Thursday, December 25, 2008

4E or A31 or leave it be?

Have been thinking whether to convert my engine into 1.3, or get a new car (Cefiro A31), or stick with everything during the economy slowdown that's coming...

If I go for 1.3, I will partially achieve my dream of driving a forced induction car, but its still a Charade... a 15 years old charade to be exact, and that is not something spectacular... And I still have to endure a learning curve of driving a turbo engine, which is not as easy to maintain as a NA ....


If I go for Cefiro, I will be using all my hard earned money and then pay it all by cash, as there are no loan given for a 10 years old car... But doing that would achieve 3 main personal goals which is to drive a forced induction car, a rear wheel drive car, and also to consolidate my family's vehicle structure... not to mention having a normal work car and also a weekend car...But of course I will be a poor damn bastard and living a pathetic life


If I remain status quo, I will be able to absorb my house loan by keeping the cash in the bank to minimize the interest rate... It would definately help in the coming years when the economy hit bottom and starts to pick up again.


Being not able to make any significant decision, I had proceed to gather data on these 3 options and found out that the 1.3 would cost around RM5k, with the intercooler remain as top mount. This is not as cheap as 2 years ago, and the main reason is because of high demand and the strenghtening yen dollar against our stupid ringgit. Yup, economy crisis had impacted this decision, if I choose to move forward...


Then there's the A31 Cefiro... Averagely its around RM25k to RM37k depending on location, modification done and also the condition of the vehicle. I had seen one being sold for RM18k but that's member price... too bad didn't have a chance to see that. This option currently I'm thinking to delay for now, and wait for the economy effect to kick in and hopefully there are people who couldn't afford to maintain huge cc car.... The dropping price of petrol doesn't help in this scenario at all :(


And if I were to remain status quo, I would be able to save at least couple thousands in interest alone... technically this is not a very hard decision to make, but its contradicting to my idea of living...


Hhmm... And then there's this friend J that wanted to find carpet for his Honda City... hiong kan already, since City is being assembled in Thailand, there are no half cut that masuk City carpet as all half cut stuff are coming from Japan... A similar substitute would be Accord 5 piece carpet, I hope he don't mind the word "Accord" there if found....


Problem statement everywhere, analysis are abundant, unfortunately solutions are always tricky to come by...

First time in charity

Having sinned so much in my life, I decided to contribute a little bit back to society by participating a joint event of charity organized by my friend Foong and his gang. The event was scheduled on 22nd December where we pour in the money and get lunch box and sundries for an old folk home at Relau.

The place was a very run down home which houses 30 old folks (including some with movement difficulty), the condition of the places are lacking and their requirement list are simply long. The gang managed to gather RM600 for this event by buying simple necessities like maggie mee, eggs, can food, soya bottle, and many of those stuff listed on the list. Besides that, we also bought about 35 packs of economy rice for the old folks as lunch. Just seeing them eating the food and thinking that normally they had worse meal made me feel very sad when I think about me enjoying sushi king and McD in my normal days....

Normally I don't do charity as I believe that the money I contributed would usually ended up in the committee's pocket (as this is usually the case) and not the affected victim, but this effort ensure that the money goes to the right people and you are able to see the effort being consumed there and then are simply something new. The best thing is this group only target to do charity on the worst condition old folks home or homeless child home... as oppose to those high profile old folks center which look more like a marketing gimmick.

Now that technically I have done some positive karma, I believe this should also make year 2009 a nicer future for me right? :P
Will definately do it again!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Post mortem

Looks like my head and stomach had been hit by a tornado, and the aftermath is full of craps and corpses around... Rewind back to last Thursday, I remembered I had an action packed day when I was cross country attending meeting on Penang office and then rushed to Kulim to conduct training for the people there, and top it up I had a heaty nasi kandar as lunch and with very minimal water drinking habit... I was down with fever the very same night.

Normally fever is a small matter which could be easily brushed off within one or two day of blanket sauna practice... however the scare of my life came when I realize that all that I ate and drink are being exited from my ass. Imagine your morning diet all came out and say hi from your ass in the afternoon, with your urine tract staying dry... having seen 4 seasons of Dr. House series, I know fully well that your body can sometimes play trick on you and make you seriously doubt the existence of a godly being.... Anyway, the feeling at that time was seriously mind boggling as your body had started to divert all the fluid waste into your rectum instead of your kidney, its kinda like your body had mistaken the food tract and urinary tract and enacted convergence lane into the wrong lane....

