I sleep at 5a.m. the night before due to a lot of LAN games. Woke up two hours later and decided not to fall ball asleep or else I would not be able to wake up before my scheduled 8.30a.m.. I was extremely awake too, and did not feel as if I did not have enough sleep. It feel like a nice nap. I went to prepare and everything, and finally got out of the house at around nine plus.

Decided I want one of those traditional breakfast, I head straight towards the kopitiam and ordered two slices of kaya toast, two half-boiled eggs and a cup of ice tea. Happy that I finally get some time to myself. Been a bit stressed lately because I barely have time to myself. For the past few days, I wake up, obliged to entertain someone, all the way until when I sleep again. It has been uncondusive for my thinking, and I absolutely cannot blog when anyone's around that need me to entertain. I could do some logical thinking today. Unfortunately, while my brain is awake, my eyes were tired. The eggs tasted great by the way.

Got a 963 to NUH, got lost a bit, and finally ended up at the Health Check Centre. There was not a lot of people, so I briskly got through the stations. The blood drawing session was unbelievably fast, it was less than five seconds. I did not even have the time to think about it and it was over. However, it got my heart pounding and my feets started to shake, feeling cold. Unknowingly, my own body has entered the 'fight or flight' mode. Weight check. I am heavier than before. Height check, I am shorter than before. Eye check. Whoops, eyes were tired, so did not have sharp vision. Made a mistake reading on the left eye. Luckily I blinked and quickly reliazed the mistake and corrected myself. The result? 6/6.

Next up, urine check. Had to wait quite long before the person in-charge was ready. Once she was ready, it was a brisk walk again. She just have to dip a piece of paper into the urine, wait 30 seconds or so, and then tick all negative on our reports. And she did all the people waiting there all at one go. Blood pressure check, I failed it. I registered 133/106 or something like that. High blood pressure. Maybe those non-exercising days and the KL trip with lots of food affected it, but it was still impossible high for someone like me who registered 100/80 when I was donating blood just a year ago. She said come back later, cause you are nervous, I said maybe the blood drawing earlier affected it. Came back later, 124/100. Oops, I told her that was still quite high. She said it does not matter, as long as you don't clock over 130. Besides she wrote a note about my pulse being 103. My heart was practically exercising even though I was sitting down relaxing. I took my own pulse the day before and it registered 84. I must be nervous.

Now an extremely long wait. In the end, I met the doctor. He looks amazingly alike my secondary school A Maths teacher, Paul Foo. Oh well, I wanted to ask him if he had a brother, but my A Maths teacher's name eluded me at that moment as we were more used to call him Pooky Foo. I only recalled the name as Pooky Foo at that point of time. The first question this doctor asked me was that do I have mental illness. I gave a puzzled look and he say, probably not. Tick tick tick. Next he checked if my eyes were focussing. Tick tick. Ask me to lie on bed. He press my stomach area real hard. From the position he was pressing, seems like he was trying to locate both my kidneys. After that, more ticks. He then asked me, "Any broken bones, spines?" I shook my head. I wanted to ask him about my back, but I decided against it. I haven't exercised and rested my back everyday, so now the pain is gone. Will probably return if I play a fast-paced game of basketball.

All ticks. He noticed my high pulse rate and high pressure. He took my pulse again. Oh well, it was after a long wait, so my pulse was 84. Out of danger region, I passed! I am certified fit for University admission. Still there is one more station though, the X-ray. I met Li Feng, who was trying to get some reports done or something like that. Apparently for her, it was a wasted trip. Think she had done her health check earlier but have forwarded all her originals to the scholarship giving party, and I think she needs them now, so she trying to get another copy from the Health Centre. X-ray was quick too. Took off my shirt. Pose. Take a deep breath. *Tit* And the machine emitted a high-pitched sound. Ok. The doctor told me I am done. Barely 2 seconds. Maybe even less.

Decided I should ask Li Feng for lunch. Headed back, she was gone. Messaged her. Took a short walk outside, and saw her. Oh well, too far to call, besides, my bus stop and ACS(I) was in that direction. Walked along. (I must be getting sleepy, I actually noticed that I started using very simple sentences that contain only 2 words!) In the end, I called her, and she picked up! I was actually worried that the number do not work anymore. I got it during orientation and that would be 2 years and a half since. I changed my number, so I do not expect her to still keep the same number. Ok, we then walked together to NUH. Stammered a bit, and lack of sleep finally starting to take a toll on me. Well it was almost 1 p.m. at that point of time. Found out that she is going Medicine and NUS and applied into Kent Ridge because it is near Medicine faculty. It's near PGPR too. =)

At NUH, had red ruby. It is one of those places where there are 24 hours food and therefore a good supper place. Had a lot of suppers there before, and remember that I almost took red ruby for dessert everytime. Otherwise it would be almond longan, or soursop. All my favourites. Finished the red ruby and headed to ACS(I). Spoke to Mdm. Yong, next to matron. The birthday cards that we all signed years ago are still there. Recognized Siong Luong's signature and Jason's signature. It was really hard to miss mine since I wrote my name after the signature. Went to visit Mr. Lim, but he was busy.

Went to Hall 8 next. Just nice Wing Hing return from school. Found out it was Youth Day as well, no wonder all the teachers and students were in casual. Wing Hing changed his number so if I wanna visit, without his number it would be harder. Heh, my room still have the smell. Went over to Wing Hing's room, also my room, since I got it for 3 years. Somehow they got a 6-way link working. Imagine 6 laptops, all connected, on a Friday afternoon after school. We always have something like a 'Thank God it's Friday' thing. It is the day of freedom, where you finally get the weekend! Oh well, they had 3v3 Dota in the room. I like -ai (All Intelligence) but I never imagined they would do -aish (All Intelligence/Same Hero). 6 Liches + 6 Crystal Maidens = Havoc + lots of fun.

On my way out of ACS(I), decided I should go ACJC and visit a while, since I am here and Mr. Lim would not be ready so soon. Besides, Li Feng also expressed some intention to go back. Ok. I met Chamnap at Hall 1. Turned out he wanted to do the OCBC thing as well, and at the same time. Alright, then we can go together. Was 2 p.m. at that point of time. I decided I should go ACJC for a quick look before going to Clementi to meet him. The atmosphere in ACJC is totally different. While ACS(I) people are enjoying themselves on Youth Day, ACJC had a serious atmosphere. Not many people smiled as compared to what I saw at ACS(I). I should know why, because at that point of time, J1s have just completed their Chemistry paper and the J2s are 6 weeks from prelims. Saw Cindy at the gate, she told me almost everyone went home. Actually that was good, cause I won't have to stay so long then.

Reached the MR Room. No one's in. Horror. Knock knock knock. No response. Turn back. Saw Pamela heading here. Yay! Door open. Went in and confirmed that no one was in. I sat down, and since it was air-con, and I have been walking quite a lot, it got really comfortable. I was a bit sweaty, but since I sat down, I almost refused to stand up again, until I am really rested. Had a nice chat with Pamela too. She was in KL for the period of time that I was in KL, and she say she loved Malaysia. She said Malaysia was clean, and on top of that, things are cheaper than Singapore. I was shocked, I told her I had the impression that Philippines were cleaner, she said it was otherwise. Malaysia was very clean compared to the Philippines. Oh well, guess I have to appreciate that. Heard Malaysia was widely regarded in Philippines to be one of the more advanced country in South East Asia. Hehe, I thought Malaysia was quite backwards considering they did not had broadband available for home users until 2 years ago.

Chatted for more than an hour, but now I am late for Chamnap. Rushed there, called him, and he said he was already heading back because of lack of documents. I looked for OCBC but I could not find it, most likely because I was searching the front part facing the road along the MRT. Called him again, and this time, I found it! IT was really easy, just submitting the form will do. They seemed a bit unsure about it, and do that consult senior who in turn went on to consult another senior kind of thing. Gossip about how their boss is a meticulous person and all the details must be in. I needed to put in at least a local address. Wrote that down and TA-DAH, I am done. That probably did not even take 5 minutes. The officer serving me chatted a bit. And found out her son is from ACS(I) too!

Walked past Kopitiam. Saw my favourite 'lap cheong', so I had lunch there. I ate until I was very very full! Now headed back to ACS(I). It is very easy to get lost, since turning right was not an option when you enter the front gate for the 6 years that I am here. I turned right into the new building. Totally lost my bearing so I do not know how to get back to the old one. There are numerous ponds in the compound and the area looked extremely high-class, looks more like university rather than a secondary school. The design of the building was great too, and it was an eye-candy if you walked through all parts of it. Suddenly, the old buildings seemed much older than they really are. I saw a lift, and the board for level 4 said, Deans/HODs office. I thought I will try it. But the lift did not work. It emit a piercing buzzer sound when you press the button. Luckily the stairs are just right next to it. Climbed up to level 4 and immediately saw Mr. Lim in his office.

The door seemed like it needs special access card before it could be opened, so I waited outside. I become quite puzzled when Mr. Lim kept waving to me to come in. I pushed the door and it opened. Turned out that the thing was spoilt, as it could not be opened. So the teachers got someone to open it permanently. Mr. Lim's office is huge now. Besides, it is extremely peaceful and quiet. The only noise you will hear is the air-con, and clearly. Quite a condusive environment and not to mention, there is a great view. For some reason, I think people should continue on in ACS(I) rather than onwards to ACJC. I felt that they would have a better education over there. Waited for him to finish his target 120 collection. As seen from the list of top donors, ACS(I) seemed to have been a victim of donor fatigue. The top collector did not do as well as the top collector in target 118. Most of the top collectors did not do too well too. Anyway, getting donations within 2 years of completing the last one is a bit too tight. I would consider 4 years, so that the parents would not complain so much donating, and the returns you get from not experiencing donor fatigue is probably better than hosting a donation drive every two years. Unless of course, you are NKF.

When he was finally done, I headed over to his house for phone bills. Had a nice chat too. And tea at Wah Kee. Towards the end I just stoned, and I felt as if I could fall asleep sitting down upright. Hui Jie visited Angela, and wanted to visit me too. Unfortunately for her, I was not in today. By the time I reached the bus stop, she had just got on to her bus. Think turn left turn right. I was extremely tired, with headache, stomach discomforts, and runny nose. When I sat down on my computer, I refused to sit up. I also refused to join any LAN games for the night. Just wanted to finish blogging, and sleep.


For the past 2 nights I have been playing a few online games on virtual LAN! Hamachi. It worked everytime for all the games, does not interfere with your own real LAN as well. Ut2004 was exciting, and Heroes 5 over LAN was not that bad as well. Looking forward to Diablo 2 over LAN, and Dota over LAN was tried and tested!

Worse part of today was waking up. Woke up at 7p.m., and still blur at that time. While deciding on what to do, I read my Freshman's guide since it was within reach. To my horror my health check was supposed to be today. Sigh, panic. Decided to go the next day. More hamachi later part of the night! Nothing much productive.

Realized that I am a bad gamer. I was trying to beat a Gangsters 2 level for a long time when I was back in KL. I tried as hard as I could, but I still could not make it. Part of the reason was that I was obsessed with keeping my gangsters alive, but if any of them died, that means I have intentionally imposed a penalty on myself for the next level. I hate the tank. It requires a bomber to beat (or else prepare 5 full gangsters and expect only one to live) and precise bomb throwing timing. Not only that, the bomber usually escape injured, and the tank regenerates! While a bomber can only carry two bombs, the tanks are limitless, anyhow, in the end I beat the level.

