Greetings from Shanghai

I have landed in Shanghai on Sunday, 13 April and have been here for the past 1 week. Time really fly. I managed to find the access to Blogger from China. It was surprise because because last year when I was in Shanghai, access to Blogger was blocked.

It has been a fully working week since I landed in Shanghai. Only last night, I managed to get out of the office before 10.00 p.m.. I managed to take a walk with my staff who is here in Shanghai for the first time. We walked all the way from the hotel to Lujiazhui area before we took the subway to Puxi and Nanjing Road.

Nothing changes much in Shanghai since last year except the the Shanghai Financial Center is almost completed and now has taken over Jin Mao Building as the tallest building in China. I managed to snap a photo of the two buildings together and guess which item in the photo is the tallest?.. Well it's the Moon!!!
I have to work through the weekend to ensure that the project is completed on time. I managed to sneak sometime to write posting. More photos will be posting as and when I can afford the time.

Shanghai here I come... again?

After being in KL since my last overseas assignment in Manila, I have grown to love being at home, doing the stuff that I like and most of all being with my family.

On Sunday, I will travel to Shanghai for my assignment. It will be short but very intense assignment. Yeah, it's back to Shanghai after being away for 1 year. I was there last year when I was a rookie and still fumbling my way in my new company. Now after a year's of exposure, I am ready for a bigger challenge and project.

Actually I am on project with China but my team and I were operating remotely with the users from KL. Every evening my team and I will be on conference call with the users in Shanghai. The project was a small project and does not have a big budget, so traveling to Shanghai and being with the users there was not within the cost of the budget. However, this small project proves that we can operate from KL with any parts of the world. Luckily this project is having the same time zone with KL (there is no time difference between KL and Shanghai). Should the project be a project in the Middle East or Africa.. we would have till late in the night to work with the users.

Then came this project for China too, which has big budget and it is required to be down in less than 1 month, we took the opportunity to "piggy back" on the bug budget to be in Shanghai doing 2 projects in one go. Its a sacrifice for my team and I but its worth it since my team has not been to China and it was a good opportunity to mingle with the users that we were engaging all the while over the phone without knowing how they look like. The same goes for the users too, I think they would be anxious to see how looked like after hearing our voices all this will.

I am writing this post because I know that I cannot access Blogger from China. I had bad experience trying to put up a posting in Blogger from China because of their policy of baring access to Blogger. At the same time, I do not want my friends and visitors to my blog wondering what had happened to me for the next one month.

Well now you know.. I am off to Shanghai and crossing my fingers that I would be able to put up some stories of my stay there. In the meantime.. cheers!!!

Where do I download my torrents?

To Daniel who asked me where did I download my torrents?
Well I download most of my torrent from this site:

www. mininova.org

This site host the most up to date movies, games, software, books, pictures and TV shows. The site is free and does not require any sign-up. At the same time, I would like to mention that I use Bitcomet has by download client. The client integrate very well with Firefox which is the internet browser that I am using.

You may also add another add-on for Firefox which is Flashgot which is also a good download assistance.

Birthday Calculator

Want to know more about your birthday? Well head on to this link:

http://www.paulsadowski.com/birthday.asp

Here are the result of my birthday:

Your date of conception was on or about 24 January 1961 which was a Tuesday.

You were born on a Tuesday
under the astrological sign Libra.
Your Life path number is 8.

Your fortune cookie reads:
Delay is the antidote for anger.

Life Path Compatibility:
You are most compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 2, 4, 8, 11 & 22.
You should get along well with those with the Life Path number 6.
You may or may not get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 1 & 5.
You are least compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 3, 7 & 9.

The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2437589.5.
The golden number for 1961 is 5.
The epact number for 1961 is 13.
The year 1961 was not a leap year.

Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 2/15/1961 and ending 2/4/1962.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Ox.

Your Native American Zodiac sign is Raven; your plant is Ivy.

You were born in the Egyptian month of Choiach, the fourth month of the season of Poret (Emergence - Fertile soil).

Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 7 Heshvan 5722.
Or if you were born after sundown then the date is 8 Heshvan 5722.

The Mayan Calendar long count date of your birthday is 12.17.8.1.5 which is
12 baktun 17 katun 8 tun 1 uinal 5 kin

The Hijra (Islamic Calendar) date of your birth is Tuesday, 7 Jumadiyu'l-Avval 1381 (1381-5-7).

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 2 April 1961.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 9 April 1961.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 15 February 1961.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 21 May 1961.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 28 May 1961.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Monday, 11 September 1961.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Saturday, 1 April 1961.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 14 February 1961.

