Mitsubishi Lancer Restoration

Finally after 3 years, my vintage car restoration has been completed. However, the car is still in the workshop to fix a broken door window which I broke trying to open the door which locks got stuck last week. The restoration could have been completed sooner had I the funds to do so. However, I think I'm pretty satisfied with the way it is now.

My review about P1 Wimax

Kelvin my neighbor who stays 3 floors down from my apartment called me up this evening and asked me to meet him at the lift lobby cos he was going to pass me the new P1 modem to try out in my unit. The P1 coverage map shows that 1/3 of my apartment block is within their coverage area and so happened, my unit is slightly out of the coverage area. Block B which is right next to our block is totally out of the coverage area range. I wonder why they plan their capacity in such a way. This apartment has over 550 units and most of the residents here are young working adults and families which I believe can potentially become Packetone’s long term customers but yet so many months after their launch, nothing is being done about the coverage for the whole apartment complex. Furthermore, my apartment is located within the inner KL city limits, which is 10km radius of KLCC.

When I got the package, the first thing that struck me was the product itself. It’s matt black finish and compact size is really compelling. As compared to Maxis broadband’s ZTE modem which I signed up for 2 years ago, this modem has much more appeal! Furthermore the blue neon indicator lights is really cool. It reminds me of the new Hyundai Elantra speedometer. Their P1 logo right in the middle of the modem body on one side also lights up when you turn on the unit. I couldn’t locate any on/off buttons on the set though. The whole product design is actually quite simple, and it reminds me of a mini ionizer!

Basically the indicators are simple to understand. Just picture a traffic light. Red, amber and green light. Red being the worst coverage, amber is so-so coverage and green is excellent coverage. When the ‘traffic lights’ are blinking it means there is no or limited connectivity and when it stops blinking it means there is signal strength.

Unlike the ZTE modem, this unit doesn’t have a slot for you to insert your 3g simcard as it runs on wimax. This evening when I got the package, plugged it into my notebook and ran the speedtest available at http://speed.p1.com.my the first reading I got was 266 for DL speed and 100 for UL speed. I ran a second test right after and got 400+ for DL speed and the same UL speed. If you are paying RM49 for the most basic package, I think this speeds are quite reasonable to accept. However I’m not very clear about the fair usage policy. I need to go to P1 to get further explanation about this. 5GB limit for home user sounds a little bit to little. I wonder if I use it for normal surfing, chatting with my friends, updating my facebook page etc would 5GB be enough? Would they cut me off after I have used 5GB? Is 5GB of usage per day or per month? So many questions, so little answers!

Now it’s 11:30pm, the red light has been blinking for the past half an hour and I couldn’t access any of my websites, it alternates between red, amber and even a few seconds of green every minute. Right now only it has kinda settled down a little. I wonder if we will get that every time we attempt to use it. My friend told me that I can hook up a wireless router to it and use it wirelessly without having to plug the thing into my notebook and be stuck in one place. I definitely gotta find out more about that.

Finally, this is a great product if you know where to place the modem to get the best coverage. I live on the 11th floor of an apartment complex which has another 5 storey of car park. That makes it 17 storeys high but I still don’t face the problem I previously faced when I was using Maxis broadband, which when I called their customer service hotline was told I need to be 5th floor and below to get the best results, what about people living on the 30th floor of their condo? Does this mean that I am not a valuable broadband user?

I still have my slight dissatisfaction about not being able get full coverage inside my apartment but so far it has been quite stable. Since I am only going to get to use this modem for 1 day, I wouldn’t know what the long term service quality is going to be like unless I sign up for a package myself.

Transformers 2 premier thanks to DHL Express

Why thanks to DHL Express, we managed to catch Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen at GSC Mid Valley in a sort of exclusive i-booked-the-whole-cineplex kinda way. This is something I must say is pretty awesome! Incidentally it coincided with the opening premier of this much anticipated movie.

To tell you the truth, I was excited all morning through to evening about watching it today, before anyone else. I have been anticipating the movie since its trailer started screening a couple of months back and the funny thing was it was heavily advertised by Energizer which gave out discount coupons for battery purchases. The surprising thing was, my girlfriend was even more excited about the whole thing! (And I thought I was a great big Transformers fan…) I reckon that made 2 of us.

DHL Express rented out 2-3 cineplexes for their clients I reckon as a thank you for your business gesture. Somebody’s somebody couldn’t make it at the last minute and here we were with 2 free tix for the movie.