Fast forwarding 2 days later, everything is solved after I went to see doctor in the middle of the Sunday night (2 am), and after downing for what it may seem like a wide selection of cancer patient medicine, everything started to get reset in Sunday morning. I just drank my favourite Coca Cola at the time of this blog :)

The only bad moment for this sickness is that I shit my pants and had some awkward cleaning moment in the washroom myself, other than that, it came out pretty well

The smell of freedom is really priceless, while the smell of shit is nostalgic to say the least... the smell and color made me think of baby poop, healthy and yellow *Ewww*
Note: No more nasi kandar marathon next time!

Friday, December 12, 2008

Sick again

This is really sucks, after approximately 6 months of clean sheet, I manage to get myself sick again, so here am, sweating and head dizzy and typing this post from my bed. The sickness itself is not serious, just a little bit of fever and no energy for the whole body... fortunate enough there are no joint pain.
Having said that, today I found out that the company is unmerciful when it comes to employee getting sick. First of all, I took effort to attend night teleconference, and push my ass all the way to Kulim to prepare the training for 2nd half, but the company will expect more from you, short of exhausting your energy.

If I can't get better by tomorrow, I guess need to descend to Defcon 2 already (see doctor), and the funny thing is that I don't even know who is the panel clinic here in BM... yeah, I don't expect to fall sick in BM mah.. here got parents, suppose they can take care of you right?
Anyway, the reason I think I got sick this time is because of heaty... earlier my body had try to send an early warning (by accidently biten my lips and caused ulcer) but I choose to ignore it, coupled with the food I taken before getting sick (nasi kandar, nasi lemak...), and that particular day I was driving around looking for 4E halfcut (yes, I went hunting on weekdays). All these add up to the toll :(

Nevertheless, I should prevail! Now I'm dreading next week of work... so many stuff to do and yet so little time.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Now that I'm back for a while...

Life ain't really change much at this part of the world, work still alot and hectic... and if I were to tell my ex boss on my current working situation, she would laugh her ass off and say "told you so" right in my face before proceeding to give me wisdom advise :) But life doesn't end here, and this would probably work out in my favour as they say "you only learn through hardship and mistakes"....


Yeah, speaking of mistakes, so far I am doing pretty well on avoiding mistakes (as for those who knew me, I am prone to mistakes when I am under workload), being in my field of work, ESPECIALLY in this industry, mistakes are what that will end you up in jail, so double and triple checking is the way to go right now.... having said that, I have some really good luck after joining this company... Probably 1 hand is not enough to count em all, they started with:
  1. I lost my bloody wallet in Singapore airport terminal after my Singapore training, BUT THE BLOODY SIA PERSONNEL FOUND IT AND WAS RETURNED THE VERY NEXT DAY WITH EVERYTHING INTACT!
  2. They run out of economy seat on my flight to US AND THEY UPGRADED ME INTO BUSINESS CLASS!
  3. Despite being an Asian prick (I admit), I STILL MANAGE TO MET TONS OF WONDERFUL AMERICANS WHO SHOWED ME THEIR CULTURE AND LIFE (probably not even 20% of it, but anything more would be cultural assimilation to me)
  4. Getting caught for speeding in US under ridiculously high speed BUT MY FRIENDS POUR IN THE SUPPORT FOR THE TICKET DISMISSAL FEES!
  5. I lost my stupid Nikon S6 camera after the shooting range game in Phoenix, BUT THE COUNTER GUY SAW IT AND RUN AFTER ME AT THE CARPARK BEFORE I LEAVE TO RETURN IT TO ME!
  6. Economy crisis is coming and I MANAGE TO GATHER ENOUGH DOUGH TO ACHIEVE MY TARGETED HOUSING LOAN GOAL AND EXTRA FOR ENGINE CONVERSION!

Besides that, I have a few personal achievement that's worth mentioning:

  1. I managed to experienced one of the world's most exciting theme park under RM150!
  2. Fired my first semi-automatic rifle in my life!
  3. Drove an American muscle car! (not really a muscle but anything above 200hp would do)
  4. Cured my childhood lesion on my leg naturally!
  5. Bought 3 years of Chinese new year clothes at the fraction of what it is in Malaysia

There are more insignficant luck and achievement which I think its not worth blogging, so I'll let them pass. One thing I know even for an athiest is that life is really can be short, live life and enjoy an affordable lifestyle to prevent regret after you goto hell.... and no, I do not condone criminal activities.