Another gold nugget from Mossy (Green Molasses Dragon).
Apparently, unions have such a control over things over there in the US of A. When a company wanted to accommodate waterless urinals (I'm shocked there really is such a thing!)to receive some green sticker or another, they were blocked by the Plumber's Union since waterless urinal's would mean less work for the union.
No, really. Plumbers. Making sure they had work to do.
Many of you might not even know of a little movie called Tron. It was way back when computers were new and exciting (1982)and fun!
I'm pretty sure Walt Disney studio's got a little burnt on that one, but Mossy just told me that they are coming out with Tron 2. How awesome is that guys?!
The President of the United States notices that his brick wall has broken down next to the White House. Being the proactive POTUS (thats Secret Service talk right there) that he is, he calls in 3 contractors. One from Russia, one from China and another from India.
All 3 contractors look at the wall, and the Russian contractor gets out some measuring tape, takes some figures in his notepad, makes a few calls to his suppliers for material costs and says to the Prez, "For you, USD$1000!". So the Prez replies "How did you come to that price?"
The Russian says "Simple. USD$700 for material. USD$100 for labour and USD$200 for me."
The Prez nods, and mentions for the Chinese contractor to give it a go. The Chinese contractor pulls out a tape measure, takes some notes, and right away has an estimate, "USD$700. USD$500 for material, USD$50 for labour, and rest, for me."
Impressed, the Prez now looks at the Indian contractor, and motions for a quote. The Indian contractor looks at the wall, and then at the other 2 contractors and says, "USD$2700."
Shocked at such a high sum, the Prez says "Wow, how did you come up with that? You didn't even measure or check with your suppliers? It's way over the other 2 guy's quotes!"
The Indian contractor beckons the Prez over and whisper's "Simple. USD$1000 for me. USD$1000 for you, and we hire the Chinese guy to do it for us."
I caught the movie "City of Ember" a few weeks back and I totally forgot to blog about it!
IMO, it was an amazing movie. The look and feel of a city built underground for hundreds of years and slowly slipping into decay was captured quite well.
Acting was good too, and the fact that Murray played a role that left him low key, but still entertaining.
If anything, I felt that the movie was a little too short for my taste. For people that have read the book, I'd like to hear from you on what were the major differences between the movie and the book, as I'm sure someone has taken 'a creative free hand' in making the movie.
I've never read the book, but the movie sure does make me want to read it! Book URL here.
A good friend of mine is moving in to his new condo apartment, so I thought I'll get him a nice housewarming gift. He had no beer glasses / mugs, and IKEA does some really nice ones, so off I went to IKEA, beer glasses in mind.
Half way there, a cousin calls me up, fair enough, lets have a beer while I'm at it eh?
I get to IKEA, 20 minutes to spare, and I get myself a trolley, because everyone knows those plastic sacks IKEA offers as a carry bag is a trick for you to drop your glass ware and pay for it.
Found these cool looking glasses, at a great bargain.
I see something else that catches my eye (ohhh shiny!) and I leave my trolley for ONE MINUTE. I get back, start to push the trolley through the maze that is IKEA. Honestly, the guys that designed the shop floor are geniuses. You are FORCED to go through every area of the store before you can get to the checkout. Took me about 10 minutes just to navigate through. Just as I'm about to reach the check out counter, I look into my trolley to make sure the glasses are ok.
But oh NOES readers! ITS NOT MY TROLLEY! 2 pillows, a wok, and some plates. I've been foiled! Somehow or another, I picked up someone else' trolley by mistake.
Long story short, I had to rush back to get the glasses, this time I hugged them to my chest and ran through to the check out counter.
Of course, after that, I needed a beer. German beer restaurant to the rescue!
The Bavarian Bierhaus made a good stop over and the beer always tastes great.
Washed down a farmer's Schnitzel, perfection on a plate. And in a glass!
I lost some code when I updated the photo blog's template, so I've had to add the Google Analytics code back to the blog. Today when I fire up Analytics, its working fine, but I've only had one hit for it. Looking at the search page and term, seems like someone was looking for "amazing koi".
I couldn't help myself but to Google the term "amazing koi" myself, and wow, up comes the photo blog at ranking # 1. Sweet monkeys on a stick!.
That's enough to drive traffic over and soon, on to ruling the Interwebs!
I caught a program on tv(Discovery!) called World's Largest Chinese Restaurant. I'm not all that squirmish, but when they had a chef cook-off, and they made 2 dishes, I was pretty put off.
The first was a snake dish, which was something that looked like simple chopped snake with soy sauce. What got to me was the fact the snake parts were still squirming around on the plate. The second dish was a fish dish, which was prepared in something like 53 seconds. The fish was fried, but in such a way, that the fish head wasn't fried, and was still 'alive'. The fish gills and mouth were gaping for air, even after being fried.
