Joke of the day

While I was in Kedah there was a curious girl looking around our hardware. She was particularly inclined towards our huge LCD screens which we used to show videos of our games. Spotting the exhibitor's tags we were wearing, she proceeded to ask my Event Manager.

Curious Girl: How many inches. *pointing towards the LCD screen*
E.Manager: 32 inches.
Curious Girl: Oh. *Nods and takes a last look before leaving*

Spotting the humour in the situation I quickly told him to add "Can you handle that much man?"

In hindsight, he could have given a lot of answers that could have ended up with a sexual harassment act. One of them being "Can you handle that many inches?" or "It changes from hot to cold."

Almost a road statistic

Something crazy happened to me this morning on my way to work. I was almost involved in an accident. The day started normal for me. I left home at around 9:40am and just exited Jalan Duta into Jalan Muzium and I was about to put the pedal to the metal when I notice that there were two police cars on the speed lane. Behind them was a Mercedes and they were moving relatively fast. So I decided to join in the que. Bare in mind though, we weren't going that fast at all. Something along the lines of 100 kmph-ish. So I was driving fine and we passed the Istana, only to notice a lot of tourist bus stopping on the other side. Normally, this was normal but what made it weird was that the busses were stopping on the lane nearest to the middle of the road (ie the speed lane). As I went on, I could see more busses joining the line.

We finally reached the section of the road where it joined the highway (in front of the private air field) and then I noticed a convoy of several cars with police escort coming into the highway. They were moving at an average speed and this was when it got weird. For no apparent reason, the police cars that were in front of me braked into a full stop. At first I didn't notice that they stopped fully so I just applied a little pressure on the brakes. I mean, its not normal for cars to suddenly brake in the speed lane when there's nothing happening in front of them. Then I saw the Mercedes braked and it was at that moment that I noticed that the distance between my car and the Mercedes was rapidly decreasing. I slammed the brakes hard!

At first the car was slowing down considerably but it immediately skidded to the left. My car was starting to get out of control when I notice that I was getting dangerously close to the car in front of me. Trying to right myself, I turned the steering to the right. The car overcompensated and it was skidding to the right now, right into the guard rails! In the meantime, The Mercedes' bumper looked dangerously close. In that span of time, I immediately yanked the steering to the left. The car immediately swerved to the left narrowly missing the Mercedes but this made my car leave the lane. It went horizontal and it occupied the middle two lanes of the road! At that moment I prayed to god that no cars were going to crash into me because I was well aware on how precarious the position of my car was.

Seeing that my car was in continuous momentum towards the left side of the road, I managed to peek to my left side to see a car slowing down. After seeing that surety of no incoming car is going to crash into me, I turned my steering wheel and righted my car back to the right, right into the left most lane (ie slow lane). I spent a couple of moments to make sure that my car was in the right direction and only then did I slowly let go off my brakes and slowly put pressure back on the accelerator pedal. At that moment my head was completely blank, my chest was thumping like a madmen on the drums. Then I was trying to recall back what had happened when I looked ahead only to see the three cars in front of me were moving as if nothing happened behind them. I highly doubt that they didn't notice the screech of brakes that were sounding loudly behind them. For some reason, I felt as if the policemen knew they were in the wrong and that was why they went on their way as if nothing happened. To stop was to assume responsibility ... and probably my wrath.

Funnily the next few moments I felt really angry. Not angry at the policemen but rather at the general situation of it all. I felt angry at everything and untill this moment of typing, I couldn't really explain why. Then it occured to me that the whole incident might have only occured in bare seconds. Most probably it didn't even reached ten seconds. Everything happened so fast and I could recall that I wasn't thinking at all. Everything happened instinctively. Maybe it was because of this that I came out safe or maybe it was because the road was 4 lanes wide or maybe I missed the busy traffic time.

Suffice to say, I drove on the slow lane all the way to work. I was being over-cautious and I knew it. I seem to recall a Satria Neo honking at me after my predicament and the driver was looking at me with a gesture that said "What happened?" Not feeling like explaining the whole thing in the car, I just looked at him and shook my head slowly with a look that said "I'm just glad I didn't crash."