Then the next is what I am really stuck with. You are stuck with too little money, and you have to convince 2 gang leaders to join you and kill a third. Since you have too little money, you barely can arm one gangster to the max, and the targets are far far far away. I decided to kill all three, since it is probably the best and fastest option. Turning them as your ally does mean that you will be forever stuck with insuficient cash. Killing them, however, lets you take over their incomes. I managed to hit and run on one, just to realize he breaks up into many smaller gangs. This is irritating, but easy to solve. The hardest part is to kill the third gangster. The road in front of his office is inaccessible from the outside, which means you cannot drive in. However, there are two cars patrolling just the tiny strip of road outside his office. When gangsters are in cars, they have improved armours. Since I have no choice, I have to bring my gangsters in by foot, and most of them end up as meat shields, as there are also other enemy gangsters on foot. Tried many times, maybe I just have to approach the game diferently.

In another stressful game, I am finally stuck at mission 3 of the Inferno campaign. I was on Normal difficulty, as there was no other weaker option. I was confirmed by the game that normal is nowhere near normal. It is quite insane. I still have yet to beat Gilraen on the third time even after reloading many times and making the best move each time. By cheating, I realized three times is the maximum you need to kill him. Cheating is no good as you do not improve, so I decided to try again and again. Anyone who have beaten this mission please discuss this with me or give me some tips.

Currently playing: A lot of games on LAN, but on my own, Heroes 5
Current campaign: Inferno Campaign
Mission: 3 - The Conquest
Favourite Unit: Cerberi
Most disliked enemy unit: Master Hunter
Best Hero: Agrael (Level 21)


For the past two days I did not sleep well, mostly battling with poor internet connection. After reading much literature on the internet, I finally found out that Starhub, Singnet, TMNet (some people casually refer to it as TMNut) and JARING are all bad isps. You can read more on Azureus's wiki and other p2p related wikis as most of them list tried and tested bad isps. As you read more and more wiki's you will realize that almost every popular isps out there are either bandwidth-throttling or somehow jam p2p.

There was a lot of interesting article, and testing my speed over at most internet connection meter gave me a positive improvements. On the day I returned, most internet meters gave me 200kbps download and 250kbps upload. On BitComet, I could only manage a global maximum of 9 kb/s but my download speed can cruise up to 40 kb/s. The upload speed is perfectly normal, but the download speed is the problem. Getting my download speed slower than upload speed is really adding insult over to injury. Today, I contanstly get these results from connection meters, 400kbps download and 300kbps upload. I kept my internet connection totally idle for these test, so unless all the servers are slow, or I am really running at that speed. Problem now, BitComet remained defiant to beat the 10kb/s mark. It has been an agonizing past 2 days trying to beat the problem.

A quick search over the internet reveals that I am not the only person who is experiencing this problems. Most people, even those dating to more than a year ago, have had this problem. You will know what I mean if you try googling 'torrent download speed suddenly become very slow'. There are cases even more frustrating than mine, with usual download speed hovering over 300kb/s down to the now 3-5kb/s. (300kb/s means he at least have a 2400kbps connection) Most of the are without solution, but most of them found out in the end that their isps are bandwidth throttling! Their best solution was to immediately change isp but in my case, that is not very possible.

Disclaimer : These are just my opinions. If you are offended and you know me personally, drop me a tag. If you are offended but do not know me personally, do not read on.

Most of these isps first detect that you use p2p software, then later, the limit the maximum download speed you can have over non-common ports. To a certain extent, I think these isps are very smart, as they did not block these ports completely. If they do indeed block these ports completely, more people are going to realize it and it will soon turn into a heated debate over the parliament or angry protests. Furthermore, by just limiting the speed, they not only discourage people from using p2p softwares, they can make up the excuse that it is your computer where the problem is, or the local cable quality, or the servers on high demand today, bla bla bla and they probably have a guide book to make a different excuse everytime you call.

So most of the users become frustrated, but they can really do nothing much about it other than to hurt the isp financially by cancelling their service. If you think deeper into the topic, most isps now offer very high-speeds. Look at Singapore, there are the 30Mbps connection now. So what do you normally do online with a 30Mbps connection? Website surfing, e-mail, blogging? Well, I can do that fairly well on my 56k, and almost seamless with 256kbps. What are all your extra bandwidth doing? Nothing. They are left there so that you can be infected with virus and other web problems, and a high download speed usually mean high upload speed, which means once your computer is infected, you spread the virus at a higher speed. If you say you use your 30Mbps to do video-conferencing, VoIP, and other related stuffs, you probably do not need 30Mbps in the first place, and secondly, you will not be able to video-conference and talk to it 24 hours a day.

What else is there left so that you can max out your bandwidth and get your money's worth? Run a server. But unfortunately, Starhub has banned running servers on their Maxonline connections sometime when I was secondary 1 or 2. If you have tried it before, with so much bandwidth to spare you can actually host a server complete will mail accounts properly. In addition, the IP address in dynamic, thought most people would not have to get a change in a few months since it is based on 'always on' connection. Someone reported his IP hasn't changed for 13 months and that was in January and still counting. It is easy to keep your IP. Just leave the modem permanently powered. However, running a server means Starhub is going to be after you, and start asking you to subscribe to some of their hosting services so that they can earn more money.

What else is there left so that you can max out your bandwidth and get your money's worth? Download free stuffs from the internet. In particular, download large files from the internet, so that the computer can continue to download over long periods of time, hence maximizing your bandwidth for the period of time. By using p2p softwares, not only you have a large selections of files to download from, you are also actively uploading pieces, which means that you maximize your bandwidth both ways, thus getting really what is your money's worth. Since your modem is 'always on' connection, make your computer 'always on' too, to always use the maximum bandwidth your money is worth.

What else is there left so that you can max out your bandwidth and get your money's worth? Maybe playing online games. You still have to pay some more to view copyrighted broadband video, copyrighted Mp3s, and play copyrighted games. Some, like World of Warcraft, even requires monthly subscriptions. Definitely a good way to burn a hole in your pockets. Itunes shop charge money per Mp3, most movies are charged per download. Even single game title cost around S$40 nowadays, not to mention later they will introduce expansions in which you will be tempted to buy to get the best possible online gaming experience. (Unless you acquired all your copyrighted media illegally of course)

What else is there left so that you can max out your bandwidth and get your money's worth? Nothing. Maybe 30Mbps was a bad example. Let's take my 1.5Mbps. Knowing that you got the maximum out of your money in this case keeps you happy. I know there are a lot of people that could not be bothered by this kind of things, but unfortunately I am. Not that I am a calculative person, but if you really did not give me my money's worth, you are cheating me. I am actually happy if Starhub could at least give me a constant 600kbps connection (which lately they have been sub-par, and they promised 1.5Mbps anyway, so a constant 600kbps is not too much to ask for) which translates into around 75kb/s constant download speed. Somehow my mood are affected by download speed recently. If I see 2-5 kb/s, I begin to get stressed. If I see 10kb/s I feel anxious. If I see 20kb/s, my mood will be a-ok. And if I see 30kb/s and above, I start to be very happy. That is probably why I was so happy in Malaysia, enjoying the euphoria of 80kb/s on most torrent.

Besides, getting a 1.5Mbps just to do e-mail and internet surfing is way overkill. You probably use 0.5% of the total available bandwidth for the month. Even if you are a heavy surfer with lots of e-mails with huge attachments, I won't see you using past 3.0% percent of you total bandwidth usage. You'll seriously be better off using some prepaid plans, which use measure payment in accordance to volume used. You will save a lot of money, while still having the same internet experience. Let's do some Maths. If you can get constant 1.5Mbps connection, that translates into 187.5kb/s download. If you keep downloading 24/7 for a month, you would have downloaded 187.5*60*60*24*30 almost equals to 486Gb. I know my connection usually average slightly above 40kb/s, so dividing that down, I still should get around 103Gb. Now, set your browser cache to unlimited, and do heavy surfing for a month. At the end of the month, check your browser cache size, if it exceeds 200Mb, tell me. Even if you constantly watch videos on youtube, I won't see your cache size above 1Gb. Honest. Maybe this was not so good an example. Let's take each web page you view to be 1Mb. (already overkill) So let's say everyday, you view 1000 web pages, (another overkill) you will use 1Gb a day and 30Gb by the end of the month. I pay the same price as you, but I got over 103Gb. Seriously, do not get broadband just to do website surfing and e-mail. It is not worth it. It is a very good way to waste money.

Back to my slow connection topic, I have been troubleshooting on the most likely problem why it is suddenly slow. Most people believe that Starhub throttles bandwidth. Due to an accumulation of a lot of evidence I believe that Starhub almost killed eMule's connections. While on torrents, I am not so sure as we can set our own ports and other peer's trustable insider informations suggest that Starhub do not do so. As I read and read, I become more towards sitting on the fence, because me myself have no clear evidence of Starhub doing it. Besides, Internet can be a biased media, and even if filtered well, the degree of uncertainty is still high. I changed ports without much success. Well, decided to switch off all firewalls as well, to see that if the firewall is blocking certain connections. Still no luck. They are probably throttling certain ports, since my port 80 is alright, but I cannot come to conclusion.

Poorly configurated computer? This may be the problem. So I reconfigured all my network settings. Resetted the modem, checked the computer for spyware/adware/virus with a few different programmes. Most caught were almost harmless. Manually reconfigured the firewall for all programmes and also making sure that all the torrent programmes ports are properly configured. Still no luck.

Problems with Starhub connection? I heard that one of the Starhub underground cables are accidentally cut but however, they have repaired the underground cables as per told from their website. Besides, they promised no problems with the rest of the websites as long as their servers are not in US. The only problem with this argument is that, the cable were probably down even before I left for Kl and the connection still worked fine then. Noticed that they have been doing islandwide maintenance for almost a whole month now. I hope the last one on the 26th would be the last, since they have promised free upgrades on most plans to 4Mbps on 1st July. Probably they are gearing up for this. Ever since their maintenance started, certain people have problem with connection too, which means I am not the only one. However, if situation do not improve by 1st of July, I will have to rule out this argument as well.

Rise in number of people downloading soccer videos due to a world cup fever? I ran across MrBrown's blog while googling 'Starhub throttling'. Getting cable just for the World Cup is not worth it, so many people have resorted to downloading soccer videos online. Well, I have to wait till after 10th July to verify this one. Many have cursed Starhub for being money minded. Indeed it is quite true, because if you were to download soccer videos from Starhub themselves, it costs more money. While none of the matches are available through public channels, some have even resorted to trying to receive RTM1 transmissions. After all, the 'fat green pipe' is shared. And 'partly dedicated is hardly dedicated' and shared is not at all dedicated. All taken from their online website.

A note on the last argument. Since it is shared, we would expect responsible use. But what is responsible use? Example one, I share a room with a roommate. We share and internet connection from one 1.5Mbps line, but we split the bandwidth between ourselves. I would take care not to overuse my allowed bandwidth as that would mean my roommate will have reduced bandwidth. That is responsible use. Example two, I share a room with a roommate. We both get ourselves a 1.5Mbps line each. Then if they tell me that I am getting dropping download speed because my roommate is downloading soccer videos, it is totally unacceptable. If they have advertised it that way, they better make sure they can provide 1.5Mbps to each person, albeit shared. Translate back to the last argument above, my neighbours downloading soccer videos and I experience drop in download speeds are unacceptable.

