Archive for November, 2008

Picking up


2008
11.26

[Soundtrack of the day - Lola & Friends - Picking up the pieces. Lola is the girl character in Britannia High]

Blog

I’m kinda lil bit devastated by my blog’s server. Sometimes this blog dissapear and I will become restless. Emmy said (in her server’s-fault deleted comment) that I’m kinda ‘merepek’ in my blog. I guess I do. No more heavy thoughts as I used to have in my previous blog I wrote in USM and Brunel. But I guess that is who I wanna become at least in my spare time – merepek, rather than having all the seriousness. Lately, I’ve been keeping all of the serious matter to myself, or sometimes crying out loud (not tears-crying) to Kak Khalidah or Zeah.

Literature Survey

I have to submit 20-30 pages of literature survey with around 50 references by the end of this year. My personal deadline is 23rd of December coz I’m going home at 24th. Those jet-lagging would take few days. Er.. not really. I usually sleep at the right time when I’m at home in Malaysia.

So, hopefully I’ll be fine. My supervisor wants me to finish the first draft by 5th of December. Really short of time, but I wanna be optimistic. InsyaAllah.

Edinburgh

We’re going to Edinburgh this Saturday. There’s a trip organised by Durham International Student Assosiation if I’m not mistaken, that’s the name of the soceity. Kinda looking forward for the trip. Maybe it’s about time for me to repeat my nerdy routine back in my debate trip in USM. I usually bring books and asked Dani or Ili or other maths student to tell me which pages had been covered for the particular days I missed. Hm.. those nerdy days, I do miss it:)

Skip


2008
11.25

Sebenarnya aku ada tulis fasal salji turun. Dalam 2-3 perenggan. Emmy sempat tinggalkan komen lagi. Tapi terdelete. Server problems nih. Yang aku tahu, abang aku tengah sort out. So hopefully post ini tidak terdelete. Anyhow, I’m good. I really love my new place and I am very comfortable of people in my floor. So far, so good. Hopefully it remains the same.

On the other hand, I am feeling annoyed by someone. Adalah benda terjadi waktu debat tadi. Malas lak nak cerita. Not that personal, but I just don’t want to feel the pain by writing it out. You ask, I tell, but I keep disappearing offline on my YM, so..

Back to typing my literature survey. Have to finish it before going back to Malaysia for a vacation. Heading for a summer this winter.. eh, bleh jadi tagline untuk syarikat percutian nih. Uh, exactly a month, counting down.

Bila nak salji?


2008
11.23

Kalau tak silap, berita tadi ada cakap fasal dah turun salji kat mana ntah kat UK. Berita lain plak cakap yang malam ni akan turun salji dengan lebatnya di Durham. Tengoklah macam mana.

Suhu asyik turun ke 0 darjah dan ke bawah. Kata Bbc weather, nak turun sampai negatif 4 malam ni. Tapi taklah sampai macam tu td. Kalau dah negatif conform aku sejuk gila.

Durham ni lain benar dengan London. Atau tahun ini yang lain macam, aku tak pasti. Tak semak pula aku fasal suhu kat London.

Seingat aku, dulu ketika cuti Krismas, tengah bulan 12, aku masih mampu mengayuh basikal ke uni, untuk study dengan Udy, kawan Nigeria aku.

Semalam, aku pergi debat mingguan. Bukan latihan. Debat perdana yang diorang jemput orang luar. Aku harap sangat USM buat debat ilmiah begitu. Misalnya debat fasal ‘kajian saintifik perlu ke arah komersil’ atau debat fasal etika saintifik, atau kepenggunaan.

Jemput pensyarah atau orang-orang luar. Debat tak mengantuk macam forum. Anyway, lepas aku balik dari debat ‘this house believe in conservative future’ yang aku faham apa diorang cakap tapi tak faham konsep konservatif vs liberal dek kerna tak ikut politik Britain; aku berjalan balik ke hostel.

Taklah jauh sangat. Dalam 15 minit. Aku rasa okey je jalan. Bleh latih stamina sikit. Tapi baru jalan sikit, aku dah rasa sejuk. Aku jalan jugak, dan sepanjang perjalanan tu.. rasa menyesal sebab tak naik bas. Tangan macam dah beku dan muka rasa sakit sebab angin dingin memukul wajah.

Aku berdoa agar tak pengsan dek kerna berlari. Gatai dok pi laghi pasai ingat kot bleh panaih badan. Tak dak aih. Sampai bilik aku duduk kejap. Next time kena naik bas.

Bila nak salji? Tak turun pun takpa. Sebab hari salji turun biasanya tak la sejuk. Pastu hari salji cair, sejuknya … Brrr.