I came across this in the local paper, and I was completely blown away. Its a packet of chemicals that helps treat water so that its safe to drink
One packet, and you get drinkable, clean water. That is just insane stuff. What shocked me further was the cost and how cheap it was to get out into nations that needed it.
This is indeed, an amazing invention, and the scientists working on it should be awarded some kind of prize. A car. No, a BOAT! Well a brick BBQ at least.
I spent, in total, 2 hours looking for a power point in the airport. Two, effing, hours.
Number of power points found: 5 Number of working power points: 0 Number of weird power point locations: 5
I had to squat next to a bathroom entrance, a fast food dumpster area, and in a long walk way, with people rolling over my feet with their trolley / pull bags.
Giving up, I walked 15 minutes to the food court, only to find a BAJILION power points littered around the area. No, really, that many. Plugging into a power point, my hot mocha in hand, I try to browse available Wi-Fi points, and there aren't any. So its either, you have power, or you have the internet, but not both.
I'll tell you what to do. Log on to Twitter and go "zomgs we all dai soon k thx". I'm seeing that happen as we speak! Yes, the H1N1(its what WHO wants us to call it!) flu is an issue but I think we need to look at it as a medical issue and not panic.
Panic =
Either that, or sign up for a new job. Say hello to our new masters:
I find it so weird that we in Asia have adopted the clothing style and in some way, requirements of the corporate world.
Long sleeve shirts and ties. In some cases, suits / coats.
Am I missing something here? I'm pretty sure there's some guy in Europe etc laughing himself silly watching Asians dress for corporate work in these clothes when the temperature outside regularly goes up to 33° - 35°. That's the melting point right there.
If it was me, we'd be doing business in t-shirts and shorts. Nice, presentable shorts of course.
I'm not dead. Not quite at least. The past 2 months have been amazingly draining on me, with work and then getting a viral fever that put me out for almost 6 days.
It thought me something. What that is, I don't know. But I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere for me.
I was listening to the radio today and came across a song by Katy Perry called "Thinking of You". At first when the song played, I was thinking to myself "Woah, Alanis Morissette! Ftw!" but when the song ended the radio DJ said it was Katy Perry.
Le Gasp!
What's going on here? Was her break up with Gym Class Heroes front man Travis McCoy that traumatic that she swallowed a jagged little pill?
There's been a rise in cases of Kangaroo's attacking people recently in Australia. I'm sure someone will point out the correlation between humans trespassing on wildlife habitats and the other way around.
It got us (as in we, the people at work) to thinking of a news article where a man managed to fend off a kangaroo (I have no idea why I spelt the earlier kangaroo with a capital "K") by punching it in the family jewels.
The only true local animal we have to boast that's not available in any other country (well, not in a bottle, a pill or powder for health) would be the Malaysian Tapir. All phear the tapir!
[Edit: Too many people asked me what a Tapir was, so I've included a wiki link! Pwn!]
It was a public holiday yesterday, so today is Tuesday and its the first week of work. Well, some people might say the first day of the week is Sunday, and I agree with them, which is why I said 'first day of work'.
Since Monday missed its chance to cause havoc and destruction, its taken over Tuesday. So today is Tuesday pretending to be Monday. Or Monday, in a Tuesday suit.
I'm not a fan of airports. Not at all. In fact, I'm no fan of planes either. But I grit my teeth and go along, cause, well, you can't really drive to some of the places you visit.
This time around, I had it worse then usual.
I read the flight time wrongly. Of course, I read it forward, so I wasn't late or anything. Just early. Very early. 4 and a half hours early. I usually add on 2 hours to my flight time. My flight was around 6pm, so I added it up to 4pm. The day I was going to fly, something made me think my flight time was at 4pm, so I added another 2 hours to that, and made it to the airport at 2pm. I got to the airport, and waited for my gate to open, took another look at my e-ticket, and realised my mistake. Early, no biggy. Much better then being late eh?
So, baggage in hand, laptop ready, I went off to look for a spot to sit down and get on-line.
Did I ever get on line? This rant is too long as it is, Part 2 to come
Well, over the weekend, I thought it would be a good idea to fire up my copy of Counter Strike 1.6 (CS).
Why?
Was I drunk? No, I just thought it would be a good game I'd reminisce about. That is, until I was forced to wait hours while server's dumped ton's of files that I didn't need.
Worst. Wait. Ever!
I don't understand why people create custom mods, mp3's and wad files for their server's. I don't. At all. Really.
Brb, going to go wait for that screen to finish loading.
