Mac OS is Just So Visually Pleasing to Use

maybe it's just me being petty, but i feel so cool and comfortable when using Mac OS. all the graphics are smooth, not too crisp with a slight shadow behind each window and smooth gradient colours everywhere! and when you hover your cursor over a button, it glows lightly and fading when the cursor is moved away. aaahhh!!! and the program icons! even open source softwares have nicely designed icons using great colours and playing around with gradients and shadows. i'm wondering whether the developers/designers create better looking icons for macs than windows or it's because the OS makes everything look nice? hahaha

anyway, the reason i've posted the photo above is to point out something i've just only noticed... an incredible detail i've missed all this while. notice that the 'page load error' pop-up comes out from a slit in the grey part of the browser. it's so adorable... looks like the cd drive slit on a macbook! the pop-up slides out from the slit and dissappears when an option in the pop-up window is selected. such detail! who'd think of that?

i think i am "terlalu mengagungkan" apple products... infatuation? probably...

Thunder

i've completed my work and still have about 1 hour to go before i can leave (which is after doing the asian stock market closing). i was listening to mp3s on my hp, where the ear buds really shuts all the noise out from the surroundings, while working on the computer when i kept feeling vibrations from the table. at first i thought it was my handphone vibrating or the disc drive playing a disc... but then i remembered that if my phone were to ring, i'd hear it from my ear buds... and i was not using the disc drive... so then i took off my ear buds and found that the vibrations were caused by fierce thunder resonating my table! i hadn't realised that it was raining heavily outside...

Swatting Flies In Office

my office has been really empty this week as half of the staff are out settling problems and going for meetings. that leaves 3 of us left in the office most of the time. today, there's only two of us here. i feel lonely and actually fell asleep for a few minutes after lunch. i woke up with a mild case of heart palpitation... maybe due to fear of being found out? but as one colleague says, it is ok to have a short nap...

somehow, 2 large flies have found their way into the office yesterday afternoon and has been plaguing me all morning today. i've been literally swatting flies (which can also double up as an expression of my boredom) with the newspaper or anything nearby. however, as you know, flies have multiple eyes which gives it 360 degree view of its surroundings and so the task proved to be harder than it sounds. a few minutes ago, one of the stupid flies kept attacking me - going at my head, face, pen, laptop, mouse, etc... and as i was trying to shoo it away from my face with my right hand, it got trapped between my middle finger and ring finger... my unexpected victory was met with an impulsive thought of how much bacteria are found on a fly... i nearly puked, but got myself together and tried pulling its wings off, but it kept buzzing so i had to dispose of the fellow by pounding him between layers of a tissue paper...

please excuse my narrative of the disposal of a fly, it may seem inhumane but a fly is a pest and are far from extinction (at least this species... since i see them in abundance in markets and garbage bins). anyway, it's one down... one more to go... the other fugitive fly seem to have disappeared!

Clearing Dead Flowers

it's embarrassing but i'd only worked up the effort to dismantle my graduation flower bouquets yesterday and throw the dead flora away. the wilting blossoms in brightly coloured florist paper had been sitting in the kitchen for exactly 2 months... it was starting to give out that herbaceous smell of drying leaves...

i know that usually people just throw the whole bouquet away after a week, but i had to take out the graduation bears and removed some of the papers (to be used in some future scrapbooking or art & craft attempts)... yes, i'm a hoarder of all sorts of craft supplies!

anyway, the reason for this sudden burst of positive energy in clearing up the house comes at the usual time of the month where i'll get very hardworking and will go the extra mile to get thing done. i find that i do better on exams when it falls around this time of the month. it's because i'll be in the mood to write and thus, my answers will be better phrased... although nothing can help me if the facts are wrong, but at least if they are correct and nicely phrased, the examiner will be in a better mood and may be more lenient! at least that's what i hope...

this also explains why there's 2 posts for today.

Interesting Numbers

i just noticed as i was adding the forex that today's foreign exchange for 100 saudi riyal was RM90.210... get it? 90210... beverly hills 90210... the popoular tv series in the 1990s. but of course 90210 is only the post code or zip code...

i don't know why but i seem to always notice numbers and try to make sense of them... like while trying to remember where we parked the car, i'll try to turn the parking lot number into something that i find interesting. sometimes it's abit annoying when i can't make the numbers into anything but the numbers itself and so, i 'll just write it down somewhere.

another weird numbers thing i've come to notice is that i always seem to see 12.34 on my handphone clock, astro decoder clock, car clock or any digital time piece... somehow, i always manage to unwittingly check the time at 12.34, be it in the morning or night. the most common is after church on sunday and if i'm using the computer at night.

unfortunately, i really can't remember numbers when there is a need to remember them. i'm only good for remembering redundant numbers where there's no importance in recalling them. it's just weird how the brain works.