As of 3/26/2008 10:01:28 AM EST
You are 46 years old.
You are 557 months old.
You are 2,423 weeks old.
You are 16,962 days old.
You are 407,098 hours old.
You are 24,425,881 minutes old.
You are 1,465,552,888 seconds old.

Celebrities who share your birthday:

Nick Cannon (1980)	Eminem (1972)	Wyclef Jean (1972)
Chris Kirkpatrick (1971)	Norm MacDonald (1963)	Alan Jackson (1958)
Howard Rollins (1950)	Margot Kidder (1948)	George Wendt (1948)
Evel Knievel (1938)	Jimmy Breslin (1930)	Tom Poston (1921)
Montgomery Clift (1920)	Rita Hayworth (1918)	Arthur Miller (1915)
Jean Arthur (1905)	Spring Byington (1893)

Top songs of 1961

Tossin' and Turnin' by Bobby Lewis	Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean
Runaway by Del Shannon	Wonderland By Night by Bert Kaempfert
Pony Time by Chubby Checker	The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Tokens
Blue Moon by Marcels	Take Good Care of My Baby by Bobby Vee
Calcutta by Lawrence Welk	Runaround Sue by Dion

Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 6.63874755381605 years old. (You're still chasing cats!)

Your lucky day is Friday.
Your lucky number is 6.
Your ruling planet(s) is Venus.
Your lucky dates are 6th, 15th, 24th.
Your opposition sign is Aries.
Your opposition number(s) is 9.

Today is not one of your lucky days!

There are 205 days till your next birthday
on which your cake will have 47 candles.

Those 47 candles produce 47 BTUs,
or 11,844 calories of heat (that's only 11.8440 food Calories!) .
You can boil 5.37 US ounces of water with that many candles.

In 1961 there were approximately 4.2 million births in the US.
In 1961 the US population was approximately 179,323,175 people, 50.6 persons per square mile.
In 1961 in the US there were approximately 1,523,000 marriages (8.5%) and 393,000 divorces (2.2%)
In 1961 in the US there were approximately 1,712,000 deaths (9.5 per 1000)
In the US a new person is born approximately every 8 seconds.
In the US one person dies approximately every 12 seconds.

In 1961 the population of Australia was approximately 10,642,654.
In 1961 there were approximately 239,986 births in Australia.
In 1961 in Australia there were approximately 76,686 marriages and 6,712 divorces.
In 1961 in Australia there were approximately 88,961 deaths.


Your birthstone is Tourmaline

The Mystical properties of Tourmaline

Pink Tourmaline promotes female balance and protection. Green Toumaline promotes male balance.

Some lists consider these stones to be your birthstone. (Birthstone lists come from Jewelers, Tibet, Ayurvedic Indian medicine, and other sources)

Opal, Jasper

Your birth tree is

Maple, Independence of Mind

No ordinary person, full imagination and originality, shy and reserved, ambitious, proud, self-respect, hungers for new experiences, sometimes nervous, many complexes, good memory, learns easily, complicated love life, wants to impress.

There are 274 days till Christmas 2008!
There are 287 days till Orthodox Christmas!

The moon's phase on the day you were
born was in its first quarter.

It's already coming to the end of March!!

It has been a long long time since I have written anything in my blog. To be honest, my hobby of writing blog is slowly fading away. WHY?

There are few reasons:

One - I am lazy
Two - I noticed that other people are also lazy writing in their blogs too
Three - Got other hobbies
Four - Nothing interesting to write
Five - Lazy
Six - I am still in Kuala Lumpur since my last trip to Manila in November
Seven - Lazy
Eight - Lazy
Nine - Lazy
Ten - Lazy

I managed to bump into some of my former colleagues and they mentioned how come they have not been able to see any updated to my blog.. well the above said it all.

What I have been doing for the past three months?

Well I am caught up in a new hobby - downloading TV series via Torrent. So far I managed to download the following shows Nip/Tuck Season 5 (I bought the full set of DVD from Season 1 to 4 when I was in Shanghai), Heroes Season 2, Project Runway Season 4, Hell's Kitchen Season 3, CSI New York Season 4, CSI Las Vegas Season 8, The Celebrity Apprentice (Season 7), Amercia Next Top Model cycle 10 (that's for my daughters), American Idol Season 7 and The Sarah Conner Chronicle - from the Terminator. Apart from TV shows, I also managed to download a bunch of movies like Rambo and Hitman without any censorship!!
I have even upgraded my Streamyx line to 1MB to enable fast downloading of the shows. I would keep my PC on to download the Torrent while I am away working and if there are adequate Torrent seeds, the file would be completely downloaded when I come back. Normal file size is about 380 MB for a 45 minutes show.

