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I could really use a pat on the back.

I could really use a pat on the back.

What do i really want?

This passage here, is probably the 5th or 6th introductory passage that I’ve rewritten for tonight, as my eccentric mind wanders violently from topic to topic, and where I’ve come to a compromise that an opening passage shall be opened without targeting any particular subject that haunts me in my head.

Oh how I wish that I’m down with a writer’s block, but what do you call the opposite of that? A Writer’s broken dam? Does that sound the opposite enough? Anyway, you get the idea..

Guess what it’s called when there’s a few things that have been bothering you and lingering in your mind, but there’s just noone qualifiable and available that you can talk with.

Instead of being able to approach others for direction or guidance, you’re the one whom others turn to, and you do it gracefully, and being the least acerbic person ever to walk this earth, you realise that even though your attention isn’t limitless and personally draining, you comply because you enjoy helping or listening out.

It’s sounds venerable, it seems philantrophic, and it’s called My Life.

The few people whom I turn to as my source of inspiration all sit in a room, where we’re separated by vast bodies of water and land, but thanks to the internet, they’re only a website, or a forum, away.

If you’ve ever wanted to know who these beautiful souls are, we’re known as the third tribe, and it’s a pricey group to be in, but imho, justifiable.

Anyway, it’s like the right kind of support group that suits me in this moment, and feeds me with plenty of courage and invaluable life lessons. You are what you eat, right?

So what have I been doing of late?

For the lack of words to describe it succinctly, perhaps I’ll just say that I’m purposely screwing up my life, just so that I can fix it all back on my own again. It’s like a challenge that I’m going through all over again, just because.

I’ve been through plenty of hardship growing up and I sure know what it feels like to go through life without basic amenities, and now that I’m a little bit comfortable, it seems as if life itself is sucked out of me.

To feel alive, you’ve got to get out of your comfort zone right?

Obstacles, challenges and problems, means you’re alive, like pinching shows that you’re not asleep.

I would never see an obstacle or a setback as a problem, but rather as an opportunity to thrive from. For the record, there have been situations where I simply can’t put my head around it and have to simply ‘take it like a man’. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

Water Drops then ripplesSometimes Life puts us in a situation where the solution is so obvious, but when our mindset looks at it as a setback or discombobulating problem, we get put down and we grow weary.

When that happens, I say, view it as a challenge and give yourself a reason to overcome it, and hopefully gain something out of it. At the very least, you owe yourself this much to not meander around it.

If you’re wondering why I’m putting all these into words, it’s because of things that I see and hear from friends and family, especially of late.

Of course it’s easier said than done when I say that I see a solution and a way of overcoming their ‘problems’. Naturally I won’t go all out and lay down the blueprints for them, because It’s just impolite to do so, unless they specifically requests so.

You see, whenever someone shares something with you, they aren’t really looking for an answer, but rather a listening ear and perhaps a few tips or tricks that they may have thought that you could have kept under your sleeves.

Though I’d rather be saying ‘Look, this is how it’s done and your problem will be solved’, I’d honour their generosity in sharing by simply trying to draw out the answer from their own breathes. It’s funny how you’re more receptive to an idea when you’re made to think that you carved out the answer on your own.

In any case, nobody really needs an answer, but they’ll definitely welcome your guidance and your pat-on-the-back appreciateively.

And I’d definitely welcome any form of guidance and pat-on-the-back that I can get at the moment, in my pursuit of happiness. The Pursuit of Happiness, seen that show?

I look at myself in the mirror, and I whisper to myself “What are you searching for?”

Then I’d go all silent and make funny faces at myself.

“Why push yourself any further than where you already are?”

“Why aren’t you content with what you already have?”

Hmm, actually, I’m very much content with myself and where I am, really, but it’s what I can do for others that I’m not quite content with.

I know I can’t change them the way I want to, and so I try not to, no matter how tempted I am.

But I do tend to put on others’ shoes more readily than I’d like to, and some shoes are really tight, and it hurts.

