2 weeks at home and 2 days in KL. That's how short my holiday was. Only now I realized it was too short but when I was doing nothing around at home, I thought it was long.



Home is great. My parents are as usual. My sister getting more and more fanatic of anything pink. My brother acquired the most changes. He has trimmed down by doing workouts on a daily basis. I lost him in arm wrestling. At Form 4, he has already towered over me. I think he's easily a 6-footer now. He took up drumming since my dad's drums were now put in his bedroom. My sister quietly practice it when he's not around. So, both of them can drum. My dad and I can't it's hard to have your arms and legs moving independently. My grandaunt is as usual.



Bintulu, my hometown, have changed a little bit. There's a double lane highway to the hospital. The road to the new airport is still under construction. Pizza hut just opened a branch in town and everyone's visiting it. Many are not used to the restaurant. I could see the lack of confidence in the patron faces as they eat. On the week I arrived, we had take away pizzas for 3 nights in a row. Everyone noticed I got fatter. When my family first saw me, they all burst in laughter. My neck they said is as big as my head. I had to come with all sorts of excuses. My hair was long and that contributed to the "fat" effect.



I didn't manage to meet most of my friends. The only ones I hung out with were my friends from UiTM and Unimas who are on holiday too. Ahmad is struggling with first year law in Shah Alam, Afizal doing civil in Unimas while the rest are doing diplomass in Unimas.



I was able to use the car almost everyday. Driving around town reminds me some of the good times I had with her. Even when I was in KL, the Swatch shop and Starbucks brought memories of mixed feelings on our last... jalan-jalan. She's not around coz her holidays are at year-end. She gave me a shirt with Size S. My family saw the shirt and the only person who fitted into it was my mum. I'm prompted to go back again this winter since I've not seen here for over a year. But two weeks of winter holidays would mean a high flight price over days at home ratio. If my mum's not using her enrich points, maybe I'll beg for her to buy me a passage home.

I've put aside blogging for a more than a week now. The trip home was long and tiring and the jetlag is horrible.



Will write more once I'm in the mood to write.

I'm writing this from Pittsburgh's departure terminal using the free wireless. Our flight to Newark is delayed till 8 p.m. from 5.45 p.m. It's only 5.1 p.m.



This week has been an interesting week. Not the usual week where it is the same the week before and the week after. I'm going back. The summer session was wrapping up. My long-dreamt iPod arrived. Last night, I reformatted my laptop for the first time I bought it. In fact, I reformatted it twice. First it was hit by some spyware before I updated Windows. Tried to install Fedora but IBM's install utility formmated my windows partition as NTFS and Disk Druid can't resize NTFS. I'll wait till home where I can get a bootlegged copy of Partition Magic and resize the partition.



The iPod is an amazingly beautiful object to posssess. I had problems transferring songs.

The past few days were not regular days for me. The second summer session is finishing and I had to drag myself to finish up the last history homework and the take-home final. Professor Kats gave us a treat of pizzas and sodas for class today. I had to make my presentation on Byzantine Empire and it's cultural legacy. Hassan wrapped up the class by making a presentation on Malaysia. Professor Kat is very fond of Malaysian students. I suppose he has met many of us from the previous semesters that he had thought. This session had altogether 12 Malaysians for him. He kept mentioning about Malaysia at least once a week throughout the 6-week period. He commented on its diverse culture and traditionalism despite being developing nation as well. He said many electronics products here in the United States are manufactured in Malaysia.

I had a conversation with Irwan's landlord yesterday. He was a very talkative old man who digressed from giving Irwan advice on safety rules in his rented apartment to talking about Malaysia and state of steel workers. Like Professor Kats, he comented on the many electronic products manufactured on Malaysia. However, I am not that particularly proud of this fact for many of these products, perhaps all, are of Japanese companies who took advantage of the cheap wages in our country. Have we benefited from the foreign investments especially in the industrial areas of Shah Alam and Penang? Perhaps economically but I doubt it would a long term one. Malaysians are hired as blue-collared workers. I doubt there will be transfer of technologies as what some may have expected. Other companies such as Dell and Intel have massive operations in Penang but there is very little significant R&D going on over there.



How much more educated can the Malaysian society be? We had thrived through our cheap labor but that was simple human capital that did not require any advanced knowledge in maths or science. I've been reading my world history book especially on the topic on how Russia and Japan emerged to be industrialized nations. Japan in particular had selective Westernization which kept certain Confucian values. Education is given top priority so literacy rate was among the highest in the world. There seem to be a recipe for this success. I suppose many Malaysian leaders and politics have encountered similar readings on the successes of other nations but I am not really sure how are they working on it. The Prime Minister addressed the matter of having a knowledge-based labor force. He spoke on it inspiringly but I am not certain on how much work has he and his government has put on it. It is true also that the efforts come from the people.



As I grew up, my friends and I grew more matured. We once limited discussion to matters of entertainment like toys, sports and games. I've been discussing a lot about the state of our country with my friends especially with my fellow scholars who I've been living, eating and studying with for the past 2 years. They came up with ideals on how this country should be run. They came up with critiques especially on the education system. Professor Kats mentioned last week that it is good for the young ones to be dreamers as whether we like or not, everyone has to go through certain changes in life. The ability of being able to dream fits the ability of being able to adapt to changes. Anyway, I do pray that with all these ideals and dreams hope for a nation so unique and culturally diverse like Malaysia, come great actions. Haha. Sounds like Spider-man.

British tracks worth listening to :



Eric Clapton - Blue Eyes Blue

George Michael - Fast Love

George Michael - Amazing

Lisa Stansfield - Real Thing

Simply Red - Say You Love Me

Jamiroquai - Canned Heat



I think I have an inclination for British music especially the one with good bass and jazzy beats.

Looking at the date on the computer clock, I just remember that it has been a year since I left Shah Alam. The last few days before I left home was pretty boring I stayed later since MARA had a pre-departure briefing after the summer session ended.



Packing was an easy thing to do. It was more joyous than unpacking which was a very emotional chore after returning from Sarawak. I had built quite a home in my Cemara room that a single economy flight ticket won't allow that much luggage to be brought home. Lucky thing my mother came a few weeks before I left so I seized the opportunity of her lightweight travel.



I have always been a last-minute person. I enjoy procastinating and the adrenaline rush of doing things at the 11th hour. I did not really pack until the day before my flight back home. Thanks to a crazy night out with Tzuo Hann and Evelyn where I had my last glasses of beer before being an underaged drinker in America. As a result, there were things that were left in the room. I left my pillow which over the one year period, had acquired a rather strange world mapped due to the sweat and occasional drooling in my sleep. I regretfully left my bolster that had been in my possession since I was 6 years old. I left a self-assembled table (Nicholas assembled it actually) that I bought from the nearby Giant supermartket for RM 50. I left my laundry basket. I even left my Calculus textbook but fortunately I managed to tell my roommate to pass it to a friend of mine who is from the hometown. I remembered rushing to Cemara 4 hours before my flight to Los Angeles just to pick up the book. Christopher (the guy whom I left the textbook with) was in a biology class in Section 17 so I can't pick it up.



But among the things I left, nothing was more unusually meaningful than.....



a spanner.

I'm wondering whether I should get an Ipod. I think I had posted a similar dilemma few months ago. Now, the Ipod fever is coming back.



James bought one last Spring and it's just too beautiful. The packaging that Apple sent it in is way above what we can imagine. I can get one for $269 at student discount price. Oh man. I just can't resist not having one. But spending $300 on one isn't it too much? That's the other half of me telling. The more thrify part of me which I gained from my mum.



A sexy 20 GB Ipod is just a few clicks away. Should I make that few clicks? I have these next 2 days to decide so that I can have it with on the long flight home.



Damn you, Steve Jobs.

Another cycle of week ends and of course, it's weekend.



For the past few nights I've been watching the Democratic National Convention on TV. One thing that this event attracted me is watching the speeches made by all the politicians. Bill Clinton gave the first night's addresswhich many said proved that he is still capable for being a president. I wonder what is he doing after his presidency. 54 when he retired. That's not the age for retirement. I bet many of his classmates or peers would still be working their asses off. The presidency is the pinnacle of all jobs. Is there anything greater than being a President?



On the second night, the key speaker was Pittsburgh's own Teresa Heinz, the widow of the late John Heinz III who is also Mrs. Kerry. She seemed to have this air of a royalty from the way she carried herself on the stage. Much like a queen in fact. Palms crossed on her chest as she thanked the crowd. I would like to see her as First Lady. If John Kerry's moving into the White House next January, she'll be the first First Lady to be born not as an American. It's good for Pittsburghers too. Perhaps when John Kerry is President, both of them will visit Pittsburgh often. Her late husband was the sole heir to the Heinz ketchup empire. If you come to Pittsburgh, the legacy of the Heinz family is everywhere. Just across the road from my apartment is the Heinz Chapel. I've never been inside but I read that it was modeled after some Gothic French basillica. Then, it's CMU's Heinz School of Policy Management. John Heinz briefly taught here before. There's the Heinz field which is Pittsburgh's major stadium.



I did not watch John Edward's speech last night but I think Kenneth did. Not particularly interested.



Tonight was John Kerry's turn to give the final speech of the convention. It was the usual politician's campaigning speech filled with "I will"s. But the air of the convention center was if John Kerry has won the election. People were cheering and congratulating Kerry and Edwards. Balloons showered the whole place. It's amazing how they staged this convention. Much more gempak that a rock concert.