What started my download craze was when my wife requested me to get her a DVD player because the DVD player which was used for her TV was spoil. I managed to get a Pioneer DVD Player which can play DIVX format in addition to the normal DVD format. I experimented and found out that I managed to convert some AVI format shows to DIVX format where I can play it using the DVD. Great!! Once the AVI files are converted to DIVX I would burn them onto a DVD-RW disc to be played using the DVD player. After some time, I found out that the DVD player can also play files in AVI format, that has saved me lots to time and disk space to convert the AVI file to DIVX file.

Since I am not on any overseas assignment, I have the time at night to watch each TV episode which is recorded from HDTV before I go to bed. The quality of the images were excellent with stereo sound effect. No worries that I missed the episode on Astro and at the same time I can watch the episode just after it has been released in the States for show like The Celebrity Apprentice and America Next Top Model.

Workwise, I managed to attend the AGM for Public Bank and managed to meet up with some of my former colleagues. What was fed up was that some of them still think that I am on assignment in Shanghai... come on lar... I was in Shanghai in March to June 2007 and this is already 2008.. where the hell you got the information from???? But at least I am glad that the have not forgetten about me and my name. Maybe next year, they would have forgotten my name and by the next they would not have remembered my face!!!

No overseas assignment for this year since the travel budget is rather tight and I am running a few projects around the world remotely from my office in PJ. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, e-mail and teleconferencing!!

Ahh... the General Election.. I did not want to write much about if. Scared that I might me picked up under ISA and I would be writing my block from the detention camp in Kamunting. I am glad that the people of Malaysia have spoken. Most of the people that I spoke to before the election said that they would want to vote for the Opposition just to ensure that the current Government are kept on their toe by the Opposition. After the election, the results really surprised me that the Opposition managed to win so many seats. The share market fell more than 15% before and after the election. But I think this is a wake up call for the Government to know that the PEOPLE are not too happy with what is happening. Time for now for the Opposition to show what they can do and time also for the Government to improve what they need to improve.

Next week (24th March) my daughters will start their new education lives at the University. The elder one will be taking up a Degree course while the younger one will embark on a Foundation course leading to a Degree course upon completion. For them is a new journey of their education life but for me is a new journey for financing their education after they have enjoyed free education in the past. Luckily, I need not send them overseas since the degree courses are available in the country. The education journey for my daughters will set me back about RM100K for the next four years. On the brighter side, this is my investment in them for their education and career future.

Two Formula One Grand Prix have happened and today I am happy that Ferrari has won the Malaysian Grand Prix.

That's all for now!!

Gong Xi Fa Chai

Wishing all my friends, visitors and reader a Happy New Year of the Rat 2008.
May you enjoy good health and prosperity in the year of the rat.

I have been lazy

While I was taking my bath just now, I thought to myself that I have not been writing much in my blog for a long time. I have been uploading photos from my Thailand trip and I even did not finish my story of my trip in Thailand for the subsequent duration after Day 1.

I must admit that I have been lazy to come out with things to put into my blog. Then during my bath I told myself that I will write some thing in the blog when I come out from the bath room. And now here I am writing some things here.

For a start I want to mention that my blog have been receiving quite high volume of visitors for the past week. However, when I drilled down to the statistics of the visitors to my blog, I was surprise to know that these visitors were coming mainly from USA and India. The number of visitors from these countries have surpassed that from Malaysia. Looks like I ma more famous now in the USA and India!!!



After coming back from my vacation, it was back to work. Due to the expansion of staff, the company has expanded its office space to a new building. I have to shift my working space to a new building which located about 3 blocks from the previous one. I have been working from the new office since last Monday. Nothing much to shout about since the furniture looks the same, only thing is the office space of much bigger.

I have been making daily trips to Pavilion for the past week.. why? My daughters who have completed their examinations felt bored being at home and managed to find jobs at Pavilion. The elder one worked at Padini Concept Store while the younger one worked for a cosmetic outlet. We were concern about their safety and have resorted to pick them up daily after the work (at 10 p.m.). Making daily trips from my house in Cheras to Pavilion in the busy area of Jalan Bukit Bintang has been enjoyable for the first 2 days but after that.. huh.. BORING!!

Since the Chinese New Year is drawing near, I have to change the red lanterns at my house which has been hanging at the main door for the past 2 years. The skin of the lantern has broken and gathering dust. Time for a change of red lantern for the new year. Today, I managed to take a trip to Chinatown to buy a pair of 22 inches red lanterns. Hung it up, light it up and it looked great. Let's hope that the pair of fresh red lantern would bring me good fortune this year of the RAT!!!

