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Thursday, July 22, 2010

Hard Lessons

People learn best not when were taught nicely or while their faces were blooming with smiles and laughs, like this world is devoid of constant massacre and the ever increasing fuel price. No, they don't.

People learn when:

1. Someone dies.
2. Volcano erupts.
3. It's too freaking late.
4. It's too freaking useless to learn.
5. Time gets nigh.
6. Banana fruits twice (Google it).

As you can see from the list, people usually, if not most of the time learn best their lesson only in critical moments. In a rather harsh terminology, when they are in deep shit.

In a different conclusion,

I'm in deep feces and therefore I learnt my lesson, the hard way.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Adorable Choke

One of three classes. Which I taught Sivik. Sometimes they are just adorable.

Sometimes,

I just want to choke them one by one.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Marketing 101

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say, "I'm fantastic in bed". That's Direct Marketing.
You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, "He's fantastic in bed". That's Advertising.
You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day you call and say, "Hi, I'm fantastic in bed". That's Telemarketing.
You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink. You open the door for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her a ride, and then say, "By the way, I'm fantastic in bed". That's Public Relations.
You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says, "I hear you're fantastic in bed". That's Brand Recognition.

Source: Lowyat.net forums

Nokia C6. Thus, Thou Will Be The Successor

After a week of analysis and comparisons, I've finally decided that this will be the successor of my late W810i. You lucky dishonest bastard who found her, please do take care of Tomoe, will you?

Introducing,


Nokia C6.

Her name is still in consideration. Heck, I haven't even purchased this baby yet. I wonder if it's available in Sabah already.

Main reasons that I chose her:

1. Wifi so I don't need to drag my outdated laptop everywhere.
2. Both touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard are available!
3. GPS, in case I go to London.
4. I could care less about 3G support but it's available.
5. Minor hacking potential for running unsigned applications. Console emulators sound fun because there are buttons to press, unlike the touchscreen-only Nokia 5800, which is my previous choice.
6. Affordable price tag for a smart phone and such variety of features.
7. Larger screen without much obstruction from virtual keyboard - since there's an analog QWERTY.
8. I'm not fussy about the camera but at least the quality is better than 5800. Most 5800 camera reviews were sucky. It's 5.0 MP.
9. QuickOffice apps is available. In case of emergency, you see.
10. Large display for porn music videos, movies, series, etc - which I know I would forget to watch to oblivion soon. 

So C6, see you soon!

1 Borneo Grand Ballroom Dinner

Yesterday I went to a Hari Guru dinner at 1 Borneo's Grand Ballroom dinner with my colleague as representatives of our school. We were a little nervous because we were practical teachers representing the image of the school.

Significant awkward moment that night:

1. We were so hyped to wear blazer to the dinner. The one I wore was a blazer but since the material and color matched very well with my slack pants, you may call it a suit.
2. So officially we "suited-up" for the dinner.
3. But, it turned out the most of the guests in the ballroom wore Batik. 'Most' here was almost 98 percent.
4. The receptionists at the main entrance mistook as the piano players.
5. When I looked around a bit, I noticed that we looked like hotel manager.
6. Awesome.

Anyway, that night I witnessed two retired teachers receiving their awards for their service to the field.

30 years of service.

I don't have particular reasons, but I felt a little melancholic seeing the process of the award ceremony. The award ceremony began with a retelling of their background, life, their rise and fall as teachers, their contributions to the state and country, their services in the government.

This melancholy is not due to the feelings of inspiration to such servitude and loyalty.

Instead, I just can't imagine myself serving 30 years of my life for the field. It's not that I'm unhappy for my current condition and development at the school, in fact I was very delighted with my students cooperation and excitement in learning. I appreciated the school's staff sincere guidance and treatment towards us as practical teachers. I have confidence in teaching the two English classes I was held responsible. I couldn't be more happier. However...

I don't want people to go all melancholy and touched when they talk about me. Right, maybe that does not sound plausible.

I want to do more in this life. Teaching is a noble job. But it does not mean that I'd be willing to live and die with it. I don't want to end up as a 'burnt-out' teacher as lose my will to live and the capacity to be happy and enjoy this life. They said high-paying job offers you good money yet less time to enjoy life. As a teacher you can have more than enough time to embrace life with moderate pay. This could be true but I had witnessed more than enough 'burnt-out' teachers who had no life and led their lives less than a zombie. So in the end they had no money and no life. Then they join MLM business and abandon teaching. Now that's a pathetic ending because once you're a teacher, you'll be forever carved with the title on your forehead.

