Mood: Not quite as happy anymore (ouch)
Currently listening to: Israel Kamakawiwo Ole' - Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World [left-click to download]

Well, if you haven't already guessed - its official! I (or rather, my mother) have a new computer, a lovely piece of work with a much-needed upgrade to Windows XP (double-edged sword as it is) and a nifty flatscreen monitor which i have thoroughly come to love.

Ah yes, blogging from the comfort of my own home... Something i can now truly appreciate having been unlucky enough to suffer at the hands of freezing, noisy and otherwise distracting cybercafes.

Bliss.

Oh, and look for daily updates once again - except on perhaps Friday and/or Saturday nights when i might be otherwise inebriated from copious quantities of alcohol or futilely and pathetically 'chasing skirt' in my quest to become a playa.

Hey, doctor's orders right? ;)

Ok, looks like i've got to catch up on the last three days so here we go...

Monday (3vil)

Don't remember too much. Went to uni to finalize all of this semester's uni arrangements and then swung by Sel's place in order to generally annoy her and type bogus instant messages to her various friends and either professing her love for them or otherwise just randomly swearing at them...

Heh. ;)

Erm... and i think i went to the cybercafe in the evening... Bleah.

Tuesday (I now officially hate hippos)

Went for my first set classes (one week late - typical) which pretty much kept me busy for most of the morning and the early afternoon. Did intrude upon Sel's self-imposed hermitage in-between my classes in order to say hi, and for a more important reason - namely finding some sort of sharp utensil with which to free my nasi lemak's sambal from its stapled plastic prison.

Mmmm... made the whole visit worthwhile (the nasi lemak that is)! ;p

Came back home to hug, kiss, and set up the new computer as well as update the anti-virus and Windows OS on the Net. Oh, and i surfed for some porn once i got the ISP thing settled (whaaaat? I was deprived all this while!)... ;p

Joined Chen Hoe and Kwong Heng for the Toastmaster's function in the evening at the Banker's Club. Big crowd. As usual there was an impromptu speaking session with the speakers being given a single word and having to speak about that topic for the allocated 3 minutes, WITHOUT ever once mentioning said word - which is admittedly a lot harder than it sounds when once is rambling on without pause and hauling all sorts of lies/exaggerated childhood experiences/pathetic jokes/etc out of their ass...

And, wouldn't you know it, all three of us got called upon to speak! Still, most of the words seemed easy enough. For example, Chen Hoe got 'Blood' (he related his judo story and the resulting injury he received), Kwong Heng received 'Sister' (easy enough for him to relate to), while most of the others were asked to speak about such words as 'Hair' or 'Food'. Naturally, by this point i was feeling pretty confident about being able to speak about any such topics. My strategy was to just base it on any one of my (rather painful admittedly) personal experiences or by making fun of any of my, or any other person who i personally knew, physical/mental shortcomings (such as the topic of male pattern baldness should i be faced with 'Hair'). Personally, i was sincerely hoping that they would give me something with which i could rant about passionately for any given amount of time. Examples of this include such topics entitled 'Alcohol', 'Blogs', 'Military History' (a long shot at best), or that most quintessential of topics: 'Women'. A good plan i felt, and one that would cover virtually anything she could throw at me...

I got 'Hippo'.

I got Hippo-motherf**king-'potamus'!!!

*sigh*

Thus followed some truly deep ass digging action. I mean, seriously, what the hell can i talk about hippos??? Oh sure i managed to make up some childhood rant about having been attacked by a giant hippo during one of the Disney World river cruises (partially true mind you - although it looked suspiciously like a crocodile at the time...) followed by stating some mundane, and quite obviously made up facts, about those pathetic excuses for amphibious herbivores. *urgh* A truly horrendous speech.

F**king hippos. :(

Anyhow... moving on, there was a presentation by an image consultant (once again to do with fashion mainly *yawn*) and a small meeting after the official one was over. I managed to 'convince myself' (with no small thanks to CH) to fork up RM50 in order to attend next weekend's Toastmasters ball and masquerade. Hell, i even managed to get myself talked into what i suspiciously believe is my belting out a rendition of some song or another, solo, on stage during the night.

All i can say is that i'd better make damn sure that i'm wearing one hell of a costume to cover up my identity... Oh God, methinks that i'd better hit the Karaoke bar again sometime this week to practice... (and on that note, any takers? Joa?)

Had some really great beef balls and assorted cow intestines with the guys at one of the stalls near Bukit Bintang and that was (thankfully) pretty much my day.

Wednesday (A lesson re-learnt)

The slowest day of the lot by far... Did some gym in the morning and then went to uni in the afternoon for my lecture. The only thing really worth mentioning was how no less than five people approached me in order to ask me where i was from and to exclaim, "Wah! You so tall wan!!!". Strangest of all, people seem to have a habit of dropping what they are carrying or altogether tripping when i am in the immediate vicinity...

Strange... Maybe i really am jinxing others in some unholy way?

Anyway, went to One Utama with the parents for dinner and a spot of shopping. All i will say here is that i now remember why i thoroughly dislike going shopping for clothes with my parents. I was trying to find a pair of jeans for myself and my father just kept pushing me to take something more 'respectable' than my previous pair - a ghastly creation with ankles so tight that it gave my legs the impression of two oversized carrots (you know the one - hell, YOUR dad probably still wears them). Oh, and my mother (in typical motherly charm) managed to whip open the changing stall while i was... er... in a somewhat precarious state of undress. Also, it just so happened to be my luck that a group of salesgirls were passing by.

*sigh*

Note/Reminder to self no. 35,056: Do NOT go shopping with parents. EVER (again).

And In Other Random News...

Ok, so the streaming thing (see previous post) didn't quite work out. The download one does... just remember to left-click the [download] link. Yes, i woke up this morning with this strange yearning to put some music in my blog. However, i wanted it to be relatively unintrusive - that is, not playing immediately upon the page loading up - but rather by allowing you, the user, the choice of downloading it or streaming it. To this end i found a method by which you can do this through some html code manipulation, both streaming AND allowing for downloading without the use of external programs/applets altogether... its a pretty simple procedure but i never did figure out the streaming part until i read the article (thanks Blogdrive!)

Well during my search i did stumble across two interesting third party blog music player sites - The Laszlo Soundblox (nifty!) and Webjay.

Might try playing around with those two at a later stage so check 'em out yeah?

Of course, finding some free online file servers with which to host the files in the first place was a tad harder. Was initially keeping my hopes up with GNARLY! but they're not doing anything until the Napster suit is settled (isn't it?). So, since i was aiming for something larger than 25MB what with any future songs that i might use, i finally settled upon 35MB.com which grants you 35MB and an additional 1MB for every 1 or 10 people who download from your account (i forget the exact number) while allowing you unlimited bandwidth...

Too good to be true? It just might be... you need to download an applet from their site in order to download the song AND it only seems to work in Internet Explorer. So, after a bit of searching i have found that there is some sort of unconfirmed rumour going around that this site's applet actually might install some spyware into your computer. This is, as yet, unconfirmed and there's a bit of a debate going around at the moment... Still, it'll serve my needs for now, so by all means use it if you're not overly cautious about such things.

In the meantime, can anyone else recommend some FREE file sharing sites???

Ok, i'll leave it at that for now...

Its good to be back! :)