Since I only have these problems at hand, there is only one where I can truly do something about it. If Starhub were to throttle your bandwidth, they would have to detect you doing p2p first, or else there really is no reason to throttle your bandwidth. I tried BitComet's protocol encryption, and it failed to raise download speed. Stop downloading a few hours. Try again, no luck still. As a part of my network restructuring, I have uninstalled the norton firewall since subscriptions already expired. Also reconfigured my Windows Firewall for different connections. (I even tried different torrent clients in my effort to get speeds cruising again) In the end, the move that seemed to work was the swith to utorrent. Sounds a bit Microsoft, since it is Microtorrent effectively. I switched on the Protocol Encryption, and surprise!, the download speed went over 10kb/s but could not go beyond 20kb/s. It is much more acceptable now though it is still not out of red zone. Tired of numerous attempts and finally feeling a bit better, I went to sleep.

Also installed Peer Guardian 2, not that I am paranoid, but it gives me a greater sense of security. For the average user, you can probably get by day to day internet activities without problems with only Ad-Aware and Windows Firewall. I added Peer Guardian to my list, in an attempt to strengthen my Protocol Encryption. Heard that coming versions of utorrent may have the capability of masking them as HTTP data and running them through port 80. I really have to try that if it is possible. Port 80 is virtually unblockable, though the downside of running your downloads through it would render your browsers unusable. Each port usually only allow one programme to access the internet through it at a time. However, I have tried using both Explorer and Netscape at the same time without problems. Time to do more experiments.

Hamachi rocks! Been trying to get such functionality for a long time. I hardly lagged in any game, and no one were dropped from connection at anytime. Much better at playing LAN on Warcraft 3 with LANcraft or BattleLAN. In addition, it's emulation made me virtually connected to my peers on a real LAN. I even have the hopes of writing one such programme myself. Now I only have plans to bring it to a new level. I hope to write an instant messaging programme really peer to peer, so you would not have to sign in to online services.

Besides, these online servers can log your conversations, and by doing a direct connection, you bypass the servers, making one less connection. In reality, if anyone want to log your conversation they can, since you are connected to your isp, which is connected to the internet, which is connected to your peer's isp, which is connected to him. Someone in between could have done it, though it would be much more difficult than having both of you connect to a server. The server can log easily. Not that I am paranoid, and they probably do not have the free time to read all logs anyway, but having an instant messaging programme for LAN really is a great idea. It can be implemented on LANs that are not connected to the internet, and you have less chance of being unable to choose your nickname since the likelihood someone like the same nickname as you is lessened in a LAN connection. Besides, instant messaging on p2p also makes it closer for members of the connection, since you can implement different networks for each. For now, get my C++ right first.

In addition, writing your own means you can implement your own encryption, which means if another party logs your connection, they would have to decipher the data. It's like speaking in another language, you have to learn the language to understand what the persons speaking the language is talking about. Makes it sounds like some FBI/detective thing or an instrument for crime eh?

Peer to peer generally has a negative stigma attached to it. If you have a p2p download client, people will think that you probably download copyrighted materials on it. They probably think so because there really are people doing it. I am seeing the possibility that p2p instant messaging is going to be regarded by public as terrorist communication, because terrorists can really abuse it to their advantage. In reality, there is not much difference between it and a normal chat with your friends, just that now you do not need to get out of the house.

While there are some illegal things to download, there are legal things to download. Examples of some:-
-Anime/manga that have not been licensed (Usually authors release it free, which means free publicity, and judging by the popularity, certain companies license it and begin to distribute it with a fee)
-Certain free open source programmes (Open Office is one of them, using p2p to distribute stuffs reduces server costs as well, and is a good business plan, especially when your software is free which means you do not earn money) (Windows Vista Beta 2 cd download was through a swarmed downloader as well)
-Patches to programmes/games etc... (As long as they are not full programmes or exhibit partial function of the full programmes, use common sense on these)
-Movie trailers, soccer highlights and so on

These few categories are already more than enough reasons for you to be maximizing your bandwidth. What are you waiting for? Maximize your bandwidth usage now!


I have not done this in a while, and the last time I actually did this was when I was sick back in ACS(I) Boarding School. Yesterday morning I packed my stuffs till 4 a.m. in the morning and slept till 7. Went for breakfast, wait for my sister's piano lesson to end, and eat lunch and before we knew it, it was 12 already, and I was back in my old house. Tired from only getting 3 hours of sleep the night before, I slept till 7 p.m.! This was where my right ankle got miraculously healed. When I got onto the train again, I slept again from 10p.m. all the way till 6 a.m. this morning. Total number of hours of virtually slept before starting today = 18 hours.

Got lost a bit around Woodlands, since it was one-way, taking the bus in the wrong direction does mean that you do not get to immediately board on the opposite direction. Luckily I decided to be safe and took the bus to the MRT. There I found another bus service that can get to my destination sooner rather than trying to find the straight bus at Woodlands. Besides, the straight bus service really takes forever. One thing different about Malaysia and Singapore. At 8 plus a.m., you do not see very much school kids in school uniform in Malaysia walking along the streets. At 8 plus a.m., I saw quite a number of school kids in their school uniforms, often alone, strolling slowly on the streets. There was even a Malay girl in make-up, I wonder if that was allowed in school.

Oh well, something wrong always happen to computers when I am not around. Somehow, internet has gotten extremely slow suddenly, even messenger failed to sign-in and hotmail loads forever! This reminds me of my 56k connection long ago, but since this is 1.5Mbps, something must be wrong. The immediate response was that the computer was either virus infected, spyware infected, or something was wrong with Windows. After multiple checking, I realized the computer configuration and everything was working fine. Peer to peer even on the most healthy torrent registered constant 2kb/s and my global download speed cannot break the 10kb/s barrier. Horror, horror, what is wrong with the internet?


The past few days passed in a blink of the eye. (Not quite, I felt time passes quite slowly and I actually like the speed where things are going!) I did not do anything much, besides shopping, food, computer maintenance, Astro and Neopets. Watched one or two World Cup matches. Interesting thing about World Cup on Astro, you get to choose one of the five cameras provided. Cameras up for choice are Main, Player Cam (Country 1), Player Cam (Country 2), Tactical and Highlights. The main camera is still the traditional best in my opinion, though other cameras add interesting flavour to the match.

Think the most heart stopping moment is when a person taking a penalty. I do not know why, but there seem to be a long awful pause, where everyone is silent, before a player takes a penalty. Everyone seemed stoned, even for the player taking the penalty and the goalkeeper, and this stoning moment usually last a few seconds. During the few seconds, I can feel my heartbeat rapidly rising in frequency and occasionally missing a beat. It all becomes normal once the kick is over, be it scored or not.

Food food food. Generally had good food last week. (That is because there were not any bad food) Since I rarely comes home, my family usually brings me to eat some of my favourites, and bring me around to try new ones discovered by them. That ensured that I did not have to test not-so-good tasting food first hand.

Spent two days in a row eating breakfast at Petaling Street at around 8 a.m.. That is right after sending my sisters to school. Even at eight plus in the morning, the weather was still cool and no hot burning sun yet, unlike Singapore. In fact, both days, it seemed like it would rain. There was a person busking on the street on the first day, and there were two person busking on the second day. It seemed weird at first, since they were Malays, busking in an area full of Chinese, and singing English songs. Nevertheless they did a good job! I am a person who rarely eats breakfast, and it got me enjoying breakfast once again. Economy noodle are still available, you can choose between RM1.2 or RM1.5. So cheap, where else to find? (Actually possible if you take nasi lemak with only an egg, ikan bilis and kacang) Actually, under my new house they sell glutinous rice with only kacang for RM1.

There are actually people selling bread early in the morning along Petaling Street. I has been a long time since I last had traditional western style breakfast as well. (Half-boiled eggs, toasted bread, sausage and sunny side-up) Oh well, did not have everything, but I indeed had some toasted bread for breakfast! The bak kwa stall have yet to open. Or else I will have my bread with bak kwa and floss in between, maybe some ketchup too!

The best food I have tasted over the past few days comes from a Chinese restaurant in Cheras. Incidentally, that was my last dinner before I have to leave for Singapore once again. Will look forward to eating those Marmite Ribs and prawns again. It was quite expensive too, but it is actually ok if you convert everything in Singapore dollars. Heh, my sense of value of money slowly becoming Singaporean now. It is ok just to console myself.

I did not have the chance to eat some food that I hoped I would eat this time around. Oh well, maybe next time. One of them is the Ramly burger in front of 7-11 underneath my old house. Probably the best tasting Ramly burger I ever tasted. The next is the Char Siew rice also underneath my old house. I like it so much I do not mind eating it everyday. Was guilty of eating it everyday during the period when I was getting my driver's license. After lesson is always lunch time, and the stall is just a very short walk away from the instructor's office. To end it all, I drink my favourite Slurpee (Assam Boy flavour) from the 7-11. I never found this flavour in any other 7-11 too!

On Neopets, I believe my second sister is the best point earner at it now. She do 15k a day and all that in the short span of less than a hour. Neopets allow only certain number of plays a day, so even thought theoretically if you continue playing you can accumulate lots of points, that is not possible. My youngest sister is the owner of the account and she does have her own good ways of earning Neopoints! She is like the businesswoman, as she always know what items are hot, so that we make efforts to get it and in the end she will auction it or sell it, often with high returns. I am the garbage collector, as the games have certains number of plays per day, after my sister is done getting her 15k, it is my turn, to play whatever games she does not play. I ended up having to play weird games, but nevertheless, they are fun!

Cannot say that I did much over the past few days. Not many of them were productive, and I am a slow packer, hence asking me to tidy up house is an inefficient use of my time. Take me up to 4 hours just to tidy a small area. Well, I can always start training now. Perhaps the best thing I did was to repair all the computer problems. Printer work now, old computer tip-top and laptop also tip-top. Did what I meant to do this holidays so it was great! Namely, celebrate Father's Day, celebrate my youngest sis's birthday and to sign the OCBC contract thing. Not bad for a 10 day's break.

Guess old beds are better than new. I meant old high quality beds. The bed in my old house is probably as old as me, hence turning 20 soon. Old pillows are better than new too. There is this special spongy type of softness that old pillows have which makes it very comfortable for me. Guess the longer I use a pillow, the more I could not bear to part with the pillow. Oh well, it happened such that after a 7 hour sleep on the bed, the pain in my right ankle disappeared. Guess how happy I was, the pain that had been bothering me for more than three weeks, disappeared suddenly. I seldom sleep more than 2 hours in my old house, because I am usually there in the afternoon, and only get the time for a short nap.


Another sleepless morning, and I slept around 3 hours before finally waking at 5.30 a.m. in the morning. It is another school day, but today is different, at least for my youngest sister. Even back in Singapore, the usual time I wake up is 6.30 a.m. and 5.30 a.m. for school is somewhat early for me. Besides, I had too little sleep, I could barely wake up. Even waking up at 5.30 a.m., there is a chance for us to be late.

Ok, you guessed it right this time. We were late. It was a rainy morning and traffic was bad. Unfortunately for them, the prefects book everyone even on a rainy day. Unlike ACJC, where they are slightly more understanding, the teachers do not book you if you were late for school on a rainy day. Fortunately for them, they do not have a detention system, but they do get warning letters and demerits.

There was a lot to carry. A giant 3 kg cake, (a cute mashi maro with a bat) a lot of packet drinks (here is where I realized that I have grown weak over the holidays, my arms were shaking), a lot of goody bags. My second sister went into her school, and I helped my youngest sister carry her birthday stuffs to class. I was very awake at that time, even though I actually had very little sleep. The weather was just nice to sleep too, but I ended up just enjoying the early morning view of Bukit Nanas. My eyes were unusually sharp too, as I was able to see fine details of Kuala Lumpur Tower. The top part were completely covered with clouds/fog, making it an extremely breathtaking sight. The tower seemed much taller than it really was!

