the domain podah.com is nearing its expiration and i do not intend to renew.i think it is time for me to stop blogging, if not permanently, then at least for a certain indefinite period.it has been a good 10 years of blogging, but there seems to be little left that i would like to share with all and sundry.and facebook has reared into existence as the better alternative to keeping in touch and moving forward.adieu bloggers.
my pakcik barber remarked as he was cutting my hair: “dekni ketawa selalu tak agak-agak”. he was talking about jean danker on the radio.
it’s that time of the year again, when i have to reach into the darkest corners of my storeroom and drag out moth-bitten, dust-covered knick-knacks and start packing for the annual holiday. this time around it’s the longest reservist stint ever, almost 4 weeks straight. bummer.for a startup owner like myself who’s trying to get the startup off the ground still, this comes as an inconvenience, trying to reschedule projects and having to turn away orders. on the flip side, it can also be viewed as a chance to get away from the humdrum of day in day out business. perhaps some time to gain new perspectives, rethink the business, and get back to it again with renewed zeal.oh well.que sera sera.
the only reason our lives are not spectacular is due to our fear of failure.
sadly, only peepz who are in my elite group of friends in facebook can view my hot new photos with my scofield hairstyle.
so what are you waiting? hurry up and add me as your friend, lah.
in this entry:- (1) how i lost my hair, (2) overeager guy, (3) my facebook idea, (4) where do blogs go when they die?
(1) how i lost my hair.
dear friends, i hope my case becomes a lesson to one and all: never cut your hair right after watching prison break.
i bought a hairclipper a month back and have been teaching myself how to cut hair (you know, in case a recession rolls around, i still have options open. i’ve already taught myself how to roll kachang in newspaper, how to drive round and round with ‘On Call’ sign in the car, and how to mix bubble tea, so i’m quite well-insured and recession-proof)
the first time i experimented, i did quite a good job of fashioning the usual Armani hairstyle that i’m accustomed to. i was quite pleased.
but then last Monday, while watching Prison Break (I’m quite an avid fan of Season 3), i set about cutting my hair for the 2nd time. (cue tragedy music)
I don’t know what possessed me, but instead of an Armani, I ended up with a Scofield.
My wife was really displeased. She even went to sleep, woke up in the middle of the night to look at me and exclaimed in distress, “I thought it was just a nightmare!”
Oh well. Word to the wise: we live and learn.
The last time I got down to the roots, was upon entering BMT. That was 9 years ago. I think I look slightly better now.
I visited my family on Friday night and discovered that my brother had shorn his locks too and gone for the Scofield. We had a laugh about this, because it was totally unplanned. Now we really look like the Prison Break brothers (though I have a feeling I lean more towards Sucre than Scofield….hahaha)
(2) the overeager guy
this morning we had breakfast at coffeebean. there was a guy there who was super over eager, looking at strangers and smiling and as he walked past tables, he’d say ‘hi, how are you?’
this being singapore, he mostly got stares in return. heck, he’d get stares anywhere in the world. he was just simply too over eager.
my deduction: he’s probably a insurance or real estate agent-in-training. been there, done that, know how it pans out.
(3) my facebook idea
i’ve been secretly working on an alternate facebook idea. it will be called BukuMukalu.com (Your Face’s Book in malay). i’ll be targeting niche market of Mats and Minahs to join up and do the social networking thing. There will be dangdut apps and people can give each other blond hair and tattoos. It’ll be so cool (in a kental kind of way.) i’ve already applied for a patent and now actively seeking investments of $5 million to launch the site by August 2020.
(4) where do blogs go when they die?
seriously, i’ve been very disengaged from the blog this year. i attribute this to my newfound fatherhood and also the demands of my business. i still find myself with ideas of things to blog, only i can’t seem to find the time to actually have leisure time to sit down and blog.
many old blogger friends have also come and gone, making me view blogging as perhaps a transitional phase in our lives. perhaps we need blogs in our teens and as we make the transition from school to work, but as we shed our skins and become working professionals, we tend to leave our blogger personalities behind.
as a businessman, i also worry sometimes that my online silliness might backfire against me one way or the other. i talk a lot of nonsense but i have learned to rein this in. i remember in secondary school, one guy told me, ‘one of these days, you’re gonna get punched in the face because of your mouth’. very prophetic and cryptic. still have not gotten this though.
keep my fingers crossed.
i first fell in love with macs when my girlfriend (now wife) bought an iMac. then she went on to her first ibook and i was so bought into the intuitiveness of Macs, that i shelled out almost 3,ooo bucks for my first black powerbook (nicknamed pismo or wallstreet)
i loved that powerbook. i took it with me to east timor, where it became the creative machine that fuelled newsletters. after east timor, the powerbook was the engine that helped me break into freelance designing and also my writing companion that i brought with me to Theatreworks’ 24-hour playwriting competition in Bintan in 2004. i wrote many stories on it and i’ve never taken to any machine like i did to that powerbook.
due to my freelance design experience, i landed my first job as a web-cum-graphic designer with a printshop in bras basah. this was when i became acquainted with powermacs, Apple’s desktop behemoths. from here, we slowly moved to iMacs. i had a brief stint in an advertising agency and iMacs were set to change the face of designing. No more bulky CPUs. Imagine that!
I bought my first iMac in 2006. I still remember coming home and seeing it on the table. I don’t think one could ever fall in love at first sight with a PC the way one falls for a Mac.
The iMac is still the machine I use for my business, but over the past year, I’ve added one PowerMac and also a Mac Mini to the stable. The PowerMac was a bad buy, I really shouldn’t have gotten it, but the Mac Mini (which I’m using to write this now from the study room) is a nifty little device that’s so easy to transport about. When I have work to bring home, all I have to do is bring the Mac Mini home with me. It’s no bigger than a box of donuts.
last week, i went into an iShop and studied the Macbook Air. i studied the possibility of owning, but the current specs did not justify the steep price. perhaps i’ll wait a while until the price drops and the specs are given a boost…
she’s tremenduous, she’s doing a great job, i love her.
we did vinyl stickers on one of the walls in the office today. there are more pics in the facebook photo album. some of the more ‘embarassing shots’ here…
