Ta-da!

Thought I should post a drawing, since it's a much easier way to update my blog than to post a full write-up :D

Pure Evil These Flashers Be..

I must be nuts to actually post at this kind of hour on a MON..i mean TUESDAY morning with the prospect of school in the next 5 hours brighter than the twinkle in Christina's eyes whenever she's up to something devious....but here I am anyway :D

Haven't updated for a while since Daph's birthday, particularly because I didn't have much time. Oh sorry, it should've read: particularly because I wasted too much time...

Nowadays I often find myself wasting time over petty and nonsensical matters when what I should be doing is to plow through my textbooks and notes..it's really odd that I still could not kick into that study-consistently-everyday gear, especially since trials is just a mere 3 weeks away. I just can't seem to revert back to the times when coming back from school meant only one thing: study.

One moment I'm trying to beat my own highscore in Elite Beat Agents (that funky rhythm game for the DS) and the next I'm glued to my PC trying to beat other peoples' highscores in some Flash game...and speaking of that, my discovery of Kongregate.com, a community for Flash gamers is very untimely indeed. And referring to the title of this post, that's exactly what these Flashers (people who make Flash games, not the other one, thank you) are: pure evil..

I mean, I wasted like the whole Monday evening just playing this zombie shooter called The Last Stand. Before that it was Triangle, and after that was Bowmasters Prelude. Darn..

But grumblings aside, Kongregate is a very nice site to poke around. The Flash games are generally quite addictive and there's a sort of multiplayer element to the whole thing. Give it a visit when you're bored. Perhaps then maybe I won't be the only one to have wasted entire afternoons doing nothing but playing them darned Flash games...pictures coming soon, don't worry (^-^)

Happy Birthday to the President

Ah, another year already. And our former TRU president is another year older. Doesn't seem any wiser though (runs for cover) :D

So yeah, there were the usual celebration and surprise party (and how the surprisee normally turns out to be not so surprised in the end) and all that but there were several interesting to note, namely:

1. I beat Daphne in the MUET test, ha :D Yup, worth a mention alright, even though she claimed that she 'didn't know what was going on', haha.

2. An unexpected guest turned up, and was pretty much the center of attention for a good part of the night. Who's that, you say? A scrawny little black rat that had been gnawing on the wooden frame of the store room's door for the past few days. Uncle Sim's rat cage worked like a charm and had the rat trapped after only what seemed like an hour (maybe the twisties used as bait were to blame). The dilemma though, was whether to kill the rat or not. If kill, then how? Don't kill, then how? The last thing Kat wanted was to have the rat crawl up to her room..."Will it go into my room? Huh? Will it? Is it going to come out of the store room? What if it goes into my room?"
Pretty entertaining to watch the tension build, if you ask me :D

Gosh, it's 12. I'm doomed. To the bed then...and oh, long live the love clinic, Daph (^.^)

Busy Week

Yet another week had passed by, and productivity was reduced due to the fact that Justin, Simon and Gabe (and later John) invaded my house armed with a PS2 and a copy of Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2, a deadly combination, if you ask me :D

True true, used up a good part of the Sunday afternoon but hey, it was really fun to bash (and get bashed) by them in the game..especially by Juju of course, since our rivalry dates back to the nineties when mario was more pixels than moustache.

Ah, busy busy. I don't like the very sound of it, but it's been all over my mind cause the pile of work that I had been diligently storing is now overflowing (and I don't think I swim very well in stress deluges). Not good.

At the end of the day though, I always remind myself that no matter how busy my schedule might seem (seem only, I hardly ever find myself really busy cause I'm just so so good at procrastinating) or how difficult the situations that I might find myself to be in, I've learned well enough to know this: every single one of us has enough troubles of our own.

I'll always keep it in mind because I learned a great deal about it in NS. Heck, I should write a short story about my experiences in this regard, haha. But honestly, I think it applies to everyone that there's always someone out there who's having it far worse than you. It doesn't take long for me to know the countless (tak boleh kira man) blessings that I've received from God and the people that he had put in my life. Sure enough, "When God is big, your problems are small". Only thing is, often times I see God through a stained glass: He's blur, He's fuzzy, and I can't tell if He's really there at all sometimes. But God's great, because he's patient. If you ask me, I would have summoned a rain of fire and sulphur or two on myself for being the absent-minded, lazy and sinful person that I am.

Oh no, wasted another good 10 minutes updating my blog..but thanks anyway for those who actually read my blog (especially this faithful reader called x-tina who believed I would actually update any time soon). To the battlestation!

Transformers

Like, what's there to say? It's definitely been a long while since I've heard an entire audience go "Fwah~" at the same time in a movie, but I thought Transformers really nailed some of the scenes. 'Really nailed' as in the scenes and stunts were choreographed to utter perfection, *muah* (imagine those French chefs doing the 'bon appetit' finger kiss). Awesome! No spoilers here of course, don't worry. Just a picture of the star of some the hottest scenes in the movie :D

Woohoo!

And The Crowd Goes Wild..

Judging from the posts on my Cbox, it seems like there's been a steady massive uprising to overturn my bloggingdom of www.fongkeeken.blogspot.com and send me to the Alcatraz for bloggers :D Out of my obligation as the supreme ruler over my bloggingdom, I shall post something to please my subjects. Don't worry, Officer Your-Blog-Is-Dead IiShan, I'll let you know when I decide to step down and join you in retirement :)

The past few days after the June 23rd evangelical event at Segi had been a dull one..in fact, it's probably the worst week of the month. School work is piling up, school co-curricular work is piling up, laziness is piling up..shucks. Not to mention that Su Leen and Jasmine are going off this week too....great. By the end of this year, a good number of College Group peeps would be all over the world.

-sigh-

I wonder if it's the side-effect of having been involved with the Invitation drama, but the half-dozen nights that I slept late due to practice culminated in my ponteng from school today due to flu-fever...*at-choo*

Still, I was really glad to had been involved with the production actually. Can't really say why, but I just enjoyed it. It was hard work, yea, but somehow the 'oomph' factor was just there. When I checked with Der Ming he said he really enjoyed it too, and we're both pretty sad that it's actually over.. If you've read Der Ming's blog, then you would know that he's been grounded indefinitely from church. Guess we shouldn't have ordered the ayam goreng at Kenchana that day, otherwise we would've been back much earlier....do pray for him and his parents ya :)

And tonight is the farewell for and Jas, hope my flu-fever doesn't get in the way..forecast for next two weeks : Busy with scattered intermitten rests. Thunderstorms? Quite likely..