Still, there’s so many questions that lingers on and haunts me, but like i said, noone really needs an answer.

And why again am I sharing all these, when I really don’t have to?

Because a drop of water in a pond creates ripples, and ripples makes an otherwise stagnant and dull pond more beautiful.

And I wish you’d drop and create ripples more often too.

Kick-Ass, the kicks ass movie review.

Kick-Ass, the kicks ass movie review.

It was a Shawshank Shaw Bugis Redemption yesterday, but that’s just sugar-coated gloss over my blunder of booking a movie at the wrong time slot and collecting the tickets on a wrong day.

I bought 2 Saturday tickets, when I actually intended to watch the movie on Sunday, me and D (wkwkwkwk, I’m still getting into this naming of persons in their initials as seen in many many blogs).

That I drew out the tickets without any initial flags or alarm raised by the box office, is amusing enough. Fair enough both parties didn’t realise the mistake early on.

Fortunately the box office Auntie was kind enough to allow us to change to the current date so that we were able to watch the movie as intended. What a kind and nice Auntie~

Kick-Ass!

No, not the Auntie, but the movie that we watched was Kick-Ass!

I’ve read a few glowing reviews of it and though I’ll expect any comic-book adapted movie to be sub-par most of the time, Kick-Ass truly kicked ass!

The profanities flew by as fast and furious as the punches and gore hits you, and you’ll be forgiven for thinking it’s just another mindless, action-thrill ride, but despite the ‘superhero’ setting of it all, the show remained very much human.

And that’s what I loved about it, that the leading characters are all limited by their human potential, and that the real superhero lies not in super powers, but rather a change in the mindset of the person.

It begs the question “What would you do? Would you help someone in trouble?”

I know I would, and I know I’ll probably get beaten up, ass-kicked and stabbed too — *spoiler alert* just like what our main character suffered in his first Superhero impression — but what really matters is that you stand up and fight for the weak, right?

Like how James Cameron plays ‘Avatar’ in listening to the plight of the Amazon natives.

It’s like they’re trying to send us a message. That they can take whatever they want, but this.. this is our — oh wait, wrong movie. Back to Kick-Ass.

There’ve been a couple of these ‘human’ superhero movies in recent years, and most notably Batman and Ironman, rich fellas with gadgets to play with, and also who can forget the affable Watchmen with their naked blue Dr Manhattan.

And does anyone recall Mystery Men, with Ben Stiller in that movie? I loved that too, though it wasn’t a big hit with the mainstream movie-goers, and I thought it was a delicate story then.

With Kick-Ass, it’s not just a delicate story. It is brutally kind, heartfeltly heartless, crazily cracked-up and humanly superhuman.

Take away the profanities, the explosions, the human-microwave torture and it’ll still be a great movie to catch. If there’s one up and coming prodigy to watch out for, Hit Girl, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, is it.

So what if she’s just 11 and sprouts the F language more than you’d hear from your next-of-kins? Welcome to the real world, dear Parents. That your child’s just playing World Of Warcraft or Audition SEA quietly in their room, oh boy.

Nicholas Cage in his withdrawn role, does what he does best, and that is to fill the movie with deadly coyful vengeance and a nonchalant upbringing attitude, a breathe of fresh air from his National Treasure and other supernatural movie days.

Meanwihle Aaron Johnson, who played Kick-Ass, the character, turned out to be the perfect cast for the fragile ambitious boy-grows-up role, with Matthew Vaughn directing impeccably. The tight editing and crisp soundtrack deserves a special mention because the ambience and mood it provides elevates the movie experience greatly.

There just never seem to be a dull moment, and every new scene throws the equilibrium of the show into unpredictability, and it’s this unexpected turn of events that keeps the show fresh and exciting, and in short, ass-kicking!

Need more tidbits of the movie, check it out over at IMDB yo, and don’t miss out on this movie.

It’s goooooooooood!

