Things a father will never say

Yup, things you will never-ever hear from a normal, sane and right-minded dad.

.............................................................



"Well how about that? I'm lost! Looks like we'll have to stop and ask for directions"





"You know Pumpkin, now that you're thirteen, shouldn't you like get a boyfriend already?"





"I noticed some of your friends smoking pot the other day. It's perfectly normal if you're curious you know..."





"Here's a credit card and the keys to my new car. GO CRAZY!!!"






"What do you mean you want to play football? Ballet dancing not good enough for you, son?"





"Your mother and I are going away for while. You might want to consider throwing a party."





"You mean you rammed into that guy's Mercedes? Oh don't sweat it, I'll pay whatever he wants."





"No son of mine is going to live under this roof without an earring. Now quit your belly aching and lets get to the mall."





"Whaddaya want to go and get a job for? I make plenty of money for you to spend."




"Stop studying so hard. It's not like you're gonna pass it anyway.."





"Father's Day? Ah - don't worry about that - it's no big deal."

Note to self

Dear blog,

How are you doing today? As for me I'm feeling okay I guess. I noticed you've been rather busy lately. Ever since you started appearing on Petalingstreet.org last weekend there's been an influx of visitors here. From a meagre 12 visitors a day, you now have tripled that amount in just days. I know you should feel excited, overwhelmed even. I even wondered where have Petalingstreet.org been all this time myself.

Nevertheless I hope you don't get carried away with this. It was never my intention to blog for fame, fortune or glory. The main reason I blog in the first place was to chronicle stuff that happened in my life. Exciting stuff, mundane things, events, news etcetera. Apart from that, I blog so that my kid(s) and my future generation can read, laugh about and learn what's going on in this crazy old man's head. As long as Google doesn't go bust anytime soon, I hope that my musings will be here for all to see.

So you see site traffic or the amount of comments I get everyday doesn't concern me much. I don't mind if 60 or only 6 people visit my blog everyday. I read from somewhere 90% of visitors to your blog is just that, visitors. They come, they read and they leave. They probably won't leave a comment of attempt to communicate with you and if your blog don't interest them enough, chances are they won't come back. Another 5% find your blog quite interesting, leave a comment now and then but just don't have the time get involved more with your blog. The final 5% is what they call a regular/fan of your blog. They come everyday, bookmark your RSS feed or something and leave comments all the time.

After 5 months, I've learned a lot of things about blogging from my blogger friends and also numerous blogs that I read everyday. I don't claim to be an expert in blogging but here's a few important lessons that I've learnt so far.

I know it's your blog and you can put anything you want to there BUT auto-playing audio/video stream is a mortal sin in blogging. Bear in mind that not all Internet connections are created equal. While Internet users in Germany enjoy 14MB connection, our friends in inner Mongolia (or Malaysia) might be surfing at a sluggish 14.4KB connection. Putting flash-based audio/video players on your blog will definitely make them much longer to load thus frustrating your visitors. Honestly, I won't wait longer than 10 seconds for any web page to load if I can help it. If you really had to put a streaming audio/video file there, please-please turn off the auto-play feature. I'm not teaching anybody how to design their blog but I do believe a lot of people out there share the same sentiment with me :)

Any graphic/photos larger than medium in size (in Blogger for example) is a BIG no no. It's fine if you got like 5 very big pictures per month on your blog. But imagine browsing through a month long archive of your post with a lot of very large pictures in it. It will take forever to load. I was guilty of this lack of foresight myself earlier on with my blog. That's why my January and February archive took quite a long time to load (anything more than 20 seconds is a long time by today's web page standard). That's why I regularly crop and resize my photos so that they wouldn't be too much of a burden to load.