Exasperated in trust

i'm finding it very hard to trust people lately. it seems like everytime i put my trust in someone, that person will bail out on me (in chinese, the term is "ffk" which stands for "fong fei kei" or literally translated as "board aeroplane"... don't ask me how the term originated!?!). these past few weeks i've made a couple of plans with different friends to meet up and i can say that 70% of them didn't materialise! and it's always last minute cancellations! it's like you're looking forward to eating this food and it gets snatched away as you're just about to grasp it!

i've found, with this one particular friend, that i can never arrange a successful meetup... she's really a nice person, but even if we scheduled a meeting two weeks ahead, she'd always end up having some trip or another gathering - affectively cancelling our outing. i don't know, perhaps she prioritizes another (unsaid) group of friends. after all, she is closer to them... but i hope it's not because she doesn't want to meet up with us.

i have another friend, a coursemate, whom i think doesn't want to mix with us (four of us used to lunch together and sit together in classes) anymore as she always declines invitations for meetups. i think the cause of this alienation was due to some subtle fallouts all of us had with each other as a result of too much close contact with each other. however, the rest of us did not think too much of these fallouts and just forgave and forget those akward moments. i guess it is different for different people. but it's such a pity that 2 years of friendship would go to the dogs just because of some untactful words and deeds said and done...

another incident of trust... i shall need to be vague here. my trust in people have gotten me into "hot soup" a couple of times. by "hot soup" i don't mean it as a vey serious problem, but it has resulted in my reputation being slightly marred. being blamed for something you didn't do isn't something that i desire. and i feel that it isn't quite a smart move to rat on people... it's something like biting the hand that feeds you. thankfully evidences are aplenty and if one were to look properly, it would point to the truth. that's why sometimes i prefer to do everything myself! which is obviously not a "work smart" tactic!

My first accident

this is embarrassing to say, but i met with a traffic accident on my second day of driving solo. i was coming back from work and it was just after the junction in sunway where the petting zoo used to be (i think it's now lake quay), when it happened. i was on the left slow lane when suddenly there was this black proton wira cutting in front of me (or overtaking... ) from the right. i did not see her till it happened. in fact i had slowed down upon seeing this black mass at the corner of my eyes and when she cut in front of me, i honked. but it was too late, a collision occurred.

i had slowed down while she was speeding up, so naturally her car got the worse of the damages. my car had scratches on the frontal right side of my bumper... a little dislodged but nothing out of shape or cracked. anyway that bumper had been re-sprayed before when mum rammed it into the concrete block at the science fac foyer. whereas the lady's car had a long dent on her left back door. she kept insisting i was in the wrong... and at one point i really thought i was in the wrong... but after pondering upon it for a week and revisiting the place of the incident everyday (can't be helped, since i use that road to go home everyday), i'm convinced that i was on my lane... therefore i should have the right of way!

anyway, we started out arguing with raised voice... but not abusive words or physical battle la... but in the end we parted on a friendly note, exchanging contact numbers and apologising for shouting earlier... it was really weird... but i'm glad that it wasn't such a traumatising incident... perhaps it didn't turn all sour because she was also a christian? i saw her take out a bible to prop her piece of paper for taking down my details... and i asked her if she was a christian... then we started talking about church... so weird!!! in the middle of an accident and cars buzzing by... and we're talking about church! anyway, praise God! she wasn't hostile to me when she called me up to ask about what arrangements we should have. i told her i hadn't had time to get a mechanic's quotation and she was the same too. then she said we'll keep in contact... and until now she hasn't called me (it's been 1 month now)

i really do hope that she realises i was not to blame... people make mistakes. be thankful it was just a minor accident and no bodily harm occured. i hope she doesn't call me up asking for payment... (fingers crossed)

Changes

change is good. it forces you out of your comfort zone, thus pushing you to grow.

so much change have been happening in my life. i've finally started driving, having only 3 days of practice with mum before venturing out alone. i've started working as a copywriter in an environment where i'm the only female in the company (something that i am really not used to). and before that, i was going for interviews in kl, pj, shah alam and even in singapore.

let me begin my narrative in a chronological order. the first interview i went for was for the company i'm currently attached to. it was more of a writing test than an interview and there wasn't a ready vacancy for me, so the ceo said i had to wait till their funds permitted the hiring of another staff. with that hopeless situation practically a dead end, i went for my second interview. it was the 1st phase recruitment for the standard chartered banking apprentice programme. at the end of my interview, the interviewer said she would definitely recommend me for the 2nd interview. a friend of mine also went for the same inerview, and she had seen my name in the shortlisted list. however the call never came, so i guess that too is a lost cause. thinking back, i wonder whether the reason why i wasn't called back was because i have a standard chartered bank account (conflict of interest?).