There was nothing to do, and basically I was just stoning in the hall and getting weird looks from all the teachers passing by. I figured that I should not be wasting time and I should be doing something, so I decided I should try to sleep while waiting for my sister's recess to come. I did not fall asleep in the end anyway. At least I tried, and that is the least I could do. I realize time do pass more slowly when in Malaysia. I feel that I have more time to do anything and even after I have finished something, I would expect a lot of time to have passed just to look at the clock and realize, only some time has passed. I like it slow, and steady. Time passes anyway, why not enjoy every moment slow as possible?

10.15 a.m. arrived anyway. I went to the staff room to pick up the cake we had earlier dropped on the class teacher's desk. To my horror, the cake is missing! Oh well, there was really no reason to panic, because the cake probably found its way to the classroom. I went to the classroom and it was indeed the case. The class teacher teaches English and incidentally she teaches the lesson before recess. What a coincidence! I waited till the class ends at 10.30 a.m. before strolling in to the class.

Bought too much packet drinks? I spent quite a long time tearing all the plastic wrappings that bundle up half a dozen of packet drinks. My sister's classmates helped too and guess they had a good time at it. They were laughing all the way. The class teacher helped with opening the cake box and putting the candles on the cake. Guess she couldn't count, since she just used all the candles given. There were 1 large candle and 12 small candles given. She used them all. One funny thing, the class would not listen to her instructions if they were given in English, though they practically understood every word. She didn't have to shout, but once she change language into Malay, the class become orderly at once.

Did not have enough time to change the roll of film and the last roll left in the camera only had 4 left. So I took a grand total of 4 photos for the whole event! It looked like it was a grand event, since my youngest sis invited the whole level into the classroom. (The whole level only consists of two classes, my sis's and one other class) I remember the time when I got the chance to celebrate my birthday in school. Well, my birthday usually falls on a school day where you go to school and do nothing, since exams are already over, and it does not matter whether or not the results were already released or not. We just play and play everyday in school! Usually, games we play will be XO, chess, other board games, even Command and Conquer using dice! When you are having that much fun, throwing a school birthday party would double the fun! Miss childhood.

There were really too many packet drinks, even after we gave to everyone in Primary 5. We packed the rest into a plastic bag and it was heavy! We walked around the school giving away packet drinks. I advised them to keep the rest at the back of the classroom, free for all, but my sis insisted one person can only get one packet. We therefore, have to go find all her other friends from her other levels and give them one each. Too much cake, we gave the rest of the cake to the teachers. Too much goody bags, we give away goody bags like the packet drinks. Haha, seems like my sis is in charge today!

She got a lot of presents! Almost everyone gave her one. She ended up with a whole bag of presents! Hehe, maybe her generation is different from mine. After all, we are nine years apart! She sure lives in a more modern and open childhood than mine. I did not get any after my school celebration, and my second sister did not even get a school celebration. (Which I did not know why)

Came back home, did more computer maintenance, and played more Neopets. Did not play any other games besides Neopets. Sometimes think certain Neopets games are fun! Most of the games are based on traditional games. Anyway, how more creative can these flash games get? Most games we already knew the rules by heart. I personally liked cheat, and it was quite real, considering the chance of getting caught is almost always 50%-50% for good cheats and for bad cheats, expect to get uncovered even more! It makes me feel like I am playing against real humans. Another one of my favorite is the Ice-Cream Machine, testing your hand-eye coordination and reflexes, plus proficiency in using the mouse! They even have words puzzles and games, which we can learn more words on. Overall, it is not a bad thing, and we made our youngest sis's Neopets account like a family thing where we take turns to earn point for the same account!


Hmmm, I believe I went to bed at 4a.m., but I just could not fall asleep. Perhaps too much have been on my mind, after doing much research on the virus and a having a nice chat with Valerie. Not very long after that, I have to 'wake up' but I never did fall asleep, so I just left my bed. Amazingly, I was still quite awake at that point of time, so I figured I would not fall asleep anytime soon.

Went out, followed my father and sisters to school. After we dropped them (sisters), we had early morning breakfast at Petaling Street. It is peaceful in the morning, unlike Singapore, where most places are extremely crowded even when it is early in the morning. Since there was not much people, and the sun have yet to fully rise, it gave me an impression that time passes slower here in KL. Thinking back, I really felt so. I feel that even the sun take longer to rise here. It is a much more peaceful, less stressful environment down here. Maybe that is because I am back here with the mentality of having fun. =)

Followed my father around, and saw how he worked. To a certain extent, I think he works like me. He cannot be disturbed when he is working, or else he will forget something. The best time to talk to him is after he finished everything he have to do. Got my bank loan form signed. The bank officer in-charge was Angel (hehe!) and now I have Angel's signature all over my loan form! What a coincidence eh? Saved my father a trip down to Singapore this way. By the time everything was done, it was 11 plus in the morning. I was starting to get tired, but I still could not fall asleep.

Fell asleep for a brief moment before I reached home. Was a very short nap but I feel slightly rejuvenated. Cooked rice, and then went on the rest. Finally fell asleep at 2 p.m.! Yay! Slept like a log till 7 p.m., when my father woke me up for dinner. I felt weird, but I definitely did not feel like sleeping some more. That was weird for a person who loves sleeping like me. Reached new home, and switch on my Celeron 366. Now I am deleting stuffs and arranging all my files for the old computer. Now I cannot free more than 900 Mb from my 4.3 Gb, nevertheless, the computer is now free of games and other softwares that I no longer use. Think it can still be used probably for another 2 years. My computer has turned seven!


WARNING! Do not click on them. You will be prompted to download a .exe file and run it. You will then send this message to all your peers on MSN messenger.

check out these pics of us! http://p1392.pic-myspace.info

check out this pic of you on myspace! http://p1392.pic-myspace.info

I did not edit out the original link, so that if someone wants to take a look at the virus/bug/spyware/adware/malware/trojan/backdoor, they can do so clicking the link. Particularly helpful if you are a internet security professional. I just uninstalled my Norton Anti-Virus, so I cannot send the sample to Symantec for inspection.

I did not catch this thing, so I do not know what this thing actually does, but if you got it and you are aware of it, a quick search revealed the following solution.

Disclaimer:- None of them have been tried and tested by me.

SgSiaokia said:-
1)Boot to safe mode.
2)Goto c:\windows\prefetch3)Delete msnexplorer
4)Delete myspace.exe
5)Goto c:\windows\system32\drivers6)Delete msnexplorer.exe
7)Goto c:8)Delete myspace.exe
9)Run full system scan using anti-virus/anti-spyware
10)Do a registry clean-up

joe1234 said:-
Download this http://www.microsoft.com/spyware and do a scan. It worked for me.

Most people said:-
Download and reinstall MSN Messenger stops you from continuing to send these irritating messages.
(However, if you used this solution, the threat is not over)

Some people said:-
Notice some weird files in your windows/prefetch directory that start with 'PIC' followed by a string of numbers. Delete them in safe mode.

All suggestions are better followed-up with a check with anti-virus softwares and registry clean-up. There are some free anti-virus scanners available online.

Origin of threat is not yet known. (At least when I am concerned) What the .exe file actually does is not known too. Hopefully someone finds out soon, then we can propose and find better solutions. Apparently, some blogs and forums have been hit. How it actually got into their source code is not known.

Today I did not do anything much. Pretty much stayed home for the whole day. There was not much to do also. All I did was update softwares and rearrange files. Delete loads and loads of stuffs. There are things that I rarely use anymore, so I deleted most of them to make space in my 30 Gb hard drive. Think 30Gb is really small. Even after deleting all my games, and cd images, the maximum free space I am left with never exceeded 9Gb. I wonder where all the space went... I knew some were used to keep some Tvb dramas, but it is hard to keep count of the rest.

Down with a very very irritating and persistent runny nose today. Water keeps coming out of it non-stop, I felt like a fountain. I cannot go anywhere without lots and lots of tissue. I think I am just not used to the Malaysia air, and so have to take some time getting used to it. The pain in my right foot had worsened since the past two weeks. In this case, I think the pain has to do with my poor sleeping posture. Then I wonder what would be the best position to put the leg in order to get rid of the pain. I realized something too, that my foot will not hurt so much if I wear shoes (school shoes or sports shoes). It only hurts like normal if I go barefooted or wear slippers. This is getting interesting, maybe my basketball shoes will work better?

Went out for a 'grand' dinner to celebrate Father's Day. As a result, we went to a 'slightly more expensive than usual' restaurant to eat. The bill was RM160 but the food was worth the money. Nevertheless, it was nice. The fish was really boneless, and very soft too. I liked the ribs, but the beancurd is slightly tasteless. The rest of the food was just above average. =) I could not enjoy my meal as well as I could have had because of my runny nose. I ended up going to toilet very often! Blow my nose, get more tissue paper and continue eating. Oh well, at least it was a Father's Day well celebrated! Yay! =)


Finally fell asleep at 5.30 a.m. in the morning. Woke up at 11.30 a.m. because I was woken up to join the rest to a shopping trip today. Got father's day present to buy, and also my youngest sis's birthday presents.

Woke up feeling a bit weird, as 6 hours seemed to be the good amount of sleep for a normal adult. Was a bit slow to react to most things. Suddenly miss those days where I have to get used to sleeping 6 hours a day! Back in JC, I had a cycle going, I should sleep before 12, (which I usually exceed) and wake up around 6.30a.m. (which I sometimes fail). I recall having to take extra naps during school hours to make up my 8 hours of sleep before I finally awaken for good.

Nevertheless, I got myself started, while still having a little urge at the back of my mind to sleep. The first destination that we are going to visit today is the hospital, Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (HUKM, but we usually just refer to it as UKM, derived from UKM hospital). When I finally reached the parking lot, the place seemed somewhat familiar. It didn't take me too long to realize that my mother was sent to this hospital during her dying hours, and her corpse was kept in the hospital for some time, which explained why the car park was so familiar since we have to park our car there everytime we wanted to see her corpse until it was removed. I was born here too.

We arrived at around 12.15 p.m. but the visiting time will start only at 12.30 p.m., and we have to wait at the entrance to visit patients. It was guarded by 2 hospital staffs that refused to let people in, hence there was lots and lots of people waiting for them to start allowing people to go through. Hospital is a morbid place, and the looks that most people had on their faces were grim. Most were serious, some can be seen with some tears on their face. None were too energetic, other than the occasional one or two small kids, which should not have an idea of the problems facing their parents. The two guards finally got a long message from their walkie talkie, and after a long reply, they moved their table away from blocking the door, opened the door wide and left. That was around 12.25 p.m., and we walked in of course.

Have to walk through most wards looking for my grandmother. Oh well, there is a huge board near to the entrance of every ward, with information about patients in the ward, and their bed number. So we looked around for my grandmother's name, and when we do not find it, we head over to the next ward and look at the same board. The corridors are filled with multiple health advisory posters, which really make you feel your own mortality. Come on, face it, we are no longer indestructible as we once are. Somehow you start to get nervous when you think you exhibit more than one of the symptoms listed for a particular disease. I have to walk through the corridors saying, "No worries!" to myself.