Other than that I promise to be a good sport and reply to all memes/tags given to me. Just because somebody didn't bother to reply to my tag, I will frown and brood and plan my revenge on them (ha ha!). I understand they might be too busy to reply, feeling unwell or they just plain don't like me :)

Plus if I link anybody's blog to my blog, I don't expect them to return the favour for me. I know I'm not a femes blogger or anything and my blog is just a waste of pixels on their screen, I won't go begging to them so that they link back to me. Not just any blog deserves to be blogroll you know and I only list the ones that I find most interesting and worth visiting everyday. So you should be really-really honoured if you find your blog listed there on my humble page. Anyway, I change my blogroll all the time so... <-- This guy is mental! Something is contributing to those annoying pop-ups on my blog. I suspect they came from one of those scripts/page elements but I'm not sure which one is it. It could be from Snap.com, that flash mp3 player, cbox or even my recent comments script. I won't bother to check for now but I do pity my visitors without pop-up blockers in their browsers (yes, such browsers still exists - think IE6). IMO, pop-ups are the most annoying thing ever (next to Man United fans).

One more thing. Many people don't know this but we can actually pre-post our blog. This mean we can set the exact time and date of when our is published, whether in the future or the past. Just click on Post Options and set whatever date and time you like your post to be published on. This feature is particularly useful when you usually blog on office time and you don't your boss to find out. This post for example is actually written on May 30th but instead it will appears to be published yesterday (May 29th) at 12:02 a.m which is definitely not during office hours. Likewise if you'd like your post to appear on 1st January 2020, by all mean go ahead and pre-post your blog on that date.





Last but not least, if your think your boss is reading your blog, chances are HE IS READING your blog so better think twice before you bad mouth him or the company, if you'd like to keep your job that is. A lot of companies have servers or proxies that keep record of websites visited by their employees so they KNOW where you've been.

I think that's about it for now. So until we meet again, bye.

Sign

Afif

Fun time at Tesco

Oh no, not another visit Tesco post! To my gentle-readers whose already tired of my hyper mart related yakking, that’s too bad cause they’re here to stay :)

We usually go there early in the morning to avoid long queues, get ample parking space, plus we could choose a decent trolley without broken wheels or those that are absolutely filthy. But first, we must have breakfast.


For today we had breakfast at McDonald’s. For a limited time only you can buy 2 apple pies for just 3 ringgit. Also I noticed the coffee cup is much bigger too. While I find him to be quite adorable, Adam was positively terrified of Shrek. I guess most 2 years old would be scared of toys who burps and scream out “I’m an ogre” over and over again.



Finally it’s shopping time. I don’t know about you guys but I think watching paint dry or even golfing is more exciting than escorting the wife shopping for groceries. That’s why usually she will do all the shopping while Adam knocks himself out at the play area as I keep an eye for him from the bench. It’s nice to see the kids blend and play happily together like they just don’t care. At those tender ages, it doesn’t matter if you’re Malay, Chinese, Ogre or Donkey, all they wanna do is play and have fun. Moreover I’d like to say whoever thought of making a play area in a hyper mart in the first place is a friggin’ genius!


Most people don’t know this but my favourite pastime whenever I’m bored and at a crowded place is people-watching. I noticed that malay women/girls would always look down at their chest occasionally as if to check if their bra is lopsided or something especially when somebody is watching. What’s the deal with that? Duh, shouldn’t they like checked things like that before leaving home?

And there’s this woman who walked kind of odd and really slow. Either she got some kind of illness or the husband screwed her really good last night har har! (I’m so bad).


To Mrs. Chong, just because your kid is hyperactive, doesn’t mean he’s special! The kid managed to single-handedly terrorizes everybody at the play area.

I wish all kids could be as civilized and well-behaved like Adam here just minding his own business, driving his tractor around the store.

Speaking of which, Adam had little success in wooing those sweet little girls who completely ignored him. I gotta praise your bravado kid but a simple hi won’t get you anywhere near first base these days. Try any of these pick up lines for a start:

I hope you know CPR, because you take my breath away!

There must be something wrong with my eyes, I can't take them off you.