99 Design’s iPad giveaway

99 Design’s iPad giveaway

99 Designs

They’re feeling uber generous, these fellas over at 99 designs.com, but that’s good news for us mortals, who stand a chance to be on the receiving end of this:

iPad

Yes, that sexy, sleek, touchy touchy thingy.

No, not the uber exotic gal (you wankers!). No, not the endangered Panda (you animal w*nkers!).

The Apple iPad is being given away by 99 Designs.com — actually, 3 Apple iPads are being given away.

How to?

1. Sign up with them.

2. Use their Portfolio Widget to display your 99designs portfolio on your own website or blog.

That’s it, and the more unique websites that you display this, the more chances you get.

Now, don’t tell me you don’t want an iPad?

iPage’s Anytime Money Back Guarantee

iPage’s Anytime Money Back Guarantee

Anytime Money Back GuaranteeLet’s see how fast iPage.com sticks to this ANYTIME money back guarantee of theirs.

Which really was the reason that I tried taking them up, cos their offer was irresistibly good:

1) Money Back Guarantee
This eliminates any risk of potentially getting stucked with a service or product that I’m not happy with.

2) Low Yearly Fee
Let’s face it, when are we unmoved by the price factor? Sure iPage’s plan wasn’t the lowest, compared to other hosts’ but I just had this itch to switch to another host and at this moment in time, price had to be one of the factor.

3) They Looked The Look
I know, I know, never judge a book by its cover and I may be a sucker for their ‘image’ here , in falling for their marketing cosmetics but that’s how it really goes on in life, without most of us giving any though to it. The more professional it looks, the more inclined you’re going to part with your money. Right?

So why the sudden urge for a refund?

Let’s just say I wasn’t a satisfied customer after a purchase, which I wouldn’t go deep into at the moment.

And please don’t think that they’ve got bad services or poorly designed products, because they’re actually quite good.

Plus they’ve really done well and came back strongly into the web hosting market, especially after a hiatus a few years back, and especially so with a “No questions asked”, “Anytime cancel” policy.

So now I await their reply.

A quick recap of days gone by.

Last Monday, fresh from a working Sunday rendezvous, I wrote down on a piece of paper of my current mood and it read: Busy.

I did it again the next day, and the next and the next, and I realised that it felt rejuvenating.

I looked back at my early morning moods in sequence and this was how it looked like:

Monday: Busy
Tuesday: Chaotic
Wednesday: Hell
Thursday: Redemption
Friday: Routine
Saturday: Football

And where I thought that I didn’t have to come back to the office today, on a Sunday, I eventually had to and so Sunday’s mood recap was: Bah.

Busy, chaotic. hell, redemption, routine, football and bah was how the week felt.

Early week and mid-week was hell and I think I knew how I managed to stay sane.

When you’re mentally prepared, you raise your game that little bit more.

I knew that the Food Hotel Asia, or FHA, event meant that we’d have a damn busy week+weekends, but thanks to pre-empt heads up from the regular customers, I guessed that this much it helped in staying sane.

That errors in prints amounted to just 1, considering the amount of information that I’ve had to digest from the various contractors, meant that the ship has successfully navigated away from the storm.

And I attribute the level of efficiency down to… a paper and a pen.

That’s right, nothing helped me more during that period than a piece of paper and a pen.

Countless times where someone mention something to me and I acknowledge it, expecting to remember later on, only to forget everything about it.

It’s fatal to merely hold onto a thought when you have phone calls flying at you, customers sitting beside in a discussion, and an incessant workload of graphic layouts to be done on the PC.

Whatever years of experience that I’ve racked up, I’ve learnt that anything that’s worth remembering, it’s definitely worth writing it down, no matter how strong you think your memory is.

All it takes to save your ass, especially in this line, is a piece of paper and a pen, and I was bloody prepared to write down with blood if ink ran out.

Thankfully we had plenty of pens in the office.

Write it down if it’s worth remembering.

Had I not written down my mood recaps in the early morning, I’d probably not even remember how I’d felt at the start of that day.

And now I’m able to relive those moments again.

