Of polite wishes

Maybe I've written about this before. Or maybe I haven't. I really don't know.

When in INSA (ASINSA, to be more precise), some of the students started organizing monthly birthday celebrations. At first it was only for their class, but later on they extended it to all the classes in our year. Somehow I never felt excited about those celebrations... I didn't even attend when they started including everyone. It was a while before I figured out why I felt something was "off".

I guess to me, holding a monthly birthday celebration defeats the purpose of the celebration. It is as if you don't care about the individual person, and instead decide to hold a celebration at fixed intervals so that no one can blame you for forgetting.

It's like taking the easy way out.

Recently in the office, they decided to start a fund for a quarterly birthday celebration. I wasn't really into it either... but since people seemed to like it, fine. Let's each contribute a few ringgit a month for this celebration. (I think it's 2 or 3 ringgit a month... but they collect it by quarter. Somehow. They just started, so there's no fixed system in place). For me, it just feels like chipping in for a quarterly team party. Who cares that it's your birthday this quarter anyway?

Why did I think of this today? Because someone shared a Google calendar with people's birthdays. My birthday wasn't on the calendar... and jokingly I asked the person who sent it out, "Hey, my birthday isn't in there! How could you use an outdated calendar?" (Just a few months ago, I remember being asked to update my birthday in a spreadsheet... when they were starting to talk about doing the quarterly celebration)

He replied that the calendar had been created some time ago... and he wasn't going to add newer additions to the birthday list. He told me that we were supposed to add our own birthdays.

Erm... no, thanks. That sounds to me too much like reminding people to wish you a happy birthday. I've even removed my birthday from Facebook so that I wouldn't get flooded with insincere messages... so no way I'm going to, of my own accord, create another way to get insincere messages.

Not sure what I would do if someone added it for me. Should I remove it? I would be tempted... but then again, it wouldn't be very nice to remove someone else's reminder.

The thing is, with a blatant reminder... some people would feel obliged to offer their wishes. And being unable to tell the difference between sincere and forced wishes... it's hard to appreciate any of them.

KIK!

One day, in a group chat, one of my friends suddenly wrote "kik". When there was no clarification, I ignored it. A little later, she wrote "KIK". And then again, "kik".

So I asked, what is "kik"?

Another person replied, it is lol!

LOL - laughing out loud.

Take a look at your keyboard. If you have the US layout, then you can see that KIK is just left of LOL.

I really laughed at that one! :D

What's surprising is, she didn't even correct her typo. Which means... kik is universally accepted as lol now?

Deceived by a cover...again

I recently read When the Devil Holds the Candle by Karin Fossum. The synopsis at the back of the book sounded interesting, and Inspector Sejer seemed like a famous detective that I had yet to discover.

Unfortunately, all is not as promised. The book's focus is not on Inspector Sejer, but on another character. To be fair, the book is not uninteresting, and is well-written in its own way. But... it was not what I expected from the back cover. In the end, I found Inspector Sejer a simple government officer with no exceptional qualities whatsoever. What great addition to a detectives' league is that?

I would have preferred this book to be advertised with simply "the police", instead of singling out the policemen as important characters. Then I wouldn't have felt tricked. As it was, upon finishing the book I was thinking, "What on earth...? What use are the police here?"

(I have written before about another book which does not deliver on its promises, here.)

Troubleshooting

We use these two-way radios at work. I mean we work on them, not that we use them for communication. A few days ago, I upgraded one of mine, and suddenly the screen went blank a few seconds after powering on. I tried a few times and it was still the same... Needing to use that particular software version, I asked around for a solution. I didn't find one, but someone found that I could plug the radio into the computer USB port and the screen would switch on (albeit with a "warning" colour), and I could use it as normal.

So that was what I did... until today when someone came to my cubicle to discuss another issue. I happened to mention this problem, and showed her how it happened (by powering up the radio, letting her see the screen turn on, and then turn blank). When she saw that, she pressed a button on the radio. As if by magic, the screen turned on.

What did she do?!

She adjusted the screen brightness.

Turns out that the screen brightness can be adjusted with a button...gradually becoming dimmer until total blackness. Something must have been set wrongly in this software version... making the screen black by default. I didn't really check it out... it was enough that it was working!

This is what happens when you work on something that has so many features, you don't know half of them!

Oh, and she said she had encountered the same problem before. That was how she knew. Well, I'm sure glad I showed her the problem!

Drain or save?

Blood is life.

Do you drain it or save it?

(That's supposed to be a blood bag, by the way.)

Of retribution and caring

When someone does something that makes you hopping mad and you tell that person off in a way that makes them hopping mad... now that is retribution for you.

Not that I set out to do that. I wouldn't.

But humans are so complicated, so different... anything is possible.

Sometimes I wish there was an on/off button for caring. Then you could flip the switch whenever you want. A mixture of human caring and robotic efficiency. Would make for a less stressful life.

