Feel Good

I was driving home from a rather impromptu dinner with some friends when I realised that we can feel absolutely great even without spending a dime. It was just that moment on a light drizzly night, not too late and not too early, with a three-piece jazz band sounding through my 9-year-old stock car radio. No intimidating driving from the other cars around me and the realisation of a simple lighthearted fellowship session with peers.

And you start to wonder, where did all the negativity and insecurity come from? There is much to rejoice for in our lives. The sky and all its hues. The trees and their swaying shadows. The pixelated beauty of insects. The amazing feeling and coordination in taking a deep breath.

Computer Problems Round 1 (Error Code 0xc0000034)

Around end of 2015, I had run into some problems when installing a Windows 8.1 update on my personal laptop (HP Envy Touchsmart). The installation was stuck at 82% the night before and when I woke up the morning after, it was still stuck at 82%. As I had to rush off to work, I forced quit my laptop (I know, such a "girl" thing to do) and I paid dearly for that mistake - blue screen of death!

Gender Conditioning and Bosses

A couple of days back, there was a discussion on the radio about female bosses vs male bosses. The discussion was initiated by one of the local news about a politician who made a statement that he decided to contest in an election because the other candidates were women and he didn't trust women leaders. Such statements are just so wrong on so many levels and yet they still occur in Malaysia. Perhaps it's an underhanded publicity stunt to get 5 seconds of fame.

Reflecting

Wow! It's been over two months of silence here. I've always thought of posting something but the time and mood just never was right. To say that I was busy all this while, would not be too accurate. There has been some super peak times but there has also been lull periods in between.

Every day things happen, big or small. But recently circumstances have nudged me to think about life and death.

First Birthday Trip: Boracay

Our conversation during New Year's Eve had sparked a yearning to do things differently in Year 2016. So, overnight we had decided and booked a trip to Boracay, Philippines to "celebrate" our three birthdays which spanned from late January to early February (although none of our birthdays were during our trip dates!).

Getting there was an adventure in itself. We boarded a morning AirAsia flight and was about 2 hours into the journey when the captain announced that we were turning back to KL due to "technical problems". Everyone thought it was a joke but it wasn't. This was the first time I have had to fly from KL and transit in KL too! We heard that the reason we turned back was because strong winds were pushing the plane off course and the captain didn't want to take any chances.

We finally got onto the replacement flight at 3.15 p.m. (without any compensation for the delay from AirAsia) and reached Kalibo International Airport after 7 p.m. The immigration counter was like a soapbox, which was amusing.

Kalibo International Airport - one of two airports which we can land in to get to Boracay

Nexus 5 connecting to PC issue

Today's the second time I've had problems connecting my Nexus 5 via USB cable to my laptop (HP Envy TouchSmart running on Windows 8.1). I'm so glad that I bookmarked this website, which has saved me twice!

Symptoms: After connecting Nexus 5 to PC via USB cable, switching from "Charging" to "File Transfer" on the phone results in the PC's alert sound indicating the device has disconnected. Going to "This PC", you won't find your device there either.

Solution: Go to Device Manager (Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers > Device Manager) and like the Passmark forum, my Nexus 5 was listed as "ACER Device". Clicking on it reveals a sub-category "ACER ADB Interface". Right click this and update driver, selecting the "search your local drive". For my case, there were 2 options to choose from and I chose the "MTP USB Driver".

After the driver was updated, my Nexus 5 immediately popped up as a removable drive on my PC. Voila, settled!

Thinking back, I probably needed to do this twice because of my PC 'blue screen of death' problem I had in January - which I also resolved through Google. That will be saved for another post.

Happy Lunar New Year - a year to monkey around!

Monkeying around - CNY 2016 e-card

This year my card came out very late, but my e-card was just in time! CNY celebration was the usual with some adventures in driving and work deadlines.

Happy Lunar New Year 2016! May the fire monkey year bring much laughter and blessings (as opposed to what I've been hearing it is supposed to bring).

First Car Break Down of the Year

Today was an unexpected day off at home. I had full intention of using the spare car so that my car could go into the workshop to fix the air conditioner problem. However, when I wanted to head out, the spare car couldn't start - the steering lock could not budge. So I took my car instead and it was not meant to be.

Have not seen this buddy in a long long time... I miss catching ladybirds in empty assam bottles

Baking Experiments: Cheese Tarts

Last weekend, I decided to stay home and make something useful of my time. I was looking around for what I could do and found a cheese tart recipe on the MFM superfine flour box. It looked simple, so I went out to buy some butter and started on it.

This was the outcome:

Home baked cheese tarts from scratch

My Hot Dog

I found this website where AI would determine if you're hot, from reading a HelloGiggles article and tried it out with various photos. While my own headshots yielded only "OK" ratings (hahaha... okla AI shows dependability), I was surprised with this!

My dog's photo generated using mirror image (used to be my blog profile pic once upon a time)

 And upon looking closer, even more surprised!