no way out

i don't know how to do an album review, but i'm currently listening to the new foo fighters album - in your honor. it's a 2-disc set of 10 songs each. the first cd containing fast tempo, hard rock numbers that could make sure i'm awake while driving to work in the morning.. check out no way back and best of you. the second cd contains slower, ballady numbers.. especially virginia moon (or was it cold day in the sun?!). anyways, i like it. and it's recommended that you check 'em out too. had an offsite group lunch and staff meeting at johnny carino's, an italian restaurant. had to pay for our own lunch *sigh* but at least the food was excellent. i'm seriously considering taking cooking lessons.. culinary art. that would probably widen my cooking repertoire beyond fried eggs and chicken kurma. with my newly acquired skills, i could perhaps open up a malay-themed restaurant in new york city or somewhere classy like that. hungry now. take care k! ps: i believe i could smell again, yeay!

in your honor

i think i really need to see a doctor about the cold. it's been persistent and it's bugging me enough now. and i miss mom's cooking. another vacation would be great! but that's not gonna happen anytime soon. i bought a wireless bluetooth headset that cost me a limb. felt like a spaceman wearing the headset. it's nothing to shout about of course, but i feel cool and special when i have it on. the wrx needs servicing and i haven't set an appointment yet with the mechanics. probably gonna do that tomorrow. united won against benfica.. that'll show 'em critics who have been writing my team off. we'll win the champions' league again this year! and i need to shave too. kinda looking like a grizzly bear now. good or bad? dunno. just thought it be interesting to know what your thoughts are. i think i'm gonna go home and sleep. take care.. stay safe ya!

big bang baby

hola! hope everyone's in excellent health and in good company. i have been sick (still) since i got back to colorado. the cold has been persistent. for the past couple of weeks, i've been eating and drinking with no sense of taste whatsoever. kinda weird still that i haven't lost any appetite (hmm?!). which is good.. methinks. anyways, i've promised a certain someone to go see the doctor on tuesday (standard mountain time) if i don't feel better. feeling better is a state of mind. alrighty then.. to recap my week, i'm gonna list everything down in no alphabetical and/or significance order;

1. got back to denver on sunday, 09/18/05 at 3pm; my roomie and his gf picked me up at the airport; was expecting he'd come with the wrx, but he turned out with the nissan.. ah well
2. at which we went straight to westminster for a 4pm indoor soccer match (it was actually at 5pm and we lost).. i figured i might as well tire myself now, go home for supper, shower, and tido, and try not to wake up at midnight and can't sleep anymore, went to bed around 10pm
3. i did wake up.. three times, at 12.30am, 2am, and 4am.. with the latter causing me to stay awake till the following night; the cold's killing me.. and the gas price! (i filled up the wrx for $3.3/gallon, which brought the total up to $43.. and i received a shell hat for that.. some PR work there haha!!)
4. went to work at the normal hour on monday; met my new boss and was pleasantly surprised to learn that i've got a promotion! alhamdulillah.. i'm now a staff engineer, which keeps me on track on my long-term plan of dominating the world (muahahahaaa!!).. the medium-term plan was to become a vice-president in 6-year's time ( i wonder how much sucking up i have to do now..). anyways, my official title now - electrical design staff engineer
5. apart from #4, i also met with my new program director on my first day back.. it's truly an honor for someone so insignificant to be told that he/she has been handpicked to a major role, such as a program manager.. i hope to see this assignment through til the end with success (and be rewarded with an insanely big bonus check at the end of it); got three projects to complete right away (do'h!), and daily meetings at 8.30am too (do'h! do'h!)
6. played two games of indoor soccer in boulder.. the first one at 6pm (lost), which is ok because i've just finished work, but the second one at 11pm (won), which would proved be a challenge for me to recover from the jetlagged
7. tuesday i woke up late (8.37am) with a throbbing headache and a sore throat, and after finally falling asleep around 2am previously; called my bosses and got the day off, slept til 3pm (bad move); forced myself to wake up and got my car re-insured for $1200 (last insurance expired over a month ago); met tyiara in golden and we had dinner in boulder
8. wednesday back at work; started working on the new job.. one of the more interesting challenges is to get people to work for you.. takes a lot of man-management and respect; one of my main task is to take pieces of work done by many different groups and make sense of it all on a higher level view; had to draft a plan for one of the project in preparation for a core-team meeting on thursday.. it was an especially hard thing to do since i still haven't had a good grasp of what i'm suppose to chase down, but i managed; watched 'lord of war'.. enjoyed it amidst the bluriness of jetlag and flu
9. thursday morning, finally saw leslie at starbucks.. she didn't believe i was away on a business trip 'that long' (ahh well); more of the same as #8; got more questions from the core-team about my presentation, but all in good intentions; also meant that i have a lot more work to do; indoor soccer again in boulder (drew); felt tired and miserable and need another vacation; signed up for a tennis tournament which starts on saturday.. one of the non-usta sanction tournaments, organised by asiaxpress.com (as always, i'll practice when the tournament starts)
10. friday, more relaxed; chased down a few more action items on my list, which is growing at an alarming rate; had korean lunch after the friday prayer; work some more and headed to borders after work.. what's that you say? you've never known someone spending his friday nights at borders before? well, now you have, baby!; stayed up til 2am, finished watching 'cold mountain' on tv.. that proved to be a bummer move (again) and i knew i wouldn't do much at the tennis tournament
11. saturday, big day.. woke up at 6am and commenced my sleep til 8am; got to the utah park tennis complex in aurora at exactly 9.30am, just in time for registration; it was chilly and cloudy and there were a lot of cute asian young ladies around, enough to warm the heart; saw the draw and wasn't particularly nervous, more curious because i don't know how the organizers put together the brackets, with players ranging from the 3.5-level to 4.5-level; called up to play this chinese dude and hammered him 9-0 (we played a 9-game pro-set), poor fella, didn't have a clue of what hit him; then waited for nearly 2 hours and almost fell asleep before got called up to play my second round match, against the #2 seeded player
12. started well enough.. i held my serve, and had a 40-15 advantage on his serve.. then everything went wrong and fast.. by the time i knew it, i was facing match-point.. no fairytale ending here.. simply put, i got hammered myself. i could take heart at the way i played, which was very competitive, but the fact of the matter was i lost 9-1. the more the reason to come back next year.. and it's not just gonna be because of those cute vietnamese girls; had a late lunch with a colleague, randy, who also played but lost earlier in the first-round, at pho75; bought some chicken and frozen paratha from the pakistani store in denver; then met up with rick and nadya (the 6-pair-shoe girl) there and passed them their stuff and chatted for a bit; back to longmont for a party at bl's, met the longmont malaysian gang plus some new friends from singapore and brought adeline and yikhwa along.. stayed til late for more food and chor-tai-tee til 1pm
13. sunday, slept in til 10am; outdoor soccer game in boulder at 11am; got an-almost hero's reception for no particular reason, happy to see friends again nonetheless; lost the game 2-0, after a good fight.. we had our chances, ie. missed an open goal, missed a one-on-one, and hit the post once; the other team could've scored more too but only for our courageous stand-in goalie, shaun (hey, want that job full-time?); went home and rested til 6pm.. another indoor soccer game in westminster (at 7pm). won that game rather convincingly after trailing 0-2 and now we have a chance to finish 3rd.. not bad with this being our first season in the A-league!; played another game afterwards, in goal.. the team that i was standing in for were perhaps impressed with my goal-keeping skills that they asked me to join them for their wednesday game.. i dunno yet.. i'm feeling kinda tired now..

