An Irony...

"Baldrick, do you know what irony is?"
"Yeah, it's like tinny or brassy, only it's made of iron."

Okay, now let's put that silly Blackadder quote aside.

Y'know, there was one... no, make that THREE ironies while I was at the driving centre last Saturday:
1. The driving instructor giving me a ride to the place had his handphone stuck on his ear for half of the trip there.
2. The lecturer talking about being physiologically exhausted while I was sitting there feeling exhausted, and...
3. The driver taking us back at the end of the course WASN'T wearing his seatbelts!

And oh by the way, I scored 42 out of 50 for the computerised driver's test! Passed barely, but still I passed it! :D

Almost Got Punched!

WTF???

Seriously, have we that many paranoid punks wandering around Penang nowadays? Just barely half an hour ago I was walking back from school and was at the the T-junction near my house when I saw someone sprinting like he was in a hurry or something. I saw the guy and he saw and ran up to me saying something which I didn't manage to hear. Then he pulled back his arm and fist and was looking like he was gonna take a punch AT ME! WTF? At that exact point I stepped backwards quickly and already raising my right arm in case his fist flew at me, I wasn't holding my other schoolbag close to my chest or else I would've use it to block. The guy later then walked away speaking in Hokkien that he'll "let Ah Pui know about this".

Weird weird weird. o__O;;;

I don't know what would happen if the fist landed on my face or stomach. There could be plenty of outcomes, but I'm not gonna think about it any longer. In short, I'm not gonna take that shortcut anymore and stick to the footpath beside the main street. This was tooooo weird.

On The Road To A Driver's Licence...

Has it been that long since I blogged here? Well, sorry guys for the lack of updates. School's just reopened this week and it's made me pretty tired these past few days. And the fact that 3 football World Cup games on the telly nightly isn't helping my case at all. I could only catch the first two games. :P

Anyways, that's not really the point here. The point is that after all of these while, I'm finally moving towards getting a driver's licence! My mom got a driving instructor's phone number last Friday night and the next morning I was scheduled to attend the course about the laws of the road, road safely and such stuff.

So, one bright and glaringly early morning at the very uncomfortable time of 8am, the guy who was the driving instructor appeared downstairs my apartment in a tiny and new Perodua Kancil and fetched me to at the main driving school in Sungai Ara. o.O Reached the spot 45 minutes later and had to wait a little before going into the lecture room. Passed a hundred bucks and IC to the same guy and he handed it to the folks at the counter, by then I had barely enough time to have a slice of bread for breakfast. Too rushing.

So, I got myself into the lecture room which was just beside the small exam room five minutes later. Everyone ranging from 16 year olds who were attending this course on their birthdays to middle-aged folks were there. There was even an Indonesian woman and a Pakistani man at the course too. :P I could say the people in charge inside the room there were pretty rushing too, since the changeover to the computer-chipped MyKad wasn't really proving to be convenient either. The scanner had problems reading the cards most of the times, further adding to the wait. And some of the chips were practically useless, so they had to resort to another kind of chipped card for the applicants. As for me blame it on my parents who haven't picked up the new ICs yet. I'm still stuck with my old one.


I saw too many
roadsigns. @.@ First lecturer was somewhat old Malay middle-aged guy, but he was darn hilarious with the talk. Shooting out Malay words like a machine gun and peppering his speech with antics and witty comments, the 4 hours seemed to pass by pretty fast enough. First break was a 15-minute break at 11 am and second break was a 30-minute break at 1pm. Then it was the turn for the second lecturer, he was an Indian guy but he wasn't as funny as the first one. But still, the little textbook needed to be roughly explained throughout the two lectures nontheless, and we were paying roughly 50 bucks for each lecturer. Checkout again was hampered by the same problems. Am just thankful that it passed soon enough.

So, overall the first lecture started at 9am and the second one ended officially at 3:30pm. A whole 6 and a half hours in that boring place with folks I don't even know at all. And to top it all off, I had to squeeze with 9 other people inside a Toyota Unser on my way back. So damn tired when I got back home.

By the looks of things, I'm gonna make an appointment and head back to the same place this Saturday to take the exams. If things go fast and well, the lecturer mentioned that the lessons and everything could be settled as fast as within a month! Am not gonna keep dragging this on anymore, my relatives are sorta bugging me to get my licence as soon as possible, and besides I keep seeing my classmates taking days off for their driving lessons. It really ought to be my turn now. :P

The Train Station...

So there I was, just stepped into the train station and saw three huge counters. The time was around 12:40pm. The one in front were for tickets, while the one on my left dealt with baggage ticketing and the right was the carpark payment counter. It must've been the holiday season or something, since the lines were long at all three counters.

It was only four minutes before the train arrived, and guess what? Dad had a stomachache right there at that moment.

"Dad, if you go to the toilet right then now we're gonna miss the train!"

He ignored me and walked straight ahead. The place rumbled a bit as a weird-looking service train passed through the station. Our train's not here yet, but I sure as heck know that it's gonna arrive right on the dot.

"Did you even know the car isn't parked properly yet?!?!"

The car was probably parked just outside of the station. And I have no idea where it's gonna end up once we board that train.

