Here I am by Malaysia’s own twin towers. Here is another photo of the towers by themselves.
Malaysia – Day 3
It’s the start of my third day in Malaysia. I’ve been sick with a cold, and that coupled with my jet-lag has made sleeping an arduous task. Actually falling asleep is not the problem. The problem is staying up past 6:00pm and sleeping past 2:00am.
My plan for the day is to check out my workplace. I start there tomorrow and want to have some experience getting there before the actual day I need to show up for work. The deal is, I have to take the train for about an hour to the end of the line. From there I need to take either the bus or a taxi. Apparently the taxi takes about 15 minutes and the bus is anyone’s guess because public transportation doesn’t seem to be the most reliable here, not to mention buses are not as good at manoeuvring through heavy traffic.
I’m still not used to the food, though most of it is quite tasty, it’s very greasy and I can feel my arteries clogging as I chomp through the deep-fried everything.
There is some kind of small bug climbing down the chair beside me. I guess that that will pretty much bring this post to an end.
Malaysia Day 2
After a long night of not really sleeping, I decided at 5:30 to go and explore. The humid scent of incense and garbage was still very much the atmosphere even in the early hours of the day. I met a couple of backpackers from the States and chatted with them for a few hours until the restaurant opened.
I was looking for a “western style” breakfast, but with all the travelling I’ve done you’d have think that I would already know that finding something I’d like would be difficult.
I ordered the “big dragon breakfast”: fried eggs, hash browns, sausage, orange juice, and tea. What I got was half cooked sunny side up eggs, a tiny hash brown pattie (like you would expect to get from McDonald’s) and some chopped up hot dogs lathered in grease and fried with onions, green peppers, and mushrooms. Well I’m being fairly critical I guess my biggest complaint was all the grease.
I met up with some of the other University of Lethbridge students and together we’re all geeking out at an Internet Cafe. I think I’m the winner for the biggest geek… checking out Flickr.com, Blogger.com, and Gmail vs. everyone else and their Hotmail accounts. :) Well that’s it for me for now. I think the plan for today is to scout out the worlds biggest mall, and you all thought that was either the West Ed, or Mall of America. There are a lot of enormous malls here.
Space and Time Are No Match
After skipping a day (Sunday’s are usually so boring anyway) and travelling half way around the world I’ve found myself an Internet cafe here in Malaysia. It’s just down the block from where we are staying. It’s pretty strange here and I’m feeling the culture shock. I’m also very tired and stuffed up with a cold. I haven’t eaten supper yet but to be honest I’m a little leary of the places to eat around here. I better get over that soon or I’ll end up starving! :)
I’m walking around with a guy from Edmonton named Dave Woods. He tells me I’m somewhat lucky to be stuffed up because the smells here are really something else.
I’ll spare you too many of the details, but needless to say it’s been a long trip. I’ve been ping-ponging in the zone somewhere between sleeping and consciousness for like the last 36 hours and though we arrived at our hotel almost five hours ago, I’ve been sleeping and just barely got up and started exploring these crazy markets.
I saw a rat scurry across the street and into a sewer grate, as well about 10 or so cockroaches running around on the sidewalk. It made me glad that I didn’t wear my sandals.
There are many street side restaurants / food vendors with aggressive hosts in the streets calling out and showing you their menus. There are CD’s, DVD’s, and VCD’s a plenty, not to mention the assortment of watches, shoes, and colognes for sale along this street. This Internet cafe is a nice sanctuary from the bustle outside.
Being so tired and sick it’s hard to give a true impression of the place but I’ll let you know (if you can keep a secret) seven weeks seems like it’s going to be an awful long time.
Malaysia Bound
Just under eight hours until my flight leaves for Malaysia. I have such mixed emotions about going on this trip. On the one hand I’ve never been to Southeast Asia, and it will create memories that last a lifetime, but on the other hand I’ve never been to Southeast Asia and what if the memories are not good ones!? Actually I’m just kidding. I’m really excited to get out and see the world. Also working at Gxmstudio will be great. I am totally a very lucky person.
It Ain’t Over ’til it’s Over
But in this case it really is over.
Yesterday I took a long run (to put it mildly) around the Vancouver area. By a miracle, I finally met up with Anna. I had been trying to find the school where she was acting but had some poor directions. We decided to meet at Starbucks later that night.
