And yes, I did win the 1 year worth of ice cream as well! Hehehehe *grin*

However, I gotta get it from Maxis thanks to their policy and etc, so I had to wait about 3 weeks for this. And judging from other people’s responses, I was expecting to receive it around or after my birthday.

But thanks to some twitter intervention, I got it yesterday (sunday)! Hehehe. Twitter powah.

I’ve downloaded all the apps I wanted and those few apps that were going for free during Black Friday even before I got my iPhone. Talking about anticipation! Heh. Now it’s already flooded with free apps.

Not Jailbroken yet, gonna enjoy using this as is for a few days, before jumping to the JailBroken train.

Don’t need to show you how the iPhone looks like because you can always spy on your friend’s one. Instead I’ll show you my iPhone cover! I got it on the day I got my phone as well. Heh.

Belkin Grip Two-Toned Vector

Cunnest RM79 thing, and it’s quite cheap compared to most good silicon covers out there too. Super solid and feels rigid. Throw to dog, dog can die okay! And still look cool after that.

But the screen protector sucks. Smudgy and there’s bubbles forming at the sides because of manufacturer defects. But it’s still usable so I’ll continue using it till it kaputs.

Schmae’s still-in-wish-list iPhone cover is also cooool, something which I was originally looking for but couldn’t find something like that yesterday. I really wanted to get something to cover the iPhone before I start trashing it around, so I got that beauty above. Heh.

There was an alternative which I considered, but it was too bulky. But that one, throw at car, car break in two! Fuah!

How does it feel to use an iPhone? Erm in the beginning, i can’t type without looking at the qwerty keyboard, but thank god for the auto correct feature. BUT the auto correct feature is also annoying when it comes to Manglish. It always changes my ‘helo’ to ‘help’ as well!

The battery. At 11AM it was at 80%. At 5PM it was at 10%. GOSH. I got myself  a car charger as well, but somehow it couldn’t charge the phone, but it works perfectly fine on Earl’s. Weird. Gonna get it change as soon as I get the time.

Anyways! Big thanks to NZN for the iPhone! Bigger thanks to aaalllll the people who voted for me for the 1 year supply of ice cream and a shot at the iPhone!

Oh, guess what’s the first picture I took with my iPhone?

Car accident @ Damansara Perdana

Oh well.

A crazy thing I did last night, fever went off already but my flu was still non stop. So I took a very warm bath.

Bye Flu!

Hello again Fever.

Slept under 2 blankets and I’m feeling better without fever and flu.

Sunday was fun though. Not Monday and Tuesday.

I wonder, if I had a day job, I think I would be taking around 2.5 weeks of MC. Is that acceptable or not?

Update tomorrow. I promise. I think.

Meanwhile, watch this advertisement. Funny as hell!

I’m pretty sure tonnes of people wants to know what happened to me on the 20th October 2009 (if you don’t, google for compassion ). To be frank, I don’t remember all the details from the incident – even on Day 0 and because it’s Day 14, some details might be a little off if you heard the story from me earlier.

PS: I’ll constantly update this post when I’m able to type. Work in progress for now.

To those who called, messaged, tweeted and visited me, thank you.

Day 0.

Part 1.

Just reached home after dropping off a friend after the movie screening ‘Law Abiding Citizen’ at Midvalley. I parked perpendicular from the neighbor’s house before parking the car into the house – because my mom’s car was parked in front of the gate. We’ve 3 cars and my mom’s car is always parked outside while mine and dad’s are usually parked inside.

An example would be like this:

< A >|| (outside)
------- (automatic gate)
|B| |C| (inside)

A = Mom’s, B = Mine, C = Dad’s, || = bougainvillea tree

I have to get the keys to my mom’s car and move it aside then drive my car in and move hers back into position. Thanks to my mom’s nagging I’m pretty cautious when exiting my car. So I do look around for suspicious people/activity around before exiting.

