Swordie Bloggie

My destination for this week Journey around Sabah is Sandakan Region. I will be visiting our offices at Sandakan, Telupid, Beluran and Ranau. The journey is very tiring and right now I’m in Kensington Hotel, Sandakan. This hotel is new… only about 3 months old. I don’t think it has many rooms since it only has 2 floors and located in shop lots. Environment is clean and quite… coz the area is still new 😀

And every time I go for travel, I carry few things with me. Other than travel insurance which is included in our service benefits, these few items are necessity… tooth brush, tooth paste, shaver… and of course soap… but soap normally provided by the hotel including some other stuff like shampoo.

Normally I just pack these things into a plastic bag. But this time is different… I bought a Darlie Travel Kit which I believe they just introduced. The kit includes a small tube of tooth paste and a tooth brush. The travel kit bag is big enough to fit my shaver into it which make my packing easier 😀

After the fireworks photo session in the previous night, I went back to 1Borneo for the Big Boyz Toys – Beauty & The Beast the next afternoon for car show. The cars are displayed at the LG and G floors.

At the LG floor, they put all the not so cool cars… MPV, mini, sedan etc.

At the G floor, they put all the so called Big Boyz Toys… Z4, Lotus, Lexus, Ferrari etc… Although they called it big boyz toys, I don’t think those cool cars have any PS3 on it like what the Pimp My Ride usually installs. They are all the standard kind of boyz toys… none with ICE.

There wasn’t much car on display too, but good enough for the big boyz toys model photo sessions 😀

They also have photography competition but I’m sure the organizer did not do a proper event plan for the photography competition… nobody knows what to do or how to enter the competition. I approach the MC and ask about it, but he also doesn’t know what’s going on… he asked me to talk to the ‘event manager’… I went to meet the ‘event manager’… he admitted everything are last minute… at the end I did not enter the competition because I only carried my Sony T200 with me although I manage to get some shots at the models 😀

I called my friends and told about it because there will be another session next day, Sunday… And they did go for the event… but I did not coz I was so tired.

CPM for me stands for Characters Per-Minute… speed of a printer as how many characters the printer can print in one minute. But the search I made recently says differently. For me, cpm only exists in IT world… but actually no!

There is another meaning of CPM… Corporate Performance Management! Yes it has nothing to do with IT but management… errr… but actually it does involved IT 😀

Corporate Performance Management can be used as a tool in organization to understand, act on and influence its business performance through software, processes and measures of business success. With all that, the organization can produce metrics and key performance indicators. Now you know there are two meaning of CPM, the next time you see one, make sure it refers to what is supposed to be OK… 😀

I almost cancelled my plan to join the others for the fireworks events at 1Borneo last night. It all because me and my boss went to meet the Director at 5pm. We only came out around 6.15pm! Furthermore, after that I have to send someone to Hungab and another at Kolopis!

I reach home around 7pm and immediately change my office cloths, grab my sling bag and back on the road again… destination 1Borneo, that is about 20km away! And no dinner! In my bag are my big gun, a video cam and the T200. Everything is in tip top condition… fully charged and full of storage. The video cam even has 8GB of memory stick under its hood 😀

Less then 5km from Alam Mesra… our new meeting place which is opposite to 1Borneo… CRAPP!!! Traffic Jam!!!… Clock shows 7.40pm

Lucky the jam was not that long… I manage to meet them at the kedai kopi around 8pm. Ordered my drink and food… fried rice only 😛 Eat quickly then 2 of my friends hop into my car and we went further away so that we can get better view… about 1km – 1.5km away from 1Borneo. We set our gear on the road island… there was not much people there. Only the 3 of us using tripod 😀 Wonder where the other photographers…

The show did not start at 8.30pm… we got ‘insider info’ that it’s going to be delayed to 9pm and it’s going to be shoot from the top of the hotels at 1Borneo… Novotel or Mercure. Exactly at 9.02pm the show started… and I was still posing for photo 😛

The weather was so good… so clear… our position is great… using my 17-85mm lens at its widest setting, I can capture everything… BUT the only unfortunate was ‘what I requested did not come!’… NO WIND!!! It turns out like a nuclear bomb being released at 1Borneo. The show only lasted for 5 minutes… and can’t do much becoz of the smoke! And… please comment how to take fireworks… this is my first time using M on DSLR, and I did learned few things last night. Normally I just use P. I set my shutter speed to 2.5 seconds… I should have set it to 4 or 5 seconds 🙁 

There will be a fireworks display at 1Borneo at 8.30pm tonight, 17 October 2008. The display will be for only 5 minutes.

We planned to go there by 7.30pm to get the best location to snap photos… hopefully we will get a good place… in fact we planned to do it from Universiti Sabah Malaysia compound becoz it is on the hilly side of 1Borneo.

Few of my blogroll have shown their fantastic fireworks photos… hope I can show mine 😀

The weather is a bit gloomy right now… I just hope there will be no rain at the show time… wind will be OK, since it can carry away the smokes.

Fireworks at 1Borneo
15 October, 2008 (DAILY EXPRESS NEWS)Kota Kinabalu: Rockets, roman candles and Catherine wheels will light up the west coast sky when the 1Borneo Fireworks Spectacular is held at the hypermall on Friday.The event promises breathtaking pyrotechnic choreography with a sweeping musical soundtrack.The five-minute fireworks display will begin 8:30pm with five scenes during which 10,000 shells will be fired from two large barges accompanied by eight pontoons.