Hi, I'm Mr. Right. Someone said you were looking for me.?

and my favourite:

Hi, I'm Batman. Wanna see my Batmobile?

After one hour Adam starting asking random people “have you seen my mommy?”


The key to not losing your kid at public places is to plant a GPS device on him. I got a Motorola AG4000 GPS tracking system planted somewhere in that bushy hair. This way I can keep track of him anywhere he goes using this neat little GPS Java application on my phone. Unfortunately it only works with Motorola phones so if you just got yourself a Nokia phone, well that’s just too bad… :)


And back by popular demand (i.e one), here’s an exclusive picture of the man himself Afif with Baby Shrek Adam Farihin. Owh you mean you can’t see my face? Dang I’m so bad at taking pictures… sorry, my bad.

So long Fierro

Once upon a time, The Boss hired an Italian to work in our company. He was old, around 60 something (I think). My first impression of him was that he's loud, bossy and demanding. First day he came, he just storms in demanding stuff like a notebook, car, driver, fully furnished apartment plus a mistress to keep him company at night. Okay he didn't exactly demand that last thing but since he got nearly everything he asked for, I'm not surprised if he gets that as well.

At first I thought, hey we got a white guy working with us at this little company, cool. He would bring us to greater heights maybe? Hmm, how do I decribe him. Well, his voice is unnaturally loud, I mean when he speaks, you can hear his voice within 500 metres radius. One thing for sure he loves to brag about the girls and women he supposedly been with. He claimed that girls of all races and ages easily go gaga over him like he's one big Casanova or something. Plus there's this one housewife who'd never had orgasm before and when she does it with him only then she had her first time! Came on! You expect us to believe that? Even if you're on Viagra we won't believe any of those bs! If you're like 30 years younger I might have believed that but today he's like ancient already, I mean come on, have you seen yourself in the mirror lately?

He also like to boast about his previous job in this big oil firm in Saudi Arabia. The one where they pay him like USD10,000 a month and gave him a posh apartment to stay at some more. If it was really that good, why did he left in the first place? And why the heck he agreed to work in this small time company of all places?

Of course nobody was dumb/naive enough to believe everything he said. I personally didn't take him or his stories seriously. If I didn't know better, I'd say he's one of those con artist whose out to swindle this company. Alas he's not. Apparently, The Boss did his homework and research before hiring this guy. Mr. Fierro did have some credential in his resume. His main job here is to sell our Facility Management software to other companies, especially the big firms. I was quite surprised when The Boss agreed to all his biddings. It was so not like of him to assent to anyone's demands especially new staffs.

Obviously, The Boss is not stupid you know. With all those special treatments, he expects Mr. Lorenzo Fierro to deliver something to the company, something big. He was supposed to promote and sell our software and bring in millions to the company. That was nearly 2 months ago and obviously Mr. Fierro had not lived up to that expectation. So a few day ago The Boss ceremoniously showed him the door and he's out of here just like that. Easy come, easy go.

I doubt that anybody would miss him much now that he's gone. The female staff for once would be glad that Mr. Fierro won't be harassing them again. Nothing like a serious sexual harassment or something mind you. It's that sometimes he likes to tease and bug them a lot (hey, that's MY job!).

So, goodbye and so long Mr. Fierro. Maybe we will miss your little antics and Italian language lessons. Now everybody knows how to say "good morning" in Italian (buongiorno) and Ciao actually means Hi (I was wrong all along :)) Good luck in all your future ventures and go easy with the girls will ya? (yeah right!). Too bad I don't have any photos of Mr. Fierro but he looked pretty much like this dude below.

Arrivederci signor Fierro. Potete andare dado.

