Life For Rent

I must be getting old. Either that, or there is really a whole lot to cram in during each of the 5 full days of lessons occuring every Sunday for the past 5 Sundays.

Neh, I think it’s really cuz there is a whole lot to cram in. I can’t be that old when I get younger every year!

I will be sharing stuff soon enough on computer security for the average home user, and how security can be compromised.

Dinner was at Plaza Market Cafe at the swissotel. The deal was a 1 for 1 buffet if you order a drink, but as usual I will be seen at those places only when I have ‘lobang’. It is suppose to serve Peranakan food but what did we find there? Let’s see, from oysters and raw salmon (sashimi, and they were really good but they are kinda stingy on the oyster servings. They put 10 on display and within 1 minute its gone and they top it off with another 10?!), to roast lamb, kueh pie tie, durian paste and nonya deserts. Seems the be more international that authentic Peranakan but the Peranakan food that they DO have, is quite good. The durian paste in the desert corner is comparable to the one from Merchant Court hotel. At 36 bucks, it is rather value for money, especially if you can get hold of ‘lobang’.

What kinda lobang? Just yesterday I was dining at Merchant court for its buffet lunch. The bill came up to… tada! $0.55 for 2 persons. That is what I call lobang. Sure I dine at high end places but I make sure it is more worth the dollars and sense (no pun intended) than the average hawker or food court prices. I mean, 55 cents for 2 pax buffet? I think it makes sense.

What? You wanna know how it is done? hmm… maybe I shall write a page out someday? *L* It is rather simple actually and a ‘one off thingie’, not a daily affair!

Ah yes, the pictures as promised from yesterday’s gathering..

From L-R : Weiguang (CSM), CB*bad word* Chin (my buddy!), Jiawei (Bday boy), MightyMark (me!)

From L, Clockwise : Max (forgot his nickname!), my buddy sir, C B Chin, PTI Mark, Cyclops Jiawei, Cock Sucking Monster (CSM) Sean Han Wei Guang

Had a pretty good evening. Caught up with some of my close BMT friends on one of the mate’s birthdays. Some changed quite a bit, others remain pretty much the same since recruit days. It was nice and we are thinking of making it a point to catch up during the birthdays of a few of the guys. Pictures to follow later when I get them.

I wrote a short tribute for diesel which is under reflections/pastlove. Don’t ask me why I named the page pastlove. I have no idea…

I miss that animal. Animal by breed, friend by nature, and love by fate. Her destiny is now out of my hands. I hope she is safe and happy, wherever she is now..

Life goes on as they say. Whether you lose a loved one, be it a friend, a family member, a pet, aren’t they all and the same playing the same different roles to us? But someone has to leave first, and I’m glad in a way that they leave first, so that I will never have to worry about them should I not be around. My grandma refused to keep another pet for this reason though I strongly feel a pet will improve her lifestyle and bring more joy. But she has her point and she cares too much for other people than for herself. I suppose I really ought to spend more time with her and I hope to do that. I have everything drafted in my head already, and hopefully I will be able to fulfil all that before it is too late. The way I am, I will be letting down my family a whole lot (for those who know me for who I am will know what I mean) and I hope I do not need to go any further on that path.

Think I shall go lie down and get some shut eye soon.. my last anti hacking class begins in 8 hours.

Sayo for now.

Oh gee I almost forgot. My aunt Hellen has passed away for 2 years now, 27th Jul being her death anniversary. Her tribute is located on my site under reflections, and in loving memory.

It has been 2 years. And now that it is back to studies again, I am determined to do the best I can for it is with her grace that I am undertaking my studies now. I shall not let her down..

Death, is like a transition from one place to another. From school to army to school or work, and it goes on and on.. I hope she is happy in heaven though she did not achieve her last wishes. I wished I was there to defend it all the way, but it was a tough battle my mom had to put up with. I guess she did what she could too and aunt hellen won’t blame her.

What goes around comes around..

At last the challenge is about to end. With 2 more days during the weekend and from the rules, there is no need for me to run anymore. I am about 80km ahead of the person ‘i am out to beat’ so that’s good enough for me.

It has been a gruelling one month of the challenge, and preliminary scores reflect that I have covered over 480km with a total time of around 50 hours or so. Pretty hard work for a non running competitor like me with multiple feet problems and yes I suppose I have to retire from all forms of competitve running from now on.

There is a twist however. It is supposed to be a single’s competition. However of late I have been pretty annoyed at how some things were being done in the gym. Along came Wilson who is out to be champ as well. Hence we formed a ‘tag team’ and we did whatever we could to tie all the scores, in the hope of being crowned co champions. Will we succeed? What will the final outcome be? Stay tuned! All will be known on Aug 5th when the commissioning will take place. Will there be co champions? Will one of us have to concede defeat?