Breaking up with Anna has been more strange than any of the other breakups I’ve ever been involved in. We still both seem to be very much in love but each have this understanding that it’s just not meant to be. There wasn’t any of the drama that someone might expect between two people that have been together for so long. We wandered around the mall for a bit and talked about what we’ve been up to lately and about how it was we arrived in our current situation. I would have gladly spent the whole evening with her, but I guess she had to prepare for her weekend in Victoria. Dragging it on probably would’ve only made things more difficult, especially for her. Though I am still sad, I’m actually pretty happy with the way things worked out.
In other news, U2 had another concert in Vancouver last night. I walked by GM Place on my way to the train, and just out of curiosity asked a scalper how much for 2 tickets. He said he only had 1 pair of tickets together and they were $400 each! For the most part it looked like the scalpers were having a hard time finding tickets to sell and because of that it wouldn’t surprise me if those $800 tickets sold easily.
Greetings from Vancouver
This is a photo from Jason’s apartment in downtown Vancouver. I have been lucky enough to get a week long contract with a video game company here. It’s been a great experience.
I landed here on Friday and I fly out to Malaysia extremely early Sunday morning. Things couldn’t be working out more perfectly for me.
Everyday Tips
I found some interesting tips for everyday life. Your milage may vary.
- Use a cheese grater to scrape the blackened bits of burnt cookies.
- Use those plastic soda six-pack rings to make a volleyball net.
- You can use the metal from a tin foil box to attach to the back of frames, giving the nail something to hook on.
- Try putting new cucumbers in with the other pickles. Cucumbers are cheaper than pickles, and for the price of one jar you can keep making ’em for over a year.
Berkeley Laptop Theft
A Berkeley professor explains the terrifying consequences that will soon befall the student that stole his laptop:
“I have a message for one person in this audience and I’m sorry the rest of you have to sit through this.
As you know my computer was stolen in my last lecture. The thief clearly wanted to betray everyone’s trust; it was after the exam. The thief was smart not to plug the computer into the campus network. But the thief was not smart enough to do three things.
He was not smart enough to immediately remove Windows. I installed the same version of Windows on another computer; within 15 minutes the people in Redmond Washington were very interested to know, why it was that the same version of windows was being signaled to them from two different computers.
The thief also did not inactivate either the wireless card or the transponder that’s in that computer. Within about hour there was a signal from various places on campus which allowed us to track exactly where that computer went and every time that it was turned on.
I’m not particularly concerned about the computer but the thief who thought he was only stealing an exam is presently… we think… probably still in possession of three different kinds of data, any one of which of which can send this man… this young boy actually, to Federal prison. Not a good place for a young boy to be.
You are in possession of data from $100 million trial sponsored by the NIH for which I am a consultant. This involves some of the largest companies on the planet. The NIH investigates these things through the FBI — they have been [..] notified about this problem. You are in possession of trade secrets from a fortune 1000 biotech company — the largest one in the country which I consult for. The Federal Trade [Commission] is very interested in this. The Federal Marshals are the people whom handle that. You are in possession of proprietary data from a pre-public company planning an IPO. The Securities and Exchange Commission is very interested in this and I don’t even know what branch of law enforcement they use. Your academic career is about to come to an end. You are facing very serious charges with the probability of very serious time.
At this point there is very little that anybody can do you for you. The one thing that you can do for yourself is to somehow prove that the integrity of the data which you posses has not been corrupted or copied. Ironically, I am the only person on the planet that can come to your aid because I am the only person that can tell whether the data that was on that computer are still on that computer. You’ll have to find a way, of hoping, that if you copied anything you can prove that you only have one copy of whatever was made.
I am tied up all this afternoon, I am out of town all of next week. You have until 11:55 to return the computer and whatever copies you’ve made to my office because I’m the only hope you’ve got of staying out of deeper trouble than you or any student that I’ve ever known has ever been in.
I apologize to the rest of you for having to bring up this distasteful matter. But I will point out that we have a partial image of this person. We have two eye witnesses to the transponder data. We are going to get this person. Thank you.”
Google Tracking
Google now offers a beta service that, when you are logged in, will keep track of your search history. My first question about using this service, was will I be able to use it while simultaneously using Google Suggest? I’m happy to say the answer is yes.
The other question that popped into my mind was, “Will that mean Google can do market research on my searching patterns?” To which I also had to answer yes, but then realized they already do that anyway through cookies. It’s one of those things that bothers me, but I can’t exactly see the big picture so I’m not sure if it is a bad thing. Until I figure that out I’m going to use it.
(via Google Blog)