Royally pissed

Almost lost my temper at work the other day. I had scheduled two separate meetings, but with essentially the same people. The first one was right after lunch, at 1:30pm. I had asked whether everyone was okay to attend at that time, because it was a Friday, and sometimes people get back really late from lunch on a Friday. They all said it was okay.

I reached the meeting room, and no one was there. No matter, I waited for a while. I had seen some of the people before going to the meeting room, so I knew they were back from lunch and thought they would be there soon. I thought wrong. After waiting for a while and no one had showed up, I started to get annoyed. I think I IM'ed them on Hangouts (we're using Google at work) to remind them of the meeting. In the end, we started at least 10 minutes late (can't remember the exact time).

The second meeting was at 3:30pm (the first one had ended earlier). With almost the same people, plus a few others if not mistaken. Same story, I go to the meeting room, and no one is there, even five minutes later. Even after a Hangouts reminder. Only one online attendee (again, via Hangouts) was there on time. One person arrived a bit late and hovered outside the meeting room, because "no one is there yet, why should I go in?" I had to go and search for the others. Having found them and reminded them of the meeting, it still took some of them ages to arrive. We started with a few people short because I didn't want to wait half an hour for people to arrive.

What is wrong with people these days? You think your time is more important than everyone else's? You think that people have nothing to do than to wait for you?

A lot of people use their calendar's reminder to go for meetings. Sometimes their excuse is, "I wasn't at my computer, so I didn't see my reminder." Well, guess what? It isn't a valid excuse. If you know you're going to be away from your computer, you need to have another way to remember your meeting. Like using your brain and your watch (or phone, these days), for example. (Your brain to remember when you have a meeting, and your watch to tell you the time. In case some people don't get it.)

Royally pissed is how I felt that day. Seriously. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if it had not been an empty meeting room, TWICE in a single day. One or two people being late for meetings, I can understand. I can even accept that people will not arrive on the dot, and I would be willing to wait 5 minutes. But if you are not there by that time... something is wrong. With you. You are a highly selfish and disrespectful person.

And even if you are late with a valid reason, most of the time you can still let people know. So at least, they can decide properly whether to wait, to postpone, or to start without you.

Common courtesy is on the brink of extinction.

All about apom

Some time back, I went to a food court with some friends. We bought the Indian apom (apom manis - I will go into more detail below), followed by the crispy apom (aka ban chean kuih). The crispy apom's name became a topic of discussion: One person said it was apom, I said I actually call it ban chean kuih instead of apom, and the Malays declared that it is always called apom balik in Malay. But to me apom balik is something else...

We laid the matter to rest by agreeing that anything resembling a pancake seemed to be called apom, and that was that. Good food is not meant to be argued upon. :P

A few days ago, this topic suddenly came to mind (triggered by the sight of one of the kinds of apom). So I decided to do some research.

I discovered not two, not three, but four different kinds of apom. Though I wouldn't call the last one apom...

1. Apom manis

This article gives you practically all the information you need to know about apom manis. It is the Indian apom I mentioned at the beginning of the post, though you can also find Chinese (or others, who knows?) selling it. Basically it is a simple pancake, but cooked in a mini-wok, so instead of being flat, the middle is thicker (and fluffy), whereas the sides are thin and crispy.

I don't know the stall that is recommended in the article, but I already get very good apom manis from the food court near my place, so I doubt I will go looking for it.


2. Apom balik

Next up we have the - I would like to say real - apom balik.

Now this article will tell you all about the two most famous apom balik stalls in Penang (at least I think they're the most famous... I actually haven't heard of any other stalls :P ) I myself have blogged about one of the stalls before, complete with photos of the apom-making process.

3. Ban chean kuih

Now for the crispy ban chean kuih. For this one, you can see a photo and a description here. Another page calls it apom balik (it's no. 4 on the snack list).

This one is fully crispy (instead of only crispy at the edges like the apom manis). It is cooked in a flat pan with straight edges (you can see that from its shape), so there is no fluffy centre. But that makes it just right! :)

By the way, ban chean kuih comes in two types, one thin and crispy like this one that I'm talking about, and the second one thick and... filling. I don't like the thick one much, because I prefer crispiness. And the thick one also fills me up way too quickly... since this is supposed to be a snack, I should be able to keep some space in my stomach for other things!

4. Apom berkuah

While doing my apom research, I stumbled upon this new kind of apom that I had never heard of. (From the same website, there is also a guide on how to make it, complete with pictures.) Turns out that it is a nyonya kuih, similar to kuih serabai which I had discovered only earlier this year, and blogged about. Not as good as the ones above, I would say.

So... I'm curious. Which kinds of apom have you tried? Do you call them by any other name? :)

A dream come true

I think practically everyone (and especially those who read my blog) know that I love Pikachu. So what better than finding Pikachu sitting on my desk waiting for me?