Oh, tapi ada kawan-kawan aku yang ber’yeay’ sakan bila pembaca berita cakap musim sejuk nih bakal terburuk as in sejuk. Wah, diorang seronok sebab ada chance salji turun. Takpe, aku pun seronok sebab dah beli tiket balik;)

Day 2


2008
11.21

Hari kedua di tempat baru. Not bad. I love this new place, especially for the fact that the toilet is just around the corner (literally). Takyah keluar bilik. Senang betul nak basuh tangan dan answering call of nature.

Hari ni aku bertembung dengan 2 lagi floormates aku. Yang, lelaki dari China bagitahu yang semua yang duduk kat floor nih lelaki. Maaf Mahadi. Aku terlupa yang orang lelaki pun masih suka pakai warna pink, biarpun periuk nasik.

Seorang lagi yang aku jumpa ialah Izzat (dengan ‘ain, bukan hamzah), dari Jordan (tapi duduk lama di Syria). Dia Muslim jugakla. So, aku introduce dengan Lutfi. Aku suka dengar orang-orang dari timur tengah nih sebut nama aku. Sebab ‘t’ tuh dipronounced dengan ‘tho’ (thaw as in alif, ba, ta, sa, jim …. sot,dot,tho, zho).

Kat sini aku cepat mengantuk. Pukul 1 dah rasa nak tido:D

New Place


2008
11.20

Malam ni malam kedua aku di Brackenbury. Bilik nih selesa. Luas. Ada bilik air dan tandas sekali. So, okey la. No complaint about it. Ada bas jugak dari sini ke school aku. Free during term time. So, not bad.

Aku baru sempat tegur … er.. Henry, asyik lupa ja nama dia. Dia duduk sebelah bilik aku. Aku nampak ada sorang lagi bertentangan dengan bilik aku. Dan sepatutnya ada sorang perempuan sebab nampak ada rice cooker pink. Anyway, nanti-nanti jumpa lah tu.

So far so good. Bilik panas, so I kinda like it. Walaupun ada certain time yang diorang tak buka heater, bilik masih panas sebab bilik nih kinda diapit dengan dinding-dinding berlapis-lapis. So, okay la. Waktu pagi, heater on automatik, tetiba rasa panas. Yang tak bagusnya, bila tidur dalam panas, tekak boleh kering. Entah macammana, semalam aku termimpi Yusran. Dia cakap, ‘kan aku dah cakap tidur tak payah pasang heater’. Lebih kurang macam tu lah. Wah, okey la Yusran, walaupun dah tak duduk dengan ko, tapi masih lagi dapat nasihat dalam mimpi. Hehe.

Bilik masih berkelabung. Kat sini aku cepat mengantuk. Ciao.

P.S: Terima kasih kepada Zeah, Arni, Mahadi dan Yusran yang tolong mengangkut barang-barang aku. Aku duk mula pindah sikit-sikit sejak Ahad hari tu. Isnin pindah banyak-banyak. Hari ni bawak pindah kasut. Tu ada lagi sikit-sikit barang kat rumah tu. Giler banyak benda aku beli dalam 8 bulan nih.

Games


2008
11.18

I loved it when I was a little kid – everything can be games. Like cycling bicycle and whoever reach home first will be the winner. Or as simple as guessing some simple stuff. My bro used to do some sort of olympics thingy when he came back from the boarding school. Me and my friends back then will compete in endurance challenge like who can hold their balance in one foot for the longest, or arm wrestling. It was fun.

Then, there come teenager life where pc games come in the mainstream. Still up until now. But recently, I always love to play those classic concept of games where human are come in contact rather than behind the pc screen. Nope, I’m not talking of doing Amazing Race and stuff where it requires some major plan (or otherwise I’ll be critisized by the players); I am thinking of some simple game that we can make out of our life.

I remember when I was in Brunel Uni. My housemates watched tv, quite a lot, so they come up with a game of guessing the commercial. They put some unwritten rules like – if the brands name comes up immediately, so it’s no one game. I didn’t manage to get too much into the games because I didn’t watch too much tv. I watch downloaded stuff where there’s no commercial and didn’t even pay attention to those awe-inspiring raya commercial although it’s available on YouTube. I will find it amusing, but not feeling to motivated to search for it. Not my thing.

I usually love ’searching for people’ game. I was with Intan (Bristol) in Wales Designer’s Outlet last month and Abang Tra and er… I keep forgetting his name… Abg Tra’s friend left us behind. So, I went, ‘okay Intan, whoever see (and point out) Abg Tra first, will score a point’. I think we got even scores. Can’t remember. I think it’s kinda pumping some adrenaline for finding people than feeling bored out of it. Surely A LOT of adrenaline if I’m playing with Zeah for her competitive spirit.

One of the quite interesting game that we’ve been playing lately was songs-on-a-theme. Last 2 days, me, Zeah, Arni and Mahadi was playing in Costa in service station (a.k.a R&R). I had just realised that Costa in service station was open 24/7. That’s nice. Just last couple of week, with Mahadi, I wonder.. isn’t there any place that we can hang out around 2am? Like coffee place or something. Not place where involves beers and drunking people. Now I got the answer – Costa, coffee shop.

