You know, one of the good things I thought I would have when I came back home was a more laid back life. But as it is almost nearing the 3 month mark since I’ve been back I’ve learned that that is not true. Life is what we make it be it being busy with work, errands, responsibilities, commitments, etc. Just remember that in the busyness there is can be no hurriedness especially when seeking the Lord. Then it comes down to discipline which I lack. But day by day I hope to be more like Him. Less of me, more of Him. Amen

Contemplating of writing this post for quite a long time actually. Well I don’t think I was a talkative person. Growing up in an International School during my primary school days where everybody spoke the same language was a good experience I guess but after that and continuing until this day I don’t really think was learnt how to communicate. When I went to secondary school (aka high school in some places) there was 1 side of the class that would talk among themselves in Malay and some that would talk among themselves in Chinese. Being a ‘banana’ (yellow on the outside and white on the inside, i.e. being Chinese but speaks only English) that I am as well as struggling with the Malay language I had to deal with few people conversing in English as it was probably their 2nd language. So in the process of communication where one would learn from how others communicate, I was severely handicapped. So through secondary school all the way until before I started University I lived a life where I could not effective learn how to communicate with others. I guess all this comes out when sometimes you meet people that you want to communicate with but somehow you just can’t seem to find the words to say or how to relate. Matters become worse when the other party’s interests and mine seem to have very little / nothing in common. It’s one of those times when you’re in the crowd and yet you feel so much more alone. But then again I would always like to think of myself as being the observer. Looking at how things are turning out around and not wanting to be bothered. Kind of not wanting to be noticed or possibly being afraid of being noticed and not knowing how to react, what to do or what to say even. Guess it’s just something to deal with and something to learn.

P.S. Let me congratulate my brother on his recent ‘appearance’ in the local papers. Congrats bro!

P.P.S. I know that practically most of the people who I know are smart in their own way. I guess I’m jealous because I know I’m not the kind of smart that they are but I will admit I’m hardworking. I guess it’s all about being recognized. Everybody wants to be known by others. Part of me wants to be while the other part shys away from any social activity. Leave me be with my computer and I’ll be a happy camper. Now back to learning Palm Programming….

THAT was annoying. A few days ago I tried out Kubuntu Edgy the new version of the OS and it was pretty nice until I tried to watch some podcast/netcasts/whatever-you-want-to-call-it I downloaded. It was throwing up an error. So I thought it was due to the new OS version and since I couldn’t find any posts related to it I decided to downgrade the OS. To cut the story short the downgrade didn’t work and so I just backed up and reinstalled the OS. After that I tried to play the files again and I still couldn’t, so I thought I didn’t download the proper codecs so configured them all up and it still didn’t work. So I tried to download the file again and it worked! GAAAAAHHHHHH Downloader for X which I used for d4x screwed me up ='( So now its just ‘wasting’ life away reconfiguring my system.

And now on about life and such. I’m very sure I don’t like change because I still haven’t adjusted back to Brunei life and surprisingly to me no matter how slow life is I still find myself short of time to do the stuff I want =( I guess it’s just a learning process of how to live life when the time I have is not in my hands…

On a brigther note I had a car treasure hunt last Sunday. It was fun but tiring driving around looking for clues and treasures =p At the end of the day was tired and sleepy the ‘perfect’ combination to get me all cranky which I still kind of am. Need more sleep… Need more rest…

The resume sending. First 2 went out this morning and a slew more to come. Went to Serasa beach yesterday and thank God that my car didn’t get wedged in the sand, when it almost did… twice. From this day forth I will refuse to drive to the beach. Give me tarred roads not sand. I don’t like beaches. Beaches don’t like me? Considering the last time I went to the beach my car did get stuck in sand. On 1 of the days in Chinese New Year none the less. Anyway I’m off. Bringing mom to see the doctor…
*Goes off to start the car engine*

I have been looking for a pair of glasses that have the right shade of green for quite some time. And needless to say, if you are smart enough from the title of this post, that I could not find a pair so I took matters into my own hands with a nice lovely can of spray paint. Spray painted my old pair of glasses which previously had a gold frame and viola!

Practically the perfect shade of green I was looking for! Some slight inconsitencies with the paint but doesn’t really matter to me. All I know is that I have a lovely pair of specs waiting to be used after the smell of spray paint fades away. The lenses I have for these pair of specs seem to have different degrees with my current pair so may get new lenses. And if that is the case, I may spray the current old lenses with the spray paint as well as the paint is actually pretty thin and is translucent-like so perhaps I could get green tinted lenses as well =p

On a side note I was dripping blood a few minutes ago when my left foot was standing on the instrument below and my right foot happened to be in front of it and wanting to move backwards.

Pretty bad blood leakage if I do say so myself and that’s coming from a person who crashed on his bike going down a slope and ending up having to have stitches in my chin. I don’t think I’ve seen worse blood leakage from any other injury I’ve had.