We stopped at Ward 4, and we do not find our grandmother's name at the board, so a nurse approached to ask if she can be of help. She then accessed a computer to check the patient records, but apparently she isn't that competent with the system, so she asked an even more senior nurse to do the job. Then I think the system had an error there, so even the more senior nurse could not check the patient's record. Horror! Horror! Panic! Panic! They consult each other on what to do next, and I walked around looking for something to do. Another board caught my attention. Translated from Malay to English, here is the gist of it:-

Ambulance fees - RM0.35 per km
Rent for keeping corpse at the hospital - RM30.00 per 24 hours
Ward charges for non-Malaysians - RM55.00 per day
Ward charges for Malaysian citizens - RM45.00 per day
Ward charges for teachers/civil servants/other government related people - RM35.00 per day
Ward charges for students at local universities - RM 5.00 per day

Wow, if I were to study at a local university and get hospitalized, I can stay for a month at the hospital at a grand total of RM150.00 a month, with all my meals included. Does not sound like a bad idea eh? While it is cheap and all, if I have the extra cash, I would choose to get hospitalized in Singapore. Having been there very frequently during the period of my mum's cancer ordeal, I have this impression that Singapore hospitals exhibit higher degree of professionalism. I do not mean Malaysian hospitals are not professional, but when your life is on the line, you want the best for yourself don't you?

Ok, so the nurses could not get the computer to work. What now? They tried to help us to locate our grandmother in another way. The first question they asked us was that my grandmother was male or female. My father answered 'female' and they gave quick reply in unison, 'ward 6'. Ah, we should have realized. =) We walked over to ward 6, braving over more posters with gross pictures and scary content, and finally saw my grandmother's name on the board. Bed 5 was her bed. It was easy to locate her.

There was 6 beds in the area around her partition. The rest of the patients were quite lively, and were chatting among themselves. All of them had finished their lunch and their medicine, except for my grandmother who was still soundly asleep. When the rest of the patients saw that we were visiting, they quickly told us that she has been asleep ever since her son left in the morning. (Probably one of my uncles, but how did he get in when visiting time has not yet started then?) My father woke my grandmother up, had a nice little chat and then feed her some porridge. She did not eat much, and she looked the least healthy of all the patients there. Wonder why they are grouped together though. This may be the last time I will see her. I can never be sure, but when you leave a person, you will never know whether the last time you met that person is going to be your last.

Oh well, my grandmother needed more delicate care since she could easily get bruising, even though it is just a slightly tighter squeeze. That easy bruising is probably attributed to diabetes, though without further research I cannot conclude. Besides, my mum did have diabetes as a result of liver cancer. She started off with liver cancer, but when she ended, she had liver cancer, throat cancer and diabetes as well, probably because the cancer cells have spread beyond control. Unlike the rest of the patients in the partition, she could not sit up by herself, and her arms are full of bruises probably because nurses have helped her up sometimes.

We left after my father was done feeding her porridge and medicine. There was more than three quarters left, but my grandmother said she could take no more. There was sambal fish and a lot of vege too, but as my grandmother did not have teeth, she could not eat those. I think one reason why it is hard for some people to recover is because they do not eat. That is probably why people grow weaker day by day, and end up having even less appetite as the days do by. We need to end the vicious cycle once and for all! It did not seem nice to talk a lot, since my grandmother's hearing and sight are going as well. You have to speak the same sentence a few times before she catches it.

We walked out of the ward, slowly. Of course, there were a lot of morbid images in the mind, suddenly, a pair of doors swinged open. An extended family (with lots of members) walked out of the door, everyone's hands on the coffin on wheels. Most of them had their eyes red, and tears could be seen clearly. Perhaps I have grown from this ordeal since I have been through it once. I felt somewhat desensitized. The large plate above the pair of doors read, "Heart Disease ICU".

I will never have a chance to become a doctor, as I did not do well enough during the A's to get a chance to be one. That is the reason why I will never find out how doctors are going to survive working in hospital. Hospital is such a morbid and depressing place. Sure, they can say that they get motivation when they successfully healed someone, but the degree of negative effects deaths do far outweighs the motivation you get. They can say that they are desensitized, but deep down, we are still humans, and we share the same set of emotions, hence these are still very stressful situation to be in. Doctors, do not give up! =)

Headed of to Mid Valley Megamall, where moods changed the other way. Shopping, shopping and more shopping! Wish I had a camera, and I felt like taking pictures of all the interesting stuffs that I met today and post them up with price tags, as if a catalog. Rest assured that interesting items that I spotted usually comply to my plc standards. By now I have forgotten their prices, hence this may not be possible till I get a camera. Haha, I am a shopping guy too. But it is kind of depressing when you are shopping without money... Had a haircut. Have been camping till I get a chance to come back to Malaysia and get a hair cut, so my hair was really long. Took the RM12.00 / 12 minutes quick cut thing and the results is not bad at all. I can resume shopping comfortably and I did not get bored during the cut since it was fairly quick.

Was walking around for food, but we were spoilt for choice. Oh well, even in midst of getting spoilt for choice we settled down for KFC. Wasn't really that bad since I haven't eaten KFC for a long time. More shopping after that. Bought presents (only after long time of choosing). Went to get my youngest sister from school since she was at school for a camp. My father had to meet someone, so he dropped us at another shopping centre, where we did more shopping amongst ourselves, while waiting for him to be done. An interesting incident happened there though.

I was shopping with my youngest sis at the toys section. My younger sis was off somewhere else to look at some cds. We were drawing on the boards where you can write and erase off easily. The area between shelves was not that narrow and there were two ladies behind me as I was facing the shelves with the drawing boards. A guy walked past the space between me and one of the lady and as the guy walked a few more steps, I heard a shout from the lady, "Hoi! I am going to report you for sexual harassment!". The guy went, "What?" (The look from his face was something like, I drop down dead before I harass someone like you). The lady then shouted, "Why did you bump so hard into me while you can bump into this guy? (this guy is referring to me)" She turned and told her friend, "Must have been trying to touch me or something." The friend of course, agreed whole-heartedly in defence of the friend. The guy then got an extremely irritated look on his face, "I'm sorry, lo." and he quickly walked off.

I do not know who is at fault here since I did not have eyes on my back. Besides, there were no contact at all on my part. I stood there to continue my drawing, trying to not pay attention. Later, the lady started explaining everything to her friend, and they even used me to replay the scene. I get comments like, "He's not that fat what, surely there is more than enough space in between." (He here referring to me.) Then she went to the part where the contact were made. She used her shoulders and banged her friend hard, and her friend moved back a few steps. Looked more like a tackle to me. =) They then went on to talk bad about guys, all behind my back. (Cause my back is still facing them! Haha. =))

Carrefour is surely earning a lot of money. There is this lucky wheel thing, where you get a spin on the wheel if you have a receipt on the same day as a proof that you spent more than RM60.00. The queue was super long, and they also kind of run out of prizes. We waited and waited till out turn and a spin, and we got a bowl and two 1.5l bottled mineral water. It is interesting that people take so long to queue and get a spin, when most of them end up with a soccer key chain. Had Wan Tan mee later at a hawker centre nearby. Was so tired of walking the whole day that my feet were hurting. I have really grown very unfit and it is time to exercise!

Realized my day only starts when everyone's asleep. Well, it do not have to be when everyone's asleep, but I find that I am most efficient when there is no one disturbing me. I can proceed on to think about things and come up with solutions but I am easily distracted. I just got distracted by someone's car alarm going off, obviously due to failure in the alarm since it is quite common here. For the period the alarm went off, I realized that I became a bit more anxious and could not think logically for a while. It all became good again when someone finally realized that it was his car alarm and then went down to check his car. Maybe this is the secret to good results as well, as I never really enjoyed moments alone when I was in AC Boarding School. Hopefully my results will change for the better in my university days. I appreciate being alone when I am doing work.

IT World of Mid Valley Megamall was not exactly the best place to get price lists, but I got some anyway. After comparing and came down with the lowest price for the area, here are some interesting parts that I have noted down. Some are noted down because they comply to my plc standards while others are simply noted down because they are interesting. Anyway, enjoy!

(List here is copied straight from the actual list, I do not have more info beyond that)

3D Studio Max R6 - RM14,800
Adobe Photoshop CS (FULL) - RM2450
Intel Celeron 2.26 - RM168
AMD Athlon AM2 940 3000/3200 - RM395/RM505

Hard drive 7200RPM IDE Performance
250/300/320 Western - RM293/RM363/RM365

Hard drive 7200RPM Sata
80/120/160 Seeagate - RM178/RM260/RM280
200/250/300 Seagate - RM295/RM325/RM370
400 16MB/500 Seagate - RM 790/RM1240
300 16MB Maxtor - RM370
300/320 Western Digital - RM373/RM395

The rest of the capacity of hard drive were just provided for reference. It led me to believe the sweet spot for buying hard drive is around 300Gb models since they offer then best value for money per gigabyte. However, no further details was shown on lists, which means I have to do some research as to which models they are referring too. Processor for energy efficient Pc locked at the Athlon 64 3000+ (AM2) at RM395. Think the maximum power draw of this processor is 65W.


Had McDonald's chicken burger for lunch. (This is not McChicken. It taste a little better than that, and not to mention, a bit cheaper too!)

Slept most of my afternoon away since I only slept for 3 hours the night before.

Had char siew rice for dinner. It was not bad. I think it tasted better than all the char siew rice I have ever tried in Singapore. While in the KL area, think they are just above average. Feel appetized.

Yay, uninstalled norton internet security, so I freed up a lot of RAM and not to mention, boot time have been reduced by 2 minutes. I should have known the slow boot time is cause by it, since my hard drive is slow, and I just do not have spare RAM for it. That is probably why it take forever to load and hog all my resources. Have to do so since subscription ended more than a year ago. Shall move on to AVG free to keep my computer safe. Uses much less resources, and load much faster! But I am not sure if it is safer. But we'll never know, as it only act as a form of prevention. I shall go by the theory, any kind of prevention is better than none. Now I figured out the bottleneck of performance on the laptop too, the hard drive.

My Celeron 366 Mhz appear to have a spoiled keyboard but after inspection, it was just a case of BIOS battery ran out and therefore BIOS resetted to disallowing USB function. Have to open it sooner or later since the parallel port dropped inside the casing, and therefore I cannot connect the printer. The HP Deskjet 400 (ancient, I know) appears to have some problem, where all the lights are flashing. HP website says send it for servicing, but they no longer support the product. Closer inspections revealed that the automatic paper feeder has died, probably due to dust, paper shreds accumulation. The printer works fine now, if you use the manual paper feeder. Fixed angel's HP 300 all-in-one too. This one's magic touch. Cause I tried reseating the cartridge many times when it died. The other day I did it, it came back alive! I shall not move the cartridge now unless it is empty.

I have lots of lots of reason to stay home, (and not be out shopping or doing something else) and enjoy my trip here. It will be an amazing feat to get me out of home!
In both homes:-
-No transport out. (Though taxi is cheap, I am too poor for it. Nearest LRT is too far away.)
-Unfamiliar with roads
-No money, and going out means needing to spend money
-Transport time is a long time if I need to get anywhere (would rather be at home sleeping)
-Nothing to buy (I am virtually wantless, other than for some computer parts)

Additional reasons in my new home
-Internet!
-Satelite tv (with World Cup and NBA Finals, who wants to leave the tv?)
-Lots of junk foods at home, conveniece stores nearby

Additional reasons in my old home
-Got kitchen (can try cooking!)
-Silent and have time alone(condusive for thinking and creative work)
-My favourite char siew rice is just downstairs
-7-11 with my favourite Slurpee flavour, Assam Boy!

