My Baby Nephew No.2 - In UltraScan

It was raining like bathroom shower this morning; the weather just pours and pours and after that, the sky was still so cloudy and the light was so bright, it made sense for the lazy ones to creep back under the bedclothes, turn on our air-conditioning to 20’C, lullaby-ed by the Astro TV and wait for clear weather by night time so we can jamm and party.

Man, that’s sounds definitely bliss.

I would love to join the slug club but weekends signals the cleaning hour in this household. We don’t have a maid, so it’s vacuum, mop, dust, wipe, wash, scrape, scrub, polish, shine - and that’s just on the havoc made by the 2-year-old midget-demon.

Imagine what it’s like when MySis fully develops BabyNabil 2.0 and weekends will bring forth two brat-boys.

This is... NoNameYet.


Captured from another angle.


This is part of the video. He kept covering his face with his arm (aiyo, kecik-kecik dah camera-shy...).

MySis went to her gynaecologist in TTDI (the near-D’sara-Utama’s TTDI) and had a belly see-through, just to check on NoNameYet, who’s due in May. There’s every indication that he’s going to look like his big brother, possibly even (God forbid!) be something like his brother.

There’s a lot of baby males in clan of AbangHuzir (bro-in-law). His elder brother’s family possessed a pair of identical twin boys and their younger brother. The sister’s family has two boys as well and one very tomboyish little girl.

These babies below age 6 all gather under their Grandma’s roof almost every Saturday or Sunday. Seeing how BabyNabil was being the boss of everything without his cousins, I can only imagine what the scary situation is when 6 Devils vs. 1 Grandma.

I said I can only imagine, because I really, really rather not be around to witness it. MySis tells some pretty scary horror stories; screaming, shouting, barking, running, tugging, fighting, scratching, rolling, kicking, climbing, falling, crying.

Pretty much, what macho baby-boys always do.

Apparently, to keep the peace, Grandma keeps a whipping rotan for every child. I saw those rotans on one visit the other day, which is actually kind of short. I think it was mostly for intimidation as to a kid that short (and naughty), it was as long as his arm.

So MySis is going to give the paternal family another male infantile unit by May.

I can only hope for many, many sunny days in the future because, as seen today, babies have to stay indoors during the wet shower hour.

And I still haven’t cleaned up the slimy horror on the staircase. If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get a mop.

Image: Angels and a Whole New Slideshow

I don’t usually have a fascination for angels. Yeah, they are part of the Fantasy genre I’m so enamoured about but the anatomical inconsistency of enabling flight and propulsion of having dual bird-like wings ...

I’m just plain rambling, aren’t I?

Angels. Messenger of the divine, tools of miracles, protector of innocents, harbinger of doom, mediator between God and men. See, it’s the abundance of use, immortalization and iconic personas in association with the entity ‘angels’ that any personal bias towards my preference for them is sadly lacking.

They’re just damned overused.

When I want to write a tale, I usually use the most underappreciated themes like science, social doctrine and political turmoil. I don’t use a pegasi as a creature of flight; I use 60+ species of dragons in varying shapes and sizes. In one point, I plan to use eagles as well. There so much about the nature and existing system that splicing and attaching biological body parts to non-related creatures just seem bleh...

Yeeeeeeeaaaah, I can guess ya. The wings of angels are all in the mind and their flight to goodwill and heavens’ work is metaphorical but no less deeply impacted.

Just for that (and the fact that there’s just a good load of artists with damn pretty angels pictures) I’m going to post them here.

The Muse (Google Art)


Armoured Angel by silverlimit


Fallen Angel by kjfaust


Angel by chrono75

By the way, what do you call a lot of angels? A flock of angels? A march? A team? A parade?

I've also updated my Monthly Slideshow. As you know that I'll never place personal pictures of myself or individual family members so I instead present a slideshow of my favourite images that I've collected as I surf online. Check the Slideshow tab for the new one this month (15 images intotal, some you may have seen before).

