Fast Post

My monitor arrived today. It's very pretty. And very big. Display area I mean, not physical size.

Also, got big news at work. The company that I work for which was quite large in itself, got taken over by an even bigger one.

This really hot girl I used to fancy is getting married this weekend.

Going out for movies. More updates soon.

Bought!

I've decided to order the incredibly good value LCD monitor that I mentioned yesterday. It's going to be cool. 19", widescreen, DVI, 3 year onsite warranty, free delivery. It was just too good to pass up.

It's about time that I try out an LCD monitor at home anyway. I'm already using one at the office albeit a dinky 17" analogue one.

I can afford it too. It seems that I have to go back to the office on Friday for a briefing and some meetings. That's 9 hours of overtime. Plus, I have another 12 hours of overtime that I haven't claimed. Enough to cover a lot of the cost without dipping too much into my base wage. Still in the middle of saving up for some plans next year. And also to pay for my visits to the hospital.

I score 1 more day's worth off overtime and my monitor will be paid in full.

Pretty good bit of financial balancing there I think. Oh yeah, that also means that my car will be going semi-synthetic next month instead of full.

All in all, this is quite exciting.

In other news, I've finished the Oblivion main story. Quite nice, although not quite up to Baldur's Gate 2 standard. Now I'm just doing random stuff with the character that finished the story. I'll be doing a lot more messing around once that monitor arrives! It's time to look for old games and see how they look like on widescreen.

It's going to be a fun week...

Things That Make You Go Hmm...

I was talking to a colleague just now and he mentioned something about a 19" widescreen digital LCD monitor going for RM599/-

I thought he was joking. A regular 17" one would set you back 600+ at the moment.

Well, he wasn't kidding.

There is actually a 19" digital LCD monitor going for RM599/-. That is dirt cheap. Extremely very cheap. Apparently, the price includes delivery too.

I'm considering this very, very seriously.

Should I or shouldn't I?

Wings

Just now I bought some movies. Am watching The Last Legion right now. Aishwarya Rai is soo hot she borders upon the fantastically unreal. Those eyes...

Obviously, most men (and women) with eyes will know that. She plays a Byzantine warrior in the movie. She has some awesome fight scenes.

I'm having a quietish week. It's been raining a lot especially during the day. A welcome relief from the heat.

I had an itch this week. An itch for a change in routine. So I went out and changed it without much thought. I remember a time when change brought the worse kinds of anxiety.

Ever since I began treatment I've been feeling bolder and stronger with each passing day. Even at work. I've recently been given a vital task. Normally this kind of thing will fill me with dread and the fear of failure.

But this week, I see an opportunity to shine. I feel comfortable, somehow knowing that the task is right up my alley whatever happens. I know I can deal with it.

I do wonder when I'm alone sometimes, where do I begin and where do the meds end. Is this who I am really am? If so, who was I all those years?

I don't know right now and frankly, I don't care at the moment. All I know is that I feel freer than I've ever felt. In time, the treatment will end and I will be let go, back into the blue.

In that time, I will have my answers.

I pray that the answer will be the one I hope to hear and the person that emerges is really me, free at last from my ghosts.

Have a nice weekend y'all.

Reunion

I went to hang out with some friends at an old watering hole on Friday night after our monthly staff meeting and dinner.

It was nice to be back there. The circumstances are very different from before. The place hasn't changed much though. But it looked new to me.

That night I bumped into someone I haven't met in two years. She didn't look a day older than the last time I saw her. It was... strange. I'm also quite surprised that she kept my number. She says she did try to text me before but got no reply. That makes some sense. I do remember those messages from an unidentified number. Usually I don't reply without proper ID.

She brought along a friend. I met them the same time last time. This one looked completely different. I only remembered her later.

They said they are looking forward to hanging out soon. I'm looking forward to that too.

We'll see how that pans out. Whatever happens, it should be interesting.

It's so strange to revisit an old part of an old life with new eyes.

Oh!

... The stupid power window in my car has finally failed. It happened at a very bad time too.

I was driving early yesterday morning and it started to rain. Usually, in the morning I drive with my driver side window down since it's still too cold for air conditioning.

So when it started to rain, I pushed the window button up. There was a loud "thunk" in my door and the window glass pane fell back into the door. Halfway in actually. So there I was with the rain and lack of window while I was driving in rush hour traffic. I tried to jiggle to window back straight but I got more thunking noises and the window got stuck even more.

In the end I had to find a place to pull over and yank the glass back in place with my bare hands. Good thing it didn't break.

I was late for work too. And a little bit wet on a cold morning.

How inconvenient. Now I have to find a place and time to fix the window. I hope the motor isn't broken.

So there, after 4 years my Proton power window finally failed. All things considered, that's not too bad. Proton power windows don't normally last this long. I just wished it didn't fail while it was raining.

In other news, yesterday I talked to our medical assistant again about claims for my visits to The Doc. Still no go. Looks like I'll be paying for that myself. Disappointing news but not entirely unexpected.

That's ok. That just means I can't impulse buy anything for the next few months.

I'm also really, really getting into Oblivion. I started a test game recently where I created a cat (Khajit) thief. It's fun to skulk around stalking people and head shooting them with bows and arrows and back stabbing.

Oh yes, Khajits can also naturally see in the dark like a cat which is a hugely unfair advantage.