Realized download speed using torrents are really faster here. Healthy torrents catch fire at 80kb/s and I can do a few simultaneously, but they usually cap out at a total around 170kb.s. Maybe that is when I have maximized my bandwidth.


Finally reached home. The train arrived at KL Sentral at around 7.30 a.m. and I reached home at around 9 a.m.. Had Koon Kee Wan Tan Mee for breakfast, at Petaling Street. Miss the taste! According to my father, he also eat there once in a while ever since he was very young. A bit expensive though, but that is the price to pay for their popularity and as compared to Singapore, it is still cheap.

Felt a strange urge to watch Silent Hill before it opened in Singapore. So before I left, I actually tried to watch it. The problem is, I am not done packing and therefore I was running short of time. I ended up skipping throughout the movie and hence still do not throughly know the plot and storyline behind the movie.

Warning! Lots of spoilers ahead.

The movie opened with wild shouts of "Sharon! Sharon!" and all I thought was what a great coincidence. Key similarities between the movie and a person I know. (Oops, hope she's not reading my blog, at least not this entry)

-Silent Hill rhymes and sounds like Sharon Hiu
-Silent Hill open on the 16th June in Singapore which happened to be Sharon's birthday
-The name of the little girl in the movie is Sharon too, and this Sharon I know looks like a little girl

I briefly caught the plot, but as I was doing a lot of skipping, I may be inaccurate. I think the main point behind the plot was mother looking for daughter. As the movie progressed, the plot seems to follow the Silent Hill (1) storyline, which was father looking for daughter. However, the hero (or the unfortunate person) in both Silent Hill (1) and Silent Hill 2 were male. I finished the game Silent Hill (1) for Playstation a lot of times and Silent Hill 2 for Pc once. Started Silent Hill 3 but I only went very briefly into the game. In Silent Hill (1) all the monsters, zombies, scary and weird stuffs are the results of the imagination of a little girl (which I have forgotten the name, means time to play Silent Hill (1) again!) which I guess is the storyline behind the movie. The story behind the game Silent Hill 2 was a guy looking for his wife.

The way the hero in the movie swing her arms, runs and use the flashlight and matchsticks are very similar to the game. Actually, throughout the movie, I felt as if I was playing the game, moving the person in the movie with my imaginary controller. The camera angle, fog all look deceptively in-game. Only difference now is that the hero run away from them most of the time, but in-game, we usually fight back until we cannot hold on, then we start to run. The way the character pin the flashlight to the shirt and your viewing is reduced to only within the flashlight radius looks pretty much like in Silent Hill 2 game. There was a female police officer too, in both the movie and Silent Hill (1). Cybil's her name in the game, and I am not so sure about the movie. One thing that was quite irritating about the movie though, the character kept on flinging the flashlight when she's running. While that is real and all, it gave me a terrible headache. The music too, sounded very much like the first Silent Hill (1), and it got me all excited about it again. Unfortunately, I have deleted my old Ps image of the Cd and I doubt Jason still has the cd.

Spoilers end here!

Did not have the chance to wish Sharon happy birthday since I am gone today. Oh well, at least I wished her in advance. Too poor to afford a present too, but I am sure she will understand. Hopefully she does not propagate zombies, and lots of weird things to me for that. (Just kidding!) =)


Been awake since 3 a.m. and could not fall asleep since. Since I could not fall asleep, I decided that I should do something more useful; penning down my thoughts at the moment and maybe blogging it later. It sure have been a long tme since I last took a train home. It was a long time too since I have last hand-written a paragraph this long.

Yay, I finally completed Mission 4 of the Haven campaign in Heroes of Might and Magic 5 Collector's edition. I did not expect the mission to be such a long one. The campaigns for Heroes 5 is considerably short with only 5 missions to each faction's campaign. I completed Mission 4, and now headed over to Mission 5, the last mission in the Haven campaign.

Warning! A little spoiler ahead.

I took extremely (more than usual amount of time) to complete mission 4. Part of it was because I have a compulsive need to clear the whole map (of all the monsters and mines) before advancing in the story line. I must admit, the underground part of the mission 4 map was quite challenging, and I did not take the town until the very end because I had the impression that the storyline will continue once I do so and I will not have the chance to clear the map again. I had to battle with dwindling army, so the battle get more and more tricky. Towards the end of the map, I needed some form of luck to guarantee a win. Luckily the siege of the town was easy.

Warning! Lots of spoilers ahead!

I admit I made a mistake here. Should have captured the town for resources and reinforcements, and then I will clear the map much faster. So for people who have yet to do mission 4, you do not have to clear the map, just capture the town and then continue on with the quest. Even if you really want to clear the map, capture the town first will make the journey much smoother for you. The plot gets interesting and a little more twisted towards the end. Another thing I dread, after pumping the hero all the way to the max, I realized that I would not be using that hero for mission 5. Anyway, will be away for some time, so probably no advancement in this game for a period of time. =)

Spoilers end here.

Going home is not an easy task. It is usually associated with lots and lots of packing and planning. The passage home cost RM43.00, the taxi fare cost S$8.70, presents S$secret of course. Packing is the worse part of it, as those who saw me pack before knew that I pack extremely slowly. Perhaps the most important reason why I pack so slowly was because I am quite a sentimental person. Throwing away stuffs is a big issue to me, and I even took the time to read all my notes again before giving them away after the A's. (Did not feel too good throwing them away, so I gave them away.)

This is not my best experience with train-riding. While I should be thankful because I do not have to sleep on the upper deck, (it is so cramped up there, that you could not eve sit-up straight) I had my problems with this train ride. Somehow, the air-conditioning did not seem to be working the earlier part of the night, and therefore, my sleep was badly interrupted many times. I woke up at 3 a.m., sweating, and that was why I could not fall asleep again. Had my sleep not be interupted, I may still be soundly asleep right now.Oh well, at least the view at the lower deck is much better than the upper deck. I could sit up straight and look out of the window. (The window is larger for beds on the lower deck so I could see more, therefore, nicer view!) The view is definitely much better than say, a 6 hour bus ride home. (When all you see on both sides are palm trees) The train actually run near some buildings, into a forest, beside roads and offer many other perpectives to an early Malaysian morning.

Seems like everyone around me are Singaporeans too. I had an easy time during passport clearance since the 'Malaysian passport' queue is perpetually empty. Well, you probably guessed it, that those holding Singapore passports are not as lucky as me. Seems like everyone is heading to Genting too! I am the lone guy separating an Indian family (an extended family and hence lots of members) and a group of Singaporean Chinese around my age. All going to Genting. Seemed like a good idea too, since we will reach KL Sentral around 7 plus, and by the time you buy a Genting bus ticket, board the bus, board the cable car, and reach your hotel, it is just nice the time to check in. Maybe the next time I go Genting from KL I will take a night train out too!

Being a person that rarely have the chance to go overseas, Genting is one my favourite holidays place to be. While the entire compound is not that huge and you can probably enjoy everything in one full day, the weather is what got me attracted to it. The wind is nice, the temperature is comfortable (not too warm, not too cold) and the air is relatively fresh! (though slightly poluted by the lots of visiting vehicles). Definitely much more comfortable than the normal warm weather that we are so used to. Food there are not bad too, though may be a bit expensive. Since the last time I visited Genting was a long time ago, I do not have much to say, since things there change in a flash, and the information I knew have a high chance to be inaccurate.

Woah, penning down thought wa actually a good thing, It made my eyes tired and I am getting sleepy. Maybe I may still be able to clock another hour of sleep before reaching KL. To everyone who is going to Genting, here I silently wish that you all have an exciting and enjoyable journey.


Currently playing: Heroes of Might and Magic 5 Collector's Edition
Campaign: Haven Campaign
Mission: 4 - The Trap
Favourite unit: Cavalier
Most disliked enemy unit: Archlich
Best Hero: Isabella (Level 19 Knight)

Key differences between Heroes 5 and the previous versions (that I realized)
-All armies must be led by a hero (No more imps flying around picking resources)
-Heroes are only lost when the army is defeated (no troops left, so no more hero solo army)
Hence it is best to allocate huge armies to high level heroes, to minimize chance of losing hero.
-Heroes gain skill, and ability per level (the system is just different from previous versions, hard to explain, abilities are revised)
-Town level increases with every building you build
-Possible to upgrade troops of same level (Archers to marksmen, footmen to squires etc.)
-Possible to squeeze 4000 gold a turn from town now
-More 3D! and eye-candies (animations, zoom-ins during battles are improved too)


Something that I have just realized. The place which I saw the ad and bought my 'wife', is back on. Head on the www.hardwarezone.com and check the marketplace. Just saw some good deals myself! =)

Maybe I will get myself some parts to heal my 'wife' a bit and recover some functionality.

Update on energy efficient computer. After much research, I have decided to adopt AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Socket AM2 as the processor of choice. This one should not burn a hole in my pocket and at 2.2 Ghz, it is a relatively low speed for its architecture and hence should not even scratch it's maximum power consumption of 65W. Socket AM2 is a revamped AMD platform, hence offering even more energy-efficient solutions. Currently looking at motherboard from Gigabyte, but have yet to decide on a motherboard.

Google is going to release it's spreadsheet/database freebie program! Is that a challenge toward's Microsoft's Excel?
http://www.google.com/googlespreadsheets/tour1.html

Now you can edit spreadsheet with a few other people real time. Good for projects! This may be good news to some, but bad news to some people. Multiple people editting the same spreadsheet at the same time can result in mix-ups. However, with a good team, this should not be a problem! According to reviews, the available features are only simple ones, but should be sufficient for day to day use. This is getting exciting!


Question 1: What is the difference between the compiler and the preprocessor?

Question 2: What is the difference between an integral variable and a floating-point variable?


This is Russell's MSN nickname. Had a good laugh and if you try to sing it along with the tune, it kind of fits.




Guess I better write it down here, as I can never remember the difference. You can ask me a few minutes after I read it, and I can completely forget about it. That is for being a complete newbie. Anyway,

Question: What is the difference between and interpreter and a compiler?

My own answer: An interpreter is an interpreter lo. A compiler is a 'program' to turn your program code into another program.

Correct answer: An interpreter translates a program as it reads it, turning the program instructions, or code, directly into action. A compiler translates the code into an intermediary form. This step is called compiling, and produces the object file. The compiler then can invoke a linker, which turns the object file into an executable program.

My own understanding on interpreter: Perhaps interpreter is the link between machine language (ones and zeroes) and the code?

While what a compiler does is easy to understand, what the interpreter does totally eludes me. Maybe that was for reading 'chim' books with all the 'chim' definitions. Need more research here.

Here is more C++ wisdom that I need:-

"The result of dividing by zero is undefined and usually disastrous"

Quoted from
The C++ Programming Language, Third Edition by Bjarne Stroustrup
Published by Addison Wesley Longman (1997)


I am scraping Intel Core Duo off my list in energy efficient computer. The problem is, I do not have the financial ability to get one. While my 'wife' can still be kept alive with a lot of maintenance, recycling parts from it is a bad idea because most of the important parts recyclable is semi-spoilt.

The motherboard and processor and hard drive is definitely non recyclable.

While I did not want to involve a separate graphics card, having a PCI express slot for future use might be beneficial. There is no use getting a motherboard with AGP since I can get entry level card that is better than my FX5200 and probably generate less heat, use less power and run quieter than my FX5200.

Cd-rom and floppy is dead. The only part recyclable may be the sound card and the ethernet card.

