ROTF

The new Transformers 2 trailer is out. Damn. The movie's release seems like a whole lifetime away. I can barely wait for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Veo0G2qfY

In Transit

I had a rough day yesterday. Didn't get much sleep in the morning due to that phone call. I ran around all day preparing things and by 5 pm I was at the airport. I had the worst case of nerves you could imagine. The sweltering heat didn't help at all. Mercifully, it rained last night.

I feel much better this morning. A bit of food and a good night's sleep makes all the difference.

Anyway, the original plan was for me to check out and leave tonight but not 30 seconds ago I received a call telling me that I'm going off tomorrow instead. That probably means there isn't enough time to do all my paperwork today. Which is ok I guess. Could use some more rest.

I'm in a hotel in Geylang right now. I'm going to have to find something to do today. I could go out and explore but to be honest, I don't feel all that touristy at the moment.

I'm not much of a traveler. I don't feel all that comfortable in strange places. Takes a bit of time for me to get used to new settings. Especially when I'm all alone like now. That is my peeve today, the fact that I'm completely alone with no one to talk to. Maybe I'll take a walk later and come back in the evening to surf the net.

Can you imagine how hard this would have been without access to the internet? I would die of boredom.

Anyway, while I'm still kind of anxious I'm not nearly as fearful as I was yesterday. I'm guessing this was caused by the initial shock of the hey-you're-leaving-today-get-your-stuff-ready phone call and the lack of sleep.

Have I ever mentioned how I hate surprises? At least this thing is real unlike that Oz scam I got caught up in. That experience was very damaging for me in terms of confidence and morale. I blame that for the excessive amounts bad emotions and thoughts I've been having in the days leading up to yesterday. If it weren't for that I would be way more confident and be raring to go instead.

At least I'm feeling much more positive today. Barring any disasters I should be able to fit in with my new colleagues. I hope things will be ok once I get out to sea in the next one or two days. I hope I'll do well and maybe even enjoy the experience.

Whatever happens this is something new and exciting for me.

EDIT: Something happened a minute ago that is equally surprising and irksome at the same time. I received mail from another offshore contractor telling me that they had received my resume and now they want my other documents (seaman book, certs etc). I laughed. I've always felt that The Fates like to mess with me and this is them doing it again. Where was this job offer two weeks ago? Funny thing is, I don't remember sending them my resume in the 1st place. Oh well... When it rains it pours.

Maybe I should ask them how much they pay?

Time to Go

Apparently, I'm going to Singapore this evening. I've been warned about this but it's still a bit sudden.

Fears and anxiety notwithstanding, it's now. By this time tomorrow, I'll be at sea. Wish me luck. My biggest peeve is that I didn't get to say goodbye to everyone.

Hopefully, 2 months from now I'll be a much happier person.

I have a plan. If all goes well, I'll work this job 4, maybe 5 years. I have a financial target. If I meet that target, I'll quit. If all goes well, I'll never have to work for a living again after that.

Financial freedom. I'll sacrifice 5 years of my life in exchange for the rest of my life. That's the motivation now.

Dollhouse

After Buffy and Angel, I don't watch much tv related material anymore. Not even Heroes although I feel it's really, really good from the few episodes I did manage to watch.

However, I might start following Dollhouse regularly. Why?

It's a Joss Whedon created Mutant Enemy product. Joss Whedon is awesome and I'm always interested in what he does. The show's premise is fascinating. The lead is Eliza Dushku, one of my favourite exBuffy/Angel people. She also produces the show. Amy Acker also plays a minor recurring role.

I've seen some teasers and recaps and I like what I'm seeing. I hope Fox renews it for a second season. I'm going to hunt for episodes tonight.

Here's a recap from Youtube. (Spoiler alert).

Gaga Does Coldplay

I find it a bit odd that she chooses to wrap her voice with all that electronic pop stuff in debut album. I mean listen to this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOEVKL0y1lQ

Lady Gaga Coldplay cover. She's a good pianist no?