Coming on the back of chaotic days, I remember approaching Thursday on a lighter mood.

I wrote down ‘Redemption’, because Thursday was the day that made every single minute spent in office worthwhile.

It was the day which meant that I wouldn’t mind coming back every Sunday for work if I had to.

It was also the day where every chaos and hell turn serene and rosy, for a while.

And I’m pretty sure that this is the day that everyone works for at the end of the month, and I guess I’m counting my blessings that I get to receive it twice a month.

More or less.

Yep, it was Payday, and Mar loves Paydays because it means that he gets to settle any overdue bills that he has and avoid receiving any further red letters and/or ‘please pay up’ sms-es.

Life is about paying the bills at the end of the month right?

Did you just wrote that down?

Rafa Benitez must finish what he has started.

Overheard from A Red Thing: Benitez should stay on and finish what he has began, and this is a message to all you fairweather *sic* ‘fans’.

… fans of a club support it through thick and thin, because at this moment these vocal fans who ask for the axe sound more like disgruntled shareholders, except they don’t own any shares…

… one of the main reason that Torres’ full potential is nearly unleashed, that Gerrard decided to stay when Chelsea courted him, and that the mere mention of ‘Liverpool’ in Europe meant a team that’s never to be discounted…

… Liverpool have over the years proven how strong they are when they go into the second half and especially when their backs are against the wall…

And maybe I might add just how myopic these fans are who are simply impatient for the silverware, and don’t they know that success is sweeter the longer it takes and the harder it gets? Maybe I’m too optimistic, but at the very least, I’m the least bit pessimistic — and Pessimists never gets anything done and never achieve anything that they want, because they tell themselves that it’s impossible. I just happen to think that in life, anything is possible.

Likened to an Intention Manifestation Model thingy, but just that much more simpler, believe you can, and you will, but believe you can’t, and you won’t.

My message to Rafa Benitez, if he’s by a one in a Billion chance that he’s reading this, well, you’ll never walk alone. It’s a Red thing.

The ‘Maybe someone should file a class action suit against Apple’ thread.

I don’t code in Lingo anymore and neither do I indulge in lines and lines of Actionscripts, but somehow the blue and yellow forums of Flashkit.com never fail to keep me away.

Occasionally browsing over the photography section, the arena (where plenty of brilliant photoshop tennis takes place) and most notably hanging out in its coffee lounge, a place where we deliberate on anything and everything, Flashkit or FK has been a constant haunt for me.

The quirky minds and scandalous witty retards retorts that resides among its pages are what keeps me glued after all these years.

So how many forums can you claim to be a part of, of which you’ve spent nearly a decade lingering around? After a certain period of time, it feels like home.

And threads like “Can we file a class action against Apple?” entices the professional thinkers to come out and present their arguments onto the table, and without Bush in the White house, it’s topics like these that gets the Flashkit’s wandering minds into focus and a pretty slick debate.

Flashkit were the place to be if you were gonna be a flash developer back then, but the site’s well past its glory days, although the forums are still alive and kicking. It’s like the threads have taken a life of its own and there’s just no stopping.

And that’s all that I’m there for, to nibble on the breadcrumbs of these professional’s minds and also the antics of the misdemeanours, and to perhaps learn a few graceful thing or two.

So can we start with the lawsuit already?

Wait a minute, but why should I?

If I would, is it because I’m a programmer who only knows how to use Adobe’s Flash CS5 to make apps for the AppStore?

And now that it’s taken away from me, that I have a valid reason to do so?

Baseless.

That’s how I see it really, whenever someone claims at how unjust Apple’s move is.?

The way I see, Apple owns the hardware, the software, the online store and I just don’t get the part where it’s not right for them to decide what’s best when they’re playing on their own turf with their own game?

It’s like your mom decides that no boys who listens to Justin Bieber should date her child, and then some random fella cries outrage and contemplates filing a suit against your mom, just because.

And you, the child, is a BIG FAN of that tiny prodigal singer, so do you date someone else or lock yourself in the room and cry for 13 nights straight?