Time to build an imaginary computer that have certain energy efficient merits while still conform to my plc standards. Time to do some research. Results may be up soon.


Guess I won't be using my 'wife' for 3D games any more, at least not in the short term. In addition, there weren't much games in my 'wife' since I suddenly lost interest in gaming right after the A's. It's interesting how I needed to play games at least once every day during the A's but once it is finished, I do not see games that I play as very fun anymore. Guess it's stress, and you need to game to balance. Therefore, in an effort to make it run less hot and quieter, I have decided to replace the Fx5200 with the Matrox Dual Head since it is a good 2D card and would not run hot.

As for the processor which heats up faster than it should (indicating previous damages had been done) there is nothing much I could do about it. I underclocked it to run at 90% of it's stated capacity and that is about all. My temperature monitor for parts inside looks ok so far, but the temperature around it (the room, me, and the area surrounding it) rises. I have still yet to identify the problem, but it seems that the best solution is to buy a new CPU and motherboard altogether.


My computer that resided in my boarding school room for a three years and a half, which I dearly called 'wife'. I decided to bring it out for a spin, since I am losing touch with what I kept inside it. It brings back a lot of memories, and had been with me through thick and thin. I did most of my projects on it, including my Project Work during JC1 in which I got Band 1. I owe everything I got to it. Not to mention the great class page we have in the school manual, I owe much to it too. In addition, I also played countless Dota games against my hall mates on it. (I personally blame this for my poor results, so now is its turn to owe me something.)

How did the computer come about? I had very deep interest in computer since very young. I believe I got my first computer back in 1993. It was a 286. A present from the combined fund of all my uncles and aunties. Back then, a computer was around 4k to 5k ringgit. I was ecstatic. We were very poor, but yet, we own a computer. I cannot imagine how lucky I was. Most of my classmates in school never knew what a computer was. It has been that way till at least when I was secondary 1.

There was only one or two people to which I can talk about computer about. Still remember we used to ask each other trivia questions about the computer. I believe I still remember one question from back then. The question was, 'How do you start Windows from the DOS prompt?' to which I answered the fastest and the most accurate. (There is only one answer) Type 'win' and press enter. I won. We asked each other a lot of things, like how to bypass 'CONFIG.SYS' and 'AUTOEXEC.BAT' during startup, how to configure HIMEM or EMS386. That was fun, but thinking back, computer was quite useless back then. I spent most of my time figuring out how I could make the computer more useful, and that is probably why I have scrutinized all the DOS commands available since DOS 5.0.

I even used to programme using QBasic, but programmes were really basic back then, without a real need for GUI. I did not have game and no, I did not spend most of my time on Solitare and Minesweeper. Bought a book on Wordperfect, and probably that is where I improved my typing skills. I think I can recall spending long hours in front of the computer typing. It just seems so fun! We have almost come to the end of the 286. Think it was already quite advanced back then. I realized my 286 came with the modern floppy drive that we have. (Dimensions slipped me, since they are also becoming obsolete soon) Most of the computer in school still used the ultra large black thin floppy than has capacity even smaller than the floppies we have now.

I was one of the lucky few to have a chance at computer classes. Most parents back then deemed computer lessons were impractical, and therefore, I had little classmates during computer classes. Yes, computer in school do not come with a hard drive. And yes, we have to carry our own DOS boot disk to lessons. Anyway, I cannot even remember what I learned back then. Some 'turtle' programme that they taught me. I realized they still teach it now to my youngest sister. Now that I am what I am now, come to think of it, those computer teachers were inefficient, and probably did not know much about computing. The invention of Windows probably moved users of computers from computer professionals to people who did not know much about computers. I think I can do a quick find on 'turtle' and still find the ancient program.

I do not remember much about the 286. I forgot even how much RAM it had and what graphics card it had. All I remembered was that there wasn't a sound card and I spend most of my time in front of the computer without sound. Anyway, even without a sound card, certain programs can still use the internal speaker and beep you a tune. Think of it as earlier version of non-polyphonic ringtones. I was very imaginative back then, did not know that someone have to make the game in order for me to play it. So I was there at the games shop, mouthing names of games which obviously the shopkeepers never heard before. I thought the computer can serve a million purpose, and play another million games. I did not even realize I was wrong. Probably due to the fact that I was poor. I only get to buy games once a year. Make that I only got to buy one game per year. Deep in my mind, after I leave I wanted to return the following year buying the game that I have just imagined the day before.

My first game was not Minesweeper or Solitare. It was, The Adventures of Monkey Islands by Lucasfilm games. You can still read review of it at goodolddays.net and apparently, it was a great classic. Almost most computer veterans can recall insults from the game. (You use insults to win fights. You use insults to counter insults attacks. The battle system was about insults.) I did not even know it was pirated back then, since I bought it, it must be original. Besides, how do you define 'pirated'? Deep down, a 'pirated' copy and an 'original' copy have the same bits and bytes. How do you distinguish between a 'pirated' copy from an 'original' copy? What is intelectual property? Why can't I make something just to realize someone have made it before me and therefore my one cannot be marketed? I was and is still, very poor. I like how Mr. Alistair Chew put it. If you cannot afford it, don't get it. If that were to happen, probably half the world still do not know Windows or MacOS. I am actually very thankful that I had an opportunity to engage computer in such enriching way, without needing to think about such issues. That probably made me what I am now. I probably wouldn't have been able to play The Adventures of Monkey Islands if not for that pirated copy. I am just thankful that it all happened.

One year has passed. Even my sister got a go at The Adventures of The Monkey Islands. She even completed the game. Needless to say, I must have completed the games a few times. It was time for a new game. I must admit, even though I did not have access to gaming information, and most of the information I have gathered was purely imaginative, I did a pretty good job at choosing my games. My second game of my life, The Elder Scrolls : Arena. The first ever game in the Elder Scrolls series. I never had to have another game. I can practically play away with that one. I never finished the game even after investing numerous hours, but it does not matter since it was open-ended gameplay. I can do a million of other quests and explore another million of dungeons on my own free time. I even took the time to archive which shop sells what, (when there was like, a million shops all over, man, I cannot believe I did this, I must be mad) so that my next character can just head straight to the particular shop to buy what he needed. Volendrung, still my favourite weapon, and I think it should be available in Morrowind and Oblivion, just that I never found it. Besides, another reason why I never finish the game is that whenever I pick up my fourth or fifth piece of staff, I get dropped back to my DOS command prompt with the error message "Not enough EMS". As I have asserted earlier that my family was poor, asking for an upgrade was just simply not possible. Computer parts were astronomically high-priced back then.

For some reasons, I really liked open-ended quests. I did not particularly like Morrowind and Oblivion style where you have to do this to advance to the next quest. For some reason I like a world where there is infinite possibilities for exploration. For all this reason, I prefer Arena's world over Morrowind's world over Oblivion's world. I think it might be crazy for Oblivion to even make their world as huge as Morrowind's. With so much eye candy, I bet the size of the game will exceed 10gb. Anyway, I was deeply immersed in the world of Arena for a while. I have to thank Bethesda that. I probably did not know this then, but my Arena was original. 50 ringgit well spent.

Then I got a 386. It is funny how when you get a better computer, the older one seems to be totally useless. After all the 386 have more RAM, (more EMS! =)) better graphics card, and also a larger hard drive. My first hard drive was 150 Mb I think. I cannot remember what was my next hard drive. Too long ago. The 386 was dumped by my uncle, and since I could have put it to good use, it was given to me. Forgot the exact years, but the hard drive also was packed with some games. Some are nice to play with my sister, others I just play alone. The good old days. It was real. Time seemed to stop everytime I played games. I was encapsulated in the moments of magic. Really, the good old days. Time passes so fast when I play games now. Oh great, speaking about time, it is now 9 a.m.. I better be to bed soon. Will continue this post some other time.

Woke up and it is now time to continue this post. Now where was I? The 386 was loaded with some games, I cannot remember most of it, but I also installed my Adventures of Monkey Islands and The Elder Scrolls : Arena on it. One of the more memorable games was Commander Keen or more dearly known to me as 'keen4e'. That is because the command line to start the game was 'keen4e' and then press enter. Bouncing around in a pogo stick was a lot of fun! Collecting keys to access new areas, and stunning the monsters so that they are not hostile for a small period of time. There was also a ski game that I remember. Of course, there was Mortal Kombat 1 and Mortal Kombat 2. Enjoyed watching computer execute fatality on me all the time, (because that was like the best graphics could offer back then) since I did not know how to execute them myself.

Then came the 486 as well, I believe also dumped from my uncle as well. Then came Police Quest 1-4, UFO: Enemy Unknown, Syndicate, Theme Park and many others like that. It all came in the hard drive that came with the 486. The hard drive is still here with me now, a 1.5 Gb hard drive, which was considered a gem back then. You can never fill 1.5 Gb worth back then, considering there was no music distribution, no video distribution, and it is almost impossible for you (people like you and me) to fill up 1.5 Gb just by typing or programming. UFO: Enemy Unknown of course took some of my time. I believe I was primary 4 then, which means I have additional free time. For primary 1-3 I believe I had mad teachers, but for the primary 4 year, I rarely have to even touch homework. Perhaps the only teacher that gave homework was my Malay teacher, and she uses the workbook most of the time. The trick is to finish the workbook in advance, and I would be quite free for a long period of time. Therefore, more time spent into gaming.

I started collecting 'In-Tech' the pull-out from The Star newspaper every Tuesday. It always have technical related articles to which you can learn a lot about computers. Sadly, in the recent years, it has converted into a more consumer related articles. So reviews are superficial, with little reference to technical and new technologies issues, so there was less to learn. The 'In-Tech' too, back in my primary school days used to include price lists, and all different shops place their price lists on. I usually take some time to scrutinize it and see which shop offers the best price for which parts. Sadly, that is also non-existent as of late, as they are replaced with price lists of bundled computers. Not only that, they are usually concerned with price and so the parts they used were mostly sub-par. I remember seeing a working computer for just RM250, using parts that I have never even heard before, while stile being able to churn 600Mhz and complete with monitor and keyboard.

After much comparing of prices in the 'In-Tech' newspaper, I always build my imaginary computer for the week. Maybe this habit was inculcated into me, as I still have a habit of imaginaryly building computers in my mind. You can see lately that I was trying to build energy efficient computer. (Most likely is going to be scraped since lowest clock speed Core Duo enters the market at around US$450-500, I can never afford that, and with that amount of money, you can build a fully functional decent computer) I even archived them, though my archive is gone now. I forgot which hard-drive I placed them on and it is probably thrown away by now. If you see my 'In-Tech' collections, they are usually full of highlighter marks. Sadly, my father likes to sell them to the old newspaper collector. (That is probably why I kept an archive) You get computers like, the most cost-effective (plc) computer of the week, the dream computer (yet must conform to certain plc standards), the cheapest possible working computer, and things like that.

Cpu cooling, noise and power was not an issue back then. That is why I have also added imaginary computers to my own mind that include, the coolest computer, the most silent computer, and the most energy efficient computer as of late. Reminiscing the good old days made me feel like a little boy again. Then one day, my father decided to buy one of the computer that I have under my plc archive. There I got my Celeron 366 Mhz, 64 Mb SD RAM (think they were 66 Mhz) integrated Sis Graphics, integrated audio, a 4.3 Gb hard drive in June 1999 at Rm2000 after much bargaining on my father's part. It was considered quite cheap at that time, as you can only get fully functional computers at above Rm2k. Pentium 2 was the dominant processor, and Celeron just entered the market as a cost-effective alternative.

