Hectic Day

Phew! Pretty much a hectic day today. After days and days of postponing (with no help from me and my mom, on alternate days), finally got to settle roughly 90% of the things that needed to be settled.

All in all, managed to pay off the electricity and phone bills at the bank, renew both me and my mom's magazines for the year, and get the housing application forms for the apartment that's currently in construction, all within the space of 3 hours and a kereta sapu with a driver patient enough to wait through it.

Coincidentally at the post office, I saw the old man who works as a fortune teller and living in a flat near the Jelutong municiple wet market. I recognised him but I don't believe he really remembered who I was, or did he? He was picking up a parcel from the post office and walked quite a long while to get to the place.

Anyways, am heading off to bed now. Goodnight everyone. :)

Flickering Lights / Headphones

I have absolutely no idea why the lights in my apartment blink at times. First it was just quick blinks for several hours, everyone including my parents could just shrug it off and ignore it. Then the flickering got worse until the fluorescent lights itself stop working for a few seconds and interrupt the power of my CPU, making it restart by itself.

It came up a few days ago while I was using my computer for several hours, but stuff like these never happened before. I'm guessing that my leaving my computer on to download through BitComet might be a reason for it though, and it uses too much power from a power point. Eh, it's just a guess of mine. Though when I spoke to dad about the lights, his voice lowered and spoke with a whisper and said "it's a ghost". Boy did I enjoy what he managed to tell and spook me when I was a kid, but seriously this can be scientifically explained. I'm a skeptic now, though I see stuff at the edge of my eyes occasionally. I just shrug it off too.

Anyways, have to either cut down the use of the TV and computer though. The worst was these past two nights, but then now the situation seems somewhat okay already.

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Got myself another pair of Philips headphones last month. It's a pair of closed ear headphones. 40 bucks, it kinda burned a hole in my pockets though. Imagine the pain that I went through when nephew tried to stretch the headphones. Grrrr... Anyways, another week or two after that, I dropped it and the sound quality of the left side declinded big time. It became somewhat muffled but it can be solved crudely by adjusting the balance of the sound.

Strangely, a second accidental drop a week ago fixed that problem but it introduced another problem. Wires seem to be a bit lose, and the sound partly or completely disappears when that happens. Stuffing the base of the wires deep inside helped a bit though. If it was others I think I might've chucked this pair of headphones away, but I definitely wouldn't. I'm gonna get a better pair in the future, and I absolutely will not let it fall into the hands of a kid again!

Chess MSSPP Musings

Y'know, I didn't even knew that the chess MSSPP championship was in progress until a friend of mine told me about it through MSN. Thanks Randy! As usual, the competition was held from 28-30 March and 4-7 April, which is always on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. First one is individual events and second one is team events. My fault for not completely blogging about last year's event though. Kinda lost the mood and motivation to resume blogging about it.

So anyways, I only attended the team events, which is on Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday is just too early for me to catch it. Besides, it takes a good 20 minutes for me to walk slowly to Penang Free School (the venue again this year), I need the exercise too, considering I don't usually get outside much nowadays. Also tried out having lunch at the McDonalds there! :9

So, I was there and watched the Under-15 boys team of Heng Ee crushing Methodist Boys' School 4-0, the Under-18 team was busy dealing with a Malay secondary school whose name I can't really remember right now. On the second day of the team events both Under-15 and Under-18 teams were up against St. Xavier's Institution, and both teams lost by a score of 1.5-2.5.

I was there to sorta cheer for my high school team, absolutely had no pressure for me cause I wasn't participating this year. :P Can't say the same for next year though, if I head to Form 6. Disappointing sometimes, when I saw some of the players playing against their opponents, the only thing in my mind is "j00 R royally screwed". No kidding there. Just make a mistake there, and you're screwed for real.

About our school's results, my friend got sixth place out of 135 participants in the Under-18 boys category, this is the best ever result that I have ever seen! Didn't manage to blog about it last year, but I got 18th placing with 5.5 points and that was the best result as of then. This year my friend topped up that acheivement with 6.5 points! :D Anyways, looks like we Heng Ee folks are gonna keep up with having the highest unrated players! :P As for team events, Under-18 team finished sixth while Under-15 boys were placed fourth for the second year in a row. Not a bad result I'd say. :) Most of the results can be obtained through the Penang Chess Association's website here.

On a somewhat related note here, I wanted to squeeze in a mention in this blog post about something that happened during last year's competition. I had a very bad encounter with a person. If you happen to come upon this post and know what I'm talking about, I want to let you know that I will not apologise for what I did because you are so 'effing rude! Even until now!

That's all for now. Thank you for reading.


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