However, getting to mid valley itself was almost a high drama plot. Lydia called me at about 5pm and told me bout the free tickets so I said I’d fetch her at 6:30 from work around Times Square and we’d drive to Mid Valley to get the tickets before 7:45 from one of the Managers at DHL at GSC.

At 6pm it started to rain cats and dogs. On a clear day I could see the entire KL skyline from my apartment window right over to the mont kiara hills and slightly beyond. North I get a good view of Genting Highlands right up to the red ‘GH’ logo on top of the hotel. At 6, I couldn’t even see the government clinic located right below my block! In fact, I couldn’t even see 2cm beyond my window. That was how bad the storm was. I notice we seem to get a lot of that these days. Is this wat they call mother nature’s fury for screwing up her beautiful planet?

I drove out from my apartment to horrible traffic jams everywhere, caused by flash floods (everywhere!) The road which usually never retains any water looked like lake Toba! The storm drain which is normally below normal levels were bursting at its seems and if it rained another few hours I reckon it was going to spill over. It was going at a rate that would damage the cops speed cam. That was how bad it was. Not to mention all the stalled vehicles on the roadside unable to start their engines cos their exhaust intake had too much to drink.

Anyways, after all the drama, we managed to reach Mid Valley in time to grab the tickets only to be told at 7:30 that the movie starts at 9:30. Try to beat that! Thank god the tix were free.

The movie was great! I’m not gonna give away any details here that’s for sure. Go catch it yourself! One thing I can say is, it was freaking 2.5 hours! We had a big bag of popcorn, big cup of coke, baloney breath sweaty corporate executive next to me who laughs out loud everytime the transformers move their bodyparts and ensures the whole Cineplex knows he is amused, fidgety senior citizen who yawns out loud next to Lydia. The rest of the experience was pretty normal. It ended at 12:10am!!!

One thing I wanna comment bout the movie was, there were too much foul language from the bots. Are you sure this is a U rated movie? If I had kids, I wouldn’t bring them to watch, dude! What’s up with that Mr. Bay? As if we don’t have enough foul mouth kids running around swearing at anything that walks. The movie reminded me a lot of Nicky Cage’s National Treasure 2. Watch it, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Another thing about the movie was, the fighting scenes are really fast! Too fast for my Pentium 1 brain to process. I reckon if I were watching a pirated copy, my notebook might just fry trying to accelerate the graphics from the fighting scenes. No wonder Mr. Senior citizen next to Lydia was so fidgety. He’s probably still trying to figure out why he found himself in GSC in the first place. Maybe Mrs. Senior Citizen dragged him there. She fell asleep 2 seconds after the movie started and didn’t wake up till the end. It must have been the noisiest 2.5 hour sleep she ever experienced in her life. Not to mention her husband yawning out loud every 25 seconds. I should have reached over and offered him some popcorn!

Well, that concludes my little movie adventure for today. I’m not much of a movie buff, the last movie we caught at the plex was Vin Diesel’s FnF4 but experiences like this really gives us stuff to talk about in the days to come. Great movie, great storyline, great action, a 7/10 from my scoreboard. I’m definitely gonna watch it again.

Birdie fall from a tree

Tell you guys something weird that happened to me on friday 29 May 2009. That morning I went to my gf's place as usual to fetch her to work by motorbike, cos KL traffic in the morning, u know how its like lah. So here we were leaving her residential estate when suddenly out of nowhere I felt someone hit my chest real hard. I wasn't wearing my riding jacket at that time so it hurt real badly. it was like someone punching my ribs in and the impact is really strong.

It all happened really fast, so riding at 40-50km/h my first reaction was to avoid touching whatever object that fell on my chest and let the damned thing fall to the road. I stopped the bike after about 1 meter from the object cos I was stunned bout what happened. And the pain!

I turned my bike around to the spot where the object fell down on the road after hitting me and saw a little bird. I can't say it's a baby cos its wings and feathers have all been developed, only not fully developed. I think i'd stick to the term 'juvenile bird'. haha...cos thats what it seems to look like.

The bird was panting like someone who just got off a treadmill with its eyes half open. Can u imagine? I dunno what to make of it, confusion? shock? i didn't really know what to do bout the bird lying there then. what u supposed i was supposed to do? give it 'kiss of life' like the park ranger and the penguin in madagascar 2? remembering h4n1, i wouldn't even dare lay a finger on it. it might have da flu!

by that time my gf was reminding me how late she was for work so i left the poor fella there to hyperventilate. or whatever he/she was doing.

well the sad part bout this story was, at night when i passed that way again, the juvy bird, together with his/her sibling has now been reduced to a pancake or roadkill that needed to be scrapped off the tarmac. well it's a pity...