*Can't embed video. The widescreen format spills over the post column.

Edit: Another nice video. Paparazzi i.e my favourite track from The Fame.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP8SrlbpJ5A (Piano acoustic)

Nothing to Say

Like the title says. Nothing of note to write about.

A few days ago I had this weird craving for Yeo's Chicken Curry. The one in the can. God knows why.

Apart from that random piece of information there's nothing happening at all.

Oh yes, a friend came back from offshore and passed me some more tips. I feel a little bit more encouraged but not by so much.

Still a bit anxious but not as bad as it was last week. This offshore job thing had better not be one of life's bad jokes. I've had a lot of that and it's not really that funny.

Not Gone...Yet

I guess I spoke too soon.

It's 6.00am on Thursday morning and I've just endured a 15 hour bus ride from Miri back to Kuching.

So what happened? Well, the original plan was for me to stay in Miri for a few days before deploying. Usually this is how these things work. However due to some circumstances and last minute changes I'm going off in the 2nd week of May instead. Which is great news because that means I can tie up some unfinished business and put in some extra training before mobilizing. And to see all my friends off course.

This could still change though. They could still call me later and ask me to pack up and go immediately. These things can happen too.

It wasn't a complete waste of time though. I got to talk with the new boss, hung out with a friend I haven't met in a while and most importantly, signed a contract. The money's pretty good and I'm pleased with it.

Also, I'm feeling a lot less nervous about the whole thing. I guess some mental conditioning was required. The first call really caught me off guard and by this time I wasn't thinking about going off at all. After hanging out and meeting the new boss and talking to some people I feel like I'm ready for it. As ready as a noob radioman will be anyway.

Right now, my tentative itinerary would involve flying out to Singapore then to Batam then to the barge off the coast. I say tentative because again, things can change at the last minute.

I guess all that's left to do now is to prepare as well as possible and try to do well. Things are going to change quite a bit this year.

Finally for some off topic comments.

I forgot one very important preflight rule yesterday morning. Avoid caffeine. It increases the blood pressure and during descent one blood vessel behind my left eye started throbbing and it hurt like a motherf***er.

Long bus rides are not fun even on a reasonably comfortable bus. Also in order to appreciate how big Sarawak really is, a bus ride from Miri to Kuching (or vice versa) would put that into perspective quite clearly. I left at 1400 yesterday afternoon. We stopped in Batu Niah, Bintulu, Selangau and Sibu before fueling up at the Penrissen Shell station. Arrived in 4th mile at 0451 this morning.

I won't be doing that again anytime soon. Unless I'm broke and desperate to get home. The ticket cost 80 bucks by the way.

The plan this week is to clear some debts and transfer some reserve funds into my savings account. If all goes well, I'll get all my money back and more within six months.

Wish me luck!

The Call

In a previous post I mentioned that offshore manpower demands have dried up and I was not likely to go off.

Well, The Fates like to play tricks on me. Apparently I am going. Tomorrow.

I received the call today. Someone is leaving and needed replacing.

I cannot even begin to describe the dread I was feeling. I'll admit it right here, from the beginning off the whole offshore thing last year I've had doubts about whether I can handle that kind of work. Actually that overwhelming dread started during the safety course. I have no idea why. I also imagined all kinds of nasty, antisocial types working in the offshore industry. I don't know where that idea came from either.

Well, that's just me. I've always had little confidence in trying new, more challenging things. The whole idea was to break that. And the money, obviously.

I feel much better now. I went out with a good friend just now and we talked. It makes things seem less frightening. Anyway, my brother is doing well and so is another friend. Why shouldn't I do just as well?

Well, we'll soon find out. My greatest wish now is for me to enjoy this new line of work and be as successful as I was in my previous job. And if I don't do well, so what? At least I tried.