Crocodile school!!

Just imagine how crocodiles would like going to school!!!

Alcazar show at Pattaya

Alcazar C10, originally uploaded by Kok Kuen.

The famous performers at Alcazar show at Pattaya. Just see how they dance DO NOT ask them to speak.. you will run away!!!

Alcazar show at Pattaya

A small snippet of the Alcazar show at Pattaya

River Cruise

River Cruise 8, originally uploaded by Kok Kuen.

Lovely structure on the banks of Choa Phraya during our night river cruise.

Floating market

Floating market 2, originally uploaded by Kok Kuen.

Hello 2008

Images of Thailand - Cultural Dancers

I am in love again!!

Help me!!! I am in love again!!! No not with another woman.. I am in love with the new Honda Accord 2008.

While on my way to Hua Hin, I managed to see a magazine which featured the new Honda Accord. I could see that it is a new model but I do not understand what was written in Thai. I managed to pass by a Honda showroom where there was a unit being displayed but it was too bad that I could not stop to see the car itself. I was also not able to see the car being display in any of the malls that I went to in Bangkok.

So I have to resort to view the website of Honda Thailand at http://www.honda.co.th/accord
I love the car!! It look sleeks and nice and I am awaiting for its arrival in Malaysia, I think would be middle of next year before I decide to... huh? WAKE UP!!!

Ok ok, here are some wallpaper of the car and a YouTube clip of the advertisement:

Swadee Bangkok

The children have completed their examinations (STP and SPM) and they were all rally to go for a vacation. This time around it would be Bangkok. Why Bangkok? Because my wife's uncle and cousin are Thais and they are staying in Bangkok. They were here in KL during Chinese New Year and we thought that it would be nice to reciprocate their visit to foster the relationship. At the same time, my wife's uncle, aunt and cousins have always be requesting to visit them in Bangkok. My daughters were excited because they can shop for their clothings there. So we made arrangement to fly there and join a tour for 3 days and extend our stay in Bangkok for a total of a week. All arrangements for the tickets, tour and accommodation were done on own on. The worse part was the accommodation, it seems that every hotel in Bangkok is full! We hesitated to go to Bangkok when I was informed that the General Election is scheduled on 23 December when were are in Bangkok. Fearing that there my be unrest after the ousted Thaksin Shinawatra, we fear that the party of the former PM would create some problems during the election. My wife made some calls to some friends in Bangkok and got the assurance that the King has requested for a peaceful election and that Bangkok would be safe during the elections.

We took off from Kl on 18th December, taking the ERL from Tasek Selatan to KLIA. We landed at the new (one year old) Suvarnabhumi Airport and it is very obvious that the traffic (passengers and planes) at the Bangkok airport is very much more that our KLIA.

We were greeted by our tour guide, a short guy call Pradit but he prefer to be called by his nickname Noome who speaks so-so English. The van was also waiting for us and we were taken to check-in to our hotel, The First Hotel which is located the center of the busy Pra Tu Nam area of Bangkok. We choose this hotel because it is very near shopping area and walking distance from the Skytrain.

We only had time to freshen up before my wife's aunt and cousin arrived at the hotel to greet us. Our next stop was the famous four face Buddha located in the Erawan Hotel. The San Phra Phrom or Erawan Shrine was created as a spirit house connected to the Erawan Hotel, which has now made way for the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel. There were so many people there both locals and tourist performing their offering and prays there. We bought colourful flower garlands, gold leaves, incense, and candles. We then performed our prayers at the shrine. I managed to made offering twice on all the four faces of Buddha.

Then off we go for our dinner. Dinner was at a local Chinese restaurant but with the added Tomyam to act as the appetizer for the dinner. I am able to take the spicy and sour soup while my children find it hard to take it.

After dinner, we were taken to the famous night bazaar, Suan Num Night Bazaar. I find it hard to do my shopping there because the place is stuffy and hot. Then we need to bargain to buy the goods there. My wife's aunt and cousin came along with us and they managed to bargain much better than us (since they are local there). There was an item were we bought for Baht160 and for the same price, they were about to bargain to buy two items for the same price.

After a tiring day, we went back to the hotel and rested for our long journey for the next day to Pattaya.

Arrival at the Suvarnabhumi airport

One of the many "guardian" gods at the airport

The emblem for the 80th birthday celebration of theKing. The devotion and respect of the King is very obvious in Thailand.

