Nothing Else Matters

Metallica as the Simpsons by silencedridicule at deviantART

Nothing Else Matters
by Metallica, from Metallica (1991), S&M (1999) [watch it on YouTube]

So close no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
But I know

Never cared for what they say
Never cared for games they play
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
And I know

So close no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
No, nothing else matters

A Metallica love song, dedicated to nobody and everybody. I was just listening to S&M while marking a quiz.

Progress

The university’s Internet connection is being upgraded to 106Mbps from 34Mbps currently – YAY! The upgrade work is scheduled to be completed by the first week of February, which is soon, so in less than two weeks I’ll be able to download, ehem, journal articles really fast.

On the other hand, the department has been without a printer for two weeks. The old printer is as good as dead. Its body, which I suppose was originally beige as was typical of computers and peripherals way back then, is now a very weathered stained yellow. Nobody asks if the thing is to be repaired; everybody’s decided that it’s dead. In a way, it is really a sad fate for something that has undoubtedly contributed a lot to be looked upon with such disdain now that it’s no longer working. But hey, it’s just another piece of office equipment, right?

There hasn’t been even one word about when a replacement will arrive, though, and mid-terms are looming! How hard is it to buy a stupid printer?

__________
NOTE TO SELF: Buy batteries for calculator and camera!

Over the Egg

I am having problem cooking eggs. I find myself hesitating, annoyingly, every time I am about to strike an egg to the edge of a frying pan or pot. Strike too hard, and the egg shell and content may fly all over the place and make a mess of the kitchen; or strike too light and the egg won’t break at all. That leaves me standing in the kitchen like an idiot holding an egg in one hand.

I better not be developing a phobia or some other sort of psychological condition. I can’t believe that I am hesitating on the right amount of force to use to break a stupid egg!

First Day of the Week

Does it matter whether Sunday or Monday is the first day of the week? One Miss Teapot wrote to The Star about her confusion over the matter when her son came home from school saying that Monday is the first day of the week.

I can’t remember exactly what I learned in primary school, but I remember clearly in high school Miss Sheila Rocky taught us “Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi…” in French class. Lundi is Monday in French. In Arabic class at university, however, Ustaz Fauzi Muda began counting the week with “Ahad” – Sunday. Confusing?

Personally, I’ve always considered Monday as the beginning of the week simply because school, and now work, begin on Monday, while Saturday and Sunday are weekend. Calendar and organizer applications like Google Calendar allow users to set Sunday or Monday, or even Saturday, as the beginning of the week. I left my Google Calendar setting at its default Sunday as the beginning of the week just because I don’t care or even notice either way.

A quick Google search on the question yields some interesting information. Sunday is not universally regarded as the first day of the week. Many European countries begin the week on Monday. Monday is also designated as the first day of the week by the International Standards Organization (ISO). I’m sure they have nothing against Judeo-Christian traditions.

In short, it really doesn't matter whether Sunday, Monday or any other day is the first day of the week as long as you know what day it is. So what’s with the storm in the teacup, Miss Teapot?

See:
Which is the First Day of the Week: Sunday or Monday?
Re: Is Sunday or Monday the first day of the week?

2-in-1 Special

While the ongoing WGA strike disrupts regular showing of US television series, it turns our attention to British television. Not that there aren’t good British shows out there – some are really awesome and copied by the Americans like The Office, albeit poorly – but we’re usually so saturated with US television and cinema. ITV recently launched a pair of new shows which I find quite interesting.

Echo Beach is a run-of-the-mill soap opera/teenage drama that appears like a British copycat of American The O.C. or One Tree Hill – I never watched either, by the way – set in Cornwall complete with a surf shop and of course, surfers. I wouldn’t normally even consider watching such a show if not for Moving Wallpaper.