I just hope Kerry wins so that another Bill Clinton would helped to make jobs and give some government support to healthcare.



wtf are these comments on American politics..hahaha

A movie everyday, keeps the dean's list away.



I found out that the Bourne Supremacy is part of Robert Ludlum's Bourneo Trilogy. There's a sequel to Bourne Supremacy called Bourne Ultimatum. I hope the producers are already working on it. The writer has passed awat 2/3 years ago. Apparently, the Bourne trilogy was written in the late 70s and early 80s which was in the midst of the Cold War. No wonder there are Russian elements in it. Now it's clear why most spy movies have some Russian element in them. Most of these movies are adaptations from cold war fiction writers.



I just read the news about a bunch of Singaporeans breaking the World Record for marathon movie watching. The last world record was  66 hours. Hey, that's quite feasible. I sent out an email to those friends of mine who are big fans of the anime and told them we could try doing such feat someday. What a disappointment. None of them replied with any enthusiasm. Seriously, 3 days is quite feasible considering the fact I've spend entire nights watching 3 or 4 movies straight. The only I'm scared of is that too much of movie watching for the feat would make sick of movies after that.



 

Missing



Our summer movie watching activity added another new release to the list, Bourne Supremacy. It was the sequel to Bourne Identity which I think is an awesome spy movie.



In Supremacy, Bourne's girlfriend whom he met during his escape in Geneva was killed by an awesome long-range shot across some paddy field in India. Hitman was paid by a Russian oil tycoon. Pretty sad because she was a leading actress in the first movie and now she's dead in less than 10 minutes into the movie. Bourne was of course was mad angry and the story is about him trying to piece the jigsaw and eventually kill the assassin. So, he went to Europe and the actions were mainly in Berlin and towards the end, in Moscow. There's one scene where Bourne paid a visit to a fellow CIA hitman and killed him. I had hoped that both of them would work together against the CIA but eventually the hitmen only worked on their own.



The charm of these movies is that they are out to impress us the audience especially those loves spy fantasies. It's the way these hitmen live that impressed me a lot. They act based on instructions sent via text messages. They carry sniper guns like an angler carries his fishing rod. Their marksmanship is just awesome. In Identity, Bourne killed another sniper at long range using a shotgun rifle (is there such weapon... it looked like a long shotgun). More impressive was their insane driving skills. There's Ronin-like traits in these two movies.



But why American spy movies are always shot in Europe? The Cold War ended more than a decade ago and most of the former Eastern Bloc are now even members of NATO. Maybe producing spy movies on current military threats like on wars against terrorism is too much of a risk for the producers. Even though the Bourne movies have no explicit mentionings of communism or the KGB, still the impression that I get from seeing the drama unfolding in Berlin and Moscow just gives me that traditional perception that spying is only against the Russians. I think spying against the current terrorists is harder since the obvious difference in skin color.



During the weeks before I came to the States for my freshman year, I half-read a book about the life of a former CIA agent who was in the midst of the middle East turmoil of the late 1980s especially in Lebanon. Holywood should produce movies based on such stories and not just popularize the long-gone tension between the Western world and the Russians. Probably they should also produce spy movies based on Latin America too. Spy games (Robert Redford and Brad Pitt) had a good mix of espionage scenes from all over the world. It had Lebanon and East Germany included.



Anyway, spy movies are there to satisfy our spy fantasies. These kinds of adventures do not happen to most of us everyday. I wish it happens to me sometimes but I actually shouldn't wish for it to really happen. I might not live to see 30 and even "mati katak" or die like a frog. These kind of movie are just means for us to escape the world that can sometimes be a little too mundane.

I'm ending my long night with a blog entry which also welcomes the sunrise of this Friday morning. i just spent the whole night writing long responses to the world history questions.

there's a surge of newly-burned downloaded divx movies. bob brought some back from penn state so this weekend will not be that boring. in fact, i had lived boring days by watching movies. watching movies is an escape from the real world that can be uninteresting. this weekend shall be bourne supremacy's weekend. i hope it's as good if not better than it's prequel, Bourneo Identity. all these spy movies that travel to europe kick ass. maybe i should go to some less visited part of europe. Professor Kats of my World History class often told us stories of European cities. The old man had been a tour guide in Rome in his young days. He said he spends most of his earnings in travelling. I guess he has visited every country in Europe.

back to movie watching, this is one of the few things that is uncommon between my father and i. i'm a movie buff and he's not. he thinks movies are just bulllshit because they are not true. the television shows he watches are the news, documentaries and boxing matches. home is two weeks away and i think i should introduce to him reality shows. i'm sure he'll like them.

 

 

Fuiyo. I just spent the past 12 hours coding with only an hour of intermission to cook and eat dinner. This further delays my world history homework which would take around 2 or 3 days to finish.



I was Joe's navigator throughout the trip to D.C. I had thought of lazying at the back seat until Amos gave me the front passenger seat because I'm the biggest in body size among all 8 of us in the van. It was a good experience though. The trip to D.C. was smoooth and in D.C., it went well also. Streets there are manhattan like but there were confusions when going to the Union Square. Going back yesterday was different. I misread Map Quest and missed the junction to I-70/76. What should be a mile ride along US-30 ended up a 100-mile ride along the countryside of central Pennsylvania. The road was just like Sarawak's intertown roads. One lane for each direction. Vehicles were very sparse and there we passed places that we absolutely uninhabited. Spooky at times especially when we passed empty and dark mills and houses. We even went up some higlands where the road were quite winding. Very much like the road up to the Kinabalu highlands in Sabah.



Joe stopped for a visit to the washroom at one gas station. I took the chance to ask the elderly man who manned the place. Absolute good samaritan. Although I didn't spend a penny at his shop, he gave me a detailed instruction on how to get back to highway. Actually, we had thought of just following US-30 all the way to some town called Greensburg and find out way to Pittsburgh from there. The straying into US-30 cost us an hour but nevertheless, it was an experience that I brag to my parents.



The trip to D.C. was to meet the Prime Minister at the Malaysian Embassy. He was on a very very tight schedule. During the morning, he had a short meeting with Bush Jr. at the White House. He met with us for less than the time planned but he did give quite an inspiring message to work on the country's human capital. "What's the use of having first class facilities when we're third class people?" he said. I managed to shake hand with him. He shook hand with every single student actually.



One thing I noted was there presence of the U.S. Secret Service. Yeah,  they provide security services for visiting foreign leaders too. I was impressed with them because while everyone were happily talking and smiling, they kept a serious look as if somebody would come out of the crowd with a gun. They were in their world of their own. A world of constrant suspicision.



The Malaysian Embassy is fairly a huge building. Few stories high with a few halls and a main ballroom. The diplomatic mission moved in quite recently so that explained why everything looked new. Dr. Zahratul, the MSD Officer for the Eastern region, was there. So suprised to see her remembering my name. In fact, she remembered many students' names.



About Washington D.C., it's a city where buildings are not closely built. There are no high rise like in New York. To me, the city's like a park where's there's less air of business around. Smithsonian Musuems were many around and are the tourist magnets. There's a huge memorial of Abraham Lincoln. So huge that the steps to his giant statue were as many to Sibu's Sacred Heart cathedral. We visited Arlington Cemetery where the assasinated Kennedy brothers were interned together with Jacky Kennedy and JFK's babies who died during birth. We were astounded were the huge number of white tombstones of the dead soldiers there.



 

Lots to write about but need to finish a stack of homework for this week. Will try find to write asap.





The Prime Minister came for slightly more than an hour to give us his advice and his vision for the country.

My bag is packed for Washington D.C. tomorrow and I have to bring my suit along. sigh since the high tea with the Prime Minister will be a formal occassion. Ah, the word Prime Minister still lingers around Tun Dr. Mahathir despite his retirement last year. He was there for so long that I grew up knowing no other Prime Minister except Mahathir.

 

I borrowed Bob's spindle of downloaded episodes of 24 and Monk. 24 is an interesting drama series where by a season is a story of a full day. So, an hour-long episode is about an hour. 24's about this Counter Terrorism Unit expert who's battling a conspiracy on the assasination of the African American Presidential candidate.

 

There's one flaw though. It seems unrealistic to have so many actions in a hour. I don't know about the rest but certainly in a hour for me, there's a certainly some period of daydreaming. In other words, there are periods of time  when mind just slows down and perhaps go blank. In 24, every single second has an action or a conflict. What sets this drama series from the rest is that it each episode has tail or ending. Basically, it's a 24-hour long movie cut into 24 parts.

 

On Monday morning, the Prime Minister will be meeting President Bush at the White House and in the afternoon, he'll be meeting us. Kenneth and I agree how great is it to be included with George Bush in Dato Seri Abdullah's agenda for the day.

I have a shitload of work to do, man. How am I going to perform my career one day with all these procastinating habit that seems more of a genetic disease incurable even by the latest medicine. My mother and my grandmother will be very disappointed seeing me like this.

For lunch, besides eating, I was watching American Psycho. A year 2000 movie but with a setting in the 80s. It's definitely an R-rated movie. Not a good idea to watch it during lunch.



It's about this young man. Good-looking, ive-league-schooled with a career in an investment company in Manhattan. But he's often jealous of anyone who is better than him. He's even jealous when his colleagues have better business cards. There's one scene where everybody swings out their business cards like a gun, trying to show that who's better. So, he murders anyone whom he feels as a threat. He also murders the prostitutes he brings home. Perhaps the expectation of making oneself better than the rest in every possible way can make u crazy.