Holidays. Who doesn't like em'? The whole past week had been a really refreshing break from school and was well-spent doing anything and everything except STUDY :D Quite a good holiday it has been for me. I did feel like I wasted a week of holiday, considering I have an entire legion of organic chemistry and biology's biodiversity topics thirsting for my skin and blood...but I felt it was worth it because I doubt I'd be free anymore after the holidays, what with the STPM panic and school co-curriculum work tying me up in the coming months. AND, I wasn't planning on updating initially, but since our resident dead-blog examiner Mr.Low had been persistently trying to pronounce my blog dead, I was left with no choice but to come up with something :D

What did I do again last week....hurm...I visited my uncle's apartment somewhere in PJ. It was a family event of sorts..had a steamboat at his place. Nice apartment actually, but I have no pictures to show though. Only thing worth mentioning is that for an apartment housing two persons, the fridge at my uncle's place was twice as huge as the one serving my five-person household..maybe he's planning ahead for expansion :)

More interestingly, I was supposed to watch the long-awaited Pirates 3 but Justin felt that the stars pointed towards a not-so-popular movie instead, Blades of Glory. I didn't know what to expect because I had no idea who the two actors were, and had not seen any of Will Ferrel's other supposedly horrendous titles. I didn't even know it was actually a comedy (I thought drama or what) so I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be so entertaining. Over-hype of shows like Spiderman and Shrek just ruins the whole cinema experience, I feel. But that aside, I was humored for a good hour and a half and the cleverly placed jokes were just spot-on. There were some jokes that are harder to catch, however, and half the time I ended up laughing alone (it's scary to laugh alone, really),but if you are like me or Su Leen, then you would find the movie brilliant and appreciate those nuggets of wisdom like 'the first person who walked on the moon' :D


Then there were the retro gaming sessions with Justin and my sis..Justin managed to dig up this really obscure board-game that fuses monopoly with shopping malls, and it's aptly called TOP SHOP. It's a great party game and has more than enough depth to hook casual and serious players alike for at least two hours or more (the game can last up to four hours, or even more if you are seriously kiasu). And oh, did I say it's a Playstation game? :D

Don't let the kiddie in-game graphics fool you, if we played this during a sleepover, chances are there won't be any sleep at all xD I played this on my pc, thanks to an emulator and Justin's PS controller converter that plugs into my USB port. I've also been playing :

And oh, one more (^_^)

And all this time I was wondering where my holidays went to...silly me :P

Presenting....

Ah yes, finally. Just when I was about to catch my winks, I thought of paying a visit to the flash game bank, jayisgames.com and behold my catch of the day, a fun maths gamecalled Plupon :D The premise is simple. So simple you'd think it would be easy. Well, unless your name is Jonathan Tan (super-kiasu) or Chui Yeng (super mental arithmetics), be prepared to get a beating by the third stage. The gameplay : numbers would fall from continuously from the top and all you have to do is to link 3 numbers together by simply clicking them to get a total sum of 0, 10 or 20. If the total sum is below 10, it would simply merge to become the total sum value. If you go over, it would deduct the extra points from your "life" bar(which every good Flash game must have). Let the numbers fall,
and your "life" bar gets deducted too.

Hope you guys would like it, and as always there's the all-important high-score thing to worry about. I dunno how well you guys would perform, but I'd post a starter score first. Doubt it would last more than a day after you guys start playing though :D

My Score : 131, 720 -finished- beat me

Sleep

For some funny reasons, everytime I feel like putting up a new post, it's always very near to my bedtime and this time around it's no exception.. but mind you that my blog's no where near dying yet. It's just..taking a hiatus from posting. A short one, hopefully. I've got like tonnes of things to talk about actually but since tomorrow is a Monday, I won't risk doing a late-night post. I should be updating sometime later this week. Flash games? Dunno, but I'll think of something...meanwhile, here's a PRIVATE family photo to keep you guys occupied for a while :D


Notice the brilliant placement of the surfboard - no tummies in sight, haha. And smack dab in the middle is the long-lost brother of Justin. Handsome eh? Not to mention buff too. (I am so gonna get punched for posting this, heh)

Almost One

Well well, guess what. It's been three weeks since the last update. Yay, another new record..

I'm not so sure myself why I didn't update my blog in the last 20+ days. Maybe I just got lazy, I suppose. Or maybe I didn't have anything truly groundbreaking to write about.. But me being me, I just kept telling myself that I would update as soon as I can and before I knew it, almost a month had passed without a single word conjured.

Lately I seem to be having a lot of reflective thoughts. It's kinda odd cause back then I used to live life from day to day without really doing so much as to ponder on personal issues, and 'future' to me was truly what Crayon Shin-chan depicted in one issue of the comic that I can't quite remember : my future extended only to thinking about what was for dinner.

I can't say that it's a good thing that I'm being so contemplative now, although it's not a bad thing either. Only sometimes, I wish I could be a bit more simple-minded.

As usual, the torrents of thoughts running around beneath my skull have to give way to my yearnings for my trip to slumberland. My eyes are starting to weigh more than Justin's Matthew. I think I should start keeping a diary again...there are obvious benefits but I might not be diligent enough to keep it updated enough. Guess I'll think about it another day..