We are not out to win the prizes. The prizes is ‘nothing’. It is for honour and glory, and of course, a pat on the back for the male ego.

My dog Diesel passed away yesterday. Thurs 28th Jul to what seemed to be an internal stomach cavity rupture. That’s based on an external analysis and I do not plan to do an autopsy. We’ll witness the cremation and take the ashes back. Am I sad? Indeed I am, but happy for her too although she has had a good life at my place (her life is far better than my maid’s), now that she has gone to doggy heaven she no longer has to suffer the pains of being in this world any longer. I took her back from SPCA when I was in Sec 3 so it has been quite a while, and soon enough I will add on a tribute to her on my tribute page, somewhere on this website along with whiskey…

After all the running, food has definitely been on my mind. Here’s my hitlist :

Japanese food – For all sashimi lovers, try the ala carte buffet at Ikoi restaurant, Mirama hotel. Price at 30+++. Please make reservations at least a week in advanced.

Italian food – Modesto, Orchard Parade Hotel (next to forum). Genuine italian food. Ravioli, pizzas and pastas are all pretty neat. Seek advice from the servers who will be happy to assist in your choices and make meaningful recommendations.

I also caught Red Candy some days back. A jap horror on people getting mysterious calls with a ringtone that they have never downloaded. They will hear ‘how they will die’ in 3 days time. Most of the victims will be found with a red candy in their mouth. But not all..and that’s where it may get a little interesting, with a slight twist towards the end of the story. Nothing really impressive. Graded a C-, pay the 7 bucks if you have nothing else better to spend on. My fav horros remain to be dawn of the dead (sequel coming up soon?) and Shutter.

Everyone should catch The Island. By far this is the best for the year thus far.

Am gonna take a well deserved rest and settle the little problems here and there at home. Hopefully things will get better. I sure need a well deserved rest, with exams upcoming in the month of Aug.

After all the running and stuff my weight has dropped to 73. I suppose it would be nice to maintain my current fat % at 6.6, but go back to my weight training. When one of the gym trainers begin lessons on pilate, I would probably begin on that too. It sounds pretty interesting…

For now, enjoy the weekend everyone. It’s a BMT mate’s birthday tomorrow, good chance to catch up with the peeps. Chill everyone, and keep smiling yo.

Here’s what’s in the news today.

Subject : Hijacker’s father hails London attacks

FIVE thousand dollars is all it will take to pay for another London-style terror bombing. This was disclosed by the father of one of the hijackers who commandeered the first plane that crashed into New York’s World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001.

Speaking to CNN in his apartment in Cairo, Mohamed el-Amir said he would like to see more attacks such as the July 7 bombings of three London subway trains and a bus.

Displayed prominently in the apartment were pictures of his son, Mohamed Atta, the man who is believed to have piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center. El-Amir said the attacks in the United States and London were the beginning of what would be a 50-year religious war. The man, who gave his age as ‘at least 70′, said he had no sorrow for what happened in London. Cursing in Arabic, El-Amir also denounced Muslims who condemned the London attacks and vowed to do all he could to encourage more attacks.

When asked if he would allow a CNN crew to videotape another interview with him, he said he would give his permission – for US$5,000 (S$8,500), which he would donate to someone to carry out another terror attack. He said US$5,000 was about the amount it would cost to finance another attack in London

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Doesn’t these sort of interviews serve to infuriate people? To piss people off? A mental war of sorts? Well it is certainly working cuz even though I have not been directly affected by attacks (yet), I’ve come to realise that it has always been a bunch of cowards doing all these. It is like a child in a supermart, who wants a chocolate bar only to be denied by the mother, so the child kicks a huge fuss hoping the mother will ‘tap’ out and just give in to save the embarrassment.

Well ladies and gentlemen, terrorists are not children. They are childish SOBs whom even pigs will stay away from. 50 years of religious war? Denouncing muslims who condem their attacks? Wake up old man. You are the one hiding in your stupid pig sty talking crap. I don’t see you out there doing anything useful. Yes I do not condone the plane hijack but at least some people have the guts to fly a plane through a building. As stupid and irrational, I’ll only blame them for listening to idiots like you who spew nothing but trash out of your mouth. You know what old man, if you had the guts you would stand on the street, and repeat every single words you said instead of hiding in your stupid home like a frickin coward. 5 thousand for another attack? I bet people would gladly be paid 5 cents for your head. Oh yeh, by the way, 5 cents is just about the cost to incinerate trash, like you. You lost your son to your own foolishness. Don’t blame anyone. You sacrificed your son for your own personal agenda, you are not a true father. You are not a true parent. An animal will defend its offspring. What you did, is you sent your son to hell on a silver platter. Wake up old man. You know what? If I were you I would kill myself there and then, before someone gets to you. You have no idea how many pieces of you would take to feed the dogs and pigs here.