AF5: Ananda sends his warmest regards

I’m certain Mr. Ananda is too busy to say it himself but I’m sure he’d like to thank all his fellow Malaysians who’d been tirelessly wasting money voting for their favourite students in the recent (and all previous) Akademi Fantasia reality tv show. “Thanks for making me the 2nd richest man in the country. As a token of my appreciation, all Maxis/Hotlink subscribers will get free RM50 reload PROVIDED, they forward this blog post (yes the entire blog post, word by word) to 5 other Maxis customers” he said.



Now that AF5 has ended, newly crowned champion Mila(h) will stay true to her promise and will let all her fans take a glimpse at her brand new Vios from afar (maybe if they drool enough, she’d even let them take pictures) . Plus she promises to send postcards to 10 of her fans who voted for her the most (you know who you are!) when she visits Disneyland sometime in the future. Of course she won’t forget all of her sucker loyal fans and everybody will be cordially invited to visit her open house at her shiny brand new bungalow in Seri Kembangan this Hari Raya.

Nothing amuses me more than to watch all those losers people jump up and down like monkeys as they cheer their favourite students during the recent AF final. After spending so much to vote, I’m sure all the kids, teens, makciks and pakciks will now reap the reward of their investment, which would be nothing more than a few cheap thrills. I could list a dozen better things we can do with our 50 cent but what good is the word of one blogger against the mighty marketing machinery of Astro & co?

Wake up and smell the teh tarik people! Our roti canai is not getting any bigger and you know you will have to fork out more to pay for your Astro bill next month. Stop this idiocy and waste and start spending your hard-earned money on something useful for once. Remember kids, your future college/university fee will not come cheap you know. Instead of wasting your mom and dad’s money on prepaid reloads why not save for you future? Bear in mind, you still need to pay for those PTPTN loans you know and with their absurd service fee charges, I seriously advice you start saving NOW!

“Besides, my good buddy ZAM is totally cool with it. He says better AF than let the public read some rumour-spreading, hate-mongering, non professional blogs about cooking recipes or even worse, BOOK REVIEWS! So until AF6, keep those votes coming. Although just as wasteful as sms quizzes, at least the muftis never declared them as haram yet you know. With all your support, maybe I can even kick that Kuok dude out of the number one spot! Malaysia bodoh boleh!” said Mr Ananda.

Music of the day

The Times - Telegram buat Yoko



Salahkah diriku
Bila ku berkata
Kau pendusta
Kau salahkan diriku

Silap ku anggap engkau penawar
Kau racun berbisa
Kau racun fikiranku

Ketara berbeza caramu
dengan caraku
Kian berubah
Oh kotornya hidupmu
Silap ku anggap engkau cahaya
bidadari syurga

Kau mungkiri janjimu

Tujuh lautan sanggup ku renang
Luas benua untuk ku rentas
Selamatkan mahkotamu

Dunia penuh dugaannya
Jahat hasutan manusia
Selamatkanlah dirmu

Salahkah diriku
Bila ku berkata
Kau pendusta
Kau salahkan diriku

Silap ku anggap engkau penawar
Kau racun berbisa
Kau racun fikiranku

Ketara berbezanya caramu
dengan caraku
Kian berubah
Oh naifnya dirimu
Silap ku anggap kau cahaya
bidadari syurga

Kau mungkiri janjimu

Salahkah diriku
Bila ku berkata
Kau pendusta
Kau salahkan diriku

Silap ku anggap engkau penawar
Kau racun berbisa
Kau racun fikiranku

Ketara berbeza caramu
dengan caraku
Kian berubah
kotornya hidupmu
Silap ku anggap kau cahaya
bidadari syurga

Kau mungkiri janjimu

+
Tujuh lautan sanggup ku renang
Luas benua untuk ku rentas
Selamatkan mahkotamu

Dunia penuh dugaannya
Jahat hasutan manusia
Selamatkanlah dirmu

+

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mp3

Make us dream

A.C Milan vs Liverpool FC
UEFA Champions League Final
Athens, Greece
19:45 GMT


Well this is it. On Thursday morning, the eyes, prayers and dreams of every single Liverpool fan across the world, will be well and truly focused on Athens, as we kick off against AC Milan in the Champions League final. I just can’t wait for things to get started, even typing that last line has sent a shiver up my spine, I think if I get any more excited I might very well explode! I can picture the news headline tonight: "One Liverpool fan exploded with excitement" :)



While I have a lot of respect for AC Milan, some of the noises coming out of their camp over the past couple of weeks have done nothing but provide me with an extra bit of confidence. It seems that many of their players such as Cafu, Kaka and Gattuso, have been full of talk about revenge for their Istanbul defeat.