Boomshine

Seeing how the last few weeks had been filled with countless hours of Tabuto-ing and monkey kick-offs, I thought we should at least take a quick break from hounding on each other's high scores to play something a lil' different.........a little lah, not too much :D

Boomshine is a very simple (again) Flash game that emphasizes fun over everything else. Well, it's fun at least until you try to break past the last few levels :D It's got a nice cool background music and the gameplay is self-explanatory. Click anywhere to make an explosion and the the moving coloured-dots that collide with the explosion would in turn explode. Try it, the last level was where Justin and I took forever to break..there's not much of a high score here to squabble over since the game takes too long to finish, but there IS an interesting fact that should get you worked up enough to complete the game. ONLY 4% of players ever complete the game, according to the website's details and Justin and I are among the proud FOUR PERCENT, heheh. It looks like the statistics now show that the SUCCESS RATE is 4%, and not that only 4% of all the players ever completed the game..but still, it's a fun game to play nonetheless and I hope me and Justin would be able to find another nice Flash game to post sometime soon :D . Take a break, relax, play Boomshine xD By the way, I finished it three times liao :)

SJGC's Success Rate so far = 100%

Where Love Leads

When Uncle Kah Wan first lent me a copy of the book "Taming The Tiger" by Tony Anthony, never would I have thought that he would one day make a visit to Malaysia. So I was obviously thrilled when presented with the chance to see him in person at a youth rally of sorts at SAGC. Things never turned out the way I planned it of course, otherwise I wouldn't be posting this here in the first place..

Earlier this week my friend approached me to attend her church's Easter play and persistently hammered into my head the whole 'my church is the coolest and most fun one, so you better come' sort of thing. I wasn't so willing to let go of the chance of the chance to catch Tony Anthony's message however, so I hesitated initially, though in the end I made the decision to go for it anyway because a non-Chirstian ex-classmate of mine didn't quite have any teman to go with. The church is called City Harvest and is located behind 3K (somewhere there) and is actually a renovated warehouse-style building.

I went there today at around 5 something and there were just SO MANY people who attended the play..the church sits a maximum of 1000, I think. But the turn-up was probably 30-40% more today. The queue poked through the main door of the building and though unable to squeeze inside into the hall, me and my friends managed to settle in a small room with a dozen others watching the play on a tv set. Not the best of scenarios, I know, but hey, it was better than totally missing it.

Being the charismatic church that they are, the order of things were of course Praise & Worship, A Short Bible Discussion, The Play, Altar Call and then a final song to sum things up. Overall, I thought the play was pretty good and managed to inject a lil' bit of humor into the events leading up to Easter (I mean, the first song item was in Hokkien, singing that popular Million Dollars song by dunno who and the actors were happily swinging their hips around).

Personally, I think their acting is just okay, not bad at all actually but not quite good enough to leave a strong impression. Perhaps I'm too used to plays acted in the style of our Footstool Players, which are more serious and detailed, while the play at City Harvest was more like a musical in terms of the story. But that's just my opinion, of course. The team that took part in City Harvest's play deserves credit for their efforts, nonetheless. (pats their back)

The one thing about the church that caught my interest is the friendliness of the church members there. They seem to give a lot of emphasis on running their cell groups (there are 70+ of them) and the cell group members looked very close-knit and warm to each other..not an easy feat considering the size of their congregation (~1000). As always, I found it very encouraging and cool to see the many members there who serve in the different ministries. I was certainly most curious at a girl who did a simultaneous translation of the pastor's speech inside the room where I was watching the play on the tv. She was pretty good, but that's beside the point. What I found most entertaining was her constant smile and the way she did what she did with not only hardwork and dedication, but total passion that drives a person to continuously do better..probably what we'd normally call 'the joy of serving the LORD' :D It's great to see people who eager servants of God and I only pray that our church would also be blessed with more of such people. Time to sleep then xD

My Blog's Not Dead Yet :D

Before my blog beats Justin's in the most-lazily-updated-blog competition, I thought I should post this interesting game called Tabuto that Liesl and Gabe have tried earlier. This one's very quick to play, and requires nothing more than good concentration and some degree of luck. Have fun, and as usual winners get to brag :D Oh yea, there IS a prize, or prizes depending on how things go, so go get those scores ya! When I posted this game, I had a good level of confidence that my 2.9 million score was divine enough to fend off even the most seasoned gamers (like JON!!). Of course, poor ol' me got shocked enough in the frame of one day to make me feel like a complete gaming buffoon..oh well, all for the sake of entertainment, heheh. Oh yea, Curry, you better gimme a new high-score, or I would have to remove you from the score table cause I don't think that I'd be able to find a font small enough to represent the difference in score..Well, the week has finally come to an end and the winner of this Tabuto Championship is regretta... *ahem* I mean obviously our resident flash gamer with epic proportions of kiasuness, Jonathan Tan!! (insert confetti and cheering and clapping, or jeering and protests whichever suits your fancy :D)

And the prize is? Well, it's not quite worth much, but hey, it's still something lah at least :D For his hardwork and determination (and the truckloads of kiasuness needed to pull off the 6 million score), he receives a free copy of PC Zone UK's Christmas Issue dual-layer DVD jam packed with this and that and everything else, courtesy of Sprint Sunway, hehe.

Tabuto-NinjaKiwi Games

Score Table

Jon Tan (^_^) 6,365,990
Hwok Chuen 3,298,310
Christina How 2,782,960
Simon Sim 2,524,840
Currynoodles 1,426,710
Low Iishan 752,000

Ps : Just to get you all started, my initial high-score was 300,000.
My second high-score was 700,000.
My current high-score is 2,990,000.
Rankings are sized according to the difference in score.

Part One

I think it's almost become a habit whereby I always read Jon and Christina's blog first before actually deciding to come up with a new post myself. Regardless, it was pretty odd to see the issue of dying being brought up, simply because it's been hanging in my head too for a while now...

Being in Form Six (upper) this year, the class that I'm in is different from the rest in that it's situated on ground floor away from the other classes which are on the highest floor. The reason? One of the students in our class was afflicted with a heart disease, rendering it difficult for her to climb the flights of stairs (I mean, going up four floors with the brick-laden school bag ain't very fun for me either). She's somewhat frail-looking and from the look of her eyes you could tell that she was weak.

Just so you'd know, I was actually shifted to my current class from my original Biology class because there were too many people. Like, almost 50 on the first day of school. So this year, I had to be separated from my classmates whom I had gotten to know over the last six months. Along with 10 others who were so unfortunate as to have registered a bit later than the rest of my classmates who retained.

