Look how tall he is! Andrew Bogut had just been picked as the No.1 pick in the NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks. Nothing has gotten me this excited about basketball before except for when Yao Ming made it 2 years ago. Looking forward to some great games.

Fox Sports story.

Hu, Kelly Hu was in tonight's CSI:NY. That would make it the second appearance. Maybe she'll be a repeat character on the show. Woo. Kelly Hu. It's all good.

On a side note: when a seemingly minor character on a cop show is played by an actor of some note, you just know that they are up to no good.

"The Customer is Always Right"

My ass. They are not always right. However if I'm genuinely in the wrong I'd gladly own up and fix it. I'm not talking about those situations. I'm talking about the situations when a customer is being very unreasonable and expects the value that they get from a product or service to be infinitesimally more than what they've paid. Meaning they want to squeeze every last drop of value out of their tight little asses and are never satisfied and will always complain no matter how hard you try.

So as not to get fired or whatever (k*ss my ass! :)), I'm not going to talk about what actually happened today at work. Instead I'd just rant about a similar incident, albeit in a different context. A few years back when I was running a small restaurant, this incident occured:

• Lady comes in to buy a coffee. She complains it was not hot enough. I said any hotter and I'd boil the milk and ruin the taste of the coffee. She doesn't care. She wants it HOT. So I made her another one the way she wants it.
• Second time she comes in, I made sure the milk was boiling hot. So hot that my workmates were telling me, "Oi! You're boiling the milk!" I said, "I know!!!". This time she complains it was not "full" enough. WTF!? So never mind, it's an easy fix. I just topped it up with more milk.
• Third time (!!!) she comes in, I made sure the milk was hot and the cup was full. The waitress was giving me an evil look as she struggles with not spilling the coffee. Lady brings it back and says, "This coffee is weaker than normal. Did you change the beans?" I grit my teeth and said, "No". "Can you make me another one?" I thought, "In your dreams b*tch!" I said to her, "I will give you your money back but I'm not making you another one." She grumbles a bit and finished her coffee. She never returned and boy was I glad.

Sesame street was brought to you today by the letters "a, s and s" and by the number 2 - for up yours!

p/s to the friend who said I should write about more personal stuff - here you go. :)

• Everything that you do, say, see, hear, touch, smell and taste - you are thinking about how to blog it.
• You read a lot of blogs.
• You leave comments on a lot of blogs.
• You considered having more than one blog because one just isn't enough to contain your verbal diarrhoea.
• You sneak a look at your site visit statistics whenever you are free at work - woohoo, more page loads!
• You have a digital camera and you use it often - sometimes in not-so-appropriate situations.
• You think your writing is great when it really isn't that significant in the bigger scheme of things.
• In some of your dreams, you are blogging.

... and the biggest sign of it all ...

• The next day you blog about that dream in which you were blogging.

To those who know me in real life, tell me which of these two personalities describe me the best:

http://mooiness.blogspot.com/2005/06/im-this-singaporean-blogger.html

http://mooiness.blogspot.com/2005/06/im-this-malaysian-blogger.html

Be honest! :)

Teenage angst of a PC gamer.

He earns a living playing PC games. Phwoar!!!

Any job, that is actually your hobby and one that pays well would be a dream come true for many of us. Mine would be:

1. a dance music reviewer, while also a:
2. a club and alcohol beverage reviewer.
3. and also someone paid to drive nice cars around, whilst:
4. escorting beautiful ladies to social events, and
5. being paid just to wear nice clothes.

Walked into the office this morning and my boss and colleagues are near hyperventilating: WE HAVE NO NET!!!

Proceeded to check our equipment: everything's fine. Must be our ISP. Called them up and I get a recorded message - "We are currently experiencing nation-wide technical difficulties. Our technicians are trying to resolve the issue as soon as possible." That's tech-jargon for "We'll have it fixed when it's fixed." Anyway, SHIT. Nation-wide huh?! Oh well. Relayed the news and everyone begrudgingly tries to find work to do that doesn't require the Internet. Which is not a lot. Majority in the office relies on the net for work. Most of the servers that I look after are actually not in the office. The only ones that can do work are the internal development guys - programmers.

So now what??? It's hard to look busy when I can't surf the net. And what about blogging? I feel so naked. Almost as naked as when I don't have my mobile phone on me. Hey I can blog from my mobile! Nah f**k it. Too fiddly. Too expensive.

Before long it was time for lunch. Hooray! Went out for soy-sauce chicken noodles. Mmmm. After that, had coffee at Gloria Jeans and killed another 30 mins before we headed back. Got back and still no net. Oh well. Twiddled thumbs. Read some tech magazine. Had a cup of tea. Then a coffee. Got a Tim-Tam as well. Ate it the Aussie way: bite both ends off and suck the coffee through it. Was a long time before....

Five o'clock rolls around. Called ISP again. This time the recorded message was - "We are currently experiencing technical difficulties in Western Australia. Our technicians are trying to resolve the issue as soon as possible." Figures that they would leave WA last on their to-do list. Eastern state company afterall.

Screw it. I'm going home.

Imagine that - just because we didn't have the Net in the office, productivity dropped like a sack of sh*t. We don't realise how plugged in we are until we become unplugged. How did ppl a generation ago work??? Oh right - there were phones and faxes. And something called "face-to-face" communications. They didn't sit in the office all day long. Ppl actually drove out and met up with each other. They still do today but I would guess exponentially less.

Anyway that was my day. Tomorrow is another day.

So there I was - I have not clubbed for 2 weeks and I was ready to get drunk and dance the night away. Went to Metro and was ready to get jiggy with it. Saw my regular clubbing friend and the first thing he told me was that he had to go home early for a funeral early the next day (ie. today) - it was for the mother of a friend of his.