My Previous 24 Hours

Unlike a few lucky PC-hogs, I don’t often have the chance to hang around in cyberspace as often as I wanted to. Not only would sitting in the LCD-illuminated corner of the bedroom enables me to grow mushrooms in my ear (fungus infection actually, had it before), my ability to communicate with flesh-and-blood people without the aid of a spellchecker or C-programming stipulations would rust and shrivel to awkwardness.

I still want to be a PC-hog though.

But I have a second great love that must be appeased so with the aid of a Kenari car, dual parental units, a Down-Syndrome aunt and a midget under 3 years of age, I was in Ikano Power Centre yesterday for its book fair.

Mak only dragged me along because given the choice, she would rather just take my Popular Discount Card and be done with it. Well you can’t have your 500 tarts and pastries recipes and Popular card too (and I’m not leaving until I get my own paperback).

Popular store book fair will be going on until 9th March, me thinks. I didn’t ask anybody, I just read the big schedule board of events.

After that, the rest of the day was pretty okay. I don’t want to go into wordy detail about my yesterday (as I strayed to do) mainly because today’s February 29 is more than a specially once-in-four-years day.

It’s also my homework deadline (eeep!).

So I’m just going to throw out the photos I’ve taken with my Sony Ericsson about the last 24 hours in sequential order.

7.11am: In the shoplots area next to some big ol’ apartment complex.

I was shaken awake from a very nice dream about me falling asleep and dreaming about me falling asleep and dreaming about falling asleep ... well, you get the idea. But I had to wake up and take the car to the new 7Eleven store because someBABY abhor brown-grain bread and demands white bread.

Anyway, took the opportunity to snap a pretty interesting reverse perspective photo. The mirror reflects what’s behind me but the line of perception looks as if the side view mirror is just a frame instead of a mirror. Lucky shot, me thinks.


9am: At home...

Along the way back from the shoplots area, I’ve learned something today. When you park next to a 24-hour mamak restaurant that always serves yesterday’s rice to a flock of too-heavy-to-fly-anywhere-else fat pigeons, always, ALWAYS make sure that you’re not parking under a freaking tree.

And I already have enough trouble with crows at school. *gerrrrrrram-nya!*


11:30am: An Ikano trip.

From the back, you can tell that they’re both related. This is the 1st-generation male parental unit with the 3rd-generation infantile unit. The minor can’t be told to stand still and the elder can’t scream too loud to command the minor.

But surprisingly enough (actually, it’s not a really big surprise), minor kid did stop to check the girls in front of him (he stood still long enough for the whole escalator trip; Wow, new record!).


2pm: At home...

No major picture here. Mak just brought home a book of making 500 types of pie recipes, of which 99.9999% will never be made according to exactly instructed by the book. Currently, she’s contemplating a radical approach to apple pies. This will be the last time this forbidden fruit shall be witnessed in its natural state before it condemns under extreme pastry mutations.

Actually, it turned out pretty good. Pie was gone before there was any chance to share photo evidence (burp!).


6pm: At Kelana Jaya. Click photo for 800 by 600 pixel image.

Okay, I said I didn’t go to school yesterday. Well, not completely. I didn’t enter the workstation compound, just needed to drop a package of nicely printed paper about the merits of virtual reality into the IT faculty pigeon box. I had parked in the residential area and it was a pain trying to get back to it, mostly because the damn cars kept making U-turns where they aren’t supposed to be making U-turns and I couldn’t cross to the other side.

In irritation, I photographed a row of organized disobedience. Some of them were kind enough to signal their U-turn before they break the law. Click the photo for a bigger picture.


7pm: At home... Again

Previously I’ve mentioned that there’s a shiny new faculty that had opened at school with their shiny new kitchenware. To complete this illusion of grandeur, there’s also a shiny new café, complete with indoor plants and wooden furniture.