Seriously, I may get or feel the outrage that Adobe has against Apple’s latest move, but I don’t quite understand the level that it’s reached. Seems to me that Adobe is seriously in a bad mood because Apple refuses to go out on a date.

Relax, just sit back and relax.

That’s right Adobe, calm down, and instead of throwing a tantrum, tolerate and abide by it. No point venting your frustrations if you don’t try to find a solution.

In fact solution abounds, ‘cos Adobe can now focus and redirect their energy towards companies that do want to adopt application development with CS5.

Apple has just given them one less platform to think about, and possibly narrowed their marketing budget, and everybody knows that when you have to many options, you get spoilt for choice.

So instead of fighting fire with fire, that energy is better redirected and channelled it into other ares, like maybe a new technological development or a smart marketing campaign.

Fan not, the flames of the problem.

In life, problems are the best thing that can happen to anyone, because only they give us the opportunity to learn to cope, endure and solve.

And when something can’t be solved, well, we live around it.

Now, now Adobe, just chill it.

How I developed a habit of waking up early with a purpose.


The Accidental Botanist.

I just read an article which teaches how to grow plants and I swear that I’m not turning into a botanist anytime soon, as I stumbled upon it after Googling for “nutrients that plants need”.

The word I was searching for turned out to be Fertilizers, which I eventually read off one of the search result’s pages.

Strangely for a few hours, ‘Fertilizers’ was missing from my head and frantically trying to remember a forgotten term is painfullly irritating, like how you thought you knew a certain phrase a while ago but now just simply unable to put anything to it, the moment that you needed it?

The mind ends up racing in chaos, trying to find that rogue term.

So I was searching for ‘Fertilizers’ because I wanted to start this post with a “These few days, if I was a fledgling plant, it felt as if all my [insert rogue term here] were being taken away from me. — but I ended up with a better gem.

At least I thought it was a gem, because in that article I mentioned earlier, a paragraph mentioned “All plants need these seven things to grow: room, right temperature, light, water, air, nutrients and time.” and I can’t help but to come out with a list of things that a man needs to grow.

And brilliantly ecstatically, I came up with: iPod, EPL, FHM, xbox, DOTA… ok k k.. just kidding.

So where plant needed the 7 things to grow, I was quite certain that we humans too had a list for us to grow, and so I did a simple 15-minute doodling of random stuffs, while watching American Idol. I drew a half eaten cake, some cats, or what might looked like cats, and even doodled a rocket that’s about to launch.

As it turned out, the doodling exercise done on purpose, never really had any purpose, and I was back to when I first asked myself the question: what is it that humans need to grow? Fertilisers?

Like An Epiphany.

Answers like food, family and money are perhaps tangibly more than correct but I wasn’t quite satisfied with them and I looked back at my useless doodles and slowly, I smiled.

I realised that after all that doodling, I was a really bad artist.

Or maybe the pencil wasn’t sharp enough? Bah.

But more importantly, it was also that the doodles didn’t benefit me or developed into anything, that I wished it had. Although I knew I wanted to doodle, I didn’t knew what it was exactly that I really wanted to doodle about.

You see, my doodles weren’t targeted with any purpose, and everything added up, tallied lost and randomness.

As it turns out, there and then, I knew that the answer that’d satisfy me would be…

…read on…

… that humans grow by feeding on purpose!

And not just feeding on purpose, as in feeding with intent to eat and be full, but rather about growing and developing as a whole by having intentions to pursue and missions to complete.

Yes, humans grow by feeding on ‘Purpose’. There, I feel a little satisfied now.

Go Ahead, Take Away My ‘Fertilisers’.

I was just feeling how work have been sapping away my energy lately, forcing me to stay up in the office till late and having to wake real early the next day, so I can rush and cram in more working hours for the day.

I’m never a fan of waking up early, but lo and behold, I’ve been reaching the office before 9am daily, this week, and just to put my point into perspective here, to prove that I’m not gloating about being an early riser or eager-worker, for the past few months I’ve been reaching office between 10am and 11am.