When I reached work I proceeded to check on my car, especially my tyres to see if they were worn. Weirdly they weren't. It still had its treads and the car was relatively new. So I was wondering how the hell did I started skidding. Well, it was simple really. We were moving relatively fast. It was the speed lane afterall. Then the cars braked unexpectedly. Being a Mercedes, I suppose its brakes and ABS could compensate that but my Proton Satria, I highly doubt it. Not at that speed and sudden stop. So looking back, I suppose anything can happen when you are driving. Its just a matter of you being in a position of relative safety. Thankfully, I managed to get out of it unscathed and there's nothing more than I could wish for at that moment.

Back from Kedah ICT Carnival 2007!

When I was there, Kedah was very hot. Which was one of the reasons on why we ate at KFC twice while I was there. It was for the air-cond. The Kedah ICT Carnival was a three day affair from Friday to Sunday (8th - 10th of June). It was more like an IT Carnival where various companies had booths to showcase their technology. Companies ranging from MDEC to MIMOS to TMNet. Our booth was by far the largest since it housed around 80 PCs for the Counter Strike 1.6 tournament and also some free play, courtesy of Valve and also Cubetech (Last Chaos MMO). The tournament was slated for 32 teams but in the end, only 17 teams registered and entered. The top teams Hybrid and DiV were there and also PwyH, which seem to be in every tourney we made. Although it was a three day affair, we came two days earlier to set up and make sure everything worked. Let me tell you, it was tiring carrying all the equipment and even more so when we set it up. Nevertheless, everything was ready for the event day itself.

The place where we rested. Alot of snores were heard from this room :P.

Being a guy, I couldn't help myself but to check out the Northern Malay chics there. There were a lot of pretty faces and most of them weren't that difficult to have a chat with. However, their northern accents (loghat utara) were quite thick and sometimes I had to stop to think on what they just said. Unfotunately, it was just short chats and therefore no numbers were exchanged.

This was where the Counter-Strike tourney took place. Not too shabby eh? ;).

The CS 1.6 tournament took off without a hitch although it did cause a small problem to our head marshall as he was thinking on what proper format to use. As the tournament went on, it was quite a straight forward affair as the top teams went on to the next stage, leaving the other teams in their wake. However, there was a major upset and surprise which came in the form of PwyH's victory over team Hybrid in the lower brackets. At first, Hybrid was pushed into the lower bracket courtesy of DiV which was quite a surprise as well but being Malaysia's number 1 and 2 teams respectively, the situation wasn't that big of a surprise anyway. But PwyH trouncing Hybrid to a 16-4 score was quite a phenomenal achievement! Its even more surprising that the night before the match, PwyH had an impromptu wrestling match amongst themselves (free-for-all-format) in their hotel room! Seeing the performance of PwyH, even DiV thought that they might lose. Unfortunately, DiV won for the finals, placing them champions with PwyH in the second place and Hybrid in the third place. Good game!

Me with the third place checque. I was sweating because the pic was taken during the tear down.

After that it was the closing day ceremony as well as the prize giving ceremony. Then it was the tear down of our booth and we had to move everything back into boxes and into the store room for transportation on the next day. On Monday we had our last breakfast at our hotel, which was the Grand Continental and proceeded to transfer the equipment into the lorry. Funnily, it wasn't as tiring when we had to set up the equipment. Some of us went back to the hotel for a last shower while I proceeded to go to the Pekan Rabu which was nearby to shop for some sweets and delicacies (kuih-muih). I bought some dodol and some other kuihs which I can't recall its name. Oh wait, one of them was telinga monyet and another was kuih cakar ayam.

I don't smoke but I had to take this picture! Vista enabled ciggies!XD.

We gave the lorry a two hour head start before we checked out of our hotel and went after it! Suffice to say, we got ourselves a speeding ticket and proceeded to go F1 all the way! We left at 1:30 from Alor Setar and reached KL around 5:30! Somehow, we caught up with the lorry near Rawang. Sheesh, two hour head start was too much.

The event was successful to me and here's hoping we have another one ... closer.