But of course, there are other ways that could turn someone into a vicious murderer.

For lunch, besides eating, I was watching American Psycho. A year 2000 movie but with a setting in the 80s. It's definitely an R-rated movie. Not a good idea to watch it during lunch.



It's about this young man. Good-looking, ive-league-schooled with a career in an investment company in Manhattan. But he's often jealous of anyone who is better than him. He's even jealous when his colleagues have better business cards. There's one scene where everybody swings out their business cards like a gun, trying to show that who's better. So, he murders anyone whom he feels as a threat. He also murders the prostitutes he brings home. Perhaps the expectation of making oneself better than the rest in every possible way can make u crazy.



But of course, there are other ways that could turn someone into a vicious murderer.

Another weird dream. This time it's about a trip to Europe. Maybe the movie Eurotrip has quite an impact.



I was backpacking alone and I was at some Scandinavian port town. I was suprised there were Malaysians working there. To be exact, they were Malaysian Immigration Officers. I approached one Malaysian lady and she said the Malaysian Government sent their trainees there to be trained as immigration officers before going back to the country for the actual job. That lady was even from my hometown. In fact, I approached the lady because I had lost my backpack which contained cash and my travel document.



I met two friends of mine who are backpacking Europe as well and we walked together to the train station. On the way to the station, I realized how large was the Malaysian community there. There was a school for Malaysians students and even a mosque that looked exactly like the Shah Alam mosque. Then, I passed a hospital which is built by Malaysians.



At the train station, my friends intended to go to Munich. I told them I was going down to Italy. So, we parted. I woke up and realized it's Sunday morning.

my mind's blank. nothing to write. if i write about what happened today, it would be boring.



i bumped into Carolyn in the Wean cluster today. She saw me editing C codes using Codewarrior and was surprised why I was using the IDE meant for introductory programming in CMU. In a matter a few minutes, she was teaching me a lot about xemacs and how I can using x-win32 and run them off a telnet window. And there was xemacs, a highly reputable code editing tool among the UNIX programming community. The GUI may not be appealing but it has a shitload of functionalities and options. Seeing how Carol tweaked her xemacs and how complex this software is, I decide that my next goal in programming is to learn to use this software. Sorry to say that the internet connection in Webster is not within the CMU network but through Comcast DSL. It's not as fast as CMU's. So, the disadvantage is that I'll be having lagging x displays.



These days life is about watching download movies and dramas, reading and writing answers for World History questions and writing C codes.



i think i want to be a spy and be stationed in Europe.

Had a very unsual dream. Went to Iraq. Was liked by the daughter (ehem) and the son of a popular religious leader there who looked and dressed like the Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami. The son was very friendly but had a flamboyant image like the Libyan dictator, Moammar Ghadafi. Then when I was about to leave the country, the feared government police came to search my house. I think I was with my brother. If I had feared the police, then that Iraq was Saddam's Iraq.

The flight home to Malaysia is a month away. I'm all happy and excited about seeing my family and friends as well as the small little town of Bintulu and the house where I grew up. However, one silly thing is bothering me that. The possible surprise among my family members and friends on how much fatter I've been since I came to the states have kept me wondering how can I lose a significant amount of weight in a month. Fore warnings were given when my family saw my photos. What can they expect, I've been under a meal plan that is enough to feed my brother and I. American drinks and cakes have sky-high levels of sugar (Corn syrup). The intensity of the workload here in CMU kept me from working out (ya ya ya). What more to say about the freaking cold winter that lasted for around 3 months. That too kept me from working out outdoors. Oh, since I live off campus, the CMU gymn seems lightyears away. It seems I have all the reasons not to be able to exercise much for the past 1 year.



It has been the other way round. My younger brother is now boasting that he has lost weight and is even considering joining a mountain bike race in Kapit. Max said he now eats once a day in Northwestern. Very much of a contrast to Max in Shah Alam. My Malaysian seniors have been telling me to join them in soccer every weekend. I just wish the need to exercise is as intense as the need to brush your teeth when I wake up in the morning. I wish that without a day of exercise, I would feel feverish.



Ah, too much whining for something trivial. At least, I am still healthy at the moment.



The Prime Minister is coming to the U.S. the week after next week and the Malaysian Student Department in D.C. are inviting students to attend the meeting with him on July 18. A night stay in D.C. and transportation costs will be on MSD. Will be going. I need to get out of Pittsburgh. I need to see America man! 4 years ain't enough.

Cities throughout America except those with dry spells had their skies lit with fireworks tonight. For Pittsburgh, the pyrotechnics at The Point was spectacular. I've never seen any fireworks show as beautiful as tonight's. There was a large crowd at downtown to celebrate America's Independence. I'll be posting the video clips of the show as soon as I get my camera back.



the crowd at the park was great except for the shooting incident that marred the event. i just got back to the place where my friends and i were sitting. i heard a few shots. i thought they were fireworks warmup so i didn't really bothered. a few minutes later, police officers were shouting for the crowd to make way. i saw this african american man being rushed out of the park on a stretcher.



later when i went home, i checked the local news. 2 youths were shot just before the fireworks started at the park.



http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/news/s_201955.html



Beautiful days are long gone

I can't seem to breathe

Feels like it hasn't been that long

Since you walked away from me



Now I can try to act real strong

But you and I both know

I still think of you that way

And you should know, that



The beautiful lights, the star-filled nights

They don't mean a thing

Cause you were my star

So it don't seem right

Without you here with me



Now I can try to act real strong

But you and I both know

It's hard for me to say

You were my soul



Now I could say that I don't love you no more

And I could say that I've closed the door, for our love

And I could tell you I feel it's time for us to go our separate ways

But baby I just wouldn't be the same

'Cause girl your love is still on my brain



Now when you're in love

It takes time to heal

When someone's broken your heart

And changed just how you feel



Girl I thought that you'd never do me that way

But even after all I still think of you that way



Now I could say that I don't love you no more

(I could say this, I could say this)

And I could say that I've closed the door, for our love

And I could tell you I feel it's time for us to go our separate ways

But baby I just wouldn't be the same

'Cause girl your love is still on my brain



Now love is a game

That we both like to play

Well will I win or lose if I go or if I stay, yea

Even though I try to hide my broken heart inside

Girl you know me inside-out

I can't get you off of my mind



Now I could say that I don't love you no more

(I could say that I, yea yea)

And I could say that I've closed the door, for our love

(Closed the door)

And I could tell you I feel it's time for us to go our separate ways

(No no)

But baby I just wouldn't be the same

(Wouldn't be the same)

'Cause girl your love is still on my brain

(Still on my brain)

I practically spent the whole day out today. Morning was at Strip District with Irwan. Main intention was to get Irwan's new cellphone. I had been eyeing at the the seafood restaurant that has some outdoor seats. During the previous trip to the Strip, I saw lots of people at the restaurant so I told myself I have to try out the food there. So, Bob and I went to the 2nd floor, ordered drinks and was give only a one-page menu. I was surprised with the limited choices. I asked the waitress why so and she told me that the restaurant below was a different one. So, we paid our drinks and moved downstairs. It was so funny. Sigh. Contrary to what I had expected, the food wasn't that great at least to my standards. We both had pastas and seafood but I think I can make a better pasta sauce that the one I had. A pricey lunch it was but we comforted ourselves by saying sekali sekala takpelah (once in a while).



We rushed home in time to catch the bus to Waterfront since we booked the 3.30 pm Spiderman 2 show. It was a good sequel since the outcome whether M.J. would discover Spiderman's identity. I thought she wouldn't find out. It would be a disappointment if she didn't. So, she found out who Spiderman is and became a runaway bride. Now, she's with Spiderman but I think the sequel would not be much on Pete's relationship with M.J. anymore. That kiss in Spiderman 1 is no longer a mystery to M.J. She now knows who's that great kisser.



It's 4th of July. God Bless America!

Pink-shirt girl at chess.cyert.andrew.cmu.edu



I'm sick of Php-nuke. Almost every portal that I visit these days run on php-nuke. Despite being able to change the skins for it, still the basic structure of php-nuke is there. Why can't some other group of people come up with a better designed portal system?



I'm sick of php-nuke because I had a horrible time installing it. Once installed, there were only 6 members who registered. That's why I'm sick of php-nuke.

ah. i just feel so freaking horrible. down with a fever. first with a sore throat. now with a flue. how much worse can it get? a terrible cough that will last a week? i've been in front of computers since this afternoon. i'm not a programmer neither am i chatting with my girlfriend as if i have one. so wth am i doing in front of these machines all day. i'm just an internet addict.



eunice and kenneth gave me an apron today. maybe because i used to complain that my shirt will get dirty when i cook for dinner. so kind of them. even there's an embroidered 'APIN' on it. yes, people call me the meal plan for provider for the summer. providing dinner for myself and four other friends. it has always been chicken everyday. beef and pork are out of the question. fish is too expensive in this part of America. Lamb is too costly and some may not like it.



I wish there's some other domestic animal that most ppl will eat. Something as universal as chicken but tastes different and yet still as delicious. or maybe it's just the way i cook my chicken nearly everyday. baked at 350F.

The following is from a Forbes ranking of the best city for singles. Pittsburgh, to place where I'm now, unfortunately, ranks the last but look at what they have to say about Carnegie Mellon!