No offense to all muslims. I respect the religion wholeheartedly. These terror cowards are not muslims to me. They are, “what a pig would spit back out and step on”. What’s the term for that again?

I had a great dinner last night at Ikoi restaurant, my fav haunt for now, for sashimi

It was all very nice. Great fish. Great company. Especially with the woofie lover It’s just another birthday but I appreciate all the well wishers that came into my mobile phone and MSN. It was very thoughtful indeed!

And I have a new iPod shuffle (though I renamed it to something else) from my dearest! Thank you!! *hee hee*

And today it was back to the screens with The Island. Meet Lincoln 6 Echo and Jordan 2 Delta. They are clones of real people (as you already found out from the trailers). The ‘brains’ behind all the science found out later that the Echo generation has a tendency to question, and has a sense of curiousity. Something that wasn’t programmed and was termed as a bug. They decided to destroy the entire generation. Will Mr Echo and Ms Delta be sent to the ‘island’ eventually? Will they manage to save the other clones, oblivious to the fact that they are actually copies of people? Watch this one and sit tight for a ride. It could very well be the best action thriller of the year, at least for now, surpassing Fantastic Four even. I would pay 9.50 for this movie. Highly rated by me for the CGI, acting, story, basically everything the 2h plus movie has to offer. You don’t need to crack your heads to solve anything, no twists yet you’ll discover something new at every turn even though you already know the main plot of the story through the trailers. It is graded 2 notches up from Fantastic Four, with an A- (Read : I will pay $9.50 for this).

Moving along, today I learnt of a scheming person, somewhere in my life. Somewhere in my ‘playground’. I have yet to share another ‘Holy Grail” aka “Best practices” that I have learnt over the years. Get yourself a few good friends. No, I mean it. People whom you can trust, and look out for you on what’s happening behind your back. Be your spies, literally. Take away all the ‘how do you know if you can trust them too anyway?” and just immerse yourself to things that you may not be aware of, yet things that are happening. Take that chance to reflect, if its bad things going behind your back. ie, take it as a constructive critisism if its true. Only you know if what’s being said is true or pure fabrication. You can learn a lot of things from ‘what people say’. Should you be so open to people? Should you trust everyone? Should you watch your behaviour in public? etc. It is a chance to improve.

And when it’s done, you can work on payback. Just kidding..:P

And oh yes, thank your friends for sharing stuff with you too. As they say, friends are siblings that God decided not to provide, for some reason or another.

I wanna say something about a recent supposed message posted in the new york post, about “Terrorists wrestle after bombing”.

Muhammad Hassan’s a pro wrestler in the WWE and is an American by citizenship and an Arab by descent. It appears the article called them terrorists, and that terrorists wrestle after the (london) bombing.

I think it was mighty unfair. Heck hear what Hassan has to say, and for once, I really feel for this guy. I think he is right. A free country supposedly but because of his heritage he has been denied of so many things that people of other heritages receive. I think that’s wrong. True perhaps this whole thing is just another pro wrestling gimmick to stir publicity. But the point was made in the article, and Hassan responds with his.

A person should never be denied based on his heritage. Based on what his forefathers were. Are we supposed to condem Ms Bin Laden? No. She didn’t choose to be born as a Bin Laden, and she is not a terrorist. How can one say she is a terrorist (if anyone would) just cause she is a Bin Laden?

I condem terrorists. I do not condem races, religion and heritages. To hell to those who do so.

Check out Muhammad Hassan’s message here :
http://www.wwe.com/content/media/video/494698/776716/hassanresponds

I was just receiving an email from one of my readers here who related an incident of being ’stood up’ literally. It went like this :

- Went online to chat, chatted with someone who was depressed and wanted to go out for a drink, and stated very clearly there is hidden agenda or ONS involved)
- Met up, drove to a pub, ordered a jug of beer
- Excused himself to the toilet and never came back. The servers were told to put the bill on hold as more friends would be turning up
- Reader paid the bill, left the beer and went off.
- Reader felt really dumb to have been cheated and for being too trusting.

Those who know me would know that I never really liked IRC (not implying he went onto IRC, I do not know where did he chat up the guy in fact). I have always found the characters chatting in the mainstream channels, especially the ‘dating’ ones dodgy. The homosexual channels are the worst ones. Once or twice I went in looking for people to chat and all I found were people looking for other people to meet, for all kinds of ‘activities’. You name it, there are people who are looking for it in there.