I intend to play this thief as a proper thief i.e I will break into shops and houses and steal things. Heehee.

Should be fun. Most of the time I play good characters when I play RPGs.

So far it's been a really decent week.

Lastly, on Monday evening this really pretty girl talked to me out of the blue and offered to share her umbrella. Stupidly enough, while we were talking about the bad weather and walking towards the carpark in the rain, I forgot to ask her name...

*Sigh*

The Long Haul

Firstly before anything else lest I forget, I would like to share some really nice links. Namely Neatorama. And Office Spam. I especially like Neatorama, a virtual cornucopia of strange and interesting things around the net and beyond.

And now for today's entry.

I've been feeling kind of under the weather. Higher than average temperature, stuffy head, lethargy. Been kinda feverish. As a result, I spent a grand total of 3 hours outside the hours over the last three days.

I feel much better today though, albeit still a little bit tired. At least the stuffy head is gone.

A good share of those 3 hours out of the house was spent in a waiting room at a hospital. It was Saturday morning and it was time for a follow up visit with The Doc.

Things are going great as far as treatment goes. It's going to continue for another 2 months before my next appointment.

I had a thought while I was watching Saturday morning cartoons in the waiting room. I remember how scary it was the first time I went there at the end of April. How daunting it was for me, what a "big deal" it was. Yes, the "big deal" is in inverted comas.

What a difference time has made. It doesn't feel like such a big deal anymore. It's simply a thing that needed doing. That's all.

I guess all the hooha and the drama and the doubts and the guilt and the feeling of weakness was the depression talking. It's certainly not saying much these days.

The story will continue until whenever The Doc tells me to stop which he says could be 3-4 months from now. During that time, we will know if the changes are permanent. I hope to God that it is.

Anyway, I have a sad story to tell.

I recently read something rather sad among some local bloggers. A blogger recently committed suicide. This blogger was suffering from a problem and apparently recently stopped treatment. Despite not showing it outwardly, this blogger was slowly losing out to the demon inside.

The blogger's family shut down the blog after the incident. But these days the internet has a memory...

I was curious about the circumstance so I did a search and turned up a cached entry from that blog. It was the last entry. It was heart wrenching to read. It also made my blood run cold.

Here was a real for deal suicide note, with farewells and instructions to family and friends. I was shocked into silence by it.

Sometimes people say that people kill themselves because "they're crying out for help". From what I was reading, this person didn't want no help. This person wanted to die.

Really makes the blood turn to ice reading that kind of thing.

I've had suicide fantasies before. I'm sure we've all had them at one time or another. But the reality of it is nothing like that.

Anyway, I don't know this person but I feel for her family and friends. No one can imagine how hard it is for them.

Many people don't get what it's like to be clinically depressed. Perhaps it is just as well for them for as we can see, sometimes people don't survive.

It's a powerful demon. It kills. But not directly and perhaps that is the most diabolical thing.

It's also a sobering reminder for those of us who do have the same demon. It's a reminder that it needs serious attention and needs to be dealt with, with help if necessary.

For the memory of those who didn't make it, I promise I will continue my own battle and try to win it.

And so, if you've EVER thought about killing yourself within the recent past and think the life isn't worth it, please go see a doctor. Screw the stigma, screw people who don't understand and screw everything else. This is your life. You owe it to yourself.

Have a nice week.

Seven Day Late Post

It's been a week since I posted. That's a long time.

Had a nice quite holiday break. Didn't go anywhere. My parents enjoyed themselves though. They went Gawai visiting while I did the house sitting. Didn't mind that at all. The extra hours of sleep were welcomed.

I watched At World's End last week. It was great. A little bit too long, but good nevertheless. Answered a lot of questions and ended up causing a lot of questions in the end. Will there be a 4th movie? I don't know if that's a good idea, too much of a good thing can actually be a bad thing. But if a 4th movie got made, I'd watch it if the standards are close to the three done so far. Some great fun characters there, played by some great people. Orlando Bloom notwithstanding.

But I'm thinking this will all pale into relative insignificance come the 28th of June. That's when Transformers is due out. The trailers have blown me away every time I saw them, especially the one we watched before Pirates 3. It was bloody awesome! Huge difference between watching a low res clip on my PC and a huge clip in a theatre.

This movie has every potential to be the new Star Wars. Provided it's done right. I'm really, really looking forward to it and I won't mind if the thing turns out to be more than 2 hours long.

I would love to be there on opening night at the end of the month. This movie will rule. I hope.

In other news, I'm really starting to get the hang of Oblivion now that I've tweaked it and patched it. Apparently, the original version of the game had a serious flaw. So I downloaded the patch and started a new game.

Also, I no longer get motion sickness and the initial confusion about the plot, the game mechanics and the story of the game is also gone. It plays like an MMO in that you can do whatever the hell you want, without the monthly subscription and potentially annoying other human players. Plus, no ganking...

That's not to say that I won't resume my World of Warcraft subscription in the future. I might come back. But not now.

In conclusion, Oblivion is going to sit in my hard disk for a good long while especially after I go out and get the expansion this Thursday.

In other news, not much has happened. I'm doing pretty good. The Gawai weekend was kind of dull with most of the people I wanted to visit having gone home to their kampungs for the festival.

I have to say between Gawai and Christmas, I like Christmas more.

I won't have long to wait. Only six more months. I'd like to have a meaningful one this year please.