Losing Internet, Now Asking For (Greedy) Broadband

To sum up my week, it was one of those blazing hot Malaysian days where private companies everywhere in Kuala Lumpur put their air-conditioners to minus-bajillion degrees Celsius, making caffeine-powered morning cups form ice cubes by themselves or said drinker becomes an iceberg, whichever freezes first. Indoor plants at the window seat are confused; blooming spring flowers on one branch and growing winter icicles in the other.

But I’m not here to talk about work. As much as I love my neighbour’s router, my conscience is creeping up on me about getting my own internet service provider so I can surf at my own time and discretion (not that I’m planning any online in-discretion anyway, midnight or daylight). After all, there’s only so much waiting and hoping and limited deep-fried crinkle-cut potatoes to keep me company during the waiting and hoping.

Pushing aside my inner-Jiminy Cricket, two factors against me were the more obvious reasons to get an ISP, pronto. Motherly gossip from the Surau Aunties speaks that my neighbour’s son is having major exams this year so there’s no more mindless surfing in the late nights anymore (thus ends one similarity between us, kiddo). So his unsecured router is off on most days of the week and as a result, I’m having Internet withdrawal symptoms.

Internet withdrawal: A pathetic state of mind which an Internet addict goes through when he/she is deprived of all the virtual conveniences of online gaming, surfing, googling/wiki-ing, etc. Symptoms vary from addict to addict but common signs include pacing mindlessly, excessive consumption of unhealthy beverages, blogging, drooling while sleeping, annoying little nephews, blogging, counting ticks in an hour, memorizing the entire works of Tennyson’s, excessive hot showers, blogging…

In between scarping my face off the bedroom carpet and text-messaging CASH to triple-three-double-nine (when the Fly.FM radio says cue to call), my dear, beloved older brother Abang Arsenal called me by my cellphone for the first time in an eternity to ask how’s my internship. The out-of-the-blue “Hello Liza!” was quickly explained when he requested than he wanted his laptop back by the end of April.

What da f---??!!

My baby toy who I have come to depend on during neighbor’s router and McDonald’s food trips turns out to have been misunderstood about the terms after the adoption and now original parent wants it back. I thought it was a gift. Abang Arsenal thought it was a loan. Since that he’s the man who bought the Acer notebook, I have to concise it as a loan.

To concise it further, this means my internet capability will be reduced to utter null after my internship (I had hoped to make regular trips to school before convocation to enjoy school’s wireless). That’s hell on my not-so-new online mmorpg, Celestial Destroyer. I’ve already joined an in-game family and an elite guild, with the emphasis on nighttime play.

They’re all really nice but most of the active players are Singaporeans. Gamers, go figure... (hehehehehehe!)

So! Leaving me with my long-time friend, HP Pavilion PC in the house, I sing to the tune of the primary school kid’s musical team-picking song; “Which-broadband-is-the-greedy-broadband~? Please-go-out-and-buy-your-greedy-broadband~... So-greeddiiiiiiiiie~... Sent-for-OUT!” (The song is which-shoe-is-the-dirty-shoe, in case my generation gap is at fault to your confusion).

Said greedy broadbands in question on my mind are big-shots Maxis, Digi and Celcom. In case you’re wondering, Telekom’s Streamyx can’t afford me because I’m too cool to reconstruct my faulty previous home renovation blunder to install a fixed line.

Current name on cellphone chip.


Been considering for a while.


Familial recommendation.

I’m looking for an unlimited broadband on a monthly basis, particularly downloading the upgrades on various softwares I use for work and play, maximum under RM1000 installation fee and hopefully not-so-big penalty fee after I decide to hate the service. After I do more research on these three, I’ll post an update. In the meantime, I do appreciate if you could throw all your ISP frustrations at me so I know what kind of trouble I’m asking for.

So-greeddiiiiiiiiie~...