Also, we almost couldn't put the baggage in the train yet because everyone snapped up all of the numbers available. The person in charge told me to hold on as they were finding a way to settle this mess. Gawd knows what was wrong with me, I should've squeezed and grabbed a number but instead I stood like a fool as the crowd passed by me.

So many unsettled things, my dad's not helping me a bit, and lastly the train arrives in FOUR minutes. I have no idea how much longer the train will wait before it sets off again.

And then...


...


...my handphone rang, and...


...


...I woke up.


o.O


Turns out I was having a dream since last night. Was in bed thinking about trains, and I ended up dreaming about trains. Weird.

Free Domain Name From Microsoft With a Catch...

If you're in the US and have a credit card and are searching for a domain name for yourself, then read on this blog post. If you're not, then good luck and keep on searching. :P

Apparently Microsoft's now offering one free domain name bundled together with its new Microsoft Office Live Beta. And apart from the restrictions I mentioned a while ago, you also can't change the domain's host to a non-Microsoft one. Or is it so?

“Microsoft is offering to give you a free domain if you signup for Microsoft Office Live Basics Beta (http://officelive.microsoft.com/default.aspx)

...

“The only catch is, there is no technical support once you get a domain. However, I did not know this prior to signing up (and they do not tell you this ANYWHERE in the signup process).

“So, I signed up a domain name for a company I started. however, when I accessed my account, I was horrified to find that I could not change the host from being Microsoft to my own personal hosting provider.

“This seriously troubled me. So, I went through the entire site and NO WHERE does it say how to do this. I instead decided to do some contacting on my own.”

Read the rest of it at Darren's blog. :)


Technorati tags: Microsoft, Office Live Beta, Domain names

Amazon.com Ads

I signed up for Amazon's Associates Program quite a few weeks ago, though process was fast and simple (compared to Google), I've only put up the Amazon.com ads a while ago.

That should be enough ads for now methinks, except for the referral buttons at the bottom of the blog. I should definitely adjust those a bit more. Anyways, any comments? :)

Deep Forest Music Videos

You know, for all of these while I never really like Deep Forest's music. I used to think that the tribal chants were rather weird and that sort of turned me off. It was an entire different cup of tea. During that time I was used to Enigma's songs, and as you may know Enigma and Deep Forest have had their fair share of comparison to each other's works.

And now today, I came accross a music video of "Martha's Song", one of Deep Forest's songs which have made them immensely popular (but still not as popular as Enigma nontheless). The song which I thought to be weird actually fit into the music video. As you can see, some of the videos are pretty surreal and never clear, it takes several times of viewing to sort out the things that you see.



A word about the music though. I think most of you guys would be equally weirded out too, listening to foreign chating that sounds like Indian or gawd knows what language it is, and not even knowing what it means. Well, it can take two, three or even more listens to get the hook of it. It happened to me too. Never ever force yourself to sit through an entire song or album. The main point of music is to just enjoy it and let it entertain you.

And well, if you are able to take down the path of non-mainstream music, only then your ears and your mind will be open. There's already a ton of similar music out there on the market, on the television and also on the radio that keeps on playing the same old songs time after time, and entire music industry that's dedicated to churning out music. Everyone needs a breath of fresh air sometimes, you know?

Anyways, here are other music videos also by Deep Forest worth a watch (and listen!), I've linked them to avoid clogging up the blog post with too many videos.
- Deep Forest
- Sweet Lullabye
- Madazulu


Technorati tags: Deep Forest, Sweet Lullabye, Madazulu, YouTube

Google's Been Generous...

I've found myself fiddling around with several Google tools and services lately, most of them pretty nifty if you ask me. :P Here some of 'em that I joined recently.

Google Hosted
Was checking my e-mail address yesterday when I found out that they my application for Google Hosted was approved, and I had received clearance! Three and a half months, I applied for that darn thing on February 24th and only got to use it yesterday! Though I'm very interested in this service, my local webhosting provider only provided me a faux access to the domain name, and unless I get full access to the domain name, I'm afraid it's currently being wasted. :/

The thing attractive about Google Hosted is that if you own a domain name, it's possible to create e-mail accounts under that domain name, but yet it utilises Gmail as its interface and storage site. E-mail accounts are capped at 2GB though, more than enough I think.


Google Analytics
And today, I just received my Google Analytics invite in my mailbox. Though it seems like it's geared towards AdWords subscribers and looks very profession and polished. AdWords optimisation is the game, but no AdWords for me yet though, so I'm still finding a purpose and looking through the website.


Google Sitemaps
This one doesn't need an invite, but it's still as useful as the two others. Now Google Sitemaps is a information gathering service for your website, not unlike SiteMeter methinks, but I don't think I'll be ditching SiteMeter for Google Sitemaps anytime soon. It's still worth a shot though.


Google AdSense
Now this is something most of us would be really interested in, right? Google's money-making tool for webmasters. Who are we kidding here? A little cash in the pocket would definitely ease the wallet. :P

Wonder if anyone remembers two AdSense-related post I wrote two years ago? Had AdSense on this blog once back in 2004, but a month later turns out I was suspended due to my age. Well, on day that I turned 18 I sent another application to the Google guys and asked them to re-review the website, and finally I'm now accepted. So now that I've ads in this blog, do let me know if the ad placements or layouts could be edited or changed somewhat. :)


Technorati tags: Google, Google Hosted, Google Analytics, Google Sitemap, Google AdSense