The food, however, is better left to the imagination. This is a lasagne set that costs about RM$4.50. It’s a bargain but then again, you stomach what you paid for. It’s nice but it needs Ajinomoto. I’m not going to completely diss my school’s first attempt at the canteen business however. I’m going to try the cheeseburger next, maybe that’ll go down better (with a litre of Coca-Cola maybe).


8pm: At Santai Restaurant in Muatira Damansara...

Hehehe, okay, taking photos of a pregnant lady due in May would probabaly not be under the merits of sisterly love but I just wants to show the person who’s been eating most of the mushroom steak MySis ordered. Just confirmed the gender; a little brother for BabyNabil. No name yet but it’ll probably start with the letter ‘N’.

The family tried the Santai Restaurant yesterday, taking all the western stuff. The portions are big, we’re practically stuffed and our bellies were round. But the next time, I’ll go with the black pepper (mushroom was too tame, me thinks).

So some 15 hours after the last photo was taken, here I am, back at school. My next 24 hours (though with or without pictures is yet uncertain) would be
-finishing up that homework report,
-giving Host Café’s cheeseburger a try,
-checking car for anymore essence of avian menace,
-going back to Ikano to sneak-buy that paperback (Ayah hates me reading storybooks; they’re the bane of my CGPA)
-gather every available coins in all the couches in the house.

Now I really, reeeeeeeaally wish I’m a PC-hog.

What’s Your Favourite Death Wish?

I was listening to Pop Shuvit’s Mara Bahaya mp3 while tip-tapping away at the keyboards when it dawned to me how the music really makes me want to get up and going, do something that gets the adrenaline pumping.

Hardly a blog entry would achieve that.

It was either I stop listening to our local music bands (hehehe, not really...) else I get out of my chair and play chicken on the LDP freeway. Luckily there is a third option because the former would upset the local music industry and the latter would upset the MBPJ (chicken lady on LDP, news at eight).

My substitute was to look for a few good death wishes online (heaven praise to Google).

A death wish usually mean a person who is contemplating a last-act, final-resort action before succumbing to death. This term usually applied to depressed, nothing-left-to-lose folks.

However, in the confidence of a better outcome, to describe a death wish associated with an adrenaline junkie is just to say, “He’s plain crazy”. Hooked on the natural body’s response to a fight-or-flight situation; these things really get the juices pumping and is a healthy thing to do.

Of course, if in doing the said death wish don’t get you killed.



Mmm-mmmm, fast cars. A key to a girl’s heart is a key to a silver Mercedes Benz SLK (well, at least it works with this girl). Brutally honest fact, I love to drive. I take every opportunity to get into any of my parents’, siblings’, relatives’ friends’ car and be in charge of the steering wheel. Ask me to buy sugar in 7-Eleven at 3 in the morning? No problem! Let me get the car keys...

I suppose it’s one thing I inherited from my grandfather. He owned cars during the British era, when cars are so scarce, the roads are practically empty. His last car was a Kancil, since it’s so light and speedy.

Speedy is what I do best in a car. My death wish is to drive a real Mercedes Benz SLK and take it on the longest, straightest, emptiest highway in Germany (they got no speed limit!).



Aaaah yes. The gloves, the ropes, the carribena, the tight-strapped hip harness men won’t wear without a really good reason... I took a youth camp course when I was 14 and my favourite activity was definitely the rock climbing. Though it was a damn huge rock I was tasked to conquer, in retrospect, it was probably pretty tame.

In reality, I’m so scared of heights, I get nauseous just trying to walk on a pedestrian bridge. I’ve once got so nervous on a flying-fox at one course in (Outward Bound, Lumut), that I practically cried like a baby (the instructors let me down by ladder *shame-shame*).

Even so, given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (or rather the last-thing-I-might-do-in-a lifetime opportunity) and with a rock this big and precarious looking, I shake out my tracksuits.



