Ushering the Year of Tiger

Feb 142010

If he was still alive, he will be around 22 years old this year.

Today is the celebration of new Chinese New Year, with the fierce tiger as the zodiac sign of the year. According to this website, “the oldest and most important festival in China is the Spring Festival. Better known as the Chinese New Year, it is a time for celebration for millions of Chinese all over the world. The Spring Festival celebrates the Earth coming to life and the beginning of plowing and planting.”

Chinese tiger zodiac

Chinese tiger zodiac

CNY as it’s abbreviation is a unique celebration – it is one of those that are not specially tied down to any religion. It is about a culture of a race of people that follows a set of living code, and yet they are themselves diverse in religious and personal beliefs. CNY is one of the celebrations outside of Islam-influenced occasions that Muslims will not have problem celebrating it with friends and family.

I have never specifically celebrated CNY, apart from wishing some of my friends. There are no immediate family members that celebrated this joyous event for me to tag along with, or any close Chinese friends that I have visited for CNY before. I have not even celebrated the CNY open houses that our politicians like to brandied around – the one that we will see a lot of ugly Malaysians wasted good food because they can’t chew more than what they took on their plate.

But this year of Tiger is special for me. As stated in the opening remark, he will be around 22 years old this year if he is still around. That is such an old age for a cat, and it has been close to 12 years that I have missed him, but I can still remember him dearly.

Orange cat that looks like Tiger

Orange cat that reminds me of Tiger

His name was Tiger, and as the name implies, he was orange in colour. He was not as chubby and elegant (or irritating, depends on a person’s point of view) as Garfield, but he was one of the rare cat that had pure orange fur on all parts of his body, save for his bottom belly. We found him with his other siblings when I was around 2-3 years old back in Ampang Jaya, and we took three kittens for adoption – but only Tiger remained with us for such a long time.

I practically grew up with him during my primary school years, with lots of memories in between. My love for cats were nurtured by him – it was this strong male cat that somehow survived all the naughty things I did as a child. There are bits of memories of me and him that I could not forget until today, that will (hopefully) forever I will cherish.

For this Year of Tiger, I kick off this celebration in honour of Tiger, the domestic cat that was part of my life, and has contributed something that made me as who I am now.

Another Site Milestone

Feb 132010

Today there’s another milestone achieved on the development and usability of this personal site.

It started with some free leisure time available while I’m off for a holiday in my hometown. This personal site of mine needed some attention on the codings, therefore I went to the site’s control panel to perform the needed changes. A check on the site’s auto-script WordPress seetings revealed that the site’s front-end system needed some upgrade. In order to ensure that everything will run smoothly after I upgraded the front-end, I decided to check on updates for all the plugins used on this site.

The beauty of a freeware front-end system like WordPress is that the development community is strong and vibrant. There will always be something freeware developed for the benefit of all. While I was updating all the plugins that I used, I stumbled upon a plugin that is ranked as one of the top downloads – WPtouch iPhone – and it instantly piqued my interest. It is, to summarise, a plugin that will allow your site to be displayed in a mobile device using a custom skin to ease reading access, among others. I decided to download it and give it a try.

It was a few hours after I have installed this plugin that I gave it a try on my iPod Touch. My reaction: this is one superb plugin! I did not expect it to transform my site into something that’s mobile friendly, as if my site was made for reading pleasures on a mobile device! The site looks beautiful even at the default skin’s setting, and the posts and pages (with minimal settings) are easily accessible and readable.

I am happy that I have stumbled upon this plugin, and it is a recommended plugin for all small-time WordPress users like me out there.

Uphill Battle

Feb 122010

It will be an uphill battle for me to maintain my current weight during this festive season.

This morning, my Naked Body Mass check revealed that I am 64.3 kg in weight. It has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride for my body mass these past few days; “pasar malam” didn’t help much with all the treadmill and circuit training that I have laboured myself into.

The interesting fact is that I wrote this piece from my hometown in Kuantan. It is a wonder for me to take one day off and get in return 5-days holiday. My company was grateful enough to give us all replacement holidays on Tuesday since Chinese New Year falls on Sunday and Monday.

