TRAGIC! 3 LAPTOPS STOLEN

Today (Tuesday), I woke up in the morning thinking "Gee... now that I am updating my blog regularly, I wonder what eventful event would transpire today to blog about.... "It's probably gonna be a typical day...", I thought to myself... fat chance.

First of all, it took me almost 1 AND A HALF HOURS to get to Subang Tech park for a presentation with my 2 associates from Spore Mr. BL and Mr. T. Round and round I went before I finally found the place. The worse part of it was the refusal of the guard to let anyone in, citing limited parking lots... I had to park my car inn a lot that was about 10 minutes walking distance. Anyway, after the meeting we decided to have lunch in PJ together with one of our business partners.

Well, BL wanted to have lunch at this place called UNIQUE SEAFOOD which is somewhere off Section 14 PJ... HE'S BEEN THERE BEFORE AND HE LIKED IT, so we searched for it with such effort and diligence, making 3 long calls for directions in the process. Alright, fair enough... I parked my car outside the nearby Wisma Celcom... it was a busy area and we went in to have some good dim sum.... We were later joined by our 2 employees of our business partner 30 minutes later and after 1.5 hours of "business conversation", we walked out with full, satisfied stomachs.

Stepping out towards my car with T... I was curious to notice as to WHY my hazard light was turned on. Then T said S**T. My worse fears were confirmed. CAR BREAK IN.

My left front passenger windscreen was smashed in. Thanks to the tinting, the glass wasn't splattered badly... a huge chunk of it was on the ground outside on the grass. I knew, I knew, I knew this was bad and feared the worst.... I immediately rushed to open the boot and ..... ALL GONE.

The loss? The list in no particular order of importance:

1. 3 IBM SERIES COMPANY LAPTOPS
2. 1 rather old K500i Sony Ericsson (with an LCD screen that doesn't light up - no loss except some numbers) as well as my 016 simcard... :( ... now I have lost contact with some people whom I will never ever be able to contact again.... ever)
3. 1 ORGANIZER - which was mine, however the bad news was my CHEQUE BOOK and 2 BANK BOOKS were inside.
4. T's PASSPORT! Gasp. That's gonna a big major problem/headache for him.

Somehow, the 3 of us were rather cool about the entire situation - unbelievably calm. Maybe it was the fact that I had an excuse now not to finish my due powerpoint presentation for my business partner... maybe it was the thought of a spanking new replacement notebook... or maybe it was the joy of the dim sum...

OK, first things first - block the cheque book, sim card and bank book... I called RHB customer service hotline for 15 mins and no one seemed to pick up the DAMN CALL! What kind of service level is this... I finally succeeded to get through by calling the branch instead. Just swell. After blocking all the damn cards, I proceeded to dial 999 and ask the police for the next course of action. "Kereta boleh jalan ke....?", spoke the voice on the other side. I was thus instructed to drive my car to SS2 Police Station. Placed my newspaper on the driver's seat to avoid getting my ass full of glass and then drove with a broken left side window.

Getting to the station - there was already a QUEUE with all front desk officers busy. Wow. So much crime going on, I thought. After filing my report, we proceeded to the nearby mamak to wait for the Sergeant’s questioning session.

In our wonderful conversation with the Sergeant who was more interested in small talk then the matter at hand, he mentioned that my case is the NINTH related case TODAY. Apparently the crime rate in Selangor is the highest compared to even Penang and Ipoh combined, with most of the crime concentrated in the PJ area.... "95% Chinese and orang kaya", he said.

Just swell. My dear dad drop by as he was in the vicinity to see how everything was... and after we all got a copy of the report, I drove my car to Proton Mutiara Damansara to get it fixed up. Ho hum. T had to check in to a hotel and had to sort out his passport issues the following day so he was forced to take a "vacation". BL returned to Spore minus a laptop.

Unbelievable. According to the police, the thieves used a sensor to detect laptops. We had one eyewitness from the opposite UM motor, who said the transgression was committed by 2 Chinese guys in a black Proton Wira.

The funny thing is, just the week before, Devan and I were asking Kevin aka Mr. Mozilla Monster - WHY CARRY YOUR LAPTOP TO THE KARAOKE??? Why don't just leave it in the car like the two of us, relax nothing can happen".... Well, Kevin - why didn't I follow your precautionary measures.... GAAKKK. 2 years of work, all gone down the drain - and for the umpteenth time, as everyone has been asking - I did not back the stuff up.

What a "swell" day. BE CAREFUL OUT THERE EVERYONE AND DON'T LEAVE YOUR LAPTOPS IN YOUR CAR.