The tragic cycle continues. Each year, we publish our ranking of the best cities for singles, and, despite our hopes and prayers, Pittsburgh finishes dead last. E-mails from angry Pittsburghers wish SARS on our newsroom. The following spring rolls around, and, despite all the outrage of the previous year, Pittsburgh gets drubbed on our singles poll. The poll results, combined with a horrible job growth projection, paltry nightlife offerings and dearth of singles, conspire to make Pittsburgh finish last on our best cities for singles list. Again. And with that, we expect renewed threats to our well being. But before you hit the send button this time, Steel City, read this: Pittsburgh is one of the most beautiful, cultured, and, yes, fun towns we have had the pleasure of visiting over the past four years. New Yorkers would be jealous of a museum as wondrous as the Andy Warhol. There's nary a campus in Boston as pretty as Carnegie Mellon. And no Little Italy can match the magic of Penn Avenue on a Saturday morning. So buck up, 'Burgh! —Davide Dukcevich

Summer Session 2 began this morning. Contrary to my initial plan of taking three subjects, I dropped differential equations with hope to enjoy the next 6 weeks with just C Programming and Intro to World History.



My friends and I went to a Hong-Kong-style restaurant called Tasty's somewhere at the more shady part of Shadyside. There was great talk about this restaurant as being the best place in Pittsburgh that offers authentic, home-cook Chinese dishes. Honestly speaking, it was not as great as what I expected. I think Oriental Kitchen is much better despite not being as cheap as Tasty's.

My Photo of the Day



Caption by Reuters.

Palestinians carry the body of a wanted militant after he was killed by Israeli troops during a raid in the old city of the West Bank city of Nablus June 26,2004. Israeli troops shot dead seven Palestinian militants, including three senior faction leaders, in the deadliest raid into the West Bank for months. Among the dead in the militant stronghold was Nayef Abu Sharkh, West Bank leader for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s Fatah (news - web sites) faction, medics said. Photo by Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters



I can't imagine dragging away a dying comrade.

Watched Count of Monte Cristo for the second time. This time with the ability to pause and repeat scenes that seem unclear. Yes, I have trouble listening to movie dialogues sometimes.



Imprison me in that French prison I'll be insane in a day. In two days, I'll be dead unless some neighbouring fellow prisoner visits me and teaches me something. One line in that movie that I find rather blasphemeous - "God is everywhere....even in a kiss" said Mercedes.



Ah, I wish I can one day name my daughter "Mercedes" but with the name taken by a car manufacturer, she'll be endlessly teased by her guy friends in school.



I wonder whether Stephen King gets his inspiration for Shawshank Redemption from Count of Monte Cristo. There's this scene in the movie where the prisoners were sorting the books for their library when one of them stumbled upon CoMC and pronounced "Dumas" as "dumbass".

How I wish I can tear my Concepts of Maths notes into tiny pieces, soak them in a glass of Coke and drink the solution of great mathematical knowledge with the hope that that knowledge will settle at some memory location in my brain that allows for quick retrieval.



I wish life is that easy.

Tuesday, June 22 2004, 8 pm - started doing last 217 homework

Wednesday, Jun 23 2004, 8am - struggling with 217 homework

Wednesday, June 23 2004, 8am - stuck at questions 1, 2 and 3b.

Wednesday, June 23, 2004 8pm - still doing 217 homework

Thursday, June 24, 2004 12.01 am - finished 217 homework. time to start concepts homework due tomorrow

Friday, June 25, 2004 10.30 pm - 36-217 Summer 1 final exam

Friday, June 24, 2004 1.30 pm - 21-127 Concepts of Maths final exam



doomed.

Spinning Gasing, watched it for the second time and this time with opportunity to pause and rewind. Used to admire the production of this movie. I thought it was one of those superb Malaysian movies. But after seeing for the second time, I have second thoughts of opinion on it.



It really defied a lot of the norms of a Malaysian movie. Finas could have censored 1/4 of the movie. There's a scene on a guy banging a girl on a table, there are scenes of homosexuality. There are scenes where the characters argued about law governing inter-religious marriages in Malaysia.



The good thing is the movie potrays Malaysia as a country that does not belong to any race. Spinning Gasing features the typical HK-style loan sharks as well as religious Muslims on the East Coast. I think that's how the world should see Malaysia.



I quite like the soundtrack.



---



It's Summer 1 finals week this week. Will not be writing much but will try to study more. Lots of catching up to do in very little time.



Catch you when I still can.

"A summer without you..."



It's Friday night. Despite the upcoming concepts test on Monday and Max leaving for Chicago tomorrow, I've decided that I should bring Max and Leong Sing to some place for dinner. Hard Rock Cafe Pittsburgh.



HRC Pitt is in Station Square, a riverfront area developed intentionally for nice restaurants and as a shopping district. I've never been there before so that's also a reason we headed there.



We took the Ultraviolet Loop bus back. It's a special bus service for the weekends that serve major nightspots here. The bus brought us through the South Side. I've heard a lot about it especially the night life it offers. It is pretty much similar to Bangsar or Bukit Bintang back in KL. I promise myself that once Summer 1 is over next weekend, I'll try my best to bring my friends here. Enough of Asian eating outlets around Oakland, Squirell Hill and Shadyside. It's time to go beyond Oakland and venture into the other districts in Pittsburgh.



Won't it be regretful that after four years of college in Pittsburgh you realize that all you know about the city is limited to Oakland and shopping malls?



It's so much different than back in Taylor's and Shah Alam. I have Uncle Roni and friends to bring me all the places around KL and thanks to them I get acquianted with the roads there.

finally, the homework for this week is done. Yesterday was a horrible day having to spent nearly 12 hours finishing concepts and 217. i'm slow i must admit but at least i learn it the hard way.



I've not touched the piano for more than a month. Last time I played was after the calculus final exam at mudge. the piano there seems to be better than the ones for practice in the college of fine arts. mudge's close for the summer.



i remembered my mum sending me for my first piano lesson at 5. Mrs. Wong was a very gentle teacher and charges lower fees than other music teachers in town. When I first took her lessons, it was in a shophouse in town. 2 years later she moved her school to her home which is a proper semi-d house.



i'm not really sure why mum made me take piano lessons. probably because other parents were sending their kids for music lessons but i know for sure that my dad wants me to have at least some inclination towards music. my father's youth revolved around the guitar and even until now it still does. he was fresh from law school and was just starting his own firm so he couldn't afford a proper upright piano and instead got me a Roland KR-33 keyboard that had 12 different sounds and barely the touch of an acoustic piano. 5 years later, he bought us a proper upright. a reconditioned Yamaha U-1 that i think has better sound than any other uprights I've played so far. my dad bragged that he was so lucky to get that one for 7k and it still sounded superior. a brand new would cost nearly 20k.



i'm glad i had a formal and a rather classical training. as usual, we kids started off with scales. two octaves and at a moderate pace which i used to dislike at first. many would agree as well but to those who think that scales are useless, they actually miss a great training for improvisation. being proficient in the scales mean that you're proficient in pressing the right key to produce an acceptable, audible melody.



my dad has always been a big encouragement for me to take music seriously though not to level of making a living out of it. he believes that one who's trained solely on classical pieces is hardly a musician. i believe that one who plays music just by trying to playing other music exactly note by note is missing 99% of the beauty of music playing. dad told me to developed my listening skills at a very early age. he would accompany me with his guitar. on the other hand, i'm very poor in my sightreading since i quite dislike playing from music sheets. but i think they are useful to learn other players technique.



i quit taking music lessons when i was form 1 after 7 years of tutorship under Mrs. Wong. she's my longest teacher that I've ever had. most school teachers will only teach me for no more than 2 years. i left at Grade 5, a grade to me i think is the grade where most boys leave music lessons. zunliang left because his parents promised him than he can stop taking lessons after grade 5. on the ABRSM exams, i merely make the passing grade which saves my parents from another year of expensive fees. generally, girls do better than boys in the piano exams and that explains why many of them made it to the 8th grade. priscilla, tracy, florence, kerry, etc. counting the guy friends of mine: .... none.



i quit because learning 3 pieces for a year just to be tested by an Englishman for half an hour. it gets more and more tense as the exam day gets nearer. my sister, during one year, failed to show up for her exam because she having a really bad fever. she had to wait for another year to pass her current grade. in short, she took 2 years complete her third grade all because of being terribly ill during the exam day.



on the other hand, the classical music training taught me how to play properly. the scales that i learned are so useful that i still can play any of them today. from that, i learned the proper fingering. since it's my parents 21st wedding anniversary (yes, i'm the eldest) tomorrow, i'd like thank them for spending a significant portion of their monthly salary on an opportunity that not every child will have.

econs 4th test was today. hopefully my grades will be good enough so that i don't have to take the finals.



concepts and probability homework due tomorrow. yet to properly start on any of them.

Despite 2 cups of coffee, I still feel sluggish for another round of concepts revision. Two more weeks of this dreadful first summer session and then I'm done. But there would only be a weekend for rest until the second session starts.



Max arrived this morning 1 1/2 hours late. It can be guaranteed that Amtrak trains never arrive on time. Even on short journeys. I remember going to Boston from NYC last winter. The train was 30 minutes late and that 30 minutes provided a Singaporen conman a chance to ask me for money. He approached me saying that he needs me to return to Boston because he lost his backpack. Initially, he spoke Chinese and within seconds I told that I'm not. "You Malaysian? Oh, good, good. I'm from Singapore. You know Sandakan? I have sister in sandakan?" Ok, that sounds genuine. Imagine someone telling you the name of a Sabahan town in the middle of Penn Station, NYC. I wanted to give him 8 bucks until he said he needed $18. Wtf. He just said he needed $8. So, I told him that I don't have that much cash. He kept on begging like a small kid holding his pee. I gave a few rather strong No's and he soon left. Oh ya, another funny incident happened then too. There was a punk girl walking around showing her middle finger to us travellers.