So what’s the relationship between my weight and me being in my hometown? The answer is: good home-made food. Nothing can beat your mom’s cooking, or your dad’s culinary skills. The foods that they prepared fore you are just begging for you to throw out your diet regime out of the window.

It will be interesting to see how many kilos that I will gain after I came back from this long holiday. :)

This Final Time You Leave Your Post

Feb 092010

Today is the last day that Tan Sri Hassan Merican is the CEO and acting Chairman of PETRONAS.

Like everything that’s great, it will come to an end eventually. His 21 years in PETRONAS, with 15 years as the CEO, has been great for PETRONAS. The company changed from a local champion into a multinational group of companies, operating in 34 countries (last personal count) and growing. His contributions to the company are too many for me to list it here; but suffice to say that the PETRONAS Twin Tower – proudly standing at the heart of Kuala Lumpur – is a testimony of all the sums of the achievements that the company has gone through.

Many of us in the company are sad with his departure. There’s abundance of praise and good words of him that were uttered in the corridor, in smoking breaks, during meetings and discussions, etc. Even in my division, we have came up with a token of goodwill for him to remember us – given that we are of the few HCUs that reported directly to him.

Initially I was asked by a manager in my division to write a poem for this sad occasion, so that it will be included in the division’s farewell card. I was sceptical that I could even came with an idea to kick start this assignment. Well, I can’t just ask for the goddess of creativity to bestow her magic on me by request.

Somehow, with my copy-and-paste and alteration skills, I have somehow came up with a poem for his departure, based on an existing poem on the net. No originality here, I admitted it to the manager when I gave this poem to him. But then due to some unforeseen circumstances (that I rather not elaborate since I’m a party to this incident) he has decided not to use this poem.

Oh well, I could have just print it out and send it to TSP (as we all fondly called Tan Sri) as a farewell note – they opened a box at level 70 for staff to do so. But I must admit that I’m not that up to the beat on this. so I guess I just post this poem here, for all to read – and hope that it will be a good farewell to him.

This final time you leave your post
GIA staff here would like to boast:
We’ve wished you the best
happy life, relaxing with your wife
and family;
While we continue here, in our daily work
engrossed, for the country.

Looking into the future
From the tallest twin tower
of PETRONAS in the international arena
we can’t stop but remember
since 1989 that you have been here
and that made all the difference.

And with that
Let us together toast
You
Our dear friend and boss.

Post-edit: I went down to the farewell walk that was unofficially coordinated by the Corporate Affairs people (I guess), where many staff were standing on the sides of his path as he slowly came down from his office to his car. Many got to shake his hands (including yours truly!), some were openly weeping, while others were thanking him for all that he has done for the company.

It will be a new day for PETRONAS tomorrow, but we will never forget TSP’s contribution and foundation that he has laid down well for the company.

There is no Cure for Dengue

Feb 082010

Dengue fever is a disease caused by one of a number of viruses that are carried by mosquitoes. These mosquitoes then transmit the virus to humans. There is no treatment available to shorten the course of dengue fever.

I came back from visiting my officemate at Ampang Puteri hospital this afternoon. He was admitted to the hospital after what was thought as a mild fever turned into severe symptoms – high temperature, whole body ache, and uncontrollable body shaking, among others. With his blood pallets count dropped considerably for the past few days, the signs are clearly indicating that he might be ill with dengue.

It is scary to think that a small mosquito could have caused such a dangerous virus infection. It could not be helped that our equatorial weather with it’s abundance of rain is the perfect setup for mosquito breeding ground. Lots of other factors contributed further to the increase of dengue cases in Malaysia. While we cannot completely eradicate the problem, we could pro-actively take actions that could limit the spread of the disease, by ensuring that there are no mosquito breeding grounds near our vicinity, for example.

I do hope he will get well soon. It is sad to see a very cheerful person that I’ve known to be on the hospital bed, in agony and pain from the sickness that he never asked for.

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