So when you're burn-out, it's time to quit. Don't do more damage to yourself and the future of others.

Here's my pledge to keep my sanity before I enter the servitude:
1. I will not ever give up my freedom to dress, to behave, to do whatever I used to do whenever I'm out of the premise.
2. When I teach, I will teach with passion and sincerity and teach not only what's in the books but most importantly lessons of life.
3. Pursue higher qualifications as soon as I get the chance.
4. To teach as a human, not as a book.
5. Maintain my own character and my outlook towards life.

nota

hai sang pencari sorga celah dunia
sudahkah kau terjumpa?
jika tidak ketemu
usah kau ragu
helalah nafas lega
kerna nafas itu tetap milikmu
mungkin ia satu petanda
untuk kau kembali cari cahaya.

Don't Ever Look Back

There goes another sip,
another, another and another,
sip and sip and sip of green tea
and goes this mind wander
beg and beg and beg for a plea
to hold all these together.
Memories and plans, the past the future.
Theories sound bland, I'll past, I'm unsure.

p/s: I miss you.................

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

So How About The All-Girls School?

I know I should work on my LP instead.

I've been in St. Francis Convent for two days. I have three classes on afternoon session.

1 Efektif.
1 Progresif.
2 Efektif.

So what about the school?

First, I'm very glad that most of the colleagues are very helpful. I've been asking them lots of questions and the teachers conveniently provide detailed list of students' performance, pinpoint the better, average, the naughty students, the attention seekers, and problematic students. I'm very, very much grateful for that.

Short descriptions about the classes:

1 Efektif
I teach English for this class. Loud. Outspoken. Very attentive. Cooperative. Polite. Likable. Quite okay in language proficiency. Had groups of manageable attention seekers. Speak English most of the time. Ask a lot of questions. I told them I came from Berlin and I said "And you believed that?"

1 Progresif.
I teach English. Pemulihan class. Less loud than 1 Efektif. Polite. Likable. Occasional chit-chats. Both average and low proficiency. Less attentive than 1 Efektif but still cooperative. I set ground rule that they MUST speak in English whenever they talk to me.

2 Efektif
I teach Civic. God, I know nothing about this subject and it's in Bahasa Melayu. I can write well in Malay but when talking in a formal manner with the language, it's a little problematic. I just can't project my voice well and maintain the formality. And less formality equals to less authority. Maybe I should use English instead. I should hit the books pretty darn hard!

All in all, two days of teaching the 2 classes, I think I began to like my two English classes.
However,
it's kind of a difficult task to remember almost 100 names in a week.
Let's see if they'll grow more and more significant to me.

Three months!

This picture is taken from the internet, not my phone.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

D-Day!

Tomorrow will be our first day into the battlefield.
It's just another Monday but ironically,

it marks a single step towards the future.

To own or be owned.
To love or to loathe.
To stay or to stray.

Godspeed, comrades!

Saturday, July 3, 2010

I Need Your Contacts. (R.I.P. W810i)

I was very reluctant to buy a new phone for several years and stuck with the old and outdated SE W810i.
Perhaps, it was destined that the purpose of such reluctance was for today.
I officially lost it for a lousy reason,

I misplaced the phone.

Though there's actually a great story not worth telling to my grandchildren related to its loss.
Let's leave it at that. I will never tell a soul about it, never. Please refrain from asking me further questions.

The purpose of this post is to recollect all the contacts I had in the phone.
Since I was such a smart ass for deleting all the backup data of the phone which is less than 256 MB in order to save space in my 640GB hard disk. That's what you get for being stingy, virtual-space-wise.

So if any of you are reading this post and if you think you were once in my contact list,
please do send me a text message with your name in the message. That will be very-very-very much appreciated.

My current phone number is still that one with 019-36929xx.

Thank you,

I appreciate your phone numbers,
so are your existence as human beings and as my friends.

Joe.

R.I.P. W810i.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

That's officially the longest word used as a title ever written in this blog.
(Wait, is the above sentence correct?)

Anyway, Monday is coming nearer and nearer and I'm getting more and more nervous, mixed with a tiny portion of excitement. God willing, things will be okay.

I'm still considering, what kind of persona should I adapt that very first day?

A. A tight and very stern look on my face.
B. Steroid OD face.
C. Angelic halo on my head.
D. Just the old plain me.
E. Chicken out and fly to Antarctic and live with polar bears.

Tough choices, man. Tough choices. Antarctic sounds like fun though.

