Ten Thousand

Over the weekend the blog reached 10,000 hits. Gee, I've come so far since this humble post:

It's already the 25th, for goodness sake! My hit counter stands currently at 181. I managed to top 100 visitors last month, and I plan to do so again. So c'mon my dear readers, I'm sure you can do better than that! Come more often! It's not like I update once every 5 years!

Do me proud, or I'll be forced to 'F5' my way up to number '200' before the midnight of the 30th.

Yes, I'm that sad.

All this makes me very reluctant to take this leave of absence, but it's something I have to do if I want to be around to see the next 10,000 hits! In the meantime, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you! Spend this enchanting time with your family, away from blogs.

21 Y.O.

At of this moment, 8 people have wished me Happy Birthday!

I've finally achieved what scores of teenagers under 21 really want - to be 21. And I can safely tell them, "Stick to being your age".

Dad got out and bought a birthday cake for me last night. Though it was probably the cheapest cake around, I appreciated the gesture as I don't remember the last time he did something like that. Last year was different because somebody else bought the cake.

I'll be having dinner with a loved one - also an unprecedented first. Let's hope I have a magnificent evening again!

(No blog updates for a long time - refer to previous post on how to use RSS feeds to keep track of my blog)

Suspended Animation

I felt it, and I'm sure you all have too (as witnessed by the serious drop in posts and comments). I have lost some interest in blogging, no thanks to computer games! Last time, I would spend my free time blogging but nowadays I will boot up Windows on my iMac and play Prince of Persia (fantastic game). If I have a friend over, we'll play Marvel Ultimate Alliance (great co-op game). If I have a LOT of time to waste, I go kill some characters in Sims 2 (super time-waster).

As you can see, blogging is no longer a part of my day.

However, I won't go so far as to close my blog, as popular blogger Jay did. I am merely putting the blog on hold as I pursue my long lost hobby of computer games. I believe we move through life in phases, and this happens to be the phase of "non-blogging". I might put up a special post this Friday, but otherwise it'll be some time before I continue blogging regularly. That time I'll probably return with an all-new blog template.

As your audience is very appreciated, I suggest you keep track of my blog using RSS feeds. If you're using Firefox, it's very easy:
1. See your Address Bar. On the right corner there is a small orange icon with one white dot and two curves.
2. Click on it and add it to your Live Bookmarks. Those using Firefox 2.0 has a few more steps, but just get it into your Live Bookmarks.
3. Download the Fizzle Firefox extension and install it.
4. The next time just click on the Fizzle option under the Tools menu. It will open a page where you can see if my blog is updated or not.

This is just one of many ways to subscribe to RSS feeds. You can do it with any other blogs/news/websites that have that orange feed icon in the Address Bar. If you're already using RSS, congratulations! Add my site into your feeds and you'll know when I'm back without having to manually come here every so often.

Peace out - till we meet again.

Spelling Fever

I CALLED IT!

 

Well, sort of. A few posts back I blogged about how pop songs nowadays tend to spell certain words, and it's certainly a strange obsession. Well, that obsession has leaked into the press. Check out the headline of this Star story:

 

"Three shots, then c-r-a-s-h" (http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/12/13/nation/16302837&sec=nation )

 

Seriously, what's wrong with using "...crash!"?

 

 

Fantastic Bargains

I'm having a week long training event held in a shopping mall here, so after class I visited the CK Jeans boutique. They were advertising discounts of up to 70%! I found out that after the discount, the prices have dropped from ridiculously expensive to just expensive. RM350 for a pair of jeans? Nuh-uh. It's RM35 Haadyai counterfeits for me, please.

Spelling Bee

Have you noticed how lately R&B and pop songs will spell words? It seems to be the rage now. One of the earlier songs I remember using this method was Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl (B. A. N. A. N. A. S.). All sorts of spelling songs followed. Some of them include songs by Fergie (G. L. A. M. O. R. O. U. S.) and Ciara (G to the H, E to the T, T to the O).

 

I'm beginning to think that the artists are dong it to improve the English proficiency among fans. After all, with the accusations that rap music is deroding moral behaviour, things can only get better when singers finally spell out some of the key words in their lyrics. I'm not sure how spelling 'bananas' fit into the whole education picture, but hey! It's rich in pottasium.

 

However, this positive step received a setback when will.i.am, rapping on Fergie's Fergalicious, misspelled tasty as "T to the A to the S T E Y". In case you have problems stringing alphabets together, it's 'tastey'. Maybe it was deliberate, but all it does is to allow critics to claim that rappers are destroying English (if they haven't already). Still, don't be surprised if niggers from da 'hood start winning spelling competitions.

No Longer A Question of Content

Well, not really anyway.

 

I usually stop updating because I don't know what to write. But nowadays life is hectic and I can't find time for the blog! I have so many things to update - adventures with my new MP4 player, work ramblings, and more senseless posts caused by vampire traffic. In fact, I don't even have time to READ blogs, much less write on my own.

 

As a quick note, I'm listening to the following new albums:

Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape (not as good as L.A.M.B. but still nice)

Emma Bunton - Life in Mono (new release from Baby Spice, & surprisingly nice! Light and easy material)

Ciara - The Evolution (an average effort - no catchy tunes like 1, 2, Step or Hotline here)

Copycat

During the last MacWorld Expo, Apple put up a lot of banners promoting its upcoming version of Mac OS X (Codename: Leopard). One of them is really funny: "Redmond has a cat too. A copycat." The mention of cats is of course a reference to Mac OS' codenames like Tiger, Panther, etc while Redmond's 'copycat' is none other than Windows Vista, obviously.

 

I thought all this was just the usual Micro$oft bashing but when I saw some screenshots of Vista today, I gasped in horror. Some of them really DO look like Mac. Especially the Save and Open dialog boxes. It is really as if Microsoft lifted the whole thing up from Mac! If that's not proof of Mac OS' superior usability, I don't know what is. Perhaps the thing that is annoying me the most (as a Mac user) is that 90% of users will upgrade to Vista and praise Microsoft for finally improving the user interface, when in fact Mac users have been doing that for the past half decade.

Stewpid

I feel so stupid for recently finding out that Calvin and Hobbes, the super popular comic strip featuring a boy and his tiger pal, has ended since Dec 31, 1995. For so many years I thought I was reading new cartoons, but little did I know the papers were just reusing old ones. That's a true testament to the comic's popularity, and the same treatment has been given to Peanuts, and probably Garfield too when Jim Davis retires.

Wow.

Vampire Traffic

It used to be that I could avoid heavy traffic by leaving earlier or much later. But it seems that traffic jams have become a permanent fixture around my work area. I leave at 5pm, jam. 6pm, jam. 7pm, ALSO jam. It is literally sucking the life out of me, hence the title. Perhaps for a future Bond film they can introduce a mad scientist who deliberately causes worldwide traffic jams to make everyone depress. And depression directly affects the number of babies born, and that can only mean unhappy fertility clinics and angry governments.

Read my last 2 sentences. More proof that I'm turning into a zombie who writes pointless and humourless posts.

Anyway, last week's microchip theft in Penang prompted the police to put up half-assed roadblocks, thus causing long queues as 5 lanes of traffic are funneled into 2 lanes. Plus, the roadblock is directly outside Penang's latest shopping arcade, Queensbay Mall (which opens today). I have to pass by that road every morning, and I shudder to think how traffic will be affected by Queensbay Mall. But, I think I'll be an emotionless zombie by then, so it wouldn't really matter.