Haha, the piece-de-resistance. Yes, I might be tempted to jump through the open door of an airplane with an oversized umbrella. Still, it’ll definitely be my ultimate death wish, suspended only by clouds. On a whimsical note, I often wonder if what skydivers felt is what birds feel on their first belly-flop before flight.

Believe it or not, there’s a sky-diving centre in Malaysia. Located in Segamat, Fras Skydiving Centre offers beginners’ static-line course (whatever that means). Read a first-hand report from someone who was probably forced to do it, here: http://allmalaysia.info/news/story.asp?file=/2005/2/12/interests/10119705&sec=mi_interests_outdoor

Racing cars, rock-climbing and sky-diving would be my favourite death wishes, the thing that I might do before I’ll die happy (Dear Big-Guy-Above, please don’t play ominous music, that was not a literal prayer).

So I’m going to throw this question out to all readers. What’s your favourite death wish? Do you think you can achieve it? How old would you think you’ll get around to it?

Games Review: King’s Quest 2 (VGA Remake) by AGD Interactive

After I’ve updated my anti-virus yesterday, I decided to clean up my old-old-old folders. You wouldn’t believe all the junk I’ve collected and backed-up throughout all the 3 PCs in my lifetime (Mak was a pioneer systems analyst before she retired so our family was computer oriented since the early 1980s).

I was checking through a file that’s almost 5 years old when I came across this pretty piece of a gem. Dusty gem, faded colours with rusty fittings but still a gem.

King’ Quest 2: Romancing The Stones


Your humble, loyal, utterly devoted servant. He’s a bit... strange.

A long, long time ago before there was Playstation 2 (yes, there was life before Playstation), there was the PC and the games that depended on them. I’m practically old enough to remember original Sierra Entertainment Games (before it became Sierra On-Line).

However, this game is not it.


Look, a house! Maybe if you ask politely for directions, the mysterious inhabitants won’t try to eat you.


R-E-S-P-E-C-T spells ‘pumpkin pie’, lady!

Actually, it’s only half-and-half. You see, the graphics here are from a remake of the second of one of the first games ever built for the PC, King’s Quest series. You can tell by its generic title. Before there was Everquest, there was King’s Quest 2: Romancing the Throne, a 12-bit graphic and text-based gameplay.

Oh, please don’t make me explain what is 12-bit graphics or text-based gameplay. You’ll make me sound old.


The game utilizes every animal known in the monster book.


Just because he’s the only river-taxi guy doesn’t mean he could charge a freaking $$$&%*...

Riding on Sierra’s success, AGD Interactive is a small-profit development team that is remaking some of Sierra’s old games. For fun. So this means that this game can be downloaded for free.

I don’t mind classic as long as the gameplay (and visual) are pleasing so I took a nostalgic trip last night. Following the continuation of King’s Quest 1, your hero is Sir Graham, now the king of the nation, albeit a very lonely one.


Oooo, spooky church. What a welcoming façade.


Stop for a moment to enjoy that nice woody digitised scenery.

You need a pretty girl to occupy the big red chair next to your throne so in the impulse of a dream, you set off to a land far away on an adventure of point-and-click proportions to save baby ducklings, fetch a basket of flowers, trick a half-blind witch (no difficulty there; really...), deal with grumpy librarians and get in the middle of the clichéd vampires vs. werewolves war.

Oh yeah, you have to remember to rescue a damsel in distress somewhere at some point.


Ol’ King Neptune wants something for you just as you wants something from him.


Welcome to Surrealism Isle. Please follow the completely safe route to the tower.

Although this is a games review, I’m not going to be totally serious on the aspects of the Four Commandments of a Good Game as I always do, mainly because this was a classic of elderly proportions. I liked it, it’s nostalgic to me and mostly, you still can download this game for free (took me a while to find a working download link; haven’t I mentioned that this game is almost 5 YEARS old?).

The download includes both the game, the speech package and its music package as well. Beforewared though, it’s over 100MB... (hehehe!).