To this day that computer still sat at home, and is still working. Not to mention, it now have the streamyx internet connection to itself. My father bought a printer and internet connnection at the same time. That is when I started to have a strange need to do projects. We have projects all the time in secondary 1 in Malaysia. There was 2 history projects a year, and I cannot remember much. I remember that my Geography teacher was obsessed with colouring. We have to colour our notes, all the pictures in the notes, homework with colouring pencil or else get a good scolding. With a printer, it is easy to shine out on most projects. There is only limited amount of things you can write (and still maintain the good and nice handwriting, since they sub-conciously affect the marks you are going to get) and to this day, I still type much faster than I write. That is probably why I resent exams, where I am forced to do pen and paper, when I can type a GP essay at least twice the length that I write in the time frame.

The computer was also my first experience with Windows 98SE, and I was still a DOS person before that. With the GUI, it was easy to catch up. My hotmail e-mail account, has been around since I got internet, since I did not know how to set the POP3 mail account. Of course, it is a piece of cake now, but for me back then, I was completely lost. It still only hold 2Mb of mail. Another nice part of having internet back then, most of the people in school know nothing about internet. They will be like, "What's that?" and it is usually difficult to explain. Try explaining 'internet' to a person that never knew its existence. Of course, there will be this one or two person that have internet, and we will be like discussing what we can do. I can announce that I was a very proud owner of a 6 digit ICQ number. (I cannot even remember the number now.) I believe ICQ numbers now are around 12 digit.

The 56k internet account is still there at home today, even though I got streamyx last year. This is because the subscription is cheap and it is yearly. The only expensive part about it is usage. It is a good alternative, because there will be days when Streamyx servers are down, but the 56k internet can always serve as a backup as the servers were tried and tested over the years, and now enjoy from dwindling number of users. It was difficult back in 1999 to get onto the internet after dinner. You will get disconnected after 10 minutes. You cannot reconnect after that. Once you connect, you will get disconnected around after 10 minutes again. Irritating. I remember Napster! Where we got music but it's usually 2-3 hours per song. Besides, when downloading, you cannot do much, because the bandwidth has been jammed by the download. Pages will start to take forever to load. Nevertheless, it was easy to fill the 4.3 Gb.

In 2000, I came to Singapore. Did not bother to queue up for internet at the library. (Besides, I am an eating person. I spend most of my recess eating.) There will usually be high-volumes of people. My exposure to internet and computer is reduced to 2 hours a week at the Datashack. That is where I learnt how to MUD too. That is where I started my The Tower Towers LP Mud career. It has definitely improved my English and typing skill when I started. It was interesting and fun since most of my friends were playing at the same time. The good old days, again. Sadly, it is all over, again. I wrote my personal story on the MUD when I left it in 2001, because my mother has previously asked me to stop mudding and she died that year. I recorded the names of everyone that I had encountered and had fun together down in the story. Sadly now, my character is gone, and the list is gone too. All I am left with was the Book of Names, which was not updated since November 2001 and did not contain my name since I was not active enough.

I became detached from the computer world. No one knows my proficiency with the computer. No one even bothered to ask. I joined the computer services team, but there is not much to do. All the big things were handled by several 'uber' members. I have since started a policy of not volunteering unless asked to. I will be very happy to help, but you need to approach me first if you need help. Till this day, I stand by my theory. It is no use if you volunteer yourself when everyone thinks that you cannot do it. People will only approach you for help if they know you can do it.

This theory worked for the MRT as well. All the members are as proficient, but we all have different ways of doing things. It is funny how you set up proper, to your own liking, just to come back after the break that someone have completedly changed your configuration. Might as well, I set up to your expected configuration, so that you do not need to change it later. That is why I now move only when asked to. While many have labelled me as a 'slacker' or 'no initiative' back there, some know that I am very happy to help if you ask me nicely and accept to do things my way.

I probably carried this over to MRC in ACJC, since some of the members were my long time MRT teammates. Teachers mostly did not think I could do it, partially because I will never volunteer unless asked. What they never knew was that I took all the jobs that the rest of the team members refused. I become the 'last resort man' since most people know I will help. Since all these were on personal voluntary basis, I have many many hours (that I lost count) that was not calculated into my attendance and of course, the teachers would not even know I spent these hours. Oh well, at least I helped! It's all over and there is no use talking about it now.

Anyway back to how I got the computer. Hardwarezone was a hot site at that point of time with lots of people either selling or wanting to buy parts. I was of course wanting to buy parts. I was not in touch with the computer technology, but yet since technology was advancing so quick then, that in the short period of time that I have been away, CPU speed have increased by a lot! Even graphics card were much improved, with most graphics card starting to be able to support 3D acceleration. There was a great debate between 2D and 3D and what is the difference. After all, your monitor is forever 2D, only having x and y axis. 3D is purely imaginary, so why some cards cannot support 3D and therefore cannot start the game at all? Anyway, searching through hardwarezone landed me with my 'wife'.

Someone sold bundled parts for S$300. I got Athlon 1.3 Ghz (with fan), ASUS motherboard (I believe it's K7VIVN or something like that), Matrox G550 Dual Head, an IBM Deskstar (30Gb), Creative Live Value!, a Cd-rom drive and an ethernet card, and all this for $300, a steal. Oh well, computer and laptops were banned in 2000, just when I was thinking of getting one there. Bad timing. And the reason they gave for banning computers and laptops were even more lame. Apparently (I do not know the full story) some PRC guy got his laptop full of porn discovered by teachers. To add insult upon injury, I think it was his partner in crime that have backstabbed him. That is called because of one bad egg we all suffer. Anyway, in the end I got mine approved because I was both a member of Compserv and MRT. (Therefore needing the computer to do video editting, website maintaining and other stuffs)

I was also the first in the boarding school to have a computer since the ban. Before long, Guan Par also got his one approved after plea from many teachers. Though we got the machines in, we functioned without internet. It was lame because you did your web page, you cannot upload it. Then you need to somehow get the files to the technician, and have the technician upload it. Not only that, you get problems technician uploaded to the wrong directory, wrong version, wrong path, bla bla bla, and therefore it was a great pain just to update a web site. Contary to popular beliefs, I never editted video on my computer before. That is because I never had enough money to buy a capture card, and even though I have the camera and tape and everything, I could not get in into my computer.

Me and Guan Par have long fought the battles to make internet possible to students like us. While our counterparts in the Chinese High Boarding school are already enjoying these benefits, it does not make sense to keep us light years behind. We even wrote the proposal for the wireless internet system, after doing a lot of research. Anyway, it was approved very long ago, but they were slow to do the installation. Not only that, the installation methods were none of those ideal ones we have proposed in our proposal. We hoped that wireless internets would reach our rooms. Oh well, teachers are always worried about porn, maybe they are guilty of it themselves. Mr. Liang said, given the privacy, they surely will. Mr. Chew said, we can all don't care and make it like Chinese High, but because we care, we shall deter all of you from having internet in the rooms.

As a result, wireless internet was implemented in the boarding school dining hall. While it was passwordless, which makes it good since you do not have to worry about getting one, it could barely support up to three computers at the same time. The atmosphere is very stifling because once you get a great idea about something, someone comes over and looks at your screen and you lose your inspiration. Not only that, Ms Kwee said that you cannot bring your charger down. Use your battery. If you realize, laptop batteries do not offer comfortable amount of time. The only reason why you shouldn't bring your charger down according to Ms Kwee is that someone will trip over the cable. Lame. Then she changed it to save electricity. Lame. You can practically switch on your laptop 24/7 for a month and not needing to pay more than three dollars in electricity. And Mr. Chew thinks that only Macs were the ones that are energy efficient. =p

Anyway, back to my computer, I could not work without a keyboard a mouse and a monitor of course. Went down to Sim Lim the next day, chipped in S$100 for a FX5200, another S$200 for a decent flat-screen monitor, S$14 for the mouse (I still remember this one) around S$10 for the keyboard (I love this one), bought over a casing and a PSU from Joshua Hii for a grand total of $20. I worked without sound till Caleb lent me one of his spare pairs. I still have them and they are working great, thanks you! I realized that my Matrox card was one of the best card for 2D graphics, but it could not support 3D and all the new games required 3D. Anyway, FX5200 was decent enough for me.

After working with it for a while, I finally realized why it was sold at such a steal. The only parts that did not seem to have problems were the Matrox graphics card, the Creative sound card, the ethernet card and the Cd-rom drive. The IBM Deskstar was already making grinding sound not very long into my usage. I realized IDE1 is spoilt (you cannot enable high-speed data transfer though the cable and drive and mobo supports) so I have to plug in both my Cd-rom drive and hard drive into IDE2. Yeah, forgot the bundle included a floppy. The floppy drive works too. Ok, the motherboard was spoilt in a sense that the IDE1 was spoilt, and I get blue screen crashes attributed to motherboard instability. The processor gets very hot very fast (much more than it should) and the fan cooling it is near the end of life. The fan do not work at optimal spin rate and therefore could not cool it sufficiently. The RAM will sometimes be incorrectly detected. Furthermore, I wonder why my computer, working at only 1.3 Ghz max runs noisier and hotter than a 3.2 Ghz Dual Core with Ati X550. Something is definitely wrong with the processor. My guess is that it had overheated before, and therefore, prone to raise its temperature quickly.

Oh well, that means that they require a lot of maintenance to run at tip top conditions. I managed to provide them and kept it running till now. I packed it when I was leaving the boarding school, and never opened it till today. Think it probably spent 7 months without working, so I decided I should bring it out for a spin. I realized why I had kept it for good. The Cd-rom drive died shortly after my A's, and hence I was unable to correct the hard-drive for it's grinding. The hard-drive of course, took damage over time, and now the grinding sound is unbearable, probably due to increased grinding bringing more bad clusters. The only way to get out of this is to decrease the amount of things stored in the drive, and run diagnostics and error flagging frequently.

I therefore concluded, further computing without first doing a chkdsk /r in the recovery console is suicide for the hard-drive. I therefore began to panic as the Cd-rom drive has died, therefore I have no means of accessing the recovery controls. I therefore plugged in the floppy disk drive, just to realize it suddenly did not work when it worked well the last time. Panic panic more panic. Read articles on the internet on how to boot the computer from thumbdrive. My motherboard actually allows such thing, but the problem is, getting the thumbdrive to be system formatted. It required a floppy drive at all cost, in which the case if my floppy have worked, I would have booted from the floppy. Which defeats the purpose of having a thumbdrive to boot the computer. Did some more research, and system formatting thumbdrive became impossible without a system floppy.

Trouble trouble, but just when I was to give up, I did a search on recovery console. I realized, to my delight, that you can install recovery console as a boot up option. I quickly made an image of the windows xp cd on this 3.2 Dual core, and then break the files into small chunks, send the file over to my 'wife', load the cd, installed the recovery console boot option, and finally, start recovery console. As of 9 a.m. the hard drive finally stopped making grinding sound, and my 'wife' can be used once again. Though it was a stressful and tired night, it was worth it to see that my computer will be seeing more useful days. Now I have to find a way to make it work less noisy and hot.


Wai Hong is currently an undergraduate student at National University of Singapore. He majors in Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering. He is a member of the forever sixteen :) club since he was sixteen. He was lucky enough to end up in Anglo-Chinese School Independent and then Anglo-Chinese Junior College, where he spent his best years and still looking to spend more best years. He was born into the world on 16th October, sixteen years ago. =)

Angel * Carol * Esther * Michael * Mindy * Samantha * Seraphina

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