I waited for a motorcycle to pass by the alley first before leaving my car. The moment I was out, another motorcycle passed by and I thought nothing of it and had my guard down for a bit. Next thing I knew they turn back and came towards me.

First one passed by and stopped a further on, while the second one stopped just in front of me and said something to me.

[Neighbour]|---road---|
[Neighbour]| <*1>     |
[House] [A]| <*2> [Me]|[B] [Opposite Neighbour]
[Neighbour]|---road---|

<*1> & <*2> = Motorcycles. 2 person on each motorcycle
[A] = Mom’s car, [B] = my car.

First motorcycle passed me and stopped about a house away while the second motorcycle stopped just slightly after me. The passenger on the *2 asked for something which I couldn’t hear clearly, but I said I don’t know anyway.

Not sensing anything, I continued walking towards the gate.

Part 2

The passenger on the <*1> came down and cornered me off at the front of my mom’s car. That’s when I realised something is wrong. One was behind, another was in front of me. They brandished something that looked like a baton but pointed it away from me.

While they were shouting and demanding me to give my phone and wallet up (they weren’t exactly clear with what they wanted though. I had to figure out what exactly they wanted.), I was scrambling trying to feel my through the automatic gate remote looking for the alarm button.

Lights to the porch was still off, even the immediate left neighbours’ lights were off too. Only light illuminating was the street light. I was still processing what’s happening and trying to establish a course of action to get out of there. Of course, I ended where I am now because of the following actions lah.

Okay, quick disclaimer. From here on, my memory has been fuzzy since the incident and the following events mentioned might not be chronologically correct or might have missed a point or two.

While I kept my eyes on the robbers, I was still trying to establish which button to press to trigger the alarm and so on. Once I got the orientation of the remote right, stubbed my finger into the alarm button and hope the damn remote wouldn’t fail on me.

Gate alarm triggered and it took a while before my mom turn on the lights and came out.

At this moment the robbers still wouldn’t leave even though the alarm was ringing, and my mom just came out of the house. When my mom realised what’s actually going on, she started shouting and screaming her head off towards the robbers asking them what they wanted.

I on the other hand had other things going on in my mind. Mind you, everything was instant. Firstly, clients messages that came in with instructions were still in the phone. Second, I didn’t want to redo my IC and driving license and all those crap if they took my wallet.

So, I did the second thing on my mind, save the wallet. Don’t ask why I did it or why didn’t I pick the first one (I might have a pretty good explanation to that but client’s might just kill me for that) or why didn’t I just gave it to them.

I was right in front of my immediate left neighbour’s house. I threw my wallet from the front of the neighbour’s house into my house – through the neighbour’s porch. I kinda thought it was cool and wanted to tell the robbers “DID YOU SEE THAT?”.

I still had my phone in my right hand. I might have put the remote back into my pocket though. Not 100% sure.

House 2 || <me-> <-rob1>
House 1 || <mom's car>

House 1 = my house, House 2 = neighbour’s house. -> = facing direction

Didn’t want to have my back facing the robbers too long, I did the throw as fast as I could. I did the loudest OI I could to get the neighbours out but that drew back the attention to me.

The next thing that happened was one of the robbers (I don’t know which one) started to swing his what I thought was a baton because it felt blunt when I blocked it off.

He hit once, then twice and maybe a third. Then I think he said “takut tak sekarang”. I wasn’t. In fact I would drive my keys into his neck at that time but I didn’t want to provoke him further. Subconsciously I released my phone to the ground.

It was then another robber came on my left side and started shouting. This is when the first robber pick up my phone and started to back off.

I went nearer to my house and was in between the automatic gate and my mom’s car. It was then the 2nd robber followed me and started shouting towards me.

[    My House    ][ Neighbour House ]
-------------------------------------
|| <me-> <-rob2>
|| < mom's car >    <rob1>
<*1>  <*2>

-> = facing direction , — = gate, || = bougainvillea tree, <*1> & <*2> = robber’s motorcycles

Essentially, I was cornered.

Part 3.