Yep, guilty as charged.

So you could say that just by being in before 9am, was quite a feat for me, and all this after wearily chasing my customers (and vice-versa), after sitting hours at stretch glued to the computer screens and after not having much rest.

I was mentally growing weary with little sleep to go and irregular meals, and so what if it rained mercilessly on me last night, I rode shivering on my bike, in my drenched clothes and shoes, on the way home.

The thing is that I managed to wake up early, shrugging off that desire to catch a 5minute wink.

As it turns out, not long after washing and dressing up, I was off to work — early and purposefully.

I knew I had deadlines to meet and customers to not disappoint, and that somehow propelled me forward.

Waking Up With A Purpose.

I suppose I’ve grown slowly away from that lazy fella who hits the snooze button as often as a certain David Ngog misses the chance to score for Liverpool, and THAT is a hell damn lot.

For a long while I’ve been looking for a magic pill to help me wake up and reach work in time, like others do, and I’ve always envied how they do it, and for the past few days I’m glad that it was no pills nor new ringtone.

I’ll guiltily admit that for a long time I’ve not instilled a purpose to need to reach work early in the morning, but rather to haphazardly just wake up for the sake of waking up.

In the context of this blogpost, in the context of being an early riser and in the context of how to stay refreshed even when you’re sapped of energy, I suppose it helps to have a purpose.

I know it has helped me that little bit more in waking up, getting my engines running and enduring the day.

Go ahead, try waking up with a purpose.

A copyblogger theme, just what the doctor prescribed.


I just had to have a change. I had to. I needed it, no, I BADLY needed it.

Something about the previous ‘feel’ made me cringe a little each time it showed up on my screen, or maybe it’s the reminder of the ‘me’ back then when I first started to blog regularly.

It was colourful, pompous, fun, and something that really wasn’t me professionally, and I think it’s time that I started shifting towards a cleaner, simpler and clutter free ‘feel’.

Actually for the past few months, it’s what I’ve been trying to do with everything that concerns me.

Eliminating old clothes, unread books and torn socks are relatively easy when compared to eliminating the clutter that resides in your mind, your actions and your habits.

Before one starts to clear away the ‘unwanted’ from your cabinets and closets, it really has to start from that single place upstairs, that is your mind, or your thoughts.

It’s important to note that what the mind sees, the mind thinks, and what the mind thinks, it executes actions, and actions become habits.

A blog, to me, is more than just a website where journals are chronicled and shared, but rather a home or observatory for the mind. A place where thoughts reside and stay sane.

After a very long search, over the months, I’m very pleased with what I’ve found in this latest theme. It’s clean, it’s clear, it’s uncluttered and it’s the sort of place where I want my unconscious mind to be.

In case the theme looks strangely familiar, it’s Chris Pearson’s handywork for Brian Clark’s Copyblogger, a blog which I happened to stray around a few years back and have been lingering around since.

From a hosted blog with Blogger.com, this blog have growned along with me — although I’m not quite sure just how much I’ve grown since then — and I’d like to think that I’ve grown much, not just physically and emotionally, but habitually as well.

Unfortunately habits have a knack of not dying off easily, but as I mentioned earlier, everything starts with the mind, and what the mind sees or senses.

And I like this new clean theme. There’s no more annoying song playing in the background, even though I’m still in adoration with Avatar’s soundtracks, and most evidently is that there’s no more Shoutbox.

Sorry guys, as part of my elimination process, I’m cutting off my Shoutbox account, which was a paid account by the way (which helps to fend off spam and moderate posts) and it’s exclusion surely would save some $$$ and TIME along the way.

It’s really not that bad, because the Disqus Comments System is a great way to communicate and it really should be abused as often as possible — so go ahead, abuse it. ; )

In any case, I’d love to hear any disagreements on this new theme, if any.

It’s a fresh restart for me, and it does feel as if something’s brewing somewhere out there.

I like.