Games Review: World of Goo (Like Playing With Old Aunties)

Blogging, like the facts of life, is an attribute of a person that grows with the person as the person grows up, though facts of life are much less embarrassing to discover as your interviewee did more research on your background on the internet. Especially after your promising interview with said company.

Not that I have any horror interview stories to share (an interesting blog topic nonetheless) but a fact of my life that I’ve discovered while -trying to- growing up is being acquainted with a gaggle of old geese (to put it lightly) which I have mentioned around the blog messages as the Surau Aunties.

For multicultural readers, a surau is a religious Muslim building too small to be a registered centre, too exclusive to include large memberships and too unofficial to pay taxes to the government. Kind of like private banks in United States, only without the current economic recession and the CEOs don’t disappear in private jets (surau members fly AirAsia, which is far easier to track them down as AirAsia’s flights aren’t that timely anyway).

Surau Aunties don’t exist back in the pre-2008 Aidilfitri mainly because the said Surau (capital-S) I’m affiliated with wasn’t big enough to contain all their hot air, risking explosion. Now that the Surau had installed air-conditioning, every lady with pre- or pretend-menopause within a 30 kilometer radius flocked into the crescent-topped white cube to enjoy its climate control and exchange recipes, gossip and recipes for gossip.

So before we deviate from the blog title, what does Surau Aunties have anything to do with the game I’m writing about? A lot of similarities.

Oh God (pun intended), a whole lot of similarities.

World of Goo.

This simulation game was a smash hit when it came out sometime ago due to its simplicity of interface and yet the complexity of the gameplay, both adding up to a funny storyline into a whole lot of fun. Now if you know me, as I’ve yet to figure that out who is myself yet, I’m more of an rpg-fantasy-reader with dungeons and dragons around every corner, the 3D the better, especially when you beat a monster to crap.

Naturally, I didn’t thought of reviewing said game, especially since I couldn’t find the *ahem* full version to download. But LM, the youngest intern in where I work, took a short break from his Devil May Cry 4 to play something less devil, more squeaking than crying and a whole lot of numbers multiplied by 4.

So when the screams of death were suddenly replaced by sounds effects that can only be defined as ‘cute’, I had to check and see if LM had fallen sick and was playing a girly game. Far from the truth, World of Goo is a very tasking operation.


Playing with their balls.


Launch them gooey balls.

Designers from 2D Boy games had come up with a unique and refreshing game that brings in a lot of physics into play. The goal is straight-forward enough; link a chain of balls from a limited number of goo to become a stable structure and get close enough to the suction pipe for the rest of the goo balls to disappear to.

Infected with its cuteness, I downloaded a demo version to give it a try. Soon enough, I was building massive structures of web-linked goos, all trying to go against gravity in pursuing the elusive suction pipe on the other end.


All goos are naturally attracted to the tunnel at the end of the light.


If your structure is weak, it’ll collapse into pieces.

Here are no fight quests or boss monsters; your greatest enemy is gravity and wayward goos. There’s more to it than just building towers. There are also bridges across ravines and getting out of tight spots inside tumbling boxes and chambers. Every goo counts as most of the goos can’t be detached once they become the structure, only that good calculating (and occasionally, good timing!) can get the rest of the goos up toward the suction pipe.

And just like designing a building, the taller you get, the stronger the winds, making your goo tower sway and rock, ever risking massive deconstruction damage. I often had to click Retry or use up a lot of Time-Bugs (to reverse a move) even after only 3 minutes into the game due to bad calculations.


Why some goo balls are detachable.


Extra goo balls receive new benefits.

Hilarious. It is important that every goo ball’s mission is to serve the World of Goo Corporation for the advancements of goo balls everywhere. So innuendos and expressions and even references to real world irony are present in every chapter, like offshore resources, cosmetic surgery, politics and caffeinated beverages (in no particular order).

Again, reminds us all how very cute human nature can be as lumps of goo. (hehehehehehe!).