I never condoned the idea of chatting in there. True there are some souls who are really out for a clean chat with no hidden agendas whatsoever, but these people will always be shadowed by the vast majority who just wants a ‘quick fix’. I used to have my own little channel where I chatted with my friends in IRC but that was it. It was between us who knew one another, and not in the mainstream channels (the only other mainstream i ‘parked’ my nick in, is channel perfect 10)

I haven’t exactly met a whole lot of people from online. Not exactly that interested nor usually have the time. But for those times I have met up with someone, neither of us stood the other up. What I used was the ’screening’ tactic. Everyone is ‘bad’ until proven ‘good’. Someone who chats with you on MSN, emails, on the phone etc for months and years are unlikely to have agendas of those who are on IRC dating channels. I met a friend of mine Berdley whom I got to know online many years ago, only recently. He is nice and we get along well and is a good friend of mine.I can’t say the same for those you chat up with on IRC. Those who want stuff like ONS are unlikely to keep in contact for years before meeting. Those channels to me, are places where people with the same intention in mind hang out. If you do not share the same intention, stay out of there. Go elsewhere. There are so many sites to visit online, with lots of good people waiting to be known.

Gonna head to my best bud Colin’s place for a wine drinking session now. Soon, I will be doing a write up of my own on computer security for the home user. ie, you! Know how to protect yourself and what people can do to your data, comp, and the counter measures that you can take to prevent yourself from being ‘hacked’. These are stuff I picked up from my ethical hacker certification course so it should be pretty useful. And why wouldn’t it be? In sillypore.com, everything’s free!

I was on the treadmill with a sore left knee competing for the treadmill challenge when news broke out on tv at 1555h that the london subway system was rocked with bomb blasts. The magnitude and devestation was soon seen as live footage came in. I condem these acts of terrorism. Acts against innocent citizens going about their own personal routine. A very planned attack to cripple london’s economy. Am I applauding their acts? Hell no. The son of a bitch who is responsible for all these is a coward. He is a mice playing a run and catch game. They think its funny? I call it childish. However their actions prove nothing but that they are a disgrace to humanity. So listen up you fuckin son of a bitch. You are not a champion. A true champion earns the respect of the people. All you’ve earned is a name recognisable to everyone out there. A name that I wouldn’t even spit and step on. In a game, there can only be one winner. And that winner will never be you. The day you first struck, you would think every single one of us is marked. Well listen up, cause I refuse to submit. We are the predators, and you are the prey. For every single day you breath. For everyday your miserable soul is alive, you’ll be looking behind your back. Cuz you will never know which day, will be judgement day for you. And at judgement day, your ass will be kicked. It will be, GAME OVER for you.

Evolution is set to take place again. With the month long treadmill challenge, I do not intend to give up as yet. I would have settled for something other than the top spot, but cuz of what one old man has said, it has turned on my aggression and quest for blood. He said “I’ll teach these young fellas a lesson.”

Well well old man. You are fit. It is true I concede. But the day I retire from the challenge, the day I scream I QUIT will be the day I can no longer walk.

Let’s see, over 70km in 4 days, and counting. 2 busted knees, though one is alright now the other is still giving me some problems. A sore back. 2 blisters beneath my left leg. All that is not enough to shout I QUIT.

I’ll never quit. Not till my body decides to quit on its own without my command. I’m putting my body and soul on the line for this one. I’m crazy? Indeed I am. I am C2L2 all because of my craziness but hey, I didn’t come to earth to talk. I came to fight.

I caught two movies today. War of the worlds and Fantastic Four

War Of the Worlds – Did I say I did not intend to catch it cuz of Cruise and Spie lberg? I wanted some action. We did get a few here and there. Indeed as everyone has been saying, the ending is short of anything but a great ending. I have to say, perhaps that’s how the original story went. Did you catch Independence Day starring Will Smith in the past? It is something similar. It wasn’t as bad as some made it out to be, at least for me. Nothing too spectacular though with a pretty vintage story line. 7 bucks is just about the amount I would pay for the 2 hour flik.

Fantastic Four – Good stuff. Shows how the 5 fellas got exposed to cosmic rays and caused them to mutate with the powers that made them Fantastic 4 and One villian…that’s what it ought to be. If you watched X men, this is something rather similar. In fact I see it as a warm up to x men 3 to debut next year. I would pay 9.50 for this and I am eagerly anticipating the debut of x men 3. Hopefully it will have a bigger impact. Watch this, for its effects and humour from the human torch.

Had my hair done at supercuts in Cineleisure. It’s in 30% discount right now. Anyone has any good recommendations for haircuts? I’m not particular bout it and don’t carry fanciful styles but I don’t appreciate my hair being ruined by those 10 dollar shops seriously. That’s all.

Time to work on my java programming assignment. Any one wanna lend a hand?