RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

After an unexpected quest for a Sony mp3 player and an enthusiastic (and almost obsessive) research for a rugged phone, I have finally crawled onto the smartphone bandwagon with a Sony (Ericsson) Xperia Active.  July 2012 I liked it the moment I saw it on the Sony site, and I knew that I wanted it. It is dust and water proof, can handle tracking with wet fingers and was built to withstand abuse. It isn't the newest phone on the block. Released towards the end of last year, there were only two units left in the country (according to the store I went to) and I had to book a set and wait for them to send it to the store nearest to me. I got them to do so, and they called me yesterday afternoon. By 10:00 pm last night, the phone was in my grubby hands. As I was checking out the phone and setting it up to my liking, I suddenly realised that it has been 12 years since I've been using mobile phones, and how they've changed over the years, both in function and appearanc...

Over my sandwich and a steaming mug of coffee during my lunch break, I often unwind by reading science articles and blogs on Discover Magazine. There, I've openly admitted my pseudo-geek and nerd-like tendencies on this blog for all to see.  A few weeks ago, there was an uproar among the scienctific community that had nothing to do with the Higgs Boson. Everyone was talking about a certain promotional video that was released by the EU to encourage young women to get involved in science. Turns out, the scientific community found the video extremely distasteful that I had to watch it for myself. Here it is, below. To be honest, if I was a young girl on the brink of deciding between arts or science as my future career, I don't think this video would sway my final decision towards science. I thought it was shallow on the whole, like a comment a lab assistant once gave me a long time ago when I first started working. I have long nails most of the time, but it's not bec...

The thing about catching snippets of news on the radio is that you usually only catch the end of the news, mostly after you've heard a word or two that catches your interest. Yesterday evening, those few words were eclipse, Malaysia and seven-ish pm. Of course there were other words such as *climate change to which I raised my eyebrows to an invisible audience as I was driving alone at that time. As eclipses excite me as much as prom night excites a high-schooler, I thought to myself that I will be catching the eclipse - after all it was a Saturday evening, and I had no plans, and I felt a pang of regret when I remembered that I had not bought a DSLR camera as I had planned to earlier (My carefully honed procrastination skills knows no boundaries, ha ha) How part of the eclipse might have looked from some part of the world - 'artist's' (snort) impression Sometimes plans have plans of their own. With an overcast sky (from 3 pm right up to the time when I start...

A few days ago: Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper rings out clearly as my phone lights up. I reach out and pick it up, not recognizing the number and hoping that I don't have to be rude to someone trying to convince me to buy insurance I don't need.  Rovanski: Terra! You were looking for me? I saw a missed call from you. Me: Oh. No, no.. I wasn't looking for you Rovanski: Oh, you probably wrongly called me then. Bye. Me: Bye. Strange. Rovanski's number was not in my phone, and yet he received a call (which he missed) from my number even though I was conscious and my phone was with me all the time. Besides, I don't really call people on their mobile phones unless it is an emergency and only after I've exhausted attempts at all other forms of communication. I thought it was just a one time thing, but I was clearly mistaken. A few days later: The phone rings again, and it's Rovanski again although I still didn't recognise the number as I...

Around 4 years and 1 month ago, I was handed a heartache on a platter in the form of a laptop. To make matters worse, I actually paid for it. It was the very first laptop/computer I ever bought on my own, and I grudgingly have to admit now that I might have been taken on a small ride (they changed the OS from XP to Vista with only 503 MB of memory) without knowing it until at least a year later A few weeks ago, the laptop suddenly died while I was using it. After fretting for awhile and finally allowing it to 'cool down' it revived and started working again as though nothing had happened. Good news? Maybe. Or maybe not. Then last night, it went berserk again. My sister was using it for something and she complained that the screen showed her that 'a fatal error has occurred'. She also said that before her laptop died late last year, it had behaved in such a way. Inevitably, the heartache on a platter may have reached the end of it's road. Undeniably, the idea of g...

So the country is apparently thinking on broadening her economic horizons using the partnership with a certain foreign biotech company that specialises in and develops medicine which also unfortunately involves testing on animals. While broadening economic horizons is crucial to the development of a developing nation such as ours, I personally think that using animals to test the effectiveness of the medicine meant for humans to be a tad bit cruel, although it had been done for some time until some intervention. Now you get stuff (mostly cosmetics) that says it was not tested on animals. The other day, while I was reading one of my usual lunch time reading materials I came across the article below: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/05/mouse-pain-expression/ I sort of discussed the article with my sister later that night and she did say that mice had the tendency to double up in pain (like we do) when they were subjected to painful conditions that could give them ulcers - stres...

The computer and I shook hands politely for the very first time circa 1989, when I was about 9 years old. Our friendship led us through several complicated sounding activities, like creating designs with Logo, some programming with BASIC, and a few others which seem to escape my memory at present. But above all, the friendship introduced me to the wonderful world of games. An interesting point to note in the games we played is that you usually have some sort of control over what goes on. Take for instance this game we used to play back then called " Adventures in Math " where you'd go around solving math puzzles in a castle like place and collect money and diamonds in the process. Of course once you've solved a certain number of questions, you will be led out to the exit and your game ends, but if you're there to win (the school actually turned it into a competition - the highest scoring team gets a spiffy looking trophy and may be mistaken for an athlete, but he...

I just realised that giving death threats to a thumb drive or pen drive or whatever else it's called is as futile as chasing away a man (or woman) eating tiger with a "shoooo" and a wave of the hand. That said, a trusty old pen drive (5 years and counting) which had been working just perfectly fine yesterday evening (until 6:45 pm) has decided to close it's curtain on me. The only thing it tells me is that it is not formatted and would I like to format it now? I don't. All I want is for it to open so that I can e-mail something very, very important which took me a few good hours to complete to my boss! So, if there is anyone out there who knows how to retrieve the data that refuses to show itself... please help. Thank you... (trying my best to not panic) Edit: I got a lead from a friend on Facebook, but there are still some hitches, as in the software tells me that the documents are still there, somewhere, but I'm not very clear on how to 'rescue...

You could say it all started with an advertisement they put on TV somewhere around after 7pm every day without fail which used to make me and my sister look at each other and exclaim... "we should go!" which we will then forget about until the next day. It was also probably the fact that that particular weekend (along with a few others this month) was a long one and the fact that our cousins (also sisters) were on a short break from the crazy and exciting world of being educated so that they can someday join in the bandwagon of disgruntled working adults. And that is how we ended up at the Leonardo da Vinci: The Genius exhibition at the National Science Centre that Sunday. The exhibition displayed aspects of Leonardo's life and achievements, from reproductions of his notes in 'mirror handwriting', his inventions - some which we were allowed to touch, his drawings of the human anatomy, his works of art (including the much talked about Mona Lisa which has more m...

Seen from the outside stairs that led to the almost deserted carpark, the crescent of the moon looked like a small mouth smiling in the distance. Upon a closer look, two brightly shining objects, looking like stars stared out from above the moon like a pair of eyes twinkling on a face. I read on Saturday about the phenomenon that was supposed to occur on Monday night , where the moon, Venus and Jupiter could be seen in a cluster and thought to myself how none of these things can be seen from the Malaysian sky (like a countless number of eclipses) or how it could be another hoax that even haunted my dreams a few years ago and with everything that happens on a daily basis I completely forgot about it... that is until I saw it, thanks to a largely cloudless sky. It was so simple, yet so cool. Being enthusiastic about phenomena like this, I went for my camera as soon as doing so was possible. Nevertheless, clouds had begun to gather and the twinkling planets were slightly unclear, and...