...



My friends have been telling me not to drink too much coffee lately. I thought 3 cups a day was bad enough until Max and Leong Sing came here. Both of them have been drinking coffee from my coffee maker for the whole evening as if it's like water or cordial drinks. Yes, there are still drinking right now as they watched anime. I'm glad that there are people who are much addicted than I do.



I realized that Max and Leong Sing have much more social life than I do here. I do not have the typical American dorm life. I hardly go around Pittsburgh. It has always been either home, campus or Squirell Hill. I wish U. of Chicago has a renown comp engineering department or at least, an engineering school but they don't. I would transfer there if they do.



I'm thinking of going to Chicago for the 4th of July holiday weekend. $140 for a round trip to Chicago on U.S. Airways. I'm not sure whether I should spend that amount of money to visit the Windy City.

Leong Sing arrived via flight from Chicago this morning. So, Kenneth and I picked him up. Never seen Pittsburgh this quiet during the day although I would consider it to be a quiet city generally. We went to strip district to buy groceries as our supplies of soy sauce, minced garlic, bee hoon etc. had ran out. I discovered that the strip is actually bustling on Saturday mornings.



It was an atmosphere 10 times better than going to a shopping mall which the girl friends of mine love to go to during any free time (sigh). The Strip today had lots of street vendors selling rather cheap goods like souvenir t-shirts and pastries. The scene was somewhat similar to Notting Hill's I guess. I was really taken by surprise because all along I though the Strip is just another quiet part of a city with a declining population. I just wish Pittsburgh is as vibrant as New York. It's a sad thing to note that in the 1940s Pittsburgh population was over 600 000 and today it's merely above 300 000. Thanks to the closing of the major steel mills the city no longer attracts job seekers. In fact, this city seems to me a retiring place for old people.



NYC is an awesome city to visit. 12 days there during winter was amazing despite the cold. It didn't take me long to familiarize myself with the street system in Manhattan and the subway. The island was so full of people. I doubt the city will be declining in population. It has never depended on any mining industry. What kept NYC alive as it was 150 years ago is its financial district and continuation of the influx of immigrants. I wish I can return there again this summer. Maybe to enjoy the streets and avenues without the hindrance of chilly weather. Tasneem couldn't agree more on how great the city is.



We watched Harry Porter today, a week after its release. It was much better than the previous two.

Max and Leong Sing will be coming down to Pittsburgh from Chicago this weekend. Their Spring quarter ends this week so they'll have a week off before summer classes.



I've been very unmotivated for the past 2 days. No will to work hard especially revise the discrete math class that I'm taking right now. Today's lecture was the worst since the course began 3.5 weeks ago. Frankly speaking, I could only absorb 10% of the 1.5-hour long class on ring theory, equivalent classes and binary operations. The lecturer went so fast that every new material is based on previous material that was taught 5 minutes before.



Summer courses cram so information in a very short period of time. Maybe I'm not born to understand maths quickly or it's all because I didn't put much effort of revising after classes.



Feels like throwing books at the four walls of bedroom. Even out of the window.



What a stressful life in a tech school.

I'm really disappointed with my concepts grade today. One of the lowest in the class 11 students. I really thank God for having the professor to award and extra bonus points of 20 due to some typo.



Called home today and surprise to hear from my little bro that he and my uncle were mugged on in Sarawak Plaza, Kuching. They were approached by some youths claiming that they belong to some gang and asked for money from my uncle. My brother was quite scared but he did a very wise thing. He stood up and walked away. The leader of the gang asked where my brother is going. He boldly said that he's gonna call the police. "You telephone la kalau you berani". My uncle was not really afraid but found it amusing to be in that kind of situation.



My bro placed a call to dad who was back home. He called a friend of his who's one of the assistants supritendants in the Kuching. My bro called my elder uncle who called a cousin who's some quite important person in the state government. In 10 mins, my bro said, 2 police cars arrived but the gang had left already. The only thing that they took was my uncle's cellphone.

Nice. I spent the weekend working my ass on stuffing theorems and proofs into my head. It's very hard to concentrate at times. There's so much things going around that need attention. Anyway, the Concepts exam this afternoon was quite tough. Fortunately, the professor let us answer only 5 out of the 10 questiosns.



Went to Hunt library to borrow Ronald Reagan's A Life of Letters. The library search engine, Cameo, lists in in the "gifts" section. When I asked the librarian on the whereabout of the section, she said books listed under "GIFTS" are still being processed and yet to be placed in their sections. I read some of the letters in the bok before and they were quite interesting especially one when Reagan wrote to his son Michael who was having problems with his grades in school.



I used to write to X before. Even when she's around. It was funny how we used to exchange letters 5 to 6 pages long, mine having the worse handwriting. In fact, much worse because I felt somehow threaten by the amount that she could write.



Another exam tomorrow. Econs. Econs will over by this week. I hope I won't have to take the final.

"When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be," he said, "I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead."



- last words of Ronald Reagan



I remember reading about Alzheimer in one of Nicholas Sparks' novel called The Notebook. What a sad way to die by slowly forgetting people you love.

The exam review during Concepts was intmidating with the expecation to know how to prove every single theorem and lemma the lecturer presented for the past 3 weeks. So, we headed out to GE to buy some supplies for the upcoming week.



Bob was reluctant to cook so I took up the duty and made nasi lemak. I'm probably biased but I think my mum's nasi lemak sambal is the best in the world. No kidding. So, I cooked the sambil based on her recipe. Then, I saw a bag of uneaten Pretzels belonging to Kenneth. It was there since Winter so I think it's time we make use of it. None of us really like to eat Pretzels anyway. Since chicken is part of nasi lemak, so I decided to use the pretzel crumbs as a coating for the fried chicken. Grounding the pretzel was a problem. Having the pretzels packed in a ziplock bag, I took a soda bottle full of water and start crusing them. It didn't really ground much and the ziplock bag started to tear. So, I used the blender instead.



Saw yummy brownies sold at Giant Eagle but what a price for just half-a-cake. So, I baked one last night. First time baking a cake. I didn't really work that well. Too moist.

Now Arthemiz mentioning of travelling during the summer, I'm thinking of New Orleans. But the flights there are expensive. For the 4th of July weekend, a return is at least $500 on Orbitz. Thinking of going to Chicago but I'm not really keen of going there except for visiting my friends.



Can't wait to go home for the 3 weeks aftert summer 2. Actually, I can't wait to travel out of Pittsburgh.

Another 5 a.m. bed time. Surprisingly, these days I sleep early on weekends. Summer classes can be taxing when the questions are hard and even discussion is not allowed. I have a probability exam tomorrow and a concepts exam monday as well as a econs exam on Wednesday. Good thing that econs will be end by next week so I don't have to take up at 8 for the rest of Summer 1.



So far, today's weather has been good. Not very hot. Around 20 C. No sweat but still can wear shorts and t shirt around. That's the ideal weather.



I'm thinking of working as a lab assistant for 15-100 in the coming fall. Applied for it but need to attend some recruitment meeting. If I get the job, I'll be spending some weekday nights in the programming clusters helping freshmen out with their programming assignments. I need to start working on some job if I am to apply for internship in the future. Right now, I have no working experience.

Click here for another interesting post about the lost heir of blues legeng Robert Johnson. A inspiring story somehow.

Read this:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=572&ncid=572&e=5&u=/nm/20040531/lf_nm/france_germany_warbabies_dc_1



a very sad thing to find out

What a waste. The web server thing is getting more and more distracting. I played around php-nuke and tried to set up a forum for my secondary school but the sendmail daemon screwed up that registered users didn't get any confirmation e-mail. No wonder no one is in the members list.



Summer school here is really like a summer boot camp. It's a mental one though. For the past 2 weeks, I've been grilled with basic discrete maths that drives me into a record low of confidence. My friends who are not taking summer classes tell me that what I'm doing just sucks but I find it's not much different than studying during the normal semester. I enjoy concepts of math but the material is really needs a good push or squeeze to get into that narrow pipe that delivers knowledge into my brain. Not just delivering it into my brain is my problem, but to make sure of it at the right time and at the least amount of time is another problem. What a way to describe dumbness. Is there such a word, dumbness?



I think I drank 5 cups of coffee today. Thanks to the pack of coffee machine that makes coffee-making a very appealing activity. Oh, I feeel quite jittery now.



Oh again, it's Gawai today. My grand family is not celebrating it the usual way. My grandparents are somewhere in Colorado with one of my uncles and his family. They arrived last week but no plans are made to visit me here in Pittsburgh. So, the gathering place this year is Kuching. My family's there right now I think. To me, it's just another day spent in my room with sheets of paper lying around and a very distracting laptop. No, I'm not cursing you, Thinkpad. You're still one of my closest buddies around.

Happy birthday to my roommate Kenneth. Nearly all the Malaysians who aren't attending Midwest came for his birthday dinner held at My Thai, Shadyside. Eunice and I tried to find a nearby bakery but failed so we didn't have a cake during the dinner. But we picked up one after that and had an after-dinner party in our apartment. Photos will be posted soon at !http://crisab.homelinux.com/gallery



Welcome to the club, Kenneth. Your birthday is just a week away from mine and Eunice's.