He swung out his parang from his sling bag, samurai style. Then he held it around his hip, again like a samurai waiting to run and attack.

For a quick second I thought these guys must have watched too much TV.

He shouted, “aku akan bunuh engkau”. I think he felt intimidated by me.

My mom pleaded to him on and on to stop what’s he’s doing.

And at this very moment, I don’t remember how exactly I got into the house, but my mom helped me filled in the blanks.

He left me and headed back to his bike. I opened the gate and walked into the house.

Then I realised I was bleeding profusely. The blood was dripping onto my jeans and shoes. When I walked into the house, I left a long trail of blood from the gate to the kitchen.

When I was in the porch, I turned around and saw the neighbour from the right of the house came out to see what’s the commotion was about. The neighbour was wearing a sarong and a t-shirt. He was trying to ward away the robbers but the driver on the 2nd bike branded his parang and the neighbour ran back. Could you imagine how a person in sarong tries to run?

I want to laugh, really. But I had other things on my mind. I proceeded into the house.

I saw my youngest sister looking around dazed, my dad and my sister rushing downstairs,  and the maid was like “what to do what to do”. My mom was on panic mode.

In the kitchen I headed towards the sink, having my left hand up to slow down the bleeding.

Just when I was about to turn on the tap, I had a quick look at the wounds. I had a big gaping hole at the left of my wrist and a long cut on my elbow. I stopped, think, okay, it’s gonna very very painful if I washed it right now.

My dad asked me what’s going on and my mom answered panicky. Mom handed me a towel to wrap my hand and my dad said he’ll take me to the hospital.

Me, dad and my sis got into the car while my mom still have to move her car away. When she went out, all the neighbours were out on the road, then instead of moving the car she started talking to the neighbours. -_-”

We headed to Selayang Hospital, got into the Accident and Emergency ward and was examined at the triage station. The attending paramedic cleaned up the wounds and bandaged it properly. I was given a green tag and proceeded to register myself into the hospital. I was given a ticket number for my turn to be examined by a doctor. It was number 1001.

Day 1 has just begun. Continue to page 2.

Twitter:

Facebook:

kthxbai.

Congrats to the newly weds!

Sorry la Hongkiat, I just like that photo of you. Have a great life together, Hongkiat & Cely!

Laptop fried. No reason given, couldn’t start it up or do anything. Luckily I finished my work the night before and burnt into DVDs.

Then, 2nd day on location. Was there at 1PM as I did the day before. Somehow there was a miscommunication between me and the person I was liasing, so I was stranded there till the shoot was over, which was 6.30PM. Laptop fried, phone died. Did nuts there.

Buka puasa with the people on set, and it wasn’t hygienic as expected. None of my friends were near enough to my location to have dinner together, so had to eat there..

Then one of the actresses was so late, I was only able to do my job at 8.45PM. That’s nearly 8 hours on set, doing NOTHING. Once I’m done with my shoot, it’s already 9PM.

Went home, thinking about the bad day, and fell asleep on the sofa.

Tuesday:

Redemption day. Tried to fix the hard disk, only to find out I was using the wrong hard disk. Casing were all the same.

Called Dell service to check on my laptop’s warranty and got a technician to come in the next day.

Called Dell sales to check on my monitor’s status because the sales person didn’t send any purchase confirmation to my email. I don’t even have the invoice number or quotation number for that. Received the invoice later in the day.

Sorted out my photos, relocation and backup.

Wednesday:

Dell technician came in, replaced the motherboard on the laptop and it started to run again. Data still intact. Phew.

Found out one of my close friend had a miscarriage. Arranged for lunch on Friday.

The girl was on MC, so I asked her out for dinner. Jammed like mad thanks to the rain, had dinner then sent her back. Still too nervous to ask her straight into her face about that night, I decided to call her. Seems that it’s common to be physical in the clubs. Felt a bit crumbled inside but heck, it’s already been a bad week, so just move on to the next item.