The four-face Buddha shrine

A closer view of the four-faced Buddha

You know that you are in Thailand when you see this sign!!

Merry Christmas greetings

Ho! Ho! Ho!, it is the time of the year to say Merry Christmas to all my readers.
I have been away from home for the past week and was on vacation on Bangkok with the family. We arrived back late last night on Christmas eve and I need to re-adjust myself before I can put up this post. There are stories to be told during my stay in Bangkok and many photos to show. Please come back to view my stories and photos here and also at my Flickr album.

In the meantime, the picture of the Christmas tree was captured at the Twin Tower Hotel in Bangkok.

New malls around KL

As the festive season is in and bonus time is also in, a few malls have pop up within KL and PJ areas. Well only one is new while two others are extension of the existing malls. The new mall is The Pavilion (where I shot some fashion photos) while the Garden is the extension at Mid Valley and Sunway Pyramid had a new extension wing.

Today I have the chance to visit the Garden, the new extension of Mid Valley. There two new anchor tenants which are Isetan and Robinson. The place was nice and with good architecture and interior design. I managed to snap some scenes the place before I was informed by a "security" girl who politely informed me that I am not suppose to take pictures in the premise.

Here are some photos taken during my trip to the Garden and Mid Valley today.

The "security" lady who advise me to stop shotting!!

A view of my son and I through the Christmas tree crystal ball

Rainy days and Monday

Monday.. rainy day.. it is now 9.00 p.m. and it has not stopped raining since 10.00 a.m. this morning. The rainy season is here in Kuala Lumpur.

Yes.. I am back in Kuala Lumpur, my hometown, my city after being away for almost a month in Manila.. I am finally back home!!!

Well actually I left Manila on 1 December. I rushed back to office the following Monday to prepare for my next project.. organising the Team Building event for my group. I volunteered to organise the first team building event for my group after being persuaded by some of my close friend. Most of the work organising the event was done remotely from Manila with the help of my colleagues who are in office. It was not an easy task since rounding up all the staff to participate in the event. Some of them were away from office on assignment overseas, some cannot come because they have to look after their children, the was one who was had tendered his resignation and there a few who said that they could not join the whole event because they need to attend to meetings and other work. Come on!! Where is the team spirit for a TEAM BUILDING event???

Ok ok.. I can bear with them. The event was held at Genting View Resort and the staff were saying why go there where it so near to KL. Why could not they go to the beach or mountain or water rafting?? WHY??? Because we are sort of the budget and there is a direction to have it for a 2 days maximum course!!

How many more obstacle that this event has to go through before we proceed??? Then came the T-shirt issue.. some of those who could not make it to the event wanted the T-shirt. The decision given was that those who are not attending the event are not entitled for the T-shirt. Then there were complains.. in the end, we were given the OK to provide also T-shirts for those who did not attend the event.

On the big day, Friday, 7th December, we were off to Genting View Resort. It rained!!! Wet wet wet and cold. But the event still need to go on and it did. Everyone enjoyed it!! See the pictures.. I don't want to say more.

Deja Vu

After the curfew imposed on Manila from 12.00 a.m. to 5.00 a.m., I am finally arrived safely in my apartment. The newspaper was filled with articles talking about the filed coup that happened yesterday. I found this article in The Philippines Star papers which I find very interesting. It was the Editorial in the paper and was titled Deja Vu.

This one ended even quicker than its precedent four years ago. Saying they wanted to avoid bloodshed, detainees accused of plotting a coup led by Senator Antonio Trillanes IV and Army Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim surrendered and were re-arrested early last night. Hours earlier, the two men had walked out of their court in Makati and then marched in the rain to the five-star Manila Peninsula Hotel in the heart of the nation's financial district, where they demanded the resignation of President Arroyo and called on other members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to join them.

Both men are not new to trying to topple the government from posh accommodations. Lim led the takeover of hotels in Makati in December 1989, in the bloodiest attempt to topple the administration of Corazon Aquino. How the government dealt with him has to have a bearing on his action yesterday and on those of Trillanes and their supporters. After getting a slap on the wrist for the 1989 coup, Lim was eventually reinstated. Under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who rose to power on the wings of a military-backed popular revolt, Lim was even appointed to head the elite Army Scout Ranger Regiment.

Trillanes was a junior officer when he joined several others and staged a mutiny in July 2003. That time, they picked the posh Oakwood serviced apartments, also in the heart of Makati, to stage their mutiny. From detention, Trillanes managed to win a seat in the Senate last May. when adventurism is rewarded, it is bound to be repeated. Thus we had the hotel siege yesterday staged by individuals already facing charges of plotting a coup last year.