Was very surprised to see the quality of shops at Walnut Street. There were many high-end boutiques especially those for women. I wish I live nearby. The houses there are mainly owned by the upperclass Pittsburghers like lawyers, doctors and bankers I think. The houses were really potray those lived by happy families like those we see on T.V.



My sore throat might get worsed. I finished 4 bottles of water today and I still feel slightly feverish. I need proper sleep tonight. Concepts homework waiting and this time it's hard.



Bo's leavig later at 3.45 am for his internship in Washington, D.C. Will not meet him after that for he'll be returning to Melbourne at the end of the summer. Good luck, mate

Finally I'm able to get blogger to reach my server via FTP. The problem was all about my ftp server not being passive. I went as far as asking help from Blogger's support group. They told me that blogger only support either secure ftp or passive ftp.



I fulfilled a long time intention of watching Day After Tomorrow yesterday. It was very similar to deep impact excepted no characters were isolated. The movie is quite entertaining in a sense that it conjured some wild possibilities. I don't know why moviemakers like to send disasters to New York City. This time, it was flooded and eventually became part of the expanded Artic continent. In fact, nearly the entire Northern hemisphere was swallowed up by snow. The U.S. government ordered its citizen to evacuate as far south as possible. Then, the reverse of reality happened - the influx of American refugees at the border with Mexico. The President announced that it forgave all Latin American debts.... everyone laughed in the cinema. The freaky part of the movie is the eye of the snow storm. The area within the eye will experience tremendous drop in temperature - 10 degrees per second. People froze to death that instantly so I think it was like spraying someone with liquid nitrogen. There was a scene on three Brith RAF choppers which froze instantly crash when they were on the way to evacuate the royal family at Balmoral Castle. By the way, the movie was also about the paleonclimatologist who modelled the climate change rescuing his son stuck in New York.



I'm having a sore throat now. Sucks..

Thanks to multiple problems with package installers in my Redhat box, I've neglected my blog for the past few days. Even my summer studies is put aside. Last night, I made a second installation thinking that some package might have been corrupted. Still, redhat hangs when I tried installing a new version of php using yum.



I'd like to thank my dear friends here in CMU who gave Eunice and I a treat for our birthday in Bangkok Balcony on Saturday night. Kenneth, Chern Yih, Ken Yu, Joo May, Ding, Wendy, Seng Keat and Bo.. Great friends I have here in Pittsburgh. Great friends who are in other places as well. Thanks for all the birthday wishes via ICQ, MSN, Shoutbox etc. Max and Rafiq gave me a call. Thanks, guys.



What a coincidence that Eunice aka Yau Nai and I share the same birthday. What is more suprising is that we're from the same pre-uni center in Shah Alam. Oh ya, I remembered during Orientation. The O.C.s were asking if anyone wants to get a copy of the placement test. Out of the large crowd of incoming scholars, Eunice and I stood up asking for it since we said we would do anything to get good grades. None of our friends remembered about that incident. Neither does Eunice.



The food during the birthday dinner was great. Thai food. Ah, our daily lunch now is Thai Food too.. from the food trucks. Quite pricey but the classy decor explains the bill. Not as fancy as P.F. Chang's but worthy to be called one of those upper-class Asian restaurants. Usually, Malaysians would hold birthday dinners here.



Concepts and Stats 217 are really bothering me now. I find myself to have a very low sense of understanding mathematical ideas. Thanks to Kenneth and Eunice who explained the proof of Division with Remainder Theorem. I wish I can be as quick as them in grasping. My logic thinking is quite slow I must say.... Paokong commented my homework solutions today and that I should use the more proper way to prove. He took the course last semester and admitted that it was a course so rigid in writing proofs. I guess Maths' like Law. You need some structured way of arguing. It's different from problem solving.



Back to revising Stats 217... halfway downloading Fedora Core 2 for the other free P.C.Hope none of the problems with this first installation occurs there. Supposedly Fedora seems to be the more popular version of Red Hat now...

Yay! I'm 20 today.



Will not write much now. Need to sleep. Have been configuring my server for the whole night. Damn. Econs exam on monday and Concepts HW due!

testing. first try on putting the blog on my home server

Fuiyo.. Concepts (as in Concepts of Maths) was very not intuitive today. I feel so dumb compared to that math major girl who's taking the course with us. Prof. Grossberg introduced to us Well Ordering Principle (W.O.P.) to us. The definition seems infinitive and to the dumb like, it seems trivial. It states the existence of a minimum value in a non-empty set of numbers. Am I right? Correct me if I'm wrong. When he delved into proving the theorem that the Induction Principle = W.O.P, that's when I started to get dizzy. Suppose this.. suppose that...



I finally got the Indy machine running. Last Monday, Bo and I carted a free 19" SGI Monitor from the kind and helpful SCS Help Desk. This afternoon, the guy who donated the Indy to me came and resetted the root password and he taught a few basic stuff about Irix and Unix in generally. It's just a 166 Mhz machine built around 10 years ago but it is so well built that I can call it a product that has been over-engineered. The light blue casing is very solid. In fact, more solid than any PC casing I've seen. The CPU thin is thin too. The interesting part about this machine is its boot tune. When you turn on this Indy, you can here this tada sound.... I still have a lot to read about this IRIX. Apprarently, there are still user groups on IRIX 6.2 which might be helpful. Yet to set up the network as well. I intend to run this as a simple web server. Most probably this site will be hosted on that machine instead on my CMU Andrew web space.



After Arun left, I dashed to Hammershlag to help Seng Keat and friends move his things to his new dorm room at Morewood. Then I got a call from someone whom I'm borrowing a piece of software from so I had to leave Seng Keat before even meeting him (emm.. weird statement).



Then it started to rain heavily with the thunders and lightning.



This sucks. I'm stuck in Cyert waiting for the thunderstorm to go away. Killing time by writing a blog. Huh...

I was thinking about the war in Iraq and the involvement of other countries in sending military forces there. Looking at terrorist threats that the involved countries are facing, especially peaceful Japan, I understand why Malaysia refused to support the war. Although Malaysia can be said to a moderate Islamic country, there are some people who vehemently oppose the war and are willing to use terrorism. I'm glad that there are hardly any terrorist threats back home despite easy going immigration on foreigners coming in and out. In short, I think the government is doing the right job to avoid possible terrorist threats.



God bless Malaysia.

Download here

One evening early last semester, I had nothing to do. So I went up to a piano room in CFA and recorded something pure improv.

Webster 615 this summer will be home to a bunch of guys having homecooked Malaysian food for dinner. Thanks to the hiatus from the meal plan during the summer. For example, tonight, Dilo prepared a super-sedap nasi lepak that made Pittsburgh more like home. Don't perceive me as chauvinistic but I think guys these days take food more seriously than girls.



We insist on having proper meals instead munching off some raw carrots or candy bar for lunch or dinner. Our stomach may grow slightly bigger

but at least we stick to the conventional wisdom that has been passed down for generations that we should have proper meals for lunch and dinner assuming that we can afford to have them. I used to know a girl who eats nothing or at least very little when I'm around with her. However, strangely enough, her parents told my parents that she eats quite a lot at home. I tried to assume that she's in front of me but... no.. I don't think so.



I think people always think of me as me as a cold, unfriendly, serious and perhaps fierce person. My observations of new people I meet seems to be that they are have that fear in getting to know me. Close friends told me that I do have a serious face. Am I getting this from my parents who also fierce-looking people?



Btw, being fierce looking doesn't mean being selfish, snobbish or unkind. It's just the way facial muscles are structured.

Sheesh.. this week has been going very slowly. Typical of a first week of class. Econs seems easy but the material requires a lot of thinking especially what goes up and what goes down. For Concept of Maths, it's not really intuitive. I asked quite stupid questions today in class coz I honestly don't understand. Calculus seems easier to grasp.

Decided not to drop the 217 stats class. back to original summer plan.

Switching from the 217 stats class to diff eq. Hope it works.

I try my best not to think about you



For the past 2 days, I felt dreadful of my upcoming summer classes. Somehow tonight, I became enthusiastic about the three courses I'm starting to take tomorrow - Priciples of Economicds, Probability Theory and Random Processes and Concepts of Maths. I know I will working my ass off again especially when materials are covered at much greater paced. I just pray that I can cope with the intensity. The Spring semester is now over. My grades are out and it's time to move on.

Nothing to hope for in her



Spent the night browsing friendster after a hiatus from the activity since the finals week. Found quite a number of long lost friends. One of them is Khairul who used to sit next to me in Form 4. A soccer playing dude who takes the game seriously. I used to play with him back in lower secondary. I can't believe that I would wake up at 7 (afternoon session) and made my mum drive to school just to play soccer with Khairul's team. There was Alif too, Fadzli's cousin, a very quiet person whom we always smilar as 'Alif Tatau' to differentiate him with Haliff, another buddy of mine who's doing medicine in Gajah Mada University, Indonesia. I'm looking forward to find Haironiza on friendster. She was my classmate since Primary 1 till Form 3. If it wasn't for her dad's job transfer to Mukah, we would still be classmates till Form 5. I knew how much she hated her new place from the number of times in a year she returned to Bintulu. I thought finding her was easy since she's Alif's girlfriend. Apparently not. She was nowhere to be found Ali's list.