okeh-kokeh.. if you have any questions, leave me a comment ok! take care now :)

knockin' on heaven's door

i'm writing this from the cozy surroundings of a cyber cafe close to raffles the plaza in singapore, capitol building somewhere. i just checked in for the night, from kl. insyaAllah i'll be flying off to the states early tomorrow morning (yeay... gulp!). my current adventure to the far east is fast drawing to a close. in a sense, it's really hard to leave behind the people (family and friends), especially, and the everyday-routine that you've become accustomed to when you've spent enough time (and been enjoying yourself like nobody's business) in a particular environment. i've always enjoyed my trips to singapore, both for work (it's true, it's true) and pleasure. and i do hope i'll get more chances to come over. in spite of not having achieved the most important task that i came back to do (some people probably have an idea of what i'm talking about), it's been one heck of a trip. met a lot more people than i wanted to (not that's a bad thing, mind you), been to dear friends' wedding (congrats again emirul and neili), met an almost-old-flame from my khir johari days, been to those mini gatherings/reunions that my balik pulau buddies put together, met new, awesome friends in singapore (you know who you are!), heavenly delicacies as always, got myself a godson (babies are absolutely amazing, especially one aqil zarfan), got some work done obviously (i hope), got talking to a couple of pretty and sweet MAS flight attendants (haha!! eat your hearts out!), played tennis well, my mom says i'm fat (can you believe it?!), lost my handphone at almost the end of my trip (moral: don't get pissed off senseless with your dad and leave your handphone lying around), got a new handphone, bought a Lions' rugby jersey (even though they got hammered senseless by the all-blacks), got to sit in an SL 55 AMG merc (i have to get one of these machines.. i'll put this down on my 6-year-vice-president-of-asia-pacific plan), etc. etc. i'll probably list down a bunch more later. all in all, it's been a fun trip this time. definitely physical-draining with an emotional roller-coster - probably this is what we call a joyride. and i won't change a thing if i were to do this all over again. the greatest regrets are perhaps not having the chance to go visit my brother in sabah and my sister in the uk. and i didn't get the bird's nest too. okeh.. i don't know what else to write here. i think there's an epl match going on right now. and i do need to get some rest for tomorrow's 'gruelling' trip (20 hours of 'nganga' and 'buat bodo' in the flight). now, having contributing nothing significant to the national economy for the last two weeks while actually doing nothing back home, i guess i'm ready to get back to work. new challenges beckon for the brave! (well, like i have any other choices now issit*sigh*). do take care everybody.. ciao!

pour some sugar on me

contrary to popular belief, i do update my blog on my off-days... albeit very, very slowly. hey, you can't blame a guy for enjoying some time 'doing nothing', slacking off literally. especially when i believe that i deserve some time off. from where i'm standing (or sitting, or lying, depending on what time of the day we're talking about), everything seems peachy. finally got to follow up with what's going on in new orleans and japan, these places been severely hit by various hurricanes (katrina and nabi ('butterfly' in korean)) and typhoon in taiwan (didn't get the name of the typhoon there), and the us open on tv. all of these in between non-stop eating and visiting relatives. to those wanting pictures will have to wait.. sowwy. ok, running out of ideas now. i'll try update this again tomorrow. till then, signing off from kota bharu.. do take care ya! ciao!