I must say that I am very bad at keeping in touch with friends. I have lost touch with a lot of my school friends. I am neither a person who write letters nor a phone person. If you see the credit on my mobile phone, you know. I wished all my friends are Internet savvy and chat with me online.

Anyway, I must thank Facebook because I could find a few of my old school friends. Catching up with them is so great. Being me, I would want to know how they are doing, married or not, work life..etc It certainly brought back memories. Imagine I haven’t seen them for over a decade after I left school. There is a reunion coming up and I cannot wait to hear more of it.

With Facebook, you can search through your school network and you can find members who are from the same school as you. Oooh, your friends must be internet savvy first and have the interest in joining facebook. If they are not a member then you will not be able to find them. That is the only good thing I can see in facebook, others features are just a waste of time.

If you looking for old friends, go sign up and start searching. It is very easy and simple. Google Facebook if you need instructions.

I was given a stack of Haagen Dazs ice-cream vouchers so I thought I might else well get a tub to try. I got Tiramisu flavor. It was indeed very sweet to begin with. On top of it, it was nothing out of the extraordinary. My children tried the toffee and mango flavor on the cone. I like the crispy cone but the ice cream were very sweet, even without toppings. For RM12 per cone, I will not buy it on my own.

I have some more vouchers, so tell me what other good flavor to pick so that I will not be disappointed again. With the vouchers I have, I can go for another 5-6 more tubs.

Anyway, I still love the world class choc from Baskin Robins.

BBGS which used to be a great school and now the land was taken to turn into a shopping mall. We fought hard to keep the school. It was more than 15 years of battle. However when the government decided to relocate the school, our hopes scattered. Worst is they changed the name.

Before                                          After

Yeah it was on a piece of expensive land because that area was a golden shopping triangle. Thanks to Sungai Wang which started it all.

I did a lot of crazy things when I was in school. BBGS is a very strict school with a book of rules. Every day is a “fine” day if you do not follow the rules. Prefects are keeping watch on us. By the way, I am not so good in keeping the rules but I know the boundaries.

One rule said that we are not allowed to be seen in the nearby shopping malls wearing school uniform. I used to travel to school by school bus and hid a bag of clothes in the school bus. I will wait for the school bus to come and take my clothes, put my school bag on the school bus and hop off. My school has two sessions, morning and afternoon. The school bus will come back in the evening to fetch the afternoon students back.

A group of us will get change in a nearby hotel toilet and we will go shopping until evening. Sometimes we even go for a movie. Most of the time we are very good, stay in school and study. Those were the days when crime rate were not so great and safer. Now I don’t think it is a good idea to do that.

Anyway if you are from BBGS and in the year of 1987 there is a reunion on 25th July 2008 at Concorde Hotel. More stories later.

I don’t really know what you call this bridge, it is a bridge over the Penang big drain (aka longkang). It was completed a while back but it took years. The purpose is the ease the Penang Bayan Lepas Phase III Free Trade Zone traffic. I guess it did what it was built for.

Getting on it definitely thrill me but only for a short while. What do you expect? It is a very short distance. As I said, it is only to go over the big drain.

That drain is filled with dirty water, at times it is black with lots of garbage flowing on top. I wished the gomen will clean it up. It will be nice to see clear water in that drain.

I am really happy with Penang Vivahill Honda Service Center as I can see improvements, every time I go service my car. First they have these comfortable sofa chairs at the lounge for resting and reading. You can also get a cup of hot drinks like coffee or tea free of charge and no limit. Water dispenser is also available.

Next there are 2 glass rooms for people like me to work with Internet connection. I can connect my notebook to my office network and work while my car is being serviced. I wished they can install a telephone so that I can do conference too.

Today I saw a small area with small chairs and tables for children play area. They do know how to satisfy customers with children. Previously when I went to the Sg. Pinang Honda Service Center, I was really frustrated because the sales people were smoking in the place. I saw children playing in the area too. I wrote a letter to Honda GM and the government. I wonder did they ever improve the service center there. I won’t know because I do not go there anymore.

However with Honda service, they charged an arm and a leg. It is fairly expensive even after they give me VIP discount. Their mechanics are very young and they cannot fix my car problems. They have a lot of explanation on the cause but no action to fix it. Now I need to find a good mechanic.

I created a public forum for new mothers using PHPBB. It has been running for a few years and last year it started to get registration spam. Bots were creating accounts maliciously. However they cannot spam the forum because they can never get themselves activated. The forum still needs an admin to activate it.

I am not sure why they want to spam a local forum. They really have nothing better to do. I constantly get email, 30-40 emails per day on account creation. I was too lazy to look at the php code to fix it.

Today while I was sick of working, I took a look at the code and fix the spam problems for good. It took me 30 minutes to fix it. Now the forum totally block out spam for good. I haven’t received a single email on activation of account now. They can leave my mail box in peace.

If you want to block out spam in forum, try writing the simple registration form yourselves. It is not that difficult with php. The bots will be clueless on how to spam your forum and they do not want to spend extra time on it. You will be left alone.

With prices hike, we really have to live simple life. I heard a lot of tips on how we save petrol while driving, such as

1. Pump up your tires to the right pressure.
2. Drive at moderate speed. No speeding or changing speed rapidly.
3. Clean the air-filter regularly.
4. Use thinner tires.
5. Start up the car properly.
6. Avoid traveling with unnecessary weight in your car.
7. Be smart and take routes with less traffic congestion.
8. Avoid strong acceleration. No Mat Rempit style of driving.
9. Do not let your engine idle.
10. Use air condition sparingly.
11. Car pooling with your colleagues.

I must say the last tip would be move nearer to your workplace. You certainly can avoid the traffic congestion. If you cannot do that, maybe find work nearer to where you stay. However, one has to sacrifice to make it work. If you cannot, maybe you do not need the savings or you can afford the rise in petrol. If you can, stop complaining.

If you cannot save petrol, maybe you can save on other things. Buy what you need and abstain what you want. My favorite toast with butter and sugar only cost me less than 20 sens. I should eat more at home.

At lunch time, a bunch of us was talking about the petrol station not accepting credit card in the northern region. Reason given was the petrol station owners claim that they lose nearly 50% of the profit to card transactions. Keywords are “lose profit” not “lose money”. If you read it correctly, they want more profit. In actual sense, they are not losing money but just want a bigger chunk of the profit.

In carrying out those actions, consumers like us are the victims as always. We need to carry cash to pump petrol.

One of my colleague said, if the owners are not happy, they can always surrender their license. I am sure other people will like to buy it from them. If you think hard, these station owners do not need to do much to earn a profit. Most of the work is done by the big oil company like marketing or advertisement. All they need to do is to oversee the station.

On top of that, these stations are asking for trouble because trading in pure cash will attracts robbery. Some of these stations are open 24 hours and believed me, no one want to work after midnight if they know so much cash is in the station. They better get good security guards.

Was it a wise decision? You tell me.

You can steal my notebook but you cannot steal my data. Recently my company bought the encryption software called PGP to protect the data in the notebook. The data in my notebook is not encrypted.

Even if you steal my notebook, you cannot get to my data. It is encrypted with a security password. It is a powerful tool and it encrypt the whole hard disk.

It is very simple to install, in fact I didn’t know it was installed until it asked me for a password. It is advisable to defrag the hard disk before installation, it will speed things up.

After it is done, it will ask you for a password.
Now every time I boot up my notebook, it will request for a password before loading the operating system. I heard with this software you can even protect your mobile phone.

Let’s hope I don’t have amnesia and forget my password.