean muscles. It is a bit expensive, but if the results are good, i think it's going to be worth my time.