There isn't much to worry about actually. It's just me being silly.

If I find myself liking it I will succeed in my plans to retire early provided I don't suddenly develop expensive, extravagant tastes.

Wish me luck folks.

Zooey

I've been watching (or rather re-watching) a lot of DVDs lately. I think I've watched Transformers 3 times already this week.

I also watched Yes Man earlier this week. Good movie. Starring Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel. Ah Zooey..

I like Zooey. She is one of my favourite actresses. I've seen a number of her movies and I liked them all. She's also part of She & Him. Like most things involving Zooey She & Him's music is very... quirky?. Just watch that video on top of the post and see what I mean.

I was trawling Youtube for interviews and I found one where she mentioned the Speech Accent Archive. It's a collection of various English accents from all over the world by both native and non-native speakers. It's awesome. (It uses Quicktime so if it doesn't work with Firefox open it in Explorer.)

And while listening to the supposedly Malaysian accent it got me thinking. Is there such a thing as a proper Malaysian accent? (Manglish doesn't count). There are so many ethnic groups here and they all sound different when speaking English. Heck, all my friends speak English and they all sound different.

What do you think? What's the definitive Malaysian English accent if such a thing exists?

On that note, here's another great song from She & Him.

Plan B

Holy week. Hmm, perhaps it's a good idea if I do something holy?

Anyway, I'm still looking for work. This week I signed up at JobsMalaysia, that Labour Department website. And Jobstreet of course. I also have two other openings I heard about through the grapevine. One of them sounds good but unfortunately requires knowledge of Linux of which I have none at all. The other one is only available next month.

I've given up looking at the local papers. There's nothing good there.

I also registered at myEG just for the heck of it. Looks quite useful. You never know when you might need it.

While I've been doing this it dawned to me that perhaps my skills set might be a little too specific. Apparently there's a ton of positions available for systems analyst, programmers, application devs etc. Software stuff. No surprise. Software related work is NOT easy. Hence the talent pool might be a little on the short side.

There's almost none available for the humble hardware and support tech. Either support people are a dime a dozen these days or hardware and operating software have gotten so reliable support is no longer that important. I'm inclined to think it's the former.

Yes, things are looking a bit grim and I can't really shake this impending sense of doom. But I keep looking.

How about that offshore thing? Well, I've heard a lot of stories recently about oil and gas but the manpower demand has completely dried up (no pun intended) and now it's almost impossible for a newbie to get in. Everyone wants experienced people at sea and I don't really blame them actually.

Maybe it's got something to do with crude being at 40 bucks a barrel only these days. There's another reason why I'm thinking twice about going offshore but I can't really say much about that right now.

I owe the parents 5k. They said I don't have to pay it back but somehow it would be so very wrong if I didn't at least try to pay them back.

If nothing happens by the 1st week of May it'll be time for Plan C. Which means I need to leave home in search of work. Perhaps I'll be away for a long, long time.

Life is not so easy these days...

Pantas dan Garang Empat

Need for Speed The Movie Pt. 4 Fast & Furious 4. With the original cast. Surprisingly good!

500 Million and a New Stadium!!

Not..

It's April already. Time sure does fly these days...

Are You Bored?

Or did you find a foreign word you can't pronounce? Type it in here and here your computer speak.

It's a lot of fun..

There isn't anything new so this will have to count as an update. Oh yes, there is one thing. April is near. Time for Plan B.

Fast Times in the EPL

Just wow. First Man U self destructs at Fulham and get two more players sent off. Now Liverpool can't stop scoring. I think that's 13 goals in their last 3 games.

Only the week before that I think, we were hanging out at Jalan Song remembering the good ole days when Chelsea were actually good and Jose was giving Sir Alex a run for his money..

It's too bad I can't watch games at home now that we don't have the Astro Sports Package anymore. The next few weeks are going to be exciting for EPL fans.