There's nothing like death to bring your whole clubbing mood come crashing down. It puts everything in perspective. Suddenly everything feels frivilous and pointless. Alcohol doesn't help - if you are down, it only makes it worse. So I didn't drink much. And in my moment of sobriety leaving the club (early at 2am) and driving home, I pondered about how simple life was when you were a kid.

If you were fortunate enough, your daily worries consisted of going to school, doing your homework and playing with your friends and family. You were happy with the simple things such as having ppl love and care for you, and that you weren't hungry or cold. And death was such an alien concept that it doesn't register at all. Having said that though, if you were stuck being a kid then you would never experience such truly adult experiences as love, sex, money, and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from helping or looking after someone.

We can't nor should we wished to be forever young but we can go back to being like a kid by cherishing what's really important - basic things like friends, family, food and shelter. If you have those, you have everything you need to be happy. Everything else is icing on the cake.

Men find it hard to say, "I love you" to the women that they do love. They have no such problem with their cars. In fact, they spew the word out so much when it comes to their cars that I’m sure it infuriates wives and girlfriends everywhere.

Why is this so? Let me list some of the reasons:

• You can touch and rub your car all day long. Hence the washing, the waxing and the polishing etc.
• Your car will never argue with you. It wouldn’t say to you, "You’re not wearing that, are you?" Everything that you do is ok with your car.
• It only gets loud when you step on the accelerator
• Your car is always in the mood for it – driving, that is.
• You may not completely understand how your car works, but it would not blame you for it.

… and perhaps the best reason,

• You can have more than one car.

... for a beer. I'm still at work because I'm slightly intoxicated from the beer that I'm drinking right now. I only have half a bottle but I guess it's because of the light lunch that I'm in my current state.

And why am I having a beer at work on a Wednesday??? Because a colleague who was stressed decided to crack open one and asked me if I wanted one. I wasn't stressed but I sympathised with him so I said yes. Now I have to kill some time sobering up. Hmmm, don't s'pose I can browse for some porn....

What a cold, wet and miserable day it was today in Perth.

Besides the coldness, you know it's winter when:

1. It's still dark when you alarm goes off in the morning.
2. Because of that you thought you set the alarm too early so you doze off thinking you still got an hour. Besides it's really nice and warm beneath your blanket.
3. You bolt up from your bed and look at the clock and it's half an hour till you have to be at work, and your work is half an hour away(!).
4. You decide if you should brush your teeth, do a number 2, or eat your breakfast. You only have time for one task. You decide to brush your teeth - the other things can be done at work.
5. You get to work just a few minutes late even though the roads were choked up with cars driving slow in the wet.
6. You sit down at your desk and breath a sigh of relief. Then you realise you left your mobile phone at home and you forgot to spray on anti-perspirant. F**k!

Oh well, at least you don't have bad breath.

Before I rant on, here's a quick lesson on modern money economics. The majority of money is no longer represented by paper and coins but by numbers in hundreds of thousands of databases in computers in banks all over the world. Therefore it's no longer tangible so to speak, but these numbers still represent real value.

I can understand that when I deposit a cheque into my account it takes a few days for that money to become available. At the end of the day, my bank would verify all the cheques, sends it on to a branch of the reserve bank closest to them or to a clearinghouse. Then the cheques get sent to the cheque writer's bank. That bank deducts the money from the cheque writer's account and notifies your bank electronically. And voila! You have money.

Now when the cheque is bypassed completely and I do an electronic transfer of funds between two different banks, I would assume the money to be available as fast as an e-mail can travel on the Internet - almost instantaneous. One bank deducts some numbers from its database, and the other one adds some numbers to its database. So why is it that my money is still not there after 3 days!?

I suspect that one bank holds on to the money a bit longer before notifying the other bank, which in turn also holds on to the money a bit longer than neccesary after they've "received" it. Like a virtual slush fund. Why!? So that they can earn some interest in high yield overnight money markets. But that's a lesson for another day. Suffice to say - it's to do with maximising what they earn from *your* money.

End of my rant. Economics is such a dry topic isn't it?

After clubbing on Saturday I was typically tired on Sunday afternoon. This despite having slept from 4am till 1pm. Long story short - as we all know, well those who eat Chinese food anyway, Chinese tea really goes down well with a typically rich Chinese meal. Had some at dinner and thought this is great 'cos it also perked me up a little.

This was at 8pm so I thought I should have no problem sleeping. WRONG! Yes I was tired and yawning by midnight but I kept waking up during the night. And now I'm a cranky mofo at work. :P So there: Chinese tea is deceptively high in caffeine. I knew there were caffeine in it but never knew it was that strong.

Another funny one - all of us would know at least one person like this. Ppl who are self-absorbed, love to talk about themselves, really love their own voices and tell you waaayyy too much information.

Shut up biatch! <-- this term can be used on guys too! :D

Damn u cant take that Back!

Ok finally it's beer o'clock. A favourite barmaid is leaving one of my fav pubs tonight so will go there for a last hurrah or something. Friday and Saturday here I come! :)

A friend of mine just came back from the Cannes film festival where she rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous. She was right there on the red carpet! Looking at her photos almost made me felt like I was there.

Then I remembered that some cousins living in China met Jackie Chan and Gong Li. And another acquiantance of mine in HK knows Sammi Cheng. And yet another friend in HK works for a media company, so naturally she gets to meet famous ppl as part of her job. Yes I'm dropping names. Anyway this all means that I'm only 2 degrees of separation away from famous ppl. Woohoo!

A cheap and vicarious thrill this is. :P