Thursday:

The new monitor is being delayed for 7 days. Emailed asking for an explanation and they said they didn’t have enough parts, so it’s being delayed. I’ll only be getting it by end of this week.

Met up with Mei at 1u, again jam thanks to the rain. The padini jacket I wanted to buy wasn’t available in that padini outlet. Left the place and went to have dinner near her house.

Friday:

Had lunch with the close friend and accompanied her to her gynae in Taman Mayang. Found out that she’s suffering from ectopic pregnancy after the same gynae misdiagnose her 2 weeks earlier. The gynae adviced her get a surgery as soon as possible because it might endanger her as well. Did a quick google then and found out how serious it was.

She went to get a second opinion later, while I had to go to work. Later she told me she’s getting into surgery in the evening.

Work was okay, but was still preoccupied with her condition. Had dinner with uni friends after that.

Saturday:

Visited my friend in the hospital and heard the stories about the gynaes and the different hospitals she had to visit during the day after I left. Damn incompetent those doctors. Finally she ended up in Tropicana Hospital. Unfortunately the fallopian tube ruptured but they managed to remove the save her life.

Went to Skytrex with William and friends. Fun!

Shot Cely’s hen’s night after that. Surprisingly I could last that long even after Skytrex.

Sunday: Rest day. Finished up a few photo sets for clients. Working on the desktop is so much faster. Why didn’t I thought of that in the beginning?

Monday:

Wedding reception rehearsal for this Friday. Recon job before the big day.

Still feeling depressed about the whole week, went to meet up with Mei after work. Went home and slept.

Photos needs to be rearranged to a new format/structure so I can easily find them and it wouldn’t clog up my system when the Lightroom catalog gets bigger. 30000 photos! So it would be in this format:

> Year (eg: 2009)
>> Month (eg: 01 January)
>>> Date-Event Name (eg: 090101 NYE)
>>> LR monthly catalog (eg: 01 January.lrcat)

Problem is, photos are distributed in 3 portable hdds and aren’t formatted in the yymmdd-eventname format. So I’m getting to that but it seems that I might have messed up the dates because windows couldn’t recognise the 30D’s RAW files. Ugh.

Current LR catalog also needs to be dissected into different months. I used to separate the catalogs to work and personal. I think it’s better for me to combine them together, and group by month. Plus, work is play.

Next to move them to the NAS. Not really a problem, but time consuming.

Then duplicate to desktop for editing. I’ll be using the desktop exclusively for editing because it’s faster. Hopefully I’m able to upgrade it by this month when the new monitor comes in. Phenom X4!

WebWork

Install backup software. Install backup software. Install backup software. Install backup software. Install backup software.

Back up to NAS.

The XPS would most likely be exclusively be used for web projects, simply because I like using that keyboard for typing. Occasionally I’ll use the laptop for photowork if I’m location. Have to figure out a workflow for that. Sigh.

Life

Got this all wrong. Don’t pass go, don’t collect $200. Time to buy properties and set a foothold into it.

Money sucked completely. This month’s spending is off the roof. New lens, new monitor, and possibly upgrades for the desktop. Anyone interested in buying the lenses?

Rejected a job so I could meet up with friends tomorrow. Not that the job doesn’t pay good, but I miss my friends. That pays better.

I’d like to go on a holiday BADLY. Anywhere would do. Even if it’s just Genting. Don’t need too many people. One on one would do.

Friday, I spent the entire day in Subang running errands, getting ffk-ed, being interviewed and getting a contractual photography job, getting paid from a previous job and had luncheons and dinner-eons with client and friends.

*update: I was interviewed by David Teo‘s wife. I just realised how significant that person was after a round of Googling.*

Saturday was pretty much work only, with the exception that the work at night was much more fun than the one in the day. Been trying to improve Project Manhattan but hitting a snag or two on each step. It’s gradually growing, but at a very slow pace. I’ve already missed the deadline for releasing the site, but what can I do.. I’m just a one man show.

I think I’ve bitten more than I can chew.