the next interview was at an insurance company in kota kemuning. they had found my resume from JobsDB and called me to schedule an interview. they offered me the job (some assistant marketing exec) for the salary i requested, provided i proved myself within the probation period. i turned down that job as they needed an answer immediately and i had already scheduled another interview in singapore.

i went for the phase 1 mgtp assessment session for maxis. it was really different from the other interviews i'd went for, as the assessment was split into 2 sections, written tests and group dynamics. i think i screwed up the written test, especially the comprehension and essay parts. for the group dynamics, our team of 4 did not quite gel, so we could not complete the task given to us. however, i managed to make a friend from the session... i thought she had the most potential among the 4 of us (in getting through to the 2nd phase), but she didn't get it. needless to say, i didn't get through either.

the singapore interview was pretty disappointing as i had had a wrong impression of the job i applied for. it was advertised on Jobstreet with a legal recruitment firm for company profile but they were looking for a graduate trainee in the biotechnology field. i thought it was a HR company recruiting for another biotech company (like some other ads on these job websites). however, it turned out to be an internal recruitment, meaning they were looking for headhunters. the interviewer was patronising, immediately telling me i've got the wrong impression of the job i was being interviewed for (before i even said a word... maybe she could have told me that before i spent hundreds of ringgit to get to singapore!) but i must give her credit for answering my many questions although it was clearly a goner case.

so after some more meetings with my first 'interviewer', i accepted the job and am currently working as a 'creative copywriter' (as the very detailed job contract states, although i don't really see why the word "creative" should be in the job title since i'm not really doing those advert copywriting...). i had to reject 2 interviews - the first was for the post of medical writer in an international medical media company and the second was from Kraft (and this i had to reject because my boss was sitting right next to me when i recieved the call! what luck!?!)

Beheaded Ant

My left big toe is itchy and mildly inflame. i was wondering why it was so since yesterday. while helping with dinner preparations, i finally figured out the answer... suddenly i remembered being bitten by a red ant on saturday while washing a car rubber mat in my garden! it's funny how things like that can totally slip my mind. in terms of the emotion i feel when facing one of these memory lapses it is like being able to see a beautiful castle in the distance but the way to it is somehow magically photoshop-ed away so that the castle appears to be suspended in the air. but you know that that doesn't make sense logically and then there is this unfathomable yearning to find the missing pieces.

anyway, back to the ant story... the strangest thing (ok that's abit far fetched... maybe it's better to go with 'strange' alone without the -est) happened today, i found an ant's head in the ear piece of my handphone. at first i thought it was one of those tiny beetles which like to eat woolen clothes and roll into a tight ball when disturbed... but when i dug it out with a safety pin and upon closer inspection, i found that it had 2 small eyes, pincers and no legs... it was a beheaded ant! how it got there, i have no idea but i can't help thinking this is a payback (to the ant) for biting my toe the other day...

My blog is susceptible to spammers? WOW

i was randomly reading back my old posts, when i noticed that some of them had comments. honestly this is the first time i've noticed that my blog had any comments!!! all this while i've assumed that the only reader to this blog is... ME... hahaha... since i did put it in 'private' mode for some time, especially during the times when i was working on projects... hence alot of ranting and i deemed it unsafe for some of my rather descriptive complaints to be available publicly...

i guess this calls for 34 comments... delete! delete! delete!

anyway, back to the 'comments' issue, i was surprised that most of it were spam!!! hahahaha (so yeah, maybe my readership actually numbers to ONE!!!) well most of the comments were composed using this cookie cutter template of first complementing my blog (which i doubt they even read a word past the title) and then proceed to advertise their own blog... especially this fellow with some carpet cleaning website! but there were a couple of comments which were clearly related to my post... so i guess those where genuine readers? (thanks for reading my blog! although i think most strangers would find it difficult to keep tract of what i'm trying to document... hehe) through one of the comments, i discovered a park ranger's blog and read a few posts... amusing anecdotes, just like what we see on tv about park rangers! hehehe

one particular comment was pretty surprising though... the one about my seatru experience in 2005! the volunteers after my slot read my post! and they discovered it from one of the research assistant's blog!! double shocking-ness... i thought my identity was illusive (i guess not! hahaha... so much so for my fancy ideas about myself!)... but yeah, seatru was really a great experience. i like these kinds of stuff where there is no fuss to deal with and you genuinely have to plunge yourself into the experience! testing strengths that you never knew you were capable of (like living for a week without electricity!). i hope one day i can go back to chagar hutang to see the hatchlings which i missed in 2005... (here i go rambling again)