A DAY AT WORK

Can you believe it. It's been a long day at work (and I didn't even get to the office). In one day, I met 2 business partners, 1 solution partner, made bout 5 calls to Singapore associates, answered about 10 calls from partners, made almost double of that to colleagues, boss and other partners, worked on a solution presentation, compliance statement, answer e-mails in the morning and for my "after work" work I worked with 1 copywriter, art director and designer not to mentioned trashing out ideas over coffee bean till midnite and let's not forget the 100km spent to and fro between cyberjaya and PJ.

Today I parked my tired Gen.2 at over 8 locations, met up and talked to 19 people and had a variety of roti telur, chap fan and nasi goreng kampung for meals.

Just your typical Josh day. I am even in my tie and slacks as I type this.

SUPERMAN RETURNS

Well done Bryan Singer. Just watched the much anticipated summer blockbuster at TGV with Lan to catch Bryan Singer's take on the Man of Steel. Instead of a brand new Supes, Mr. Singer has decided to make a "sequel" of some sorts, and I have to say the coolest thing about Superman Returns is its nostalgia of tying back to the effective 1978 movie.


Brandon Routh has an amazing resemblance to Christopher Reeve (especially as Clark Kent), and does a decent job in his big screen debut. The scene that blew me away was the "sunset" fly-by at the end which was a perfect homage to Christopher Reeves - the EXACT same angle, same shot and same smile on Supes... Awesome.

The only challenge was getting movie tickets - from CineLeisure to GSC and finally as expected we ended up at good old 1U TGV. Old, cheap and available (RM9). A nice cap to a weekend. Long live Superman.

MY PARENTS 20 SECONDS OF FAME

Well, Proton finally launched its much anticipated Satria Neo last week. Not bad, I must say. Better quality, better build and a nice looking car... I noticed better padding, better hinges and the important part is that Proton has used a much better power-window system this time. The doors are solid and its the nicest looking Proton ever...

Anyways, enough about the car. It was truly my parents 20 seconds of fame. We met up at Mutiara Damansara for the launching and my parents got interviewed by TV3. He he. Good for them.

Unfortunately - TV3 billed them RM250 for the footage on VHS (expensive!). So people, if you get caught on television, make sure you record it and not buy it from the TV stations....

My dad gave the best comment from the interviews "...Bentuk Cantik... Seronok.... Tapi roof memang rendah...." ... my mom obviously caught off guard just spewed out this comment - " .... I like the BACK ... it's like EYES".... HAHAHAHAH.

To give them a bit more glam, I edited a short 5 minute clip of their Satria Neo experience, tidying up the grainy video, interspacing it with clips of the Satria Neo and background music track into a nice DVD for them to carry around.

YAHOO FINALLY

Finally, Yahoo! has released a new version of Messenger for Mac. Wonderful. It even supports my cheap RM60 webcam.

Thus ends my suffering of poor messenging clients on my Mac Mini.

The English players stare in disbelief. We all did too.

DIFFERENT WORLD CUP SAME STORY

Yes. We lost - AGAIN. What makes it more painful this time is that we were the deserving side. There we were, all assembled at Food Foundry Section 17, it was by far the largest gathering among friends in England jerseys together.

It was a lacklustre performance in the first half. But we knew, as the game moved along, England would switch to a more attacking 4-4-2, and with Aaron Lennon poised to come on, we were pretty sure we would able to come out tops over the Portugese.

What the F is wrong with FIFA? How could you assign an Argentinian referee to officiate the match? The Argies have a long grudge history with the Three Lions as well as the fact that the got bundled out by hosts Germany yesterday.

Devan, my good friend came to the Foundry just in time to watch together as we all scratched our heads wondering why for Fs sake did Rooney get sent off. It was diabolical. The attitude of the referee and that of major jack-ass Christiano Ronaldo.

Well, 10 against 11. But England played with a lot of heart and deserved to win it. Then came the penalties. I told Lan earlier before the game that if it goes to penalties I might as well just drive off because England would lose. I was right. I should have.

Unbelievable. Few months ago, you would bet your mortgage on Lampard and Gerard scoring penalties. They do this day in and day out in the EPL. At least just ONE of them missing is acceptable (bullocks Frank Lampard)... but BOTH??? C'mon. All I knew is if Gerard had scored, England would be through.

Well it's over. The world cup is over for me. Once again, FIFA has managed to mastermind another controversial and sad end for England. Let's look forward to Euro (ho-hum).

To Hafiz, Lan, Gary, Devan, Kit and my cousins - your undying loyalty is commendable. Keep it up guys. Hafiz you summed it up well yesterday - "I DON'T WANNA BE FUCKING 80 TO SEE ENGLAND WIN THE WORLD CUP".