One of my portable harddisk crashed bringing along 2-3 months worth of RAW photos, mostly untouched and NOT backup-ed. Sigh. Going to give it another try tomorrow hopefully it works. Maybe it’s time to try the fridge technique again.

At night, was Foon Yee’s hen night in KL. Very nice girl, who’s getting married soon. Shooting my 2nd hen night was quite exciting *not because I was already expecting strippers* but this time was a parade around Changkat Bukit Bintang. The previous one has a stripper in it. For this one, it was selling kisses and the bride to be came home with a sore puckered lips.

Not forgetting to mention, someone was there. But…

Sunday, the new job’s first day. I was recruited into a production house as a photographer for stills and portraits for their drama and film productions. Was okay, got to play with a Kino lighting system. Something new to use and isn’t cheap as well. Even the production house rented it for their own purposes. Lots of things to learn from film that I can apply into my photography skill sets. Pay isn’t too bad either, and at least it’s consistent – for now.

Tomorrow is another day of photoshooting on location.

Things to complain about.. Desktop PC is crappy and buggy, and it needs an upgrade – though it’s perfectly capable to handle all my workload.. 24″ monitor is coming in either today or tomorrow! It’s for the desktop anyways, so again, need to upgrade the damn thing before I can actually use it. I’m hoping to upgrade with less than RM1000, but it seems that Phenom X4 would be using a DDR3 RAM system, meaning I need to upgrade on RAM as well.. *Sigh* CPU + RAM + Mobo = RM900-1000, which excludes the two 1TB harddisks I’d like to buy for photos (RAID 1).

Got to play with Chung Lern‘s CPL filter, and I must say, a CPL filter is a must for any wide angle lenses! Now I shoot through glass and water *and clothes? *. Though I did noticed that portraits didn’t look as natural as I’d like it to be. Will try again tomorrow during the photoshoot.

Need to spend on a UV filter for the new lens, else might scratch or drop it.. Also hoping to get the ThinkTank Skin belt system from Singapore before the wedding shoot in two weeks time.. HK, please please do get it for me.

GOSH so much cash going out this month!

AND workload is going UP UP UP.

Who want’s to be my PA? I can’t pay much though.

Was quite nervous to begin with. Not because I was just sitting for an exam, but because of the cost of the exam.

So there I was, telling myself how many questions I need to get right, a nonsensical thought but it’s because of all the years, bowling competitively, telling myself to achieve a target I set.

10% successful so far.

Based on the sample exam engine that I’ve been practicing at home, I needed 70% to pass an 80 questions MCQ paper, that would mean I’ll need at least 56 questions correct to pass. There’s two types of MCQ questions, a single answer question or multiple answers question (meaning more than 1 correct answers). A question may have more than 4 choices, some even 8 choices, and it doesn’t specify how many answers are correct. A full point for getting all right, and half for incomplete answers.

So again, I entered my credentials and begin the exam ‘tutorial’ – how to use the exam program, etc. Then I saw something rather odd.

“To pass this examination requires at least 55%”

Okay, I was delighted, even more when it mentioned that it will specify how many answers are correct for the multiple answers questions. There was a downside though – there wasn’t any partial marks for incomplete answers.

55%, that’s 44 questions I need to score.

Timer started counting down when I press ‘Begin exam’. 3 hours and counting.

By the time I finish answering the questions, I did a rough estimation of the possible score I’ll get.

A breakdown of confident/50-50/not-sure answers.

25% – 100% absolutely correct.

25% – 50-50

50% – lets hope for the best shall we?

I even included error co-efficiency for total breakdown of the correct answers into the calculation.

100% for confident answers.

80% for 50-50.

And the remaining, 5-10% should be correct.

So that in the end would get me at around 50% for the total score. 5% short. I guess that extra 5% would have to be put under the ‘lucky answers’ category, if there were one.

Ran through my answers a few times and with 15 minutes remaining, I couldn’t wait anymore. It was killing me that the ‘End Exam’ button was just there, waiting to be pressed.

53%

12 hours to exam.