Travel(Horror)ogue

Date: 14.12.2003

[Time: 08.30 AM SGT]
Woke up late. Dammit.

[Time: 09.30 AM SGT]
Reached WTC just in time to check in. Couldn't find passengers I was supposed to help check in as a favour for parent's friend.

[Time: 09.50 AM SGT]
Turns out they've already gone inside.

[Time: 10.10 AM SGT]
Ferry pulls out of harbor, a little late as usual.

[Time: 11.00 AM SGT (10.00 AM Local)]
Reached Batam. Got into waiting van for ride to airport. Chatted with aforementioned fellow passengers, Americans from Florida, father and 13-year-old youngest daughter.

The father works for CalTex Indonesia and is in charge of all their labs in Duri (Map) and has three degrees in Chemistry. Explained how I nearly failed Chemistry in my final year of High School.

[Time: 11.30 AM SGT (10.30 AM Local)]
Reached Hang Nadim International Airport, Batam. 2nd van carrying luggage (fellow passengers has 36 pieces(!) of luggage) is late. Turns out that van is prone to overheating and cannot go beyond a fairly sedate 40-60 km/h. Driver asked me to explain this to the Americans, which I did.

[Time: 12.00 PM SGT (11.00 PM Local)]
All checked in and ready to go. Turns out that my name was somehow removed from the list, which explains heated argument between travel agent and counter staff. Which also explains why I'm Mr. R. Duane on my boarding pass.

[Time: 12.30 AM SGT (11.30 AM Local)]
Flight was supposed to leave Batam at 12.00 PM Local, but still hasn't landed yet. Fellow passenger starting to worry.

[Time: 1.00 PM SGT (12.00 PM Local)]
Time to take off and still no plane. Fellow passenger starting to complain.

[Time: 1.15 PM SGT (12.15 PM Local)]
Official-looking man came into boarding lounge to make an announcement. Turns out the plane was delayed out of Jakarta and just took off minutes ago. Flight will be delayed to 3.00 PM Local. Also that all passengers on that flight has a free lunch at the airport restaurant. Fellow passenger starting to really bitch now.

[Time: 1.30 PM SGT (12.30 PM Local)]
Had a fairly decent lunch of rice with beef rendang and cassava leaves in coconut gravy. I really missed Indonesian food.

[Time: 2.00 PM SGT (1.00 PM Local)]
Back in boarding lounge.

[Time: 2.30 PM SGT (1.30 PM Local)]
Official-looking man is back with another announcement. All passengers for Lion Air flight to Pekanbaru to move to boarding lounge at other end of airport, because the plane's gonna be parked at that gate instead of where we are now. Fellow passenger's bitching becomes more vehement.

[Time: 2.45 PM SGT (1.45 PM Local)]
Settled into new boarding lounge.

[Time: 3.00 PM SGT (2.00 PM Local)]
Plane's finally landed. Hooray!

Just looked up from my book and looked left. Saw a Buddhist monk with mobile phone in hand and hands-free earpiece in ear chatting with another person. I thought they were supposed to have a vow of poverty or something?

[Time: 3.15 PM SGT (2.15 PM Local)]
Plane is unloading cargo.

Looked up from my book again and looked up. Opposite me is mother and intelectually-challenged daughter, probably mid-20s and about 200 kilos. Said daughter glowered at me with what I can only call a malicious fatness. Imagine being stared down by Jabba the Hutt after you've referred to his mother's mating habits and you'll have an idea of what I mean.

[Time: 3.30 PM SGT (2.30 PM Local)]
Plane is still unloading cargo. Jaysus! If you're going to take in so much cargo on a passenger flight, why don't you just open a freight airline instead of a passenger airline, dickheads?

Jabba the Hutt still staring at me with unmitigated hate. What the fuck did I do?

[Time: 3.45 PM SGT (2.54 PM Local)]
Boarding call. Fina-fuckin'-ly!

[Time: 4.00 PM SGT (3.00 PM Local)]
Plane finally took off.

[Time: 4.30 PM SGT (3.30 PM Local)]
Landed in Sultan Syarif Qasim II Airport, Pekanbaru. Proceeded to arrival lounge where Mom and Cousin are waiting. Turns out that fellow passenger knows Mom's cousin who works at same installation.

I never check in any luggage, so we go straight to our car and went home. Drew oath from Mom to never ever book me on a Lion Air flight again.

[Time: 5.00 PM SGT (4.00 PM Local)]
Settled into my room and unpacking. When I should've been doing that 3 hours ago. Anyhoo, back home now, nothing much left to do except check email every day to see if any prospective employers have dropped me an email. Oh, and also enjoy time at home.

I know, I know

Yes... I know I haven't been updating in a long time.

Well, get ready. I'm about to write down everything that I've meant to write (and never really got around to until now).

Wisdom comes suddenly (and painfully)

So, it's been roughly 2 weeks since I quit my job. And oddly enough, my wisdom tooth suddenly decided to grow and break through the gumline on the night after I quit. One of my former colleagues thinks that it probably means that quitting the job was the wisest decision I've made in my life so far. I prefer to think that I've gone away from the job wiser than I ever was before in my life.

Whatever.

Anyhoo, just for a quick update, I know I complained before about how my (former) boss wasn't going to pay me. But they did, in the end. And that was the end of that.

So, what have I been doing with all my free time, you say? Nothing much, really. Looking for a new job, watching movies, reading, playing games, etc., etc. In other words, just bumming around.

Oh, and I did this on the night I quit. It was the most fun I've ever had in a long time. :P

Regrets

Dammit!

*slaps forehead*

*kicks self in the ass*

ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Misery loves company

Met a friend of mine today, whom I haven't seen in a while, and had a nice long talk.