Few things that messed with my head currently:

1. Mixed feelings. (Just like pau mixed fillings)
2. A proper AE title.
3. Early life crisis.
4. Global warming.
5. My cat back at home.
6. Identity crisis.
7. Allowance.
8. Lack of fast internet connection.
9. Impromptu decisions.

Absolutely off topic but,

God has his own way to deliver his reminder.

Really. And none shall ever know what happened.

Friday, July 2, 2010

What.

Amidst this pre-prac,
the recent and hidden and sudden gush of feelings and emotions is like

:3

or perhaps even

X3

Oh no.

KBps, Kbps and Mbps.

On the last post, I've mentioned about the bits and bytes thingy. Since I have nothing to do while thinking about my thesis title, I might as well elaborate on this.

So what is byte? First of all, it's not the stylish way of spelling bite.
As I mentioned previously,

Kbps = Kilobits per second

KBps = Kilobytes per second

Mbps = Megabits per second

MBps = Megabytes per second

Bits is a smaller unit compared to bytes.

Thus, 1 Mbps is NOT the same as 1 MBps.

The Streamyx line that I and most households use is the 1 Mbps package. The fastest line that Steamyx offers is 4Mbps, last time I checked.

1Mbps converted to actual download speed is about 150-160 KBps.

With about 10 to 15 simultaneous torrent downloads, you can boost this speed to more than 200 KBps, but not permanently.

With Rapidshare Premium account download, the max speed that I can get is about 170KBps.

Thus, in conclusion, don't get overhyped when you see 1Mbps and assume that it means 1MBps download speed. 

Chiaow.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Gratitude. Digi and Celcom.

First of all, I'd like to say thanks to visitors of this blog for dropping supportive comments, after about 2 months abandonments.

I appreciate all of the comments! :)

But. The problem is I can't reply any.

I've been using the hostel's free wi-fi, no more Streamyx here. The connection is snailish, I can't seem to open the Comment link to reply any of the comments.

The second I get my allowance, I'm getting a Digi broadband. Though in general internet broadband providers suck, but at least Digi's offer is a lot better than Celcom phony promises.

Celcom Berukband

Celcom's Fair Usage Policy is about 5GB per month (the basic), for RM68 per month. The speed is 348Kbps. Mind you, kbps, not KBps. b means bits and B means bytes. So if 348kbps is converted to bytes a.k.a. the actual download speed, it's about 40-50 KBps, kilobytes per second. Bits is a smaller unit. I've tried this, after you finish the 5GB limit, trust me, the curse words you utter will be a lot faster than the internet speed. After that small 5GB limit, your connection will be throttled. "Throttled"? No, it doesn't mean that your connection will be faster, like the motorcycle throttle. Network-terminology-wise, "throttled" means your bandwidth will be down-scaled to a cute little fugly thing. Celcom's speed after the 'throttle' is about 56Kbps, if I'm not mistaken. So the actual download speed is about 5-10 KBps, the most 12? 13? Surfing is about dysfunctional at this speed, since web contents nowadays are larger compared to those dial-up connection days. Bravo.

 So how about Digi?

The basic package is RM68 last time I checked at Digi centre. No more student package as I asked the fellows. Digi's basic Fair Usage Policy is 3GB, with 700Kbps speed. Smaller download limit, but higher speed. This sounds ridiculous, since faster speed could only mean that you'll run out of that 3GB faster! However, the perk about Digi is... Drum-rolls please~~

The speed after the throttle is 128Kbps! (if I'm not mistaken but I'm quite sure)

So that's a sufficient reason why I prefer Celcom over Digi. Though actually, I'd prefer Streamyx over any of these broadband services. But I'm afraid this hostel won't permit that. Maybe, maybe, I miss my house back in Shah Alam a little.

Don't get me started about Maxis. No.

Alas, this country's internet capability is still below average.
Just be grateful, damn it!

p/s: My friends in KK told me there were Wimax banners around KK sometime ago. Now I wonder, where the heck is Wimax? Judging from KK's road flyover development, I bet it will be next year.

Mumblo Dumbo

Can you still remember those days, on specific dates we'd be so eager to count and even mention,

"Oh, I'm 19 today! Tee hee!"

Aging was delightful and getting older was cool.
You could do things that you couldn't back when you're 15 or 17.
 You get to live on your own and do whatever you wanted to. Almost.

Officially by March this year, I turned 23.
And I have no job. Yet.

Counting the growing number is not fun anymore.