I happened to be away playing ping pong. Adeline was staying late that day, and she was bored... so she printed out a Pikachu cube and left it on my desk after making it!

Here's another photo at another angle so that the tail is visible:

Actually this cube Pokemon craze started from the Tech Expo in Motorola. On that day, there was a games booth that gave out printouts for people to make cube characters. (there were no Pokemon on that day) If you completed one, they would give you a brown bag (containing a few snacks). I didn't actually visit the booth until the end of the day, when they were already closing down (they had run out of brown bags), but I took a printout anyway. They only had the most difficult one left... which no one wanted to take.

So I picked up the challenge and slowly (over the next few days) figured out what went where. At first I had no idea how the end product was even supposed to look like. But then I managed to make the head... and Louis figured out who it was supposed to be. "It's the character from Sonic the hedgehog!" he exclaimed.

And so a Google search yielded some results: It was Amy Rose, Sonic's girlfriend (kinda... because it says that she considers herself Sonic's girlfriend, but I'm not sure whether Sonic agrees :P ) But with the name of the character, I was able to search for pictures of it to know how it was supposed to look in the end.

I found that the printout was not that complete... it didn't have hands! So I made white hands with simple white paper cutouts.

There were two pieces of "hair" left over... if you check the actual character's pictures, you will see that the hair is actually short. But the hair pieces that I had were so long... I felt they weren't drawn correctly. But no matter, I gave my Amy Rose long hair. And then... at least she can stand a bit more easily!

I believe that more Pokemon are in the works...because we found some more cutouts online. I'm also planning to re-make my old Jigglypuff in colour...

Good morning butterfly!

This morning there was a lovely butterfly sitting outside my kitchen window. I was afraid I would scare it away if I opened the window, so I snapped a few pics before opening the window. But it was still there... unmoving. I guess it was sleeping. So I got even better photos!

Pretty, right?

After some time it started fluttering its wings, slowly... a few times... and then it took off.

Good morning and a good day to you, butterfly!

Edit (13 Oct): Thanks to Wei Ping, I found out the name of this butterfly. It is a blue pansy!

Firefighting

I've got a few things I want to blog about, but let's start off with a short one. As I've mentioned a few times (I believe), I like it when people inject a bit of humour into the serious (supposedly) world of work. Anyway, one of my e-mails received the following auto-reply:

Dear Sender,

I'm OOO on external firefighter training Oct-5, Oct-6, Oct-7 .

If you notice any fire in console - call my mobile.

If you notice any fire anywhere else  - call 998

OOO stands for "out of office", in case you're wondering. This e-mail comes from Poland, so I guess 998 is the emergency number for the fire brigade there. And as for console... I suppose that's their job!

What I like about this e-mail is the references to firefighting throughout. Very consistent. :D

Creating a solar system

At work we have a scrum board to keep track of our team's activities. We recently received our new metal/whiteboard boards. Before this we were using a softboard, so we used pins to stick papers onto the board. Now we can use magnets, so I came up with these avatars for our team members! (no one had much ideas on how to decorate our scrum board, so somehow the task fell to me (because I more or less designed the old one))

Unfortunately I didn't pay enough attention and the positions of Uranus and Neptune got switched... I didn't realize until I was halfway through removing the magnets and I was too lazy to rearrange them again.
(The icons come from Zairaam at DeviantArt; you can check out the original images there.)

I printed out the images and cut them out... then we found out that the paper would definitely tear if we stuck it on magnets to use (our magnets are smaller than the icons...about the size of a 10-sen coin). One of my team members thought of sticking the paper onto something harder first... and we found cardboard! So there we have paper on cardboard, stuck onto magnets.

As I was making them, I stuck them onto my metal cabinet of drawers (you can see the top drawer slightly open on the left). And why not arrange the solar system?

Besides all the planets (including Pluto), there are the Sun, the Moon and even an asteroid. There is also a black hole, which I placed far away (bottom left), so that it won't swallow up the planets! The supernova is also far away (top right) for about the same reason... so that it's explosive power will not destroy the planets. As for Thanos... at first I thought it was one of Jupiter's moons, but turns out it isn't... my friends told me it was a Marvel character - an evil one. So the evil Thanos is not too near to the other planets, but trying to approach... stealthily. lol

You can touch if...

Just thought of this funny incident at work. It happened quite some time ago. F was at his desk, and L was walking around... and then for some reason (which I can't remember), L went over to kacau F by lightly touching the hair at the back of his head. (both L and F are guys, by the way)

F jumped and said, Hey, need to charge one you know...

I laughed and said, He will charge... then you can touch!

As soon as the words left my mouth I knew something was "wrong". L also immediately burst out laughing. He asked F, Did you hear what she said? Fortunately F hadn't heard. :P

So maybe I shouldn't be posting about it here... but then again, I'm not naming anyone so it's okay right? :D

And the thing is... I like how it rhymes. :P