I guess what happened was the birds were attacked in their nest by other birds or predators. u know how it's like in the animal kingdom. eat or be eaten. and da poor fella didn't even learn how to fly yet.

all the while i was thinking to myself, how da heck does a bird fall out of a tree???

David Geh's Profile

More on life...

What possibly could be the remedy of a lifetime of mistakes and bad judgments calls? Envy of others is the only words that comes to my mind whenever I think of my peers who started out at the same time with me on a level playing field whom today can lay claim to being ‘somebody’ either in a certain social circle, profession, achievement or circumstances. This feeling of envy of course is only directed towards those who have achieved rather outstanding outcomes in the same amount of time I took to become who I am, or who I am not, today.

Don’t get me wrong. I am extremely proud of them. The feeling of pride only a friend can have for another whenever he or she achieves a certain outstanding milestone in their lives. I can consider myself privileged to have crossed paths with some of the great individuals of my time. From outstanding athletes to brilliant academicians, well groomed and learned professionals to individuals whom have successfully raised beautiful children whom will one day inherit this beautiful world we live in.

As I look back, I could find many things that I would have set the record straight about given a chance to go back in time. However I also believe that, the choices which I had made at one point or another in my life had lead me to where I am today and to get to where I want to be tomorrow, I have to make choices today which will affect a favorable outcome. I don’t know if there is such a thing as too little too late or being too old to do something to become successful.

Whenever I get that thought, my mind will immediately do an auto search of my mind’s archives to retrieve the story of Colonel Sanders which at either 60 or 70, who got 1000 doors slammed in his face in the process of selling the rights to use his KFC chicken recipe, didn’t give up and became a screaming success after the 1001st client said yes and believed in him.

I remember being in a client’s office 9 years ago seeing a poster I never would forget. It said in bold letters ‘THE 3 SECRETS TO SUCCESS!’ 1.Think Big! 2.Work Hard! 3.Never give up! How many times have you heard of that before? If you’re like me, hearing it for the first time, I’m sure it’s definitely advice worth its weight in gold. However, 9 years down the road, I still don’t reckon I have achieved success yet.

However, have I ever considered what I consider as success? What benchmark or acid test do I apply to say my situation is a lost cause? I reckon I have set a very high standard for myself to achieve, that’s why even after numerous successes in life, I still find that I really am lacking something. But what is it?

Let’s do an inventory check, a nice apartment with a 360 degree view of the city, a car, high education with another kick ass degree on the way, a loving partner, parents and siblings. For the ordinary person, I reckon it can be more than anybody can ever ask for. In fact, if I were to compare myself to the average Malaysian, income wise earning 3k and less per month, which I’m sure represents about 80% of the entire workforce in Malaysia, I’m way better off. This would put me in the top 20% of the workforce. Now I’m not talking about the population in general. I think if I were to rank myself against the general population, the calculation would probably be like this: assuming KL population is 4 million, which is 15% of the entire 26 million people in Malaysia. Assuming I put myself in the top 25%, I would be in the top 5% of the Malaysian population earning a good living and living a good life. I wonder if I’d achieve that kind of success living in another country, like in Singapore or Australia. Although these places are excellent to live in and promise great job opportunities and quality of life, I’m not sure I will be able to be in the top 5% of the population there. In today’s world, where you rank is all that matters. To achieve success, it’s paramount that you know where you stand and implement changes your circumstances and make better decisions to get to where you want to go to. Clarity is power!

Ok this is part 2. To tell you the truth I took so long to complete this blog entry, I kinda lost my train of thought somewhere along the way. In the past 24 hours I did take the time to ponder about what I wrote here last night and it got me thinking. Am I really there yet? As in the top 5% of the entire population in Malaysia. I wonder what kind of benchmarks I would use to gauge that. Or maybe I’m not? I could well be swimming in the bottom 95% of the gene pool and quite contented with it.

Then I came to this conclusion. Life could be simple it could be complex. So far I have chosen the it to be complex, which is good from where I am, now. And then what? Is running a race your whole life and still running past 50 great? I know I wouldn’t wanna be running a race my whole life and wake up 20 years later telling myself, u know what? Maybe I shouldn’t be running like this after all.