Now some of my friends weren't too cool bout the matter, and rightly so because the ground floor classes were super-duper noisy, but you can't possibly fault her (my sick friend,and let's just call her A cause she's an A student) for being born with the sickness. And never would I have imagined that the so-called heart disease would rob her of her life..yeah, if you noticed I used past tense earlier.
Apparently, the parents knew she wasn't gonna live for much longer. The doctors already predicted that she would only live for a certain number of years..and from what I heard, she and her family managed to spend some good quality time together. The most ironic thing though was that she passed away DURING the school holidays last week. So you could imagine me being told on Monday "eh, you know that A died right?"...No way?!?!

When I thought about it, I wondered how it was like to be in her shoes. In Jon's case it's a feeling, a premonition, but her death sentence had been waiting all the while..to live with the thought of possibly not being able to see the next day, what motivation was there for her to have remained strong? If you had asked me, I don't think I'd even want to ever fall asleep..she was a top student, and the only reason I could think of for her to have worked so hard was to make her parents happy..and I wonder what would happen to her, since she's not a Christian. For people like her who had only known suffering, what would God's verdict be? At times like this, I can only fall back on the righteousness of God and trust him to judge accordingly...

Nobody likes dying I'd assume, save for those who hate their lives and everything else to death..but I think it's safe to say that for most of us it's not a very great thing because of the security that we are shelled in..our parents, our friends, our relatively peaceful country..die? Nah...I'd sooner hit a jackpot, I can hear you say. Right.

-And since I run the risk of over-lengthening the blog, I'd save the rest for Part Two. Later then :D-

Here Goes Nothing

Breathe in....sigh~ It's actually already pretty late at night, and tomorrow being a school day I know too well that I should be in my bed by now but having read Christina's blog, and then Jon Tan's blog, I couldn't help but to try to pen down a little of what ran through my mind....

First and foremost, to be honest I was so totally disturbed by the fact that Christina actually drove a REAL CAR on the REAL STREETS of Subang. I was so disturbed. More than that, I was appalled. Worried sick. It drove me nuts (pun not intended) to see the danger that she was putting herself into, and that was the least of my worries. What if she was so unlucky as to meet an accident? Never mind the fact that she would be prosecuted under juvenile law, I cannot imagine if anyone were to be injured, or worse still : die. Christina, should you be reading this, I'm really sorry to sound like some holier-than-thou police officer, but I voiced this out of concern. Out of fear. Thank God that you got back home safe that day. Should you now feel that I've overstepped my boundaries as a friend, I can only apologize but my stand and my statement stays the way it is. Please be careful the next time, Christina..

Shifting the focus from our Miss C, Jon's recent post Friends for Christ? did give me some food for thought. I too, didn't think that you would see yourself as almost the same, if not identical to that 'periphery guy' who doesn't belong to the group, Jon. To be without friends isn't what most people would've thought about you, I guess. But I just want to say that, you had been, and still are, a fantastic friend to me, Jon. In the absence of a brother whom I can closely relate to, I really appreciate the fellowship and friendship that you've afforded me. I don't really know why, but I had suddenly felt the need to say so..somehow it didn't feel right to just let the matter drop like that.

Perhaps it is the very same burden in my heart that I experienced while in National Service that pressed me into writing this post. My heart stirred, and it wasn't exactly the most comfortable feeling. Thinking I might be genuinely concerned with how you two have troubled hearts, I wrote exactly what I had in mind, which explains the different tone of this post. But then again, it could also very well be that I myself tengah syok sendiri only..and to put it in the bluntest manner, like to jaga tepi kain orang.

Haih, now even I am emo liao...is it infectious or something?

(the very next day) Can't believe I actually managed to write such an odd-sounding post myself. Maybe I should avoid posting while under the influence of sleepiness....sigh~

Let the games begin!

********ANNOUNCEMENT********

In light of the high demand for the third DVD of the four-disc compilation of Justice League and JL:Unlimited, I've decided to hold a lil' friendly tournament of Flash games similar to that done by our fellow noodle shop owner. The games are still being considered at the moment and this post would be updated regularly. To participate, simply play, get the highest score and notify me via the ChatBox or the comments, take a screenshot (if possible) and send it to me (either through MSN or e-mail) and the results would be tabulated every now and then over the course of the week. I'd need Justin's help though, since he's experienced in this, haha :D The game's open to everyone, so bring on the fun guys!

First game : Chuck

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gosh, I'm running late...sorry I'm an hour behind, just got back from the magazine shop (reading gossip magazines sure doesn't do a single bit of good to your eyes and brain, I've realised..). So here's the deal : the twist is called At Least I'm Better Than You At Something Else. Since it seemed that no one could knock Jon's 500K score off the high-score throne, I'll now give 100K points for the highest score achieved in each of the 4 rounds of the game. In case of a tie with the high scores, the tie-breaker would be a coin flip :D Of course, unfortunately for you Jon, you'd have to be excluded because I believe your 230+ score for the throw distance of Chuck is cukup ohsem already. You can post high scores but only for reference and bragging rights :D At any rate, we would all need to be the best in at least three of the four rounds to beat your score, so I think it's fair enough..To post your round-specific high scores, just add a number in front like this :

4 : 999999

Go get those high scores!

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And here are the results of your hard work and effort, people :D (tabulated with the bonus scores)

1st Place : Low Iishan!! with 605503
2nd Place : Jon Tan!! with 596524
3rd place : Mushi!! with 460000
4th Place : Gabriel!! with 458132
5th Place : Simon Sim!! with 351114

There you have it. Champion Low Iishan please step up to claim your...your..oh wait. Simon Sim has somehow gotten hold of the grand prize of Justice League Disc 3.......oh well. Thank you for participating anyway :D I've not updated my blog so often in one week before. Until the next time then!!

Oh, but to have it again..

IT’S Saturday! One more day and the Chinese New Year week would’ve come to an end. Sorry for the slightly lewat punya post, had been unable to get hold of the net for the last two days (no thanks to my bro), in fact I’m typing this in WORD now while waiting for my brother to surrender the internet cable back to me..