Apparently they are pissed off about the fact that we had the cheek to refuse to lay down and die when we were 3-0 down in that game, but that’s fine because if those thoughts are still eating away inside their minds, it can only be good news for us. Besides, we had all this ridiculous revenge talk from Chelsky before our semi final, but it didn’t do them any good and I don’t expect it will do Milan any good either.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank their manager Carlos Ancelotti. I thought it was a great sporting gesture on his part, to help Rafa with his pre-match talk to the players by stating in a recent interview that Liverpool were the worst team of the four semi finalists and nothing but a long ball team etc. Cheers Carlos, I’m sure Rafa will have a copy of that interview pinned to our dressing room wall as an extra little motivational tool for the lads.




I also think we should be thankful to United boss Alex Ferguson. Not only has he also provided our lads with a nice little piece of motivation by stating that he is “absolutely certain” Milan will beat us in the final, but his ridiculous tactics in the second leg of their semi at the San Siro, has provided Rafa with a nice little training video of exactly what not to do. If we give the Milan players time and space, and our midfield stands back and admires the likes of Kaka and co, instead of actually tackling them, then there is a real danger that we will be demolished and embarrassed in much the same way as they were. So thanks for the reminder Alex, (you idiot!)





As for tonight, there's little hope that I can ever sleep first and wake up later at 2 a.m, not with so much fervor and excitement. This time I had applied for my leave long beforehand and on the correct day too. Last time I miscalculated the different time zones between here and Europe and end up taking a leave a day before instead (silly me!).



Before the final in 2005 I was desperately hoping we would win, this time I know we can. Of course, being Liverpool I don’t expect we’ll do things the easy way and no doubt we’ll be given a few frights along the way. I don't expect it would be the same heart-stopping 3-3 draw again this year in Athens. But IF we did go down 3-0 at again on the break, just remember that infamous Rafa Benitez half time talk that inspired our legendary comeback:-

"Don't let your heads drop.

All the players who go on the pitch after half-time have to keep their heads held high.

We are Liverpool.

You are playing for Liverpool.

Do not forget that.

You have to hold your heads high for the supporters.

You have to do it for them.

You cannot call yourselves Liverpool players if you have
your heads down.

If we create a few chances we have the possibility of
getting back into this.

Believe you can do it and you will.

Give yourself the chance
to be heroes."

(Rafa Benitez – Half time.
Ataturk Stadium. Istanbul.
25th May 2005)

That's right. Give yourself the chance to be heroes. We truly deserve to be there tonight. If we win it, that would be fantastic. If we don't, walk on and keep your head up high and remember, you'll never walk alone...

Make us dream (again!).

We have a winner!

Remember when I used to whine about the lack of good places to have breakfast nowadays in the Serdang/Seri Kembangan area? Well not anymore cause earlier this month I stumbled upon this gem of a stall in Sri Serdang. If you're looking for some authentic and super delicious Kelantanese cuisine like nasi kerabu, nasi dagang or nasi berlauk, head on to this particular stall somewhere between 7-Eleven and Maybank in Sri Serdang. You can easily spot this stall from the main road, it's the middle one with some crowd around it. They make it just like back home and it's not far-fetched to say their nasi berlauk is the best ever! Now I don't have to wait for my annual balik kampung trip to get a taste of my favourite food yay!



..and the winner for The most orderly and tidy desk Award goes to... Afif he he he..