It’s all about the choices we make and the actions we take. We have been conditioned from young that there is a fine line between right and wrong, so, when we do stuff right we get rewarded and when we do stuff wrong, we get punished. So we go about our lives trying our darnest not to fail or do the wrong thing. Which, in the end, could end up wrong as well. Perhaps its our fear of failure that lead us to failure in the end. What say you?

The long way home...

When you can’t seem to find what you want to in a certain place no matte how hard u look for it, is the thing you are looking for misplaced or are you looking in all the wrong places?

That is what I have been asking myself for the past 9 months since I left the cruise company after finding out they were going to pack up and leave for another country.

I keep asking myself where I went wrong. I keep improving my methods, my techniques and my game plan but it seems like the more hope I bank on, the more disappointed I get. Am I kidding myself?

This town didn’t work for me before. That’s why I left in 2002. What made me think that I could make it work this time around? Was it because I have been away for a while and now I’m back and wiser? Well right now it seems like the wiser I get, the worst my situation gets in tandem.

No wonder my best buddy left. It was perhaps the best decision he made in his life. Look at where he is now, a bright future ahead of him. It didn’t matter where it took him, even to a god forsaken place. My gal was right. I’m too choosy! But you would too if you were me. We need to set a certain standard for ourselves in this world right? It’s all about wanting the best for ourselves. Isn’t that what our parents wanted for us while we were growing up? But look where all that brought me? Nothing but one frustration after another.

Like everyone else, I don’t know who I should start blaming next. The government? The global economic meltdown? Paranoid companies? This day and age? Religion? I think I’m all over spewing my unhappiness over all of the above. Its about time I get a mirror and take a long hard look at who I really am and who I really want to be and what I really want to do. But… do I really have the luxury of that? Do we all? My dad used to tell me that we rarely get to do the things or become who we really want to be in this lifetime. Life is all about grabbing whatever we can get our hands on and making the best out of every moment we can.

Which brings me to another question… Have I been taking all the wrong advices? Have I been following all the wrong principles?

What would I do if I know that I couldn’t fail? I’ve read that sentence somewhere in the tons of books I own and tons more in the libraries I go to frequently. What would I do? Is this a trick question? Do I have to delve deep inside my soul to find the answer to that or is it something superficial which escaped my eyes? I don’t know if there is more to this life than what have been served to me thus far or there is a more simple answer to all the worries and suffering of everyday human life.

I mean, life should be simple, right? I mean, it really could be. We humans take something as simple as life and complicate and mess it up so badly that in the end we don’t even know what it is all about anymore. Its like we thrive on chaos, complication and uncertainty.

This is exactly what I am going through right now. If I didn’t put my hopes up too high, aim for the moon, expect more from myself and complicate the shit out of my simple existence, I wouldn’t be in such a predicament I am currently in. If everyone is a big shot doesn’t mean I have to be one too right? I could be a Mr. Nobody and still be happy and contented. I dunno why I can’t bring myself to accept that for a fact.

But, it isn’t such a bad thing after all. Look at what I have achieved in this life so far. It far exceeds even my own expectation in such a short period of time. If it’s that good, then what do I still want? What else is lacking in my life? Why can’t I accept it for what it is now? I keep thinking in terms of how it could be like, what it is like when its done. The end justifying the means. I’ve been so obsessed with the end result, I can confidently say that, I’m not sure what I had expected the end result to look like. For all I know, I have already achieved that result!

In all the frenzy of running the rat race, always thinking in terms of tomorrow and what if, I have kinda lost touch with some of the things which exists in the present. I’m sure I have. I find myself doing less and less of the enjoyable things I used to engage in before I started worrying about the future and how to get there. It’s true! I don’t hang out with my friends like I used to. Even if I do, I seldom reminisce about the past with them the way I used to do before. What we talk about is always about whats ahead and what we’d like to be or like to have or what will be. What a drag! I used to enjoy the simple things in life.

I think my problem is, I do more of the planning for life but less of the living of life. Well I’m glad. I’m glad I finally see what I have been denying myself of seeing. I fully understand it now. Live every moment as if it was your last. Live as if you’re gonna die tomorrow. Life is simple, why complicate it? But where should I start? When is a good time to start living my life? When should I live like I am dying? When should I love like I never loved before? When should I start planning my life and start living my life? Today? Tomorrow? Right now?

I have made a decision not to worry so much. Not to fear so much and start to live my life for the present. Yesterday is in the past. Tomorrow is too far away, today a gift, a gift from the Almighty, I think that’s why it’s called the present.