Chinese New Years come and go, but this year it had been quite meaningful to me. I reminisced a lot about my childhood and early teenage years spent in the quaint little town of Kuantan, Pahang. The town (or city, whichever one applies :D) didn’t quite change much; the atmosphere was still the same, the skies were as blue as I could remember them to be, the people still as laid back, and not to mention the refreshing break from all those silly KL traffic jams. (^_^)

On the first day that I arrived back in Kuantan, one of the first things I did was to soak in the environment, breathe in the seaside air and like any self-respecting Kuantan resident, haahh~ switched into ‘relax & enjoy’ mode. Actually, it’s a bit odd that this year should be any different than the ones before because last time going back to Kuantan was a dull affair, if anything. Sure sure, there are friends to meet and yam cha and all that but I didn’t take Kuantan to be anything more than just a seaside town. Or city. But this year, it proved to be a wonderful trip back home.

And how I missed my favourite breakfast joint, an old but popular corner-shop restaurant called NEW HUP LEK. They serve absolutely the BEST Teh-C-Ping, with the smooth texture and light flavor and the ohsem taste of evaporated milk that bursts into a fantabulous aroma when fused with tea boiled at just the right temperature…WAHHH~ All that and only for RM 1.50, what a steal! I ordered it twice and would have gotten myself a third glass if not for the nasi lemak with kari ayam :D

Whilst I was at Kuantan, I had some brief reunions with some of my classmates of yore, mostly my Form 123 friends. I did feel kinda left out at first, cause many of them seemed to have changed, to have moved on. On the other hand, I don’t feel I’ve changed much. But at a small reunion dinner of sorts on Tuesday I discovered that while some of them had indeed ‘grown up’, so to speak, what with their funkier appearances and girlfriends in tow and all; many of my friends were still who I knew them to be. As I sat at one place observing, I can’t help but notice that.... some things never change. Some things just never change…

Harvest – wise, this year wasn’t too bad for me. Total ang-pau collections amounted to:

RM 240.00++

Not that much, I know. Especially for those of you with wealthier aunties and uncles who can easily match the above-mentioned amount with TWO ang-paus…. but still, it’s a good sum for me nonetheless. Enough for a round of splurging at Starbucks, heheh.

Sigh~, school’s coming again in a day or two. Time to hit the books..(yeah right :D)

And What Time Is It Now?

So the sorry for not having posted in so many days. It's a record alright, two weeks straight without an update..gomenasai~ (^_^) This being the post to break the one-month-long blogging drought on this site, I'll start with an uber-cool word. Lemme just look it up now ....... Got it! :D

*Ahem* For those of you who had prognosticated the very demise of my blog, I hereby stand firm declaring the resurrection (pardon the word, I know it's cheesy) of fongkeeken.blogspot.com! Haha, there then, I'm back. For now lah :D


The reason that I had been MWKW (missing who-knows-where) for so long is mainly attributed to to things : 1) My kemalasan and 2) my aging, ailing, failing computer...


Yea, the last few weeks of my absence has been marred by none other my computer giving a hundred and one stoopid problems..to sum up how many times I had reinstalled my Windows, I can now proudly say that I've memorised the windows CD-Key. Yup, that many times....in fact, I'm so unhappy with my pc that I'll list down some of the grievances that I have against the pc and the man who sold it to me. But fret not those of you who are not computer-jargon fluent, I'll put the layman's equivalents along which would be in blue, so read on!

-What The PC Salesguy Did To Me-


1.He gave me Pentium 4 3Ghz chip with HT, but the motherboard wasn't compatible, so the chip runs at 1.8Ghz now...WHAT?!
1.He sold me a nice Toyota engine that runs over 160kph but it was fitted inside a Kancil...


2.He gave me only 40Gb of hard disk space. Pittance considering what he was paid..
2.He sold me a car with a boot space no bigger than a fishbowl.

3.It did NOT come with a monitor.
3.My car didn't have a windscreen..

4.It was 256 Mb of RAM they gave me and they installed XP..
4.I was supposed to drive at a minimum of 80kph with only three wheels?

5.The hard disks are now already faulty, giving me nightmares and an endless rerun of system failures culminating in reformats that also end up getting corrupted later on.
5.The wheels came off several times already even when I drove at only 20kph, causing unnecessary mental and physical anguish..

6.They gave me the lousiest keyboard and mouse which broke in no time..
6.Surely you could understand that? :D

7.They didn't bother to give speakers too. Not even cheapo earphones!
7. A car with no speakers? Hang the salesman!! xD

8.Only a CD-RW drive, no DVD drive, sob..
8. Cassette player only ka? I want CD-player at least!

9.Oh, it used to run on integrated graphics, only now I'm using Justin's old GeForce 2 MX.
9.My radiator was a built-in kind, really lauya..the air-cond blew hot air, so I cannot tahan until had to take Justin's old car's radiator and use.

.................................

Trust me, I have plenty more to yap about but I'll take my leave for now, go dinner first :D Another time then. Hopefully my PC would be working the next time I'd need to update...

Yet another week?

Gosh, the last few days had been zipping by faster than Justin rushing to fetch Xin Xin home on a late Friday...it's already Sunday evening, and Monday's dawning on me yet again. I must say that it has not been a very productive week, what with the gaming marathons that we've had (cafe again next week? you bet I'll give you the cold shoulder :D). Yes Simon, I see your point. Homework's catching up with me (actually I'm already left behind by miles...to finish all the work on my hands right now would take at least 3 days of holiday). If anything, I should be quaking in my boots and start doing all-night study sessions up until I finish STPM. I should. But obviously I'm not.

To a certain extent I have to admit that I'm lazy. I'm unmotivated, easily bored, slow to think and have a much higher affinity for computers than my textbooks. But an interesting observation I made was last Friday when my english teacher asked to write on the topic "Education: What it means to me." To almost all my friends, it was very difficult topic. "Ei brother, what to write lah? What stupid title.." I don't know if they really meant it but it seemed to me as though education is nothing to them. Nothing but textbooks and exams. I was kinda annoyed, to say the least. Is this really what the Malaysian education system has churned out? Students who have no regard whatsoever of what they had been in pursuit of day and night every single day right up until now?

