bruce is back again

so I was watching surrogates last night, where all these people operate robots in the real world and never leave their homes. freaky right? a fat ugly dude could be walking around he streets in a tarty blond body, making out with all those loser college boys. wait a minute....

bruce willis plays this cop who investigates the mysterious deaths of surrogate operators. now, the surrogates are connected to their operators neurons thus they experience whatever the surrogates experience. but the machines have a fail safe that allows them to disconnect with the operators, should they die or shutdown.

the story kicks off with the death of the son of the creator of surrogates, who died when his surrogate was destroyed by a new weapon of some sort. and bruce goes on a homocide investigation that leads him to discover how hot he really looks in real life and that he doesnt need a surrogate cause his so damn awesome even at that age.

a solid 5 stars right there!

salam

living it

its 090909.

am reading a month's worth of backlogged world news rss feeds.

you know how history books are full of time-lines on how things happen, the dates in which something significant occurred, contributing to the build up to a historical event that seemed so obvious from the futures point of view.

reading through the world news, I can't help but feel a little overwhelmed by everything. all those news, those little significant events that will probably feature one day in history books as the thing that led up to that one big historical event.

I'm living history. and I don't even know it.

but then, they never do...

the new buzzword

so recently I was tasked by the boss to prepare a social media presentation for the management. with all the hype surrounding twitter and crisis management, it was only a matter of time that the company would get on the buzzword bandwagon. thus, eyes and sleeves simultaneously rolled, I set about to research my subject.

first on my togethr list is a social media workshop by a self professed twitter addict and this guy. I started the workshop with as much skepticism as I could muster (that's the only way you'll ever learn anything) and decided to twitter while listening, to show how in I was with all this social media / web 2.0 stuff. after 30 minutes and three twitter posts later, I realised I had no idea what a hashtag was and had not placed the given hashtag (#myprca) on my twitter posts, thus alienating my witty comments on the workshop from the rest of the twittering audience. and don't get me started on twitpics. the workshop was an eye-opener to say the least. eventhough I was an avid used of tumblr and facebook, I realised that I was still a long way away from becoming a self professed anything in the world of social media.

*However, Google News still rules in my book as the best news related search engine but am contemplating delicious for my research based search engine*

properly enlightened of my ignorance, I decided to continue my research on the internet. A few google clicks into the www, I found a neat little presentation pack that explains Social Media in Plain English. Common Crafts, the creator of the Plain English series of presentation, explains the many facets of Social Media, in simple, paper cutout formats (similar to those employed by the Maxis ads, btw). Thanks to his informative and easy to understand presentations, I now am proudly a user of delicious, have setup my twitpic email on my phone and also managed to gain some new zombie survival skills at the same time. Not to mention finally truly understanding the concept of Wiki (as opposed to thinking it is all a branch of Wikipedia). Brilliant to say the least.

thus I started crafting the presentation, of which content I won't dwell here. It's for management. You get the picture.

Once I completed it, I was still buzzing with social media excitement. I had a discussion with Adam on the growth of social media and its sustainability. if you have been using the internet for as long as I have, you will know the story of the deaths of website hosters (before the advent of blogs) like geocities, goplay and envy.nu. their demise caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of user generated websites (mine included). currently, most of the major social media sites like twitter and tumblr, are free agents, running on the backs of hopeful investors who see the potential in its business. however, if they don't get bought out, or figure out how to generate money soon, these sites might well disappear into the nethernet, just as their equally popular predecessors. let's pray that doesn't happen.

I believe in science

Single molecule, one million times smaller than a grain of sand, pictured for first time


I saw this on my tumblr today. A news article in the daily mail. Scientists from IBM used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to reveal the chemical bonds within a molecule. It just blew me away. It brought back a whole lot of memories, 9 years worth to be exact, of me being a science student, at school, then at University. After leaving it for almost four years, doing PR of all things, I forgot how amazing science really is. Learning about the very core of our world, our life. The basic structure of our bodies, the basic structure of all things. Genes. Atoms. A whole universe beyond imagining.

And yet, not quite. Because they did imagine it. Or rather, fathom it. And as we go deeper and deeper into ourselves, its almost hard to imagine that all this was not engineered.

I don't know how many would recognise my reference to Nacho Libre in my title. El Skeletor, Nacho's partner in the movie, refused to be baptised, because he does not believe in God. He believes in Science. Sure enough, a breakthrough such as this, immediately sparked the debate of God vs Evolution, this time, in the comments portion of the daily mail.