It's good to know that there are others out there who are as miserable, pissed off and disgruntled as I am.

I know I shouldn't feel that way, but I guess I'm just jaded....

Anyway, 26 days to go.

The Governator

Well, well, they've got Governor Arnold "I'll Be Backed" Schwartzenegger in California now. And despite the major attacks on his campaign, too.

Just speaks volumes about the power of fandom eh?

Now, Californians are gonna have to learn to pronounce his surname (and spell it, too!)

"And now, I would like to welcome Governor Schwartzne... Schartze... Governor Arnie."

:P

BlogBack is awesome.

'Nuff sed.

(Thanks, PJ!)

And for my next trick... I shall run faster than a speeding bullet!

Jeezus H. Christ!

It's not as if the deadlines were not already ridiculous before, but this really takes the cake.

*sigh*

There goes another weekend...

Worse, my boss is trying to stiff me again before I leave. Saying that under labour laws annual leave is not an entitlement, and that I'm not entitled to clear my leave nor to be compensated for not being allowed to do so. And when I showed her what the labour laws really say, she said that she's dissapointed in me because I actually went and checked up on it.

I mean, c'mon, seriously! Haven't you guys stiffed me enough already?

On another note, met up with PJ and some of the other MASIG people again... finally! :p

Oh, and did I tell you that Firebird rocks? Oh, and Thunderbird is awesome as well.

So long Internet Explorer! So long Outlook Express! I've got a new love in my life now!

I've got a song in my heart...

And a spring to my step.

Quake in fear, Redmond...

For the Firebird has arrived!

Well, kind of. The latest milestone build was 0.6.1, and it's still got some bugs and some unfinished features. But man, even at this stage of development, it's already very impressive. When it reaches the release stage, I'm willing to bet it's gonna blow IE out of the water.

My favourite feature? No more whack-a-mole!

So go on, love yourself a little: Go download this nifty application. It'll be the best thing you've ever done for your PC (and for yourself). ;)

Thanks for ruining my mood for the whole day...

Bastard.

I feel cheated.

For two weeks I've been trying to get a glimpse of Mars, but no dice. The weather's been so cloudy and smoky that I can't even see the moon! Even on the day that Mars was supposed to be nearest! And then a coupla days ago, I can finally see the moon. But guess what? That's right, no Mars to be seen.

This sucks.

What?! Not another one...!

Micro$oft just announced yet ANOTHER security flaw in Windows.

At the rate this is going, I'm seriously thinking of downgrading my home PC to Windows 98 SE... Or better yet, upgrading to linux.

'Course, I'll miss the games that I can play on Windows. And also the fact that linux doesn't have a decent port of QuickTime player, and considering that most trailers are in .mov format, this is quite a drag. (If anybody reading this knows of a decent linux app that plays .mov files, lemme know here. Cheers.).

Anyhoo, that's what you have dual-booting for, right? I've been telling myself that I'm gonna setup my PC for linux-readiness, but until now, I still haven't done so. Mostly because there still isn't a really easy way to do Windows-based things on a linux machine, even if you have a dual-boot system. The best, of course, is still rebooting.

Another peeve I have is that there's no package out there that allows you to write to your other OS's partition. Reading is fine (with explore2fs for reading my linux partition from windows and kernel-ntfs for windows from linux), but I still haven't found one that supports writing yet, even in root mode. Even though I did an smbmount with rw permissions and the proper mask set. Again, if anybody knows of something that does this (or if someone knows how to do it right so that it'll write as well, lemme know here. Thanks. :)).

And last, but not least, I still dunno how to get non-latin characters (read: chinese/jap/etc. characters) to display properly. Nor how to get non-latin input on linux. Which is why I still need to switch back to Windows at work now and again to do some work using Asian fonts.

Don't get me wrong, though. Despite all these things, I love using linux. It's fast and stable, which is more than what I can say for certain other OSs. :P

Anyhoo, until I've figured out how to do all these things without going back to Windows, I'll still keep using dual-boot.

Long live dual-boot! (What'll us on-the-fence-ers do without it? ;))

*ouch*

Ow... Brain... leaking... out... through... nose....

X|

30 July 2003

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday to me.

Well, someone should care...

Vivid dreams

Have you ever had a dream so real, that it stays with you for your whole life? The kind of dream that you can recall anytime you want, recalling every single detail, every single word, every single sensation, every single emotion? All the peoples, places & events?

* There was actually more here, but my connection died as I was posting it. I can't remember what I typed anymore, and it's probably best to leave it at that.

It has begun...

Well, so Shrub ("little Bush", geddit?) has finally gone loco on Iraq.

So much for the efforts that a lot of people has made (NUS for Peace, Masturbate for Peace) to prevent it from happening.

Oh, well...

"May God have mercy on us all."
-- JFK, and many other US Presidents upon announcing that the US is going to war.

Kiss Me, I'm Irish!

You are a Dubliner.


What's your Inner European?
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Random Thoughts

man... you know, you realize something when you're still at work after most everybody has left and you have a FREE ticket to a party for that day.

a li'l background:

anyway, the story is, i was with my brother last sunday in orchard
we were walking towards heeren for dinner after visiting a relative at mt. elizabeth's hospital.

you know how they always have this open area for promotions and events and stuff next to heeren?
these people were doing it there, and i got accosted by the emcee :P
long story short, i got "coerced" into participating in a game (blow a baloon and see whose pop first), lost, but got a free ticket anyway :P

The Verdict (Continued)

No late nights.

No watching movies until 6.00 a.m.

The only good thing is that you have a steady source of income.

No sitting in cafes sipping on a nice cuppa and enjoying the view.

No...