............................................................................................

Do pardon the somewhat harsh opinions though, I don't wish to offend anyone actually. Let me put some smileys to brighten up the mood again:

:D :D :D :D :D

There. Well, moving back to the point, I just wish that one day we'd be given the chance to pursue knowledge for what it is, to study and think so that we may genuinely learn. To be educated in the purest manner, whereby there is a real appreciation of all the hard work and effort put in by the great scientists and thinkers of our forefathers' times. But enough talk, I've got some homework to battle. If only I could strap the maths textbook onto a rocket and launch it into oblivion.....bah. But before I go, here's an amusing pic of our fellow noodle shop owner :D

Hmm..might as well put this up also then xD Beware the evils of webcams!

I Yan Nees of life

At times, I wish that I have the ability to read people's minds. No no, I'm not under the influence of Justice League drunkenness, mind you. But rather, I just find it dumbfounding that human thoughts are so unpredictable. So hard to perceive and probe. What goes on in our minds is what goes on in our minds I suppose, our mental sanctuary where we process the thoughts that can get through to others and the things that can't possibly be known by others. If you think you know a person, think again.

I've had more than my fair share of surprises, one of which involved this sweet demure girl that used to be my classmate three or four years ago. She was polite and soft-spoken, and after our PMR we met again while taking our certificates from the school. The staff somehow managed to switch our certificates, so I ended up with her cert and she with mine. She was to leave for some place in an hour or so, so she called me up. I was at the coffeeshop and I don't clearly recall what I had said to her or likewise but she ended up scolding me like I just ran over her father and mother in a mercedes. It was really scary how she expressed her disagreement with the whole certificates issue, and we parted ways as enemies..sort of. Well, I had wanted to make-up and forget about the matter but at that time it didn't seem like an option at all to her.

Which brings me to this particular episode of Justice League where Jon Jonzz (hope I spelled it right) accidentally 'opened' his psychic channels too strongly, enabling him to listen in on all the thoughts of people around him but without the means to stop it. At the city, he was overwhelmed by all the blatant lies, angry remarks and negative thoughts that flooded his mind from those living in the city. He flew away to a forest, hemmed in by the how selfish, arrogant and self-righteous the very people that he risks his life to protect are. He was disappointed, to say the least.

But a search party that happened to be nearby looking for someone's lost daughter in the forests during that night gave Jon a new insight. He heard self-sacrificing, kind and truly sincere thoughts from some of those in the search party. "It's freezing cold out here, and I don't even know the girl! But I know how it feels like if I were to lose my kids.."."I've got to find her..no matter what. Come on, where are you (girl's name).......".

I was really surprised that what I previously thought was just a Saturday morning cartoon would have such a deep, resounding theme of the vagaries of the human heart. I cannot imagine myself having mind reading powers, because I fear I end up knowing more than I need to.. I guess everyone needs to have a certain degree of privacy, without which we would be stripped of the freedom of sharing only what we feel like sharing with others. I wonder how God does it, with all the six billion souls that he can readily tap into anytime, anyday to listen in on.....

Fun For Five

Just a day shy of the new school term's beginning, I found myself in the company of several brothers-in-arms. Yes, there we were, Jon Justin Simon Rudy and me myself in the cybercafe at SS15 called Autosurf blasting the pixels off each other like some wild cavemen. It's been awhile since we actually came together to have some clean, mindless fun. In fact, I believe this is the first time we had our cafe hangout session, on the first day of the year somemore. It was five dollars for 3 hours, hence the aptly-named title :D Alvin was also there to join in the fun and boy, was it a fragfest or what..

Being the lousy-shot that I am, Counter-Strike proved to be a low-fun/high-tension game as we battled strangers who sat opposite us. But when everyone's had enough of CS, we still had like some 30 minutes of playing time left. So Justin made a wise (yup,very wise) suggestion that we play Half-Life and it couldn't have been any better. The fun level shot through the roof :D Everyone was literally going bananas over the missiles and crossbow fires all over the place, dodging a rocket from the front only to be sniped from the roof by Justin XD Either that or Jon would chase people like those pesky credit card salesmen wielding his trusty crowbar, totally bonkers!

It was the longest half an hour that we've played, and by the time the our time was up, we wouldn't have minded playing on if not for the fact that it was already very late..oh well, can't wait for the next shoot-out session!! On the side note, I've been scanning almost every single thing that I could get my grubby hands on, and here's a very nice piece of farewell note that I got from three kind souls :D

Thanks a lot for the paper tissue note, Kat Dora and Christina! You have no idea how many times I've read it while at the camp, haha. But here's one just for memory's sake:

A Matter Of As

Having come to a full circle of the school holidays, the PMR results are finally out. Kudos
to all those who did well, to all those who got the grades they wanted and to those
who can finally ask for their dream toy/gadget/car/phone/whatever. Kudos also for the teachers whose hard work and efforts have finally paid off for their students. But amidst all the cheers and celebrations; it's important, I think, that we do not place too much emphasis on the results.

As is always the case, we tend to look at the grades first, and from that alone pass remarks about the person. "Oh, straight As? You study hard,eh?"."Wow, your daughter's really smart!"."Your son's really great. My son's only got half of your son's grades, I just don't know what to do with him..(shakes head,looks disdainfully at the son.)"."So your daughter got good grades ah? Your daughter next time sure earn big bucks wan! Not like that Madam Cheng's daughter, only 2 As and one fail even! Hmph, she can get ready to sweep the streets..".When parents get together, it's undeniable that their children's grades would come into the discussion in one way or another.


I used to read this comic called Great Teacher Onizuka or GTO in short that centred on the life of a teacher. A teacher who, unlike many others, went against the socially-accepted rules and systems, and thought so much more of education than just books and papers. On the surface, the comic contains lots and lots (lots) of sexual overtones and violent themes characteristic of Japanese culture normally depicted in mangas. Most would pass it off as a guilty pleasure due to the not-so-decent subplots used by the artist. But what I really appreciate in the comic is how the artist subtly weaves in a much deeper and stronger social message of the role of teachers in society.