Talking about long-lost friends, can't believe that my dad has a long long half-brother. Quite a story behind it. Anyway, grandpa and relatives were saying that they look very similar to my dad. A spitting image of him. This thrills my dad since he is the only son. For me, it's quite unbelievable. All the while, I've been looking at my dad as the man of the family. I guess to me my dad is a very special person indeed. So, when I'm back this August, I'll most probably meet up with half-uncle of mine. Unforunately, he is not as lucky as my dad to escape the ruralness of the Sarawakian interior and obtain some decent education. What causes the thrill also is that I am a spitting image of my dad and if that man looks like my dad, so I can pretty much say that I'll be seeing myself in my uncle. People always say that I'm a xeroxed copy of my dad which of course, gives a sense of relief to him...haha.



Btw, the blogging gets longer recently since I pissed someone off...



I can't believe how many free stuff that we've gotten for the apartment today and in the past week when graduating seniors are leaving. Now, Webster 615 has quite a complete kitchen... appliances wise I mean. Coffeemaker (brand new one), blender and toaster as well as the rice cooker and microwave that Kenneth and I bought.

Heh, topcoder.com is not for me at the moment. Tried my luck in today's noon competition and I failed miserably. There were 3 tasks. Level 250 was a simple one and yet I failed the test case. Too lazy to test it beforehand. Level 500 was to write a game similar to black jack but instead of a ceiling of 21, it's 31. Didn't complete it because the many possibilities of Ace of having to carry 1 or 11 points. Level 1000, needless to say, was to code some kind of hard disk utility. I gave up.





All my grades are out early. Did well in all except a B for Physics II. It was a course Rozana and I worked hard for. She got an A since she worked harder than I did. I was off by 2% from the 84% cut off grade for an A. I did quite badly in the final. Yeah, the final was tough especially on the wave question. I need another 12 points of 200 to get an A. Easily could get it if I think little bit more on that question. Anyway, quite satisfied with the semester of 6 courses.



Summer classes start next week. Hoping to work hard and do well.

She's gone for the summer



Another holiday spent shopping. Without a car, nothing much can be done in Pittsburgh although bus rides for us college students are free. The only reasonable places to visit are the shopping mallls and no clothes were at the reasonable price range for me to buy. Yesterday was Monroeville while today's waterfront. The Punisher that we watched was a good one I think. A Marvel comic turned movie. Thomas Jane looks like Hugh Jackman and for a while I thought I was watching another Daredevil or X-Men. Lots of smart moves by The Punisher. I like what he did to frame Howard Saint's wife and his right hand man.



I think I got into a near-death incident this evening. Irwan, Kenneth and I were cooking dinner for 11 people. The fried chicken was not really cooked so Irwan threw them back into the pan of oil. When we though the chicken was done, I took one out and quickly cut a small piece of chicken and shove into my hungry mouth. The chicken was just out of the boiling pot of cooking oil so you can guess roughly the temperature when oil has a higher boiling temperature than water and its bigger heat capacity. It did not feel that hot first, chewed once and decided that it's cooked. I swalled the piece. Next thing I could feel was a buildup of heat along my esofagus. I though it's the normal heat thing that I used to get from eating food that was just out of pot. My chest became hotter and hotter. I knew something was going wrong so I quickly opened the refrigerator and looked for something cold to drink. There was no pitcher of cold water in sight. Neither there were my usual supplies of mineral water from excess meal blocks. The only thing I could think of then was a half-full bottle of juice. I have no idea who it belongs to. Either Irwan's, Kenneth's or Diong's. Drinking it really helped. There was an immediate cooling effect. The juice was nice too so I drank till the last drop. Sheeshh...I could have just drank from the kitchen tap but I guess I was panicking that I couldn't think properly then. I just wonder what would happen if I didn't do anything. My esofagus might have punctured due to the excessive heat that are killing the cell walls. Hey, doctors and doctor wannabes who are reading this, please give some comments on what might happen if such thing happen and nothing is done to cool down my body.



The Computer Science Help Desk did an extraordinary for me today. They are giving me a 19" SGI monitor with 13W3 plugin. This will help me start that SGI Indy workstation that I got for free on Monday. Can't wait to cart it back tomorrow!

test

On the left is this Silicon Graphics (SGI)Indy workstation that I picked up from a kind Ph.D student in Biology who gave it out for free. It's a 1994 model that at its time cost $5000. Specs: 2 x 1GB SCSI hard drives, 64 MB of RAM, 166 MHZ Mips Processor, 13W3 monitor port, and a web cam. Installed inside is an IRIX. Yet to find an adapter for the monitor. Might scour for parts around Wean tonight. Wanna learn UNIX with this machine.



As I write this, my Uncle Benjamin back in Kuching might browsing through my blog, commenting who earth would read my blog and who the hell thinks of a dying computer mouse.



"What's wrong with your generation?", he asked hinting the stupidity of my eulogy



I have this feeling that my family members including my uncles are thinking I'm overworking here. I suppose my dad would tell them that their son/nephew here are work night and day. Uncle Christopher did not believe that we have that much work. Uncle Benjamin told me that I should join give a visit the Opus Dei center 1 mile down 5th Avenue. Btw, Opus Dei is a Catholic organization for non-priests and nuns so that they can live the life of doing God's will in whatever legal/honest profession they're in.



They tell me play some sports because they are superb atheletes back in their young days. Hello, I'm not like them. Physically, I have my Kayan genes and my Kayan side doesn't play sports. We play music. Music is equally as good as sports! I tried playing soccer and fail miserably on the pitch. I can't run 6 times around the track without stopping 100 times every 10 meters. I even lost to my younger brother (4 years younger!) when we took swimming classes together in primary school.



Why do we all have to live to expectations? Why don't we live to prove people wrong?

I'm done with my finals! and I'm done with my freshman year in college. Never felt so free.

Carnegie Mellon freshman Physics courses are tough. Yesterday's Physics II for Engineers final was tough. Hmm.. maybe it was not tough. Maybe I was careless. I overlooked a lot of things. I carelessly measured the changing area of a triangle as the changing area of a rectangle. I wrote a travelling wave equation for a standing wave in its harmonic frequency. I don't know what other careless mistake I did. I think I'm getting a B for this course. Again, not after a B for Physics I. Hard to believe that I feel tihs way after mad studying for it for the past 1 week.

My mouse went dead last night. I always eat as I use the computer so that mouse that had served me since I got my old laptop in 2002 turned oily. I brought it to the bathroom, rubbed some liquid soap on it, rinse it with damped toilet paper, dried it with towel, plugged it back it and there was no red LED light at the base. The mouse has served me well. I would still use it if it didn't get electrocuted last night. A generic, two-button Logitech, it's an example of fine Swiss engineering although its made in China. With no mouse, I had to spent Friday night at the cluster but thanks to Ding, I got to borrow his extra Microsoft Mouse, an optical one.

On the way back from campus last night at 1 am, a white dude talking on his cellphone came up to me and asked my name.

"Hey buy, what's your name?" he asked.

"Why do you need it for?" I stammered.

"Anthony? NIce to meet you Anthony. Do you live around here?" "

Hesistantly I said yes. The next thing he did was running across the red traffic light at the PNC Bank junction. I realized he was drunk from the way he ran. He hailed a taxi but couldn't get one.

I have programming today. I just hope everything will go fine. No mental blocks. No hard methods. No null exceptions. I HATE NULL EXCEPTIONS.

Summer Breeze

The DLINK wireless router arrived yesterday. I think it's not just hub but a swtich so that explains our wired connections went up to 100 mbps. It's a LAN now unlike with the hub which assigned specific comcast IPs. Now, the router holds a comcast IP while the three of us, dilo, kenneth and i, have IPs specific to the LAN. We are able to share files across the network but we could only see each other's machine. Can't browse the shared folder. The wireless runs well. I realized that there are around 5 other routers throughout the building. Apparently, for mine, I set the network key so others outside couldn't use our connection. I can't wait to pick up the free p.c. from the frats.

It's my Physics for Engineering Students II Final tomorrow. I'm ABsolutely nervous, worried, anxious etc. Phobia finals this week since my last sem's final was a wreck. For the past four days, most of things that I read were on Physics. The materials will be very much important for my next three years of engineering especially on waves.

Praying for the best.

The Chem E final I just had was so freaking tough. I guess all 12-unit finals are tough. This evening's one had me leave out quite a number of stuff. I'm unsure on some questions that I did. Mole balance, mass balance, etc. Even the first question took me a while to tackle. The good thing was Prof. Powers was very nice to us. Since yesterday or the day before was Cinco De Mayo, the Mexican celebration of its Mexico's independence during the batlle of Puebla, he told us that this time's 10% extra points will be on that holiday as a theme. I printed out a Mexican flag and glued it on my shirt. It was okay but the cracking sound made by the paper is slightly annoying. Prof. Powers brought in Mexican food and drinks for our exam "half-time". A coursemate brought in an array of homemade Tortilla dips. But sorry to say that the food didn't ease the trouble that we went through, or at least what I went through. I nearly panicked at one moment. I did thought of hanging myself if I do badly in this exam. Yeah, I actually did.

Anyway, with my performance in the first two hour-exams, all I hope I'll get an A for this course. God bless, Professor Powers for his kindness and generosity to us, his students, throughout the entire duration of this intro course. Thanks Professor!

I'm trying so hard to concentrate studying Physics. The laptop, the music, the tv, the kitchen are all sources of distrations. They make jump out of my task chair and start walking around. I wish there's a drug that keeps me focused. I heard some students in Cornell take this. I don't know but I wish I can have one.

This girl X I thinks like this: picky on getting a bf but once she gets one, she won't be commited.

comments, avid readers & visitors?