It’s sheer marketing genius. Moving Wallpaper is a behind-the-scene mockumentary comedy about the production of Echo Beach. Apparently, Echo Beach was originally Polnarren, after the name of the Cornwall town, a boring satirical drama, until a new producer comes in two weeks before launching and turns it into the glamorous and sexy Echo Beach. Moving Wallpaper, the better of the two, is shown right before Echo Beach, thus encouraging viewers to stay and watch the latter, if only to see how decisions made in Moving Wallpaper – or the producer’s garbage – appears in Echo Beach.

Cool.

The Pile Piles

Gundam Destruction by SaiyanSonic at deviantART

Another package from Amazon arrived today! Inside were three books to add to my growing pile of books-waiting-to-be-read:

1. The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman. Latest book by the renowned economist. An impulse buy.
   
   
2. The Lost Fleet: Courageous by Jack Campbell. The third book in the Lost Fleet military SF series by John G. Hemry aka Jack Campbell. Captain “Black Jack” Geary continues navigating the battered Alliance Fleet through Syndic territory, but now there may be aliens too! I’m setting aside everything else to read this first.
   
   
3. Mobile Suit Gundam: Awakening, Escalation, Confrontation by Yoshiyuki Tomino. I never watched the animated series and don’t really feel like making the time to sit down and watch it now, or ever. When it comes to giant mecha I’m really partial to Macross/Robotech – nothing beats the über-cool F-14 Tomcat-inspired mechamorphing VF-1 Valkyrie. Still, they do have some really cool mecha in Gundam, hence the book. It is a proper novel by the way, not a comic or graphic novel, so I'm really hoping to find at least a half-decent story.
   

Mobile

I want a new mobile phone.

There are two charges on my credit card this month for new mobile phones – one new Nokia set for my mother and one new Sony Ericsson set for my brother – but none for me. None for me.

My mother had been complaining about her old mobile phone with its dying battery for weeks, while hinting not-so-subtly for us (read: me) to buy her a new one. Even though she can’t even withdraw her own money at the ATM for fear that the machine would swallow her ATM card, my mother demanded a new mobile phone that has a radio and a camera. After going through a short list of candidates, my brother and I finally settled on a simple phone that happens to be just an updated version of her old mobile phone with neither radio nor camera.

She is happy with it, but now bugs me for an MP3 player. :P

I just might get myself a Sony Ericsson W660i too!

My brother, however, was basically happy with his old Sony Ericsson phone, but discovered not having a memory expansion slot a real problem when he ran out of space to store new contacts. He considered buying a PDA phone for a while, but in the end decided to just buy a new mobile phone – this time with a memory expansion slot, Bluetooth, 3G; the whole nine yards – and buy a proper PDA later. I paid for the W660i with my credit card and he promised to pay me back in monthly installments.

I want a new mobile phone because my mother, brother, and sister all have new mobile phones, but my white and orange W800i is still working fine while it’s my notebook that’s giving me worries. I guess I have to wait and see how things play out, then. Who knows, CUEPACS may actually succeed in getting the government to pay civil servants that RM2000 “honorarium”.
:-(

__________
PS: Students are always surprised when I tell them that my average monthly mobile usage is RM8 and that I have more than RM200 in accumulated prepaid credits.

Workplace Temptations

WARNING: Work-related rant ahead.

swift kick in your ass by jyoshi917 at deviantART

Students I want to kick all the way to Pluto:

1. Students who after x semesters in school still don’t know the name of the program they’re in.
   
   
2. Students who after x semesters in school still don’t know that all courses have a standard load of three credit hours.
   
   
3. Students who after x weeks through the semester still don’t know which section they’re in.
   
   
4. Students who at the end of the semester write the wrong lecturer’s name on the final exam paper.

Feel free to add/suggest more.

__________
QUICKIE: Are you bothered that Pluto is no longer considered a planet? On August 24, 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) finally formalized the definition of the term “planet”, which resulted in the exclusion of Pluto from the list of planets orbiting the Sun. In a manner of speaking, Pluto was voted out.