Travel, travel, travel… journey, journey, journey… outstation, outstation, outstation… these are the words which keep on playing on my head… and it is all about work. Of course I really wish I can travel for real… to the north pole maybe 😀

I have been talking about my journey around Sabah for the past few weeks. Next week we are going to continue with it again, after three weeks of break including the Hari Raya break.

This time we are heading to Sandakan region… Although in our ‘journey around Sabah’, this is the first time we are travelling by road and none of us have driven to all our destinations before, so far we have not lost any of our way. Well, you can say that the road signs along our journey are very helpful, as good as the las vegas strip map 😆

Very true that we have not lost any of our way… and we manage to reach to our destination on time. But I hope by saying this, we are not going to get lost on our next journey… I cross my finger… and I hope our next journey will be just like our previous ‘two weeks’ journey to Tawau region and Keningau region.

Inflation is high… everything is expensive nowadays… we have to spend more and can’t save much, so we are getting poorer now. Even with Mr. Bush’s $700 billion economic plan, I don’t think we can benefit anything from it.

If you are earning $3K or less a month, I guess you are having a hard time… especially if you are staying in the city… and have family to support.

My watch broke down for sometimes already. No, it was not on purpose and it was not caused by Mr. Bush’s $700 billion economic plan. I was thinking of getting a new one with better features… but I’m still thinking… I have been using digital watches since I started wearing one… maybe it is time for me to get a watch with hands, probably one of the Festina watches. But then again, I also carry hand phone with me all the time… and it has clock too. When I’m driving, my car also has clock… so do I need another timepiece to carry around with me?

Should I spent some more money for something which is redundant to my use?… errr… maybe I should save more money instead so that I can buy the more expensive watch with more features on it… probably the one with hand phone, satellite TV receiver, PDA… 😀

Recently I received an email about barcode. You know the vertical black and white stripe on most of the packaging nowadays.

The email is about the contamination of melamine in goods especially foods from China. It tells you how to compare goods produced by China and Taiwan by looking at the barcode numbers. It says that the first 3 numbers of the barcode represents the country of origin.

I did not believe it straight away… so I did some search about international barcode standard. Surprise… surprise… it is true after all. But my search also found that it is true that the first 3 numbers represents which country the barcode REGISTRED but it doesn’t mean the goods are produced or manufactured in that country. The owner of the barcode is the country as stated in the first 3 numbers of the barcode, but the goods can be manufactured in other places or countries.

So, goods’ barcode with first 3 numbers of 471, which represent Taiwan might not be necessary manufactured in Taiwan… but it could be manufactured in Malaysia (955), Indonesia (899) or worse China (690 – 695) itself.

My point is, don’t just look at the barcode to compare the origin of the goods… you must also look at the label ‘Made In …’

Like when you travel abroad, for instant to USA, when you enter shops hoping to get ‘Made In USA’ goods… forget it, big chance you will find goods as ‘Made In Malaysia’ 😀

So while abroad, if you plan to use barcode as your reference alone, don’t… and as for safety while abroad… get a travel medical insurance, who knows you accidentally consumed melamine in big amount while you are abroad traveling.

Some notable barcodes…
Singapore – 888
Mongolia – 865

And here are the rest of the barcodes which represent the country of origin… . . . Continue Reading »

One of my favorite puzzle games during my uni time is SOKOBAN. In fact I still love playing this game until today. This game really tests your creativity. The idea of this game is player pushes boxes around a maze, viewed from above, and tries to put them in designated locations. Only one box may be pushed at a time, and boxes cannot be pulled…. yea, this game is just about moving boxes around… sound boring you said? If you never tried it before, you will definitely say that. But once you played it, you will get hooked to this game FOREVER… just like how kids got hooked with the tiny gray scale screen ‘game and watch’ game console during the eighties… and my favorite ‘game and watch’ game was the Octopus… yea I think that was the title of the game… that was way too long time ago, I can’t possibly remember it very well… but I know the game made me skip food 😛

There are many types of Sokoban out there today from different developers… try googling it 😀 There is one version which has more than 100 levels I played a few years back… but I only manage to complete 70 plus level… The interesting part about Sokoban is, once you solve a particular level… you might not remember the solution after sometimes… that what make you hooked to this game… you want to solve it! badly! again and again…

I think I need a long break… work is so much… 24 hours a day is just not enough. Going outstation is a bit relaxing since I don’t have to answer calls or do anything at office. But there are works to be done waiting at office all the time. Even my colleague at HQ said ‘you’re very quite lately’… I feel like going crazy… I hope I don’t grow acne all over my face because of these works… well, I do get it when I eat fried peanuts… yea fried peanuts… but not ‘boiled peanut’, I like eating that one… and when I get one on my body, it will be ‘jerawat batu’… yea, like volcano… reddish on top… so far I have not found the best acne treatment for me… maybe I need to do facial instead… LOL

Anyways, my outstation… journey around Sabah on the 8 – 12 September and 22 – 26 September was fantastic although it was tiring travelling in the car for hours.

We supposed to continue our journey this week… and it supposed to be 3 weeks continuously, but because of workload, I have to postpone it. This week and next week, we will be in KK, meaning on 20 – 24 October we have to be off again. Then there will be Deepavali on 27 October, meaning no journey during that week… wasted another week, but it’s OK since we can rest… then we will continue again on week 3 – 7 November and 13 – 17 November… but since there will be big event on week 17 – 21 November… we have to postpone that to week 20 – 24 November… geee… so much more to do… but I will treat it as fun fun fun…