It was 3.30 a.m. and I had enough of sitting my desk so I asked Irwan outside whether I could borrow his just-arrived Runaway Jury DVD. Juri Yang Melarikan Diri.

I never realized the existence of a bunch of people called jury consultants - highly-paid people whose service to trial lawyers is to advise them which juries to pick. That only happens in the American legal system I suppose. A Malaysian judge or magistrate does not have them to help him decide the outcome of a case - at least not for the criminal court but I know the juvenile court has "accessors" - people who give opinions on whether the convicted young man should be sent to Boys' Home or not. My grandpa was one for quite sometime after his retirement.

So, this movie is about a civil court case involving the widow of a shot stockbroker and the gun industry. She was suing them for being the cause of his husband's death for the reason that the gun industry promoted the use of guns. The widow hired an honest but reputable lawyer (Dustin Hoffman). For the gun company, it's not the lawyers who actually runs the show but a charismatic professional jury consultant who's more like a jury fixer (Gene Hackman). What makes this guy look cool is the people working for him. They are young college grads, fresh from tech institutions (at least MIT was mentioned) who run the surveillance for him. Flat panel TVs surrounds their workspace in a rundown New Orleans building. The other thing that was impressive was how the jury consultant anaylzes probable juries during the jury selection. Yeah, damn, the lawyers can choose the juries. Sounds like half-bribery to me. The gun company's lawyer had hidden microphones oddly placed behind their ears. With hidden video cams on their briefcases, they would choose which jury according to what he tells them on through their earpieces.

They ran into a mistake by choosing Nicholas Eastor (John Cussack) who is secretly running a similar jury fixing business but within the group of juries. He's a jury himself! He and his girlfriend offered a bid on fixing the trial. $10 million if either side wants to win. So, cat and mouse chase began between Eastor and the jury consultant but not with widow's team. It was typical of John Grisham's plot - the climax was a race against time. You know, some people chasing for something when a decisoin is about to be made. Anyway, the gun company lost as they tricked by Eastor and his girlfriend. In turns out that Eastor's girlfriend was in revenge for their lost in a civil case against the gun industry many years ago for the shooting of her sister back in high school. The couple actually tricked the jury consultant of $15 million. I guess the gun company's ceo would be mad at his hired jury consultant for being too cocky that they could win the trial.

I like the scene in this movie. New Orleans Very not typical of an American city. I thought it was some city in Spain or Southern France when the first few scenes rolled out. Must visit it one day. Maybe during the next spring break.

Today, for my ears, I fed them with Rob Dougan's 1998 album Furious Angels. I first heard of this artist way back in 1999 when his Clubbed To Death is a very inspring soundtrack in The Matrix. Again, his Clubbed to Death 2 made it the Matrix's sequel. Oh ya, Furious Angels was in too. Anyone with Napster 2.0, Penn State people especially, I recommend them to listen to his songs. It's a mix of symphonic music and techno. I imagine him performing with all his synthesizers and drum machines, a headphone on one ear, backed up by an orchestra. Power sial...

Castro maintained that Cuba -- a one-party state -- is the most democratic country in the world because it looks after the social rights of its people, with free health and education.


Literacy is higher in Cuba than in many industrialized nations, and infant mortality lower than in the United States, where 44 million people do not have medical coverage, he said.


The average age Cubans can expect to live to will rise to 80 in five years, Castro said.

Catro did visited the United States by it was in 1959. Click here to read the article.

What are the chances of a girl to be freaked out when her guy friend asks her out?

The classes for my first year in Carnegie Mellon are done. All left are the finals which leave many of us unsettled, restless, panicking, worrying, etc. Yet there is this dance performance night thing called Dancers Symposium tonight. I almost bought the tickets to go with James and friends but I decided that with 4 finals ahead, this shouldn't be the time to admire the physical feats of the dancers showing off their finely toned bodies. This is the time for a struggle - a capstone struggle after all that was done for the past 16 weeks. For some, the good grades of their midterm exams awardedto them with the exemption of the finals. Yes, congrats to my friends taking Principles of Econs for their late night attendance of past review sessions have granted them the very prize of academic excellence - an A for the course.

Yes, I will be enrolling in summer school.
Yes, it will be for both summer.
And yes, it will be in Carnegie Mellon.

[ Click here ] to read my roommate, Kenneth K. Eng's speech marking the last few days of our Freshman year.

"I shouldn't have known her at the first place"

i'm done with all my assignments for this semester. thursday was crazy. i had 5 tasks to do. 2 assignments - chem and calculus which i rushed through in the morning. i just hope i don't get deducted a lot for careless mistakes. then i have to practice Bye Bye Blackbird at Mudge since today is my last day of Jazz Piano I class with John D'Amico. I practiced so hard for the improv but the tempo I practiced with turned out to be the wrong one. It was supposed to be swing but my improv was based on a latin tempo. So, when i played for the class, it didn't worked out well and i was forced to come up with something simple and mundane improvs on the spot. There was my physics lab notebook due after that. My last notebook.No class but Professor Linsuain was there to collect the notebooks. Back at home, I spent the entire night finishing my final 15-111 assignment. 8 points which is very much influential on whether I'll get an A or not.

Good weather today. Lots of people with shorts and short skirts. Still, the clusters were packed with people finishing last-minute papers and assignments. Just like me. I had to walk all the way to the 5th floor of fine arts building to print my graphs for Physics. I was lucky to get a vacant machine.

The Naked Music label rocks. For the past 2 days, I've been feeding my two Kayan ears to the sounds of Miguel Migs, Blue Six and Aquanote. The albums: Bare Essentials Vol II, Nude Dimensions Vol I. All from Napster. Penn State people,you guys are freaking lucky. Good stuff.


All in one day. It's finals time. 107% for it. Intro to Chemical Engineering this Tuesday. Less time should be spent on blogging now.

p/s: Kenneth wrote something very cool tonight but I've yet to page it into HTML.

I was so tense before the 3rd 15-111 Exam today that I practically couldn't smile or be cheerful anytime before 11.30am. It went okay I guess. I just hope my code doesn't fail me.


The main event of the day for me was the Chemical Boat race held at the Fence. Sunny day today and the weather was cool. I like it. There was quite a crowd of Chemical Engineering undergraduates witnessing us freshmen racing our Styrofoam boats.

The length was 45 ft. 0 load.

Ours went like this: our first try was only 33 ft and we believe that the bottle was not shaken very well. The jet went slow. I panicked of course. So, on our second try, we made sure the bottle was shaken really well till white foam was seen inside the tube. It really went faster than any other competing boats but we lacked the amount of liquid so it stoped at 40 ft. It was really a boost of confidence and on our third try, we added an 50 mL of acid. It didn't went further. 39.8 ft I think.

Anyway, we were glad that it went striaght. To tell the truth, we were more worried on it not going straight than the amount of chemicals needed. Calvin's group was the winner and they deserve it after all their effort. We worked hard too but not as hard Calvin's. Anyway, glad that it was over. The race was more memorable than my Mech E race last year. Designing a boat is much easier than a car definitely.

Our boat didn't really go what we expected. Calvin's group is doing really well. They could ask for a distance and get the boat to go there chemically. Our team needs to get the data right today.



It's last week of class. Less time to blog.

Lucky for me to have to go out and send the F.C.E. for Prof. McElfresh. I realized that it's chilly outside and I need get a jacket for the outdoor testing of chem boat.



Went to mIRC for the first time in like...a year? Met my second cousin Fabian @ #iban. We've not met for around 5 years I think. Maybe more. I updated me with his current life in UPM Bintulu and on his cousin Freddy. Told me he has a gf so chun that he's jealous. Haha. We spoke Iban on text which is kinda awkward at first. My spoken Iban sucks coz I tend to stammer in that language. I think my brother's and sister's mastery of the language is better than mine. Partly because they have more Iban friends in school and they speak Iban with them. For me, I spoke Malay with my Iban friend. What a shame.



In Iban, the word for "Malay" is "Laut". I was thinking on the origin of the term. I don't think it sounds any near to the Malay word for "sea". Also, I don't think Malays live near the sea. One possiblity is that the Ibans brought along the term from the origin in Sumatera a couple hundred years ago. Maybe they interacted with the Malays in Sumatera. Another possiblity that the Ibans must have referred them to the people who lives near the sea. The Malays and Melanaus in Sarawak generally live by the sea especially along the Kuching and Sibu division. So, I guess when the Malays first meet the Iban, they were introduced as people who lives near the sea. "Kami orang tinggal dekat laut sana." The Ibans might have nodded with partial confusion so they referred them as "laut" since the Malays said they live near the sea.

"Maybe she just wants to be my friend...."



I'm done with my Physics formal report. Everything typed out and the diagrams are done. All I need now is to check them tomorrow by rereading it 10 times. Haha. The amount of error-checking I have to do is twice the amount that an ordinary person has to do. My fierce and strict English tutor when I was in Primary 3, Ms. Wee, said I'm a very careless students. What else could she expect from me? I was only a 9-year-old studying English with 13-year-olds. Hahaha. Here I'm showing off.



I just hope my 2nd last programming assignment that I've just submitted will get full mark. It's 8 points but it seems easy. The easiness makes me feel uneasy. 8 points for creating a basic BST? I had worse time coding previous assignments whose full points were only 5.



I just bargained for a desktop computer from another student. I just hope he takes my offer. I'm hoping to run a server in room. There's so much things to learn in Linux and PHP.