In the beginning, Onizuka is introduced as a trouble-maker in his student days. Violent and
perverted, he was the best example of an anti-hero. In his twenties, he fell for a girl but the
girl dumped him for an old guy. A teacher. So he sets his sights on being a teacher in the hopes that he would be able to find his true love but ends up dscovering instead what it means to be a teacher and changing the lives of his students along the way.


Among the characters explored in the comic:

-a supergenius girl who is grappling with growing up and comes from a broken family

-a president's daughter deprived of love who fell for an engaged teacher and was heartbroken

-a student whose mum is just 14 years older than him

-a student who comes from a gangster family and is feared by everyone at school, making him an introvert

-a young woman who is Onizuka's colleague and also love interest who often finds it difficult to do what she thinks
is right as a teacher

-a director of the school's PIBG who saw the shining qualities of a teacher in Onizuka and later
hired him.

-an ambitious headmistress with a skewed perspective of education because of a traumatic childhood experience

-a former rape victim who took up martial arts and joined the headmistress' secret 'Angels' team to deliver their own
brand of justice in the school.

-a petite boy who does not have the courage and confidence to grow up into manhood because of his small build

-a senior teacher who is the epitome of the average high school teacher; stressed out, earns a meagre salary,
has a so-so family and invests in all the wrong things (the dream car that he bought ended up getting smashed
enough times to get his insurance agents to go berserk)

-and so many other characters that focus on the darker sides of the Japanese society



I couldn't agree more with the comic's underlying theme that education alone guarantees nothing, in a sense that the students needed someone who could teach them the lessons of life, a teacher who can guide them and help them in their moments of need. A teacher who is not impersonal and only teaches from the textbooks, but constantly provides tutoring, friendship and support. One who is an example himself/herself for the students to look up to, that when they graduate from school they may be useful to the society. The students were lost, they all followed after their own heart and desires and made a lot of foolish decisions but Onizuka was there to help them all the way to the end. Even risking his life in the last book of the series to save the headmistress who got herself trapped in a burning building. And with style: he had just survived a major brain tumour operation when the nurses discovered that he had escaped from the hospital only to be found riding a Harley-Davidson into the burning school building and out of it unscathed. In his hospital robe.


As if to imply the superhuman qualities of Onizuka, I cannot help but feel that the whole story actually very closely mirrored the life of Jesus! Except that Jesus was the opposite of Onizuka of course :D But the story is there. The theme is there. The message is there. The lost people of Israel were the lost youths of Japan, one man had the courage to stand up against the world, and in doing so he rescued the lives of many. Just like the artist hinted how Onizuka was going to make big changes starting from just one small school where he taught, God started from Israel and offered salvation to the rest of the world. Coincidence? Maybe. But this proves that God's word trancends boundaries of nationalities and cultures.


In case you've lost me from where I started, I just wanna point this out: the A's don't matter as much as having a Godly life. You don't impact the world with the 3 dozen or so As that you mighthave, you impact the world with your life. And just how you would impact the world, would depend on whether God is present in your life. Well, at least I feel that way :D

Christmas Loots Ahoy!

This Christmas, I'm truly blessed to have received so many gifts. However, putting aside the sizes and prices of the presents, I just wish that I had prepared more Christmas presents for others who would otherwise not have received anything this year. To make a simple comparison, I gave 4 distinct Christmas presents, namely three cards written with some of my thoughts given to Justin, Hannah and Christina (Hannah got a bonus Sakura Beras Wangi Thailand,but it went to the flood victims instead. She claims they need it more than her. Of course,I'd like to differ on that but it's HER rice,so no point arguing about it now,haha) and a box of Counter-strike figurines with a pungent latex smell distributed to all the CS die-hards. What I received, on the other hand are belowI was amazed at amount of effort put even on the card alone :D

This was what I got from Simon and Shanice. You two rock!

This was from Desmond. Choki-choki and a mystery box...

This was from my bro! A nice blue wallet (girlie,yes. but heck)

The pics above were grainy because they were taken with this webcam from my friends Raymond and Suresh :D The camera's so-so, but I really appreciate their effort and sincerity. Thoughtful? You bet! Thanks a million guys!

This was...the box that housed a nice little tart from Crissy. Frankly, I found the box very artfully designed so I decided to keep it a little while longer :D

A big box of chocolate exquisitely packed in retro themes...now I know how Cadbury bars looked like 30 years ago..sweet.

Yes, I know it's not exactly decent..but it's a nice drawing by Justin. (He got someone to draw it, in case you're wondering :D) Very meaningful gift, cause it highlights just how lousy my drawings are XD Haha, just kidding. But really, I just wish I had a quarter of this pic's artist's skills, that'd be already more than enough :)


Like it says on the picture, it's a game. A PSP game. A UMD. Which I received for Christmas. *Gasp*...definitely the most expensive gift among all the other gifts, this was given to me by Lim See Huang. Great graphics, the cut-scenes put a PS2 to shame easily... But hard to play,and I don't own a PSP in the first place. Depending on my brother's generosity, this game may very well just collect dust on my table :(

:

As it stands, this is definitely the most unique and priceless gift that I've received thus far.. Pink AND printed with my name. Well, figuratively at least :D It works only in English though, in BM 'kunci tin' doesn't exactly bring about any meaning...but thank you so the very much, me cousin Justin and John and Gabe and whoever worked on this shirt! My first pink shirt turned out to be the best t-shirt that I have so far!

Christmas gifts aside, it was truly a unique experience to be able to see everyone's contribution for our church's 'gift back to God' event, what with so many songwriters and singers proving their mettle at making songs of praise. And I do mean it wholeheartedly, it was ohsem (just so you'd know, I came up with this word,not Christina :D). Speaking of Christina, I thought she really good, good in a sense not because she sang well, or because her songs were very nicely written, (although they were), but rather it was her closeness to God, and that child-like longing to be in God's presence that really gave my mind, heart and soul a stunning revelation of how we are at our very best when we approach God's presence. I now understand what it means to endeavor as Christian brothers and sisters to bring out the godliness and holiness in one another..

There and back again

It sure has been a long while since I last updated. More than 2 weeks, to count roughly. Before anyone would like to advertise my laziness as a blogger :D, let me just clarify. It all happened like this...