Man U would probably still win the league though. They still have that one game in hand. It's hard to write them off as much as I'd like to see someone win for a change. I never like to see the same team win all the time. It gets boring and it gets even more annoying to meet more glory hunting Man U "fans"...

Anyway, if Liverpool win the title it would be great. They haven't won in decades. I also would like to see Villa get into the Champions League instead of Arsenal. Makes a refreshing change.

Talking about change, I downloaded Internet Explorer 8 two days ago. It's not bad. Doesn't feel as "heavy" as previous versions of IE. It's almost like Firefox in many ways. So far, I like it.. There are many new features that I haven't tried out yet. The private browsing option is a very, very good idea for security. The multicoloured tabs are a bit strange but might be useful.

I'll write about IE8 when I play around it more this week.

EDIT: I've detected a problem with IE8 already. It screws up my blogger post formatting by removing all the line breaks between the paragraphs. Damn. I had to log in via Firefox to correct it.

Some Miscellaneous Things

Well, no big update from me this week. Still not employed yet. Luckily for me, all my insurance policies matured right now so I actually have quite a bit of money right now. What a relief this is.

Anyway, I've been gaming a lot as usual. I got some news for FMers out there. I found a logo pack containing 35,000 logos! That includes logos for all competitions and clubs in 105 leagues. By the way for those who don't know what I'm going on about, not all clubs in Football Manager 09 have their logos included in the game. Only the licensed ones. Therefore, some very nice people actually took the trouble to create the graphics for the logos (as well as skins but I like the default skin so I don't bother with this). The logo pack comes from FMGLive. Unfortunately I don't have the actual link anymore but it's on there somewhere in the form of a torrent file.

Now my FM looks pretty and "official". I'm very pleased.

I don't spend ALL my time in front of the computer despite the gaming stuff that I like to talk about. I just came back from Happy Valley. They serve the best (non-halal unfortunately) barbequed stuff in town! I haven't gone in a long time. I love that place. It's across the road from Crown Square. Go and check it out. There's actually two venues, a cafe in the shophouse facing the road and a private house behind it. I prefer to go to the house. Nicer atmosphere.

I should have taken a photo...

Anywhere, right now I'm in front of the PC again and I'm playing around with the FM database to see what I can update.

See you next time.

An Update

My brother's band Ethnic Transmissions have their new single out on promo. Check it out at their Myspace page or down here.



Their new album should be out in the next few months so if you like local music please give your support. The boys are doing a really, really good thing here.

I hope you like the song.

Aside from this, I haven't been able to update more regularly... There isn't much happening right now and not much to write about. Which is a good thing I think.

I did have a good time last night though. One of my friends got married recently and last night was their wedding dinner. It was a lot of fun. I think of all the wedding dinners I've attended in the last few years, last night was the most fun. Usually I have some negative things to say about these occasions but last night was great. The food was great and the booze was non stop.

Except for that problem they had with the notebook and the faulty headphone jack which meant that the presentation they wanted to play would have no sound. In the end, I decided to convert the video file to VCD instead. It worked beautifully and no one was any wiser.

Anyway strangely enough despite all the drinking, I didn't really felt drunk at all. I still had energy to power up the PC and play some games until early morning.

Talking about games, I've finished most of the new ones already. I'm down with Dawn of War 2 and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, which was awesome by the way. Great story, ala Band of Brothers. I've got Empire Total War installed but I'm playing that one slowly.

The game is humongous now. The installation files alone are 13Gbs but when you see what the game is about it's not surprising at all. This time around the game takes place in the 18th century, the age of gents in powdered wigs, black powder muskets and exploration. Therefore, the game now includes areas like India and the Americas. I have a Great Britain save game and in it, I'm at war with Spain and France with all the fighting taking place exclusively in the North America and the Caribbean. Great fun.