Job Interview Questions

When I finished school and started to find work, I remember getting very excited when called up for interviews. The excitement wasn’t much for the prospect of getting hired – I wasn’t at all worried about landing a job – but for the chance to talk to, see, and evaluate the interviewers themselves. The interviewers may think that the pressure during an interview is upon the interviewee, which I guess is true 99% of the time, but I thought that it was very interesting to observe the interviewers, as though they may not realize it, they reflect the organizations they work for. I am sorry to say that I was not at all impressed by some of the people who interviewed me. Thank God I’m back in school, so to speak.

Susan Thornberry wrote in TechRepublic the following list of interview questions that are illegal in the United States. I never thought that it is ever illegal to ask about one’s age! Many of the questions I think are commonly asked in Malaysia; and some are even seen in the IIUM job application form:

1. Where were you born?
   
2. What is your native language?
   
3. Are you married?
   
4. Do you have children?
   
5. Do you plan to get pregnant?
   
6. How old are you?
   
7. Do you observe Yom Kippur?
   
8. Are you in the National Guard?
   
9. Do you smoke or use alcohol?

They all can be used to discriminate against a job applicant. As ‘honorary’ practical training supervisor at the department, I see a lot of résumés and curriculum vitas of students. My idea of a résumé for a fresh graduate joining the job market for the first time should not be more than two pages long, but typically they are four to five pages long with way too much information than necessary.

I suppose we have little awareness about privacy rights and discrimination, or in this country they just don’t matter.

My New Year Non-Resolution

I don’t do New Year resolutions but if I did, one of the things that should be on the list would be to eat less.

Should, because that’s what my mother’s been telling me. I can see what she means, sometimes, like when I have to hold my breath to reach down to pick something or have a long enough look at myself in a mirror. What can I say; I have a positive self image and feel good about my body. I still feel and ‘see’ myself seventeen. Another occasion that tends to remind me about my size is when I shop for a new pair of pants. Thankfully, I don’t do that very often.

So here I am finally saying on the record that I may have a weight problem and rationalizing it.

:P

First, I am squarely blaming my mother for always cooking too much food for dinner. My sister just doesn’t eat dinner, while my brother usually doesn’t make it home in time for dinner so have his outside. So it leaves the three of us – my parents and I – to finish a meal prepared for five. How could she expect me not to eat after cooking all that food? It would be a shame to let all the good food go to waste!

Seriously, it’s not my fault. How could anyone not eat and eat when you live in a country with abundant of good food and eating is a national pastime?

It has been argued that watching your diet and exercising regularly reflects good self-discipline (which follows that “slimmer” people have better self-discipline) and you need to take good care of your health from a young age. All I can say is that I know I’m a slouch, and I am really not for restraining myself – diet-wise – today just so that I may live a few years longer down the line. Having said that, I have been wondering quite a bit about how it would feel like if I were just a little bit lighter.

Fix the Subsidy!

My wish for 2008, not that anybody asked, as strange as it seems, is for the government to fix the darn fuel subsidy.

Let’s forget for the moment that I do strongly think that the price-distorting fuel subsidy does more harm than good to the economy by promoting excessive consumption of fuel that contributes to traffic congestion etc. The subsidy is here to stay unless the government has some kind of a death wish.

Oil Wars Wallpaper by AfxTwin at deviantART

I have just discovered that I’ve written about this before. Oh, well, let me just repeat myself. The last time the government increased the retail price of fuel was when the subsidy bill grew too big as the price of petroleum went above US$70 per barrel. Now it’s more than US$90 per barrel, and is projected to hit US$100 per barrel this year. This is simply too costly and not sustainable.

The fuel subsidy helps alleviate the burden of rising costs of living, but at the same time by fixing the retail price of fuel the government is hiding from the population the reality of rising and fluctuating costs of fossil fuel. We are living in bubble.

Among other things, a higher fuel price will force us to take a more serious look at developing an efficient public transport system.