Click here to Download this Game: http://download.chip.eu/en/King_s-Quest-2-VGA-Romancing-the-Stones-2.0_159915.html
Click here for complete walkthrough: http://www.agdinteractive.com/KQ2-walk.php

Click here to Download the Previous Game (Quest For the Crown): http://download.chip.eu/en/King_s-Quest-1-VGA-Quest-for-the-Crown-3.0_159895.html
Click here for Quest For the Crown’s complete walkthrough: http://www.agdinteractive.com/KQ1-walk.php

You’ll Never See These In Any Bookstore

I’m supposed to be having my semester break starting last Monday. I’m using the term ‘supposed to’ in purely rhetorical terms because come hell or high water, I’m still going to battle NKVE morning traffic to secure my place in the PC workstation for the internet.

Cyber café? Naaaah...
I’m saving money to buy a new book. Witness my totally serious stance to literature.

I know what you’re thinking. Damn, my thighs are huge...*sigh*

I’ve read every book you see here at least once and it’s still not as much as I would like. I haven’t read enough books to declare which one would make an interesting review. I’m practically starved for fiction at the moment and my Nuffnang pay doesn’t come up this month. Checking around for second hand books though.

Granted, the book I planned to buy is something I’ve already sneak-read in The Curve’s Borders bookstore (if anybody found a RM$1 bookmark - that's literally is one ringgit - please, please return to this absent-minded beggar *boo-hoo*).

And the real book I would love to buy is still in hardcover and really, reeeeeeeeally wanted book... is no longer in publication (see my Wishlist). Most of the books I’m targeting are either in the romance or fantasy or mystery section. Preferably something with a third of each.

But you know what I really like to see? Not necessarily to read but something definitely interesting to browse through. Bookstores stocked with these titles. I swear you’ll never see books like these unless probably in a shady cult store.

*****

Santa Claus’s Travel Guide: Includes nice places, not-so-nice places, nice-to-be-naughty places and regions hostile to unidentified flying sleds.

War and Peace; written in SMS language.

Pop-out Children’s Book: Teach them the Birds and the Bees Caution: illustrations in the pop-outs may or may not have been exaggerated.

Oxymoronic Dictionary: Where everything means the opposite of what it is.

Do-It-Yourself Acupuncture: A step-by-step instructional guide from ‘pincushion’ to ‘pufferfish’ to ‘Stick It Like How Julius Caesar Popped’.

Guide to Profanities and Obscene Hand Gestures: Get ready to spit the ***king crap out of your grandmother and her favourite lesbian stripper.

Must Watch Movies as divided into New Rating Scheme:
G-ratings (nobody gets the girl)
PG-ratings (good guy gets the girl)
R-ratings (bad guy gets the girl)
X-ratings (everybody gets the girl!)
XXX-ratings (everybody gets the girl, her mother-in-law and their Chihuahua)

Chicken Overkill Recipes: The best ways to prepare ayam kampung (free-range chicken) after you’ve ran it over with your car. Try the ‘Chicken Die Standing’.

Complete Illustrated Works of Karma Sutra: *no really, where the hell can you find a thorough and explicit comprehension anywhere nowadays?*

Fun Ways to Nearly Kill Yourself While Travelling: North Korean Edition (note: 1100 pages thick).

Malaysian Judicial System: Step One; cellphone etiquette. Step two; pretend ignorance of any video. Step three; escape to remote locations in Southern Hemisphere...

1001 Excuses You Can Use for Not Doing Your Homework: “...I’m currently going through déjà vu and amnesia at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.”

PS: On a more useful tip, I recommend Sams Teach Yourself Programming with Java by Rogers Cadenhead if you want to advance on Java programming. Either the author was high on a caffeine-beer mixture when he wrote this, or he really did have a candy-apple red thong underwear with embroidered text “My dog can beat up Paris Hilton’s dog.”