yandao.com - Memoirs of a player wannabe

I don’t know about you, but personally, the light - no, really, as in the light bulbs kind of light - changes the way I actually think or my work attitude, for that matter of fact.

It’s 4.44am (damn, evil number. hah!) - and I’ve been up for the whole night trying to clear my apparently endless workload. Perhaps fortune tellers *are* right - sometimes… about the kind of work-ridden life that one tends to adapt to.. BLAH!

That said, I’ve probably around 2 invoices, 2 contracts and 1 quotation, and well, 2 projects on-hand which probably all require my immediate attention.. and guess what - I haven’t laid a single keystroke on them in these like, 5 hours.

What happened 5 hours ago? The last I remembered… I was still typing sensible, words - commands, inside some text processor to actually be manifested into scripts for projects. Strange - but.. what was I doing in this stretch?

Ah, yes, of course. Someone flicked the light switch in my bedroom cum workstation. The lights went off, and I remember vaguely having loads of thoughts drifting at random to various possible scenarios - pseudo-scenarios - I’d like to call them; Scenarios that could possibly occur with respect to reality. If you’d ever watch that show by Nicholas Cage when he had the power to actually *see* the future in multiple perspectives, you’d know what I mean - everything just keeps replaying in so many possibilities that it’s difficult to stay out of a trance.

Then the creative, arty side sinks in.

By default, I’m a technical guru - the dirtier codes becomes, the more I like the code. Hah! Somehow, with the lights dimmed (or yellowed - I’ve came to notice) or even turned off, something will just kick into me - and I’ll drop *ALL* tasks at hand, including Instant Messaging, to drop around, and mess with design stuff - such as interactive portfolios, design galleries, design inspirations and all that stuff.

In one way or another, I can’t control it, unless someone physically nudges me out of this state of appreciation for.. what - beautiful multimedia? In that state, I automagically ignore everything else which going on, except looking and and interacting at/with digital art.

Sheesh. The light does change people.

(and that’s why I’ve been unproductively.. unproductive for the past few work-nights. GRR. It’s hitting me in the face now.)

Okay, my FYP is.. partially done using CodeIgniter, and truth be told, alot of time has been wasted trying to get a specific feature, called.. well, re-writing index.php into .htaccess to work with mod_rewrite.

Finally, after some sheer, dumb luck, and 8 hours of trying - I came across some example which really wasn’t supposed to work - an example for some windows WAMP server, but nevertheless, it worked with a cPanel installation.

For those who are interested, the mod_rewrite code for this is:

Options +FollowSymLinks
Options -Indexes
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|resources|images|css|js|robots\.txt|favicon\.ico)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L,QSA]

For those of you who doesn’t know what this is, well, you don’t need to know

Dear all,

Apparently, there is a particular store selling crappy products such as crappy unwanted air refresheners and crappy cosmetics which will probably cause your skin to rot like crappy Char Kway Teow and/or Rojak without Cucumber and/or Mee Pok Tah Mai Hiam and/or Sugar Cane Juice without Ice.

This store is clearly riding on the “Yandao” and the “Yandao.com” branding and I seriously consider this infringement in accordance to local and Southeast Asian Intellectual Property and/or Branding regulations and laws.

I hereby denounce this particular store based on the above grounds.

(Once again, don’t buy crap.)

PS: I am serious about turning this into a lawsuit. Solicitors please feel free to drop me a message at hot_wired13 [at] hotmail.com via MSN - or alternatively you can obtain my contact number through this domain name’s WHOIS records.

Regards,

Kelvin

WOOT OMG ITS A BORAT SEQUEL!

Well, if you don’t know what’s BORAT, then don’t bother watching the YouTube video below. Hehehe.

Watch it till the last part, heh.

So, you’ve probably heard your “good” friends in a specific business from a specific company engaged in some specific project located in China, specifically something to do with a specific wireless technology targeted at specific quick earnings.

(Wait ar, how many times did I use the word “specific” there?)

And the catchline is always the same - hardball sales tactic, with everyone else signing up too, and it all seems too convincing and too good to be true. Deep inside you, you DO know it’s too good to be true, but being the sucker that you are, you either:

a) Succumb to your “good” friend’s persuasion (damn, you really suck, don’t you?

b) Play dumb - but then again, this is hardball sales, so they will pressure you to decide before “Sunday” - because that’s when the first payment comes, and you will lose, say $300 payout if you don’t decide before than. Oh, and lookie - tomorrow’s Sunday!

Okay, this applies to every other investment scheme too, and everything else which seems too good to be true.

Now, Kelvin, being the extremely good, kind, and well, benevolent person he is, has thought long and hard on how to counter such pressure sales tactic - or rather, “good lobang tactic”. And here’s how it’s actually done - allow me to demonstrate:

“Good” Friend: Eh Kelvin bro, long time no see, how’s life? How’s study? [insert usual crap here]

Kelvin (Me): Orh, okay lor. Things are going the way it should be. [Inside heart: "KNNNB! Another one of those investment / self-improvement crap Friend-turn-salesperson"

Friend: I recently made alot of money leh! You know now I can afford my expensive Gucci/Hugo Boss/Armani Exchange suit. I make $500/day sia!

Me: [Inside heart: "Wah, if you so rich, still need to talk to me?"] Wow, so impressive! How did you do it?

Friend: I invest in the [specific] China Wireless project lah! You know I started that time I put in $3000 and I get back $300 per week! That’s like 10% man! Within 10 weeks I get back my full $3000!