Which brings us back to how much playing World of Goo drew similarities between me being with my Surau Aunties and playing with an ever-moving force of miniature proportions poking fun in the form of jumping, squeaky, squiggly, yipping goo, that in all heart, each trying to fit itself into a purpose for something bigger and sturdier.

Like a mass of goo, all my Surau Aunties look alike and I can never tell then apart.
Like a mass of goo, all my Surau Aunties squeak in high-pitched sound effects that I don’t understand but smile anyway.
Like a mass of goo, all my Surau Aunties think they’re more delicious than the other.
Like a mass of goo, all my Surau Aunties are hard to detach once they stick to you or got stuck to another Surau Auntie.
And like a mass of goo I’ve been playing with, all my Surau Aunties are best at picking up when you’re down.


During festive holidays, Surau Aunties come in storms.

PS: Downloads for this demo can be found at 2D Boy's World of Goo Site.
PPS: Coincidently, if you can’t enjoy the full version of the game, you can still enjoy the play-by-play YouTube commentary by Gamer Shini1984 about the full version of the World of Goo (warning, use of excessive language. I mean, duuuuuh~...).

Love Thy Neighbour's Router

What I had always wanted for a long time was a kick-ass 3D capable portable computer with wireless processing so fast, it's only legal in a small group of selected WiFi restaurants (because it puts other users to shame... boo-hoo...).

See my new toy?

Smooth, silent keys...


Somewhere I belong...

It's my Acer Aspire. Though the specs were pretty mediocre as compared to my PC, the wireless modem, which is my most pressing need, is damn fast. And the webcam's icing on the cake.

Rejoice. There is a God.

My new sweetheart is second-hand, courtesy of older brotherly love (of which, the administrator-pic is still a football avatar) even though I had planned to pay him at least RM$800 for it when I heard he was selling. Reason pertaining for getting it as a freebie (a very good freebie) is that I suspect Mak had convinced him of an old story *cough* pinjaman Pity-Pity-Aunt *cough* [/pun].

But like a Ferarri lost in Tioman Island, no highway means no go.

So as blog topic hinted, I'm hanging on to my neighbour's very nice and very fast connection and never telling them about it too.

Oh, come one. Which do I ask? Neighboour Auntie-J or Neighbour Pak Guga? I suspected the latter since our houses share a wall. It started sometime back when MySis brought along her laptop to my house to do some work; she also brought along Oversized-BabyNabil (maybe in case she got bored and decided to chase after a diaper).

She didn't expect to suddenly discover an unsecured network in the middle of the living room and neither did we (then again, our laptop is a a year 2001 paperweight).

So ever since, though Prolink exists only as a name in the laptop's network device, it is always a very good friend of ours. Heck, nobody had paid a cent. Of course, availability is subjected to the will of the neighbour whose got the control (weekend nights are the longest online time) and if he/she suspected anything, which as unsecured networks go, neither had mentioned anything back in the last Hari Raya Open House.

Back then, it's only MySis's laptop that detects the signal. Now that there's a working machine with permanent residence in the house, obviously the whole family wants to dig in my Mozilla Firefox (though, without a USB Mouse, being touch-pad illiterate as they all are, I still rule... muahahahaha...). Mak wants Asian Food Channel, Ayah's checking on his new friends in Albania and Lil' Bro... being Lil' Bro, he just wants to register courses for school (Mr. No-Imagination).

Call it a guilt in the gut, but I do wonder if it's really okay to hog on my neighbour's router? I mean, they worked and paid to get the connection speed they asked for and here's me tagging on their bandwidth. Like a pedestrian with his bum on the wide bumper behind the bus, hogging free rides around town.

I can't be the only gal on the block who turns on their laptop for free ride. So I wonder, are there a lot of readers out there who enjoys their neighbour's signal as much as the neighbour does but never saying anything about it?

I know I do. I mean, I could say it's for work but I do more work at workplace than at home (also, I plan to super-upgrade its memory once I get more money). At home, whenever the signal's on, gaming instincts just takes over.


Love thy healing bubble...