Ok that's all, now back to work.

Operation Servers Migration

It was one heck of a weekend for us in the Operations department. We were involved in a servers migration operation at one government agency under MOSTI somewhere in Dengkil, Selangor. The operation started from Friday afternoon and went on non-stop till Saturday evening.


Our mission was to transfer all the servers, switches, UPS, hubs and all related peripherals from the old building to the new building and make sure everything is up and running smoothly within 12 hours. Meaning by the time the users wake up and open their website everything is running all right, their e-mails is working okay like nothing ever happened.


The distance between the old and the new building is just about 500 metres apart. But since those servers, UPS and switches weighs between 10 to 40 kilos each, 500 metres is a looooong way to go. That Cisco switch above weighs over 30 kilos and worth as much as the new Perodua Viva.
There were like 12 of us there including The Boss who showed and stayed until around 5 in the morning. Frankly, we could do it all without him being there anyway but his presence highlights the importance of this operation's success.


Dinner was provided for but we had to wait like until half past midnight before we could eat. Everybody was generally ravished and nasi goreng cina never tasted so nice before.


By 1 a.m a lot of people was sleepy already including me. For a guy who regularly sleeps around 10 p.m, staying awake past midnight is pure torture to me. My superior, Abang Din was among the first to fall asleep. No pillow? no problem man! CAT 6 cables also can do ma!


We had to follow a certain procedure for the migration. It's like we transfer 3 servers, make sure they're up and running okay, transfer another 3 servers, make sure they're up and running too before we proceed with the next phase.


Around 2 in the morning we couldn't make the TM leased line to connect so we had to like stop everything and fix that damn thing first. Turned out, there's something wrong with the fiber patch. Those darned little yellow cable made us wait for like 2 hours for nothing!

Everything else went smoothly after that minor glitch. Most of us were dead sleepy by 4 a.m. En. Mazlan, our manager passed out and had to be revived by CPR. Okay just kidding. Actually he's getting some massage from Adwien to help him pass gas stay refreshed.

Getting the servers up and stuff was mainly the job of our engineers (i.e not me) so the rest of us just hang around and wait (or sleep in any room available). I had to wait at the old building and couldn't find any decent place to sleep so I walked a bit around the building to stay awake while waiting for them to finish.


At 5 a.m those corridors sure look extra creepy to me. And there was some eerily strong wind blowing from time to time enough to make the hair at the back of my neck stood up!


Fortunately nothing spooky/mysterious happened although the place was like situated right in the middle of nowhere with thick undergrowth all around you. I managed to get like 20 minutes of sleep before sunrise and around 7 a.m everybody headed out for breakfast.

After breakfast, I had nothing much to do so I headed back home for some much needed sleep and rest (Thank God!). My family (Linda & Adam) missed me very much already, it's like I've been away for a week or something :)

By 3 p.m Saturday I was back in Dengkil to join the rest of my colleagues to fix up minor stuff here and there. Overall, the operation was a resounding success. Everything was up and running smoothly within the allocated migration time frame thanks to every body's hard work and commitment.

Yet after all that hard work, we still didn't get our mileage claim, %&*\@#

Music of the day

The Fray - Look after you

If I don't say this now I will surely break
As I'm leaving the one I want to take
Forgive the urgency but hurry up and wait
My heart has started to separate

Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Be my baby
Oh, oh, oh
I'll look after you

There now, steady love, so few come and don't go
Will you won't you, be the one I always know
When I'm losing my control, the city spins around
You're the only one who knows, you slow it down

Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Be my baby
Oh, oh, oh
I'll look after you

If ever there was a doubt
My love she leans into me
This most assuredly counts
She says most assuredly

Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Be my baby
I'll look after you

It's always have and never hold
You've begun to feel like home
What's mine is yours to leave or take
What's mine is yours to make your own

Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Be my baby
Oh, oh, oh

.................................................................

Mp3 here