I myself? I don't know what to believe. All I know is that this breakthrough, proved once again that man, is an amazing creature, capable of amazing things. And that this world that we live in, is beyond limits. And that is something to revel in. Embrace. And be a part of.

Congratulations to the team from IBM Research Zurich. What a picture!

ramadhan is here

I revisited what I wrote here one year ago,

My sister and I were talking about fasting. I want to try to observe it properly this year. Not just fasting from food and drink but this time, from negative thoughts as well. And thoughts that have no value, to me or to anyone else. I want to think more about other people. Be better to my mother. Kinder to my brother and more loving to my sisters. Dear Allah, please help me achieve all this.

Hmm, I wonder how I did last year? Not very good I think. I still have a long way to go to being a better person. It's a constant inner battle. As always, Allah, I pray you help me out.

Peace and kindness to all.

speed/spaced

I spend two hours a

day like this, in between

spaces and time. thoughts

of you get me by. music

helps. and the ocassional

nice guy with nice teeth.

but most of the time, its

just a long silent ride

to nowhere. everyone an

empty glazed spaced

expression. we are terribly

lonely all the time, why

do we do this to ourselves?

no decent pizza for louie - a screenplay

on a particularly boring friday night, sally sits alone in her room and starts to write...

scene
luigi (or as he is known to his friends, louie), is standing in the middle of a red brick kitchen discussing his current dilemma of getting proper ingredients for his pizza deli to his friend dimitri. he is clearly vexed.

luigi: i-tis-a crayzee dimeeetri. they want-a me to trade my pepper-ronni for some tomaaatoes.
luigi: I need-a tomaaatoes for my peetza and they say, traaade it louie, for your pepper-ronni
dimitri: that is-a crayzee luigi!
luigi: I come into dis contree eh, to make-a the pitza. I need the tomatoes to make-a my pitza. I cannot-a make my pitza without the tomaaatoes eh. but I need the pepper-ronni for my pepper-ronni pitza...
luigi: i-tis-a crayzee no? I need the two ingreedients to make-a the beyst pitza..
luigi: I need the pepper-ronni for my pepper-ronni pitza and the tomaaatoes is for all the pitzas.
luigi: I cannot-a make my bizznesss with one and not the other eh?
dimitri: no you cannot, my friend
luigi: i-tis just-a crayzee dimeetri. I cannot-a work in this contree, with its lack of tomaaatoes and the pepper-ronni.
luigi: I cannot-a make a deessent pitza.

end

wireless

we're finally wireless at the family home. brilliant.

adam finished upgrading my mom's new 50 ringgit (now 380 ringgit after all the additions) pc. set up the wireless connection in the house so our two pc's can get crack-e-lackin. its pretty neat and my mom's pretty happy.

so now when my nieces come over they wont have any trouble getting online, since they can use their notebooks or my mom's computer instead of fighting for the one available pc.

this computer purchase is pretty much the best thing I've done this month.

hello. nice to see you again...

I have so been neglecting this blog. been tumblring a lot lately. and playing restaurant city on facebook. basically the only two personal things I have time for on the internet lately. work has been somewhat, interesting. *smirk smirk*

I feel like I haven't been very productive in the longest time. my world lately revolves around working, work-outs and hanging out with people from work. I haven't finished either of the books I had earlier blogged about, despite refusing to loan them to my sister first. *sorry sis*

so what have I been up to lately? it's important to jot these things down sometimes, in case, 10 years from now, I change even more drastically and miss my previous self *as I do more often every day*. the journals allow me to go on a short time travel, once in a while. what amazes me is that, as lazy as I am sometimes, I seem to have a journal for every period of my life, be they in a diary, on scrap papers or online. *yay me*

so recently I,

• bought my mom a 50 ringgit computer. the company's ICT department were having a sale on them.
  
• started gym at adam's apartment. been there 7 times already. not too bad.
• finished watching the entire available episodes of kath & kim. I really don't understand why they cancelled it, but thats American tv for you.
• gave myself a pedicure
• discovered how great NSYNC was again. *yes, I loved boybands, just as any 90s girl*
• been thinking about my future a lot. you know, the whole nine yards, where I wanna be in 10 years time ect. still clueless about some things

there's a lot of nonsense happening in my life right now which I don't really get. in true sagetarian fashion, I have decided to shrug it off with a short reminder to myself, there are bigger things happening in my life. more important things that deserve my attention and action.

more importantly, there are even bigger things happening in the world and some things are just too small to pay any attention to.

all in all, things usually takes care of itself. I just have to live life right and do what I feel is the best I can do.

one step.

at a time.