Many changes have been made since Medieval 2 Total War and one of the biggest change of all is 3d naval battles. The graphic detail must be seen to be believed. The ships are so detailed, you can see crew and rigging and cannons and the like. When the fighting starts, you will see debris, sails being ripped and people falling overboard. That is if you can peer into the smoke. In this time period there is a lot of smoke on the battlefield from all them muskets and cannons.

Anyway, the game is very deep, very involved and very long. And also very fun, especially for history buffs like myself.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II...

... is too bloody awesome for words. So bloody awesome, it's taken all of my available free time. And being unemployed, I have lots of that.

Fans of RTS games, Company of Heroes and Warhammer 40K are going crazy over this awesome game I bet. The orginal Dawn of War was good but it doesn't compare to this new one. I'm midway through I think and I'm definitely replaying the single player campaign again.

Again, the story is about the Blood Ravens spacemarine chapter. This time they are dealing with a Tyranid problem. Orks and Eldar are involved as well. Even cooler than that is you can choose any of those sides in multiplayer and skirmish. Hmm Tyranids..

The only weakness the game has is its steep system requirements especially the graphics portion. But if you do have a good enough system, the game is gorgeous and a joy to behold.

I'm going to put off Football Manager for awhile until I finish the single player part.

Meanwhile...

I have nothing else to write about unfortunately. I've been spending all my time lounging around with friends and gaming. There's not much happening there.

I haven't found any work yet but then again I haven't really been looking to be honest. I have some leads and I'm waiting for those to develop. March is the window and if that passes by I'm going to plan B.

I did help Will set up his new Dell Studio 14 notebook yesterday. It's an awesome notebook. If I ever could afford a new one next time it'll probably be a Dell Studio. XPS is still kind of expensive for me.

Anyway, it felt great to be doing computer related stuff again. It's been awhile and I guess one can say it's my true calling really.

I'm going out to watch a movie in a moment. I'm going to try and update this blog more regularly this month.

The operative word here is "try"...

Damn Warhammer...

Busy

Yes, I've been busy. Playing games (GTA IV and FM2009) and catching up with friends. Not everyone knows I'm home yet though. I prefer it this way. It allows me to sink back in to real life at a slow, controlled pace.

I was at Will's place last Sunday. I nearly got lost getting there. It's been a while since I've driven up there. Heck, it's been a while since I've driven anywhere actually.

By the way, the boy has started blogging. It's here at www.rajalautoffshore.blogspot.com. For people who want to know what the life is like in the offshore oil and gas business, it's all there.

He also ordered a new notebook, a Dell Inspiron 1420. He's the 3rd person I know who's got or getting one. Myself and Gette are the other two. All different colours too. Will's is blue. He should receive it next week I think.

I'm looking for work at the moment. Rumour has it that offshore work will only open up in March, at the end of the monsoon season. I'm still wondering whether I should wait. I could wait and go offshore or I could go back to doing computers again. Both have pros and cons.

Too bad Dell doesn't have an operation here.

Anyway, I'm not going to be choosy. I need work and I need it fast. Hopefully something will turn up soon.

Apart from all this, things have been quiet. I no longer have to worry about any fallout from my Oz adventure. Let's just say that it's been taken care off...

Woohoo!

While I was out and about in rural Oz, I missed a whole lot of pop culture stuff. Such as the....



Revenge of the Fallen teaser trailer!

Woohoo!!

Laying Low

Oh how I wish I could go back to blogging about trivial, inconsequential things again.

I haven't blogged for awhile I know. There isn't much to write about. At least, there isn't much information I can release into the public domain at the moment. Things aren't really safe yet. I'm still feeling a little uneasy.

At least my immediate troubles are over and I can rest for awhile. Will more trouble appear over the horizon?

Anyway, I contacted my youngest bro last night via Facebook about offshore work. Hopefully I can get on an oil rig by March.

I have a lot of stuff to pay off. My credit card is almost maxed out and my car insurance is due end of next month.

Suffice to say my Oz trip cost me quite a lot.