It was the 12th of Dec. Camp had just been over, and I was really reluctant to have to go back to work. Camp was just 'ohsem', to borrow from Christina..so 'ohsem' that I really came back having learned something. Not that I came back from the previous camps not having learned a single thing, but rather I was able to 'integrate' what I learned this time around. Everyone mentioned on the last day that the moment we get back home, we would be turning on our MSNs, e-mails and what-nots. It couldn't have been more true for me: I was waiting to do just that.

So there I was, sitting in front of my computer. Pushed the button. Beep. Yeah, MSN here I come. Hey? What the? Boot error? What? WHAT?!?!

To explain the full extent of my predicament, it was akin to a businessman who returns home from a short break to find that a tsunami has wiped out his business, and all his properties. I was a digital pauper for the next two weeks, my hard drives had to be scrubbed and all my files were flushed down the drain. My pictures! My songs! My videos! Mind you I lost an entire 12 GB of Justice League...it was just awful. But if you're like Hannah, then you'd probably think that it's no biggie. Just a few files right? Can always get them again wan :D It's okay, the whole point of this story is actually not so much with what I lost, but rather what I gained...................

Having lost my computer to the all-too-common machanical failure, and my TMnet to human error and inefficiency, I suddenly had a whole lot of free time to myself. I work the morning shift and on average I get back home by 5 or 6 in the evening, during which my mom and sis would be handling the night shift. Which means I'm left alone at home for the whole second half of the day. With the main distraction out of the way, I did what I thought I could do: my quiet times.

I really appreciate how God had it all planned out for me, the peace and quiet, and the absence of a major stumbling block when it came to doing quiet times (the computer), and the pretty stressful days that I had been through in the last few days gave me the impetus to seek God all the more earnestly. I did. I really did. And blessed they were my quiet times, so fulfilling, so satiating that I could not ask for more. When I finally got my PC and my Internet back, which is today, I started to go crazy trying to maintain my computer. Again. Trying hard to find a program to do something, then followed by searching for updates and then CD keys and all the never-ending computer chores that had been sucking my energy dry for so long kept me occupied for a while.

It was so different. Between doing quiet time and using the PC, my mind encourages me to play the computer but deep inside I wanted to spend just a little bit more time doing my quiet time, hoping that God would speak to me in one way or another. I compared my quiet time 'after-effects' in the last two three days with that of using the computer for an hour and what a difference it was! I clearly see now that God never stopped doing what He does best: bringing us closer to him each and every day, so long as we obey Him. So blessed I had been in the last few days of my walk with God, that I only wish to pass it on to someone else. But I shall first go to sleep, I have to get to work in 7 hours from now :D Have a great Christmas then!

More Than Chair Red Bear Red

What a week it has been for me! I certainly did not expect working at Sunway Pyramid to be so tiring. Why, it's not even a real job, so to speak because I hardly need to do anything other than to sit there and scan barcodes but it sure is easier said than done..not to mention that I suffered from a very terror punya case of food-poisoning (I think) on Tuesday, which was only the second day I started working. The diarrhea + vomit combo knocked me senseless for the entire Wednesday, and even till today I've yet to fully recover. What's worse, my sis, mom and dad also seem to be affected by the same thing, albeit not as serious as in my case. I wouldn't mind resting a few more days at home if not for the fact that I need to help out my parents at the store AND the camp is just one day away! Gah, group leader somemore...I guess Christina'll have to shoulder more of the work :D (It's good training,yeah)

I don't know how the camp this year would turn out but I suppose it's never been just about fun and games, enjoyment and laughter..perhaps God already has His amazing blueprint awaiting us at the campsite. Let's just wait, and see..what God wants to do..what God wants us to do.....

One Word: Yay!

After having to contend with an archaic hand-me-down printer for so long, the Canon BJC-265SP; (see picture below), I finally managed to get my grubby hands on a new scanner-printer-copier! :D I just wished I had bought it earlier cause all this while I had to make do with a printer that can't tell a colour ink cartridge from a black&white one, not to mention makes a whole lot of noise when I actually succeed in coaxing it into printing something. That's why I could not resist paying a visit to the still-running PC Fair at KLCC with Justin on yesterday.

The first day saw a relatively mild turnout of crowds because many people prefer to go on the last day to get the killer bargains but nevertheless by evening the fair was starting to get packed. We went in with just 50 bucks each, planning to get the money from the ATM after deciding on what to buy. And what a good decision it was, for I checked out several booths for my printer-scanner-copier. The first offered RM 288. I thought it was a steal because the unit looked absolutely gorgeous. But I didn't have the money with me so we walked on,telling the aunty at the booth that "I'll be back!". Several dozen booths later, we came to the booth that offered an even better RM 269. With free gifts even :D So yeah, the poor aunty never did see my face again after that xD

The not-so-happy part of the trip was the journey back home. I had not taken the printer-scanner-copier into account, as I found myself struggling to hug the huge printer box all the way home. We took the train to KLCC, and went back the same way. It was a challenge alright, what with the insane after-work traffic at the commuting stations. Luckily Justin was kind enough to help me carry it (take turns) so I didn't need to break my wallet and my muscles..

Interestingly, we saw this Indian pakcik who was angry at the fact that the KTM train was delayed for 10 minutes. Or so I think that's what he was angry about. Now 'angry' is actually quite an understatement, cause he scolded the government, scolded the ministry, the train operators, even the poor innocent guard who were controlling the crowd. To top it off, he spat on the track! Ah-pe-tui he went, all the while rattling off words too vulgar for this blog :D Talk about being expressive...if the train was delayed again he might've run amok, for all we know,haha.

Well, we went back home with sore hands and feet, but I was happy I made the trip there. My parents were quite shocked I actually bought something so expensive though when they saw it..oh well, my money ma :D Here are some pics:

[I know it's not very clear but I can't find a better pic]
My old, old Canon printer and...


Tadaa! My new printer-scanner-copier :D
And here's a drawing that I've scanned and edited using Google's Picasa:

At any rate, it sure beats taking pictures of my drawings :D Better go get some sleep then!