Anyway it’s time to sleep… soon. I guess. Windows data backup complete, format will come this weekend. And probably I’ll boot back in Linux and hopefully not turn back. Got used to Windows again since I had to play Warcraft 3, I don’t have any free space on my Linux partition to play around so after the format hopefully will get some games running in Linux =D

Courtesy of this bandwidth speed test.

51.2 kilobits per second
Communications 51.2 kilobits per second
Storage 6.3 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 2.7 minutes
Subjective rating Slow

Problematic broadband connections since Saturday night. I was unable to surf at all from Saturday night until late Sunday afternoon. And since then the bandwidth seems to have dialup speeds or worse. Welcome to Brunei’s ISP woes.

Anyway starting to help mom out a bit. Just a bit so nothing much to say aside from being a driver. Got my dear’s old bluetooth enabled phone, the Philips Fisio 820, as her dad won a new phone in a lucky draw. So I was trying to use send AT commands to the phone and for some reason I can’t seem to send SMSs via the phone. It just keeps coming up with an error :S Tried with her new Sony Ericsson (SE) phone and it was kind of problematic as well. I can’t even use my Tungsten E2 to send an SMS using the loaded software with the Fisio. Strange… The SE phone didn’t have text mode which I think is being phased out so all that is left is PDU mode. Anyway should be getting a new phone soon hopefully, eyeing the Motorola L2 as it has bluetooth but no camera, just the way I like it but now I’m looking for a phone with bluetooth, no camera, external memory slot and costing around BND$300 =p I guess I can’t be pleased easily can I? =p I think I’ve seen phones that satisfy the 1st 3 attributes but then the cost factor comes in. Especially hesitant for the ‘unemployed’ like me.

Bye for now people. Going to be driver again….

Yeah I know I came back on Sunday but it’s been kind of a rush back here in a few ways but that should end soon. Honestly came back on Sunday and more or less stoned the rest of the day away. (delta change / delta time) was too high. Felt isolated. Everything I knew so well for the past 4 years (but especially for the past 1 year plus) all disappeared. Didn’t think I would get emotional about it but I guess I couldn’t help it like 45 minutes before flight. Photos available here and here. I guess it didn’t matter that my dear was out of the country when I came back =( It also didn’t help that when I got out of the airport it started raining and so I got a bit drenched while getting my stuff to the car. I was 8.8kg overweight so ended up paying S$53 for the excess baggage ($6 per kg) which isn’t that bad considering it’ll cost slightly cheaper to ship it but then I would have to worry about picking up the goods. This way it comes back with me straight away so it was good. A new chapter has started in my life back here in Brunei where I know God has called me to be in this season of my life. Now something that just popped up before me was should I work for my mom or not. Surprisingly it didn’t even come to my mind when I decided to come back home, I thought it was obvious. Well so I thought. It doesn’t help with people saying that there are IT companies looking for people. Well will pray about it. So I guess that makes the job searching people count to 4 in my cell (yes I still consider it my cell =p). At least I have some ideas in store and I guess time to do it as well =D

Monday I was also kind of lost of what to do. The friend I was supposed to go on an eating spree went to Malaysia for the day and dear dear was still in Malaysia. I don’t remember what I was doing honestly, but I guess I was moving on. Tuesday was the eating spree!!! Sugarbun, Ideal Cafe & Grill, Swensen’s, Satay and some Pizza Hut. To Denise they do have the 3 layered tea in Sugarbun now ;-) Ideal chicken and spagetti is always good to me =P Too bad my chicken didn’t have any skin =( Swensen’s was not on the itenerary but Tuesday was 1/2 price for the Giant Earthquake so how can I refuse? =p We also ordered a “Topless 5” made completely of sticky chewy chocolate!!! Satay was good especially since it’s like 4 sticks for $1 for chicken and beef. They even have weird meat choices like camel, rabbit, ostrich and a few more which I can’t remeber. On the table they had pictures of the meats they had which I found amusing especially that of the rabbit which looks too cute to eat to many. Still on the yet-to-eat-but-I’m-sure-as-heck-going-to-eat list is Jollibee, rojak, Gin Chew peanut buns and Youme black bean paos.

Today I’ve been fixing computers, well actually trying to find out why a computer wasn’t booting up. Ended up to be the power supply. Unluckily/Luckily I tried using the house desktop’s power supply to test to see if that was the problem. And viola! The computer finally booted up properly. The problem came back when I put that power supply (my beloved antec power supply) back into the house desktop. I attached it back and switched it on to check and I see smoke coming out of the CPU!!!! Quickly shutting it down then I found that the power cable for the floppy drive (yes there still is a floppy drive, mainly for my mom) was melted and smelling a ‘great’ smell of molten plastic. So ended up having to buy 2 power supplies.

Well I guess I better enjoy the days in Brunei as I will be living them for a while. To all those back in Singapore, take care and don’t miss me =p

Yup flight in 3 hours. Didn’t sleep at all. So I better be leaving soon. Reality still hasn’t set in. Who knows why.