Me: So cool! Tell me about it! [Inside heart: "STFU bitch, I know where this is going"]

Friend: Basically, I got 3 packages, Bronze Package, Silver Package and Gold Package

Me: Uh huh, and then?

Friend: If you don’t belief me, can start SMALL, real small! No harm trying, right?

Me: [Inside heart: "You 3rd Rate salespeople suck, really."] - Ya! I want to start small! How much?

Friend: Not much lah, $3000 can already! You can take back in ten weeks! In fact, tomorrow already got first payout of $300!

Me: Wah! So cool! On lah! I want! Steady man, $3000 no problem. I want your Gold Package, $10000 since you are my longtime buddy and I trust you alot!

[At this point, you have to make a decision, or act blur, in which they will try to pressure you into buying their crappy product/investment. I would personally whack them back flat-flat.]

Friend: Okay, you got the cash with you now?
Me: Got got, it’s in the bank, I can go get it now! You come with me okay?

[Friend's heart beams with joy, knowing thinking he will get like 60% commission and he's gonna be so bloody rich after today]

Me: [pauses] But then, it’s in my US Dollar account, which is currently trading Forex markets - I’m buying GBPUSD now, and to withdraw around $10000 and to make sure I don’t lose any positions, I will need $3000 cash to pay the broker fee first.

Me: Since you one day earn $500, and you now got Gucci stuff, can help me out right? Otherwise I lose money leh bro! Can lah, you help me take out $3000, I next week pull out $10000 for you!

[Friend shuts up and remains speechless for ten minutes, in which I decide that I have another engagement and tells him that we'll talk again soon.]

PWNED! Er, I mean, hahahaha. Sucker.

Honestly, please tell your folks not to fall for these crap investments. And feel free to use my apparently powderful technique above…

For all the guys and gals out there, I’ve just noticed Siglap Starbucks to be a hangout for… people with exceptional taste - and there’re no ugly people there. Bwahahaha! It’s just a taste of.. casual class. Tasteful people you know.

Okay, seriously, that place is on par with Holland Village - if you want to be seen - looking casually good - doing er, studying.. or “waiting” for someone who doesn’t really exist - by equally great looking people, try these two Starbucks branch.

No, and I was there to meet my clients. There wasn’t anything social about it. Hehehe! Great innocent coffee place, too.

You know anywhere else?

I don’t often endorse movies, and almost never flicks which doesn’t contain a slurry of cutting-edge whatever inside it… no, I’m not like Dexter who endorses everything he watches - I watch TOO many movies for me to accurately endorse each one of them.

This morning, instead of diligently doing FYP, I popped in Chaos Theory (imdb) by Warner Brothers Pictures on my MacBook Pro’s yummily nice widescreen. *grins*.. and boy, was I surprised. This movie deserved it’s 8.7/10 rating it got on IMDB - (673 votes). I’m actually gonna sign-in to IMDB and rate it a 10/10.

Okay, I wouldn’t reveal any spoilers - this movie is a very good one, and I’m going to keep the experience that way for you when you watch it.

The movie starts off evenly paced - no direct introductions, rather, scenes of gatherings - and you’ll catch on to who’s-who, and basically, Frank Allen, played by Ryan Reynolds (who also acted in Definitely Maybe, which was somewhat of a chick-flick, but a nice one to catch with the gf in GV Gold Class in sofas, hehehe; and also Waiting, The Amityville Horrors, and of course, the sexy flick, Van Wilder - I’m listing those that I’ve watched), and of course, his wife, Susan Allen, played by Emily Mortimer.

Yes, she’s the same girl, well, er, lady who did Lars and the Real Girl, and well, essentially, those two, with a young girl, had a very nice and happy family with Frank who has an amazing job as an efficiency trainer - you know those kinds your school/boss sends you to to learn how to be more “efficient” and crap.

Soon after, Frank’s efficiency system screws up, and everything goes wrong - misunderstandings occur, accidents, fights, blah blah blah.. and well, Frank realises that planning and efficiency isn’t everything - and that he should be hitting on whatever he wants - until, a random girl he met in his seminar cum workshop which he later brought to a hotel room states that… it was “unsatisfying”.

Frank starts off in a course to “correct” things, and in turn affects people around him, his best friend, his family… and even to a point, almost left them.. and.. well, I’m trying to figure out how not to give spoilers while revealing the content a little… HMM!

Essentially, what you will expect of this movie would be nicely timed scenes, relevant dialogs (little crappy stuff) - everything was well planned, fast turnaround of events - events can do a 360 degrees at any point of time, and you will find yourself cheering Frank on to do the right thing… even when sometimes you will stop to think for yourself.. what really is right?

This isn’t your usual chick flick, where there’s boy girl love, and crushes and shit. There is love, there are crushes, and there’s family, values, and well.. decisions in this movie. It’s a clever movie which makes you think a little, and subconsciously, you will find: HEY I KNOW HOW THAT FEELS LIKE! - in one scene or another… and you know that’s what makes Ryan Reynolds performance drop-dead amazing.

In short, go watch this movie - rent or buy the DVD if you can - if you’re a girl, I KNOW you will watch this more than once in your laptop or iPod, or keep this DVD together with your other stash of movies, yes, I know I’ll be spot on - as Kelvin always is

That said, it was a lovely way to spend a Friday morning, *claps*.

I’m going to go buy this, really, if I see it on shelves in High-Definition!