The game goes like these. We pick a theme, or a word, and then going in circle (in less than a minute), we have to find songs related to it. The scores last couple of night was 3-2-2-0 for Mahadi, me, Zeah and Arni respectively. Poor Arni, she’s just can’t go underpressure.

The winning round for Mahadi was – songs that includes name of people.

So the songs that come out includes (but not limited to)

- Britney (in Oops I did it again) – mine
- Mak Minah (that Mak Minah song popular in my matrix time) – Mahadi’s
- Bob (in Bob The Builder) – mine
- Sumaiyyah (that nasyid song)
- Maria (which was repeatedly used in lot of songs which I can barely remember now)
- Billy Jean (as in Michale Jackson’s) – mine
- Annie (as in Smooth Criminal, agan by MJ) – mine
- etc

There are a lot and I just lose quite early in the round.

Anyway, that’s a game we’ve been playing. And I’m loving it

Amazing Race Durham


2008
11.17

So, we had our Amazing Race Durham on Saturday. Best best. Aku gembira sebab banyak footage yang boleh dimasukkan untuk editing. Kitorang buat 2 round, ada 4 teams. So, aku bajet nak buat video 15 minit untuk satu round. Kalau buat panjang-panjang pun, tak larat tengok. Sekarang nih aku tengok orang target video untuk Youtube pendek-pendek saja.

For the contestants who read my blog, please do not leave comments here of who’s winning or who’s losing or anything related to Amazing Race Durham. Keep it secret first before they watch the episodes. Takpe, on your blogs, okey je kalau korang nak tulis pun.

Email from my bro


2008
11.14

Email from my brother regarding the server changing… sorta:D


Assalamualaikum..

Pada pagi ini, selepas buka email, abang ada terima satu email dari yourwebpoint.com (reseller utk EstDomains), satu berita tidak baik kepada 281,000 pelanggan dari seluruh dunia. Pemilik EstDomains disabitkan dengan jenayah berkaitan kad kredit.

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-29oct08-en.htm

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12nov08-en.htm

Apa kesan langsung kepada sub-domain solarstreak.com (pagihari.solarstreak.com) ?

Barangkali blog ini akan hilang buat sementara waktu (jika tindakan segera tidak diambil). Sebagai langkah seterusnya, ICANN (selaku badan yang mengawal selia semua domain seluruh dunia) akan membuat pemindahan ke mana-mana Registrar (syarikat pendaftar domain) yang mungkin mengambil masa yang agak lama.

Domain solarstreak.com dibeli di reseller Rusia iaitu http://www.tezis.ru .Semasa pembelian, abang terpaksa menggunakan http://babelfish.altavista.com untuk memahami bahasa Rusia. Faktor utama pembelian di tempat yang susah untuk dibeli ini ialah harga yang murah dan boleh dibeli menggunakan e-gold (harga e-gold jatuh pada masa tu). Tezis.Ru merupakan reseller bagi EstDomains, selain dari yourwebpoint.com

Pengurusan EstDomains tidaklah bermasalah (pengurusan domain dari segi teknikal), cuma yang bermasalah ialah pemilik EstDomains sendiri. Berita pada 29 Oktober abang tidak terima langsung. Berita ini pun diterima dari reseller yang sudah pun menutup perniagaan domain mereka (yourwebpoint.com).

Domain solarstreak.com yang akan expired pada 18 Disember 2008 akan dipindahkan ke syarikat DynaDot (http://www.dynadot.com) bermula hari ini, proses pemindahan mengambil masa 1 minggu (berdasarkan pengalaman lepas). Blog Pagi Hari di Durham akan berjalan seperti biasa. Jika pemindahan dibuat awal dari tarikh expired, tarikh expired baru dikira semula bermula dari tarikh pemindahan ke Registrar baru. Agak rugi dalam sebulan.

Sekian.

Abang
DagangAsia Enterprise

http://www.dagang.asia

Proud


2008
11.13

Now, Britannia High is on the list of tv show I have to download. Hm.. it’s a musical – people said that it is a rip-off of HSM, but I don’t care. Some songs are good. The plot is okay, the dance move is kinda cheesy. I wasn’t entertained much by the second episode. But the third episode was very good.

I show it to Zeah last nite.

I love this particular song – Proud, sung by that kid to his father who was a businessman and didn’t allow his kid to do performing arts in Britannia High.

Zeah said, ‘then, his father watches the performance and changes his mind?’

‘No, he didn’t’.

Anyway….

Zeah, five six seven eight…

Answering Halim


2008
11.11

So Halim asked me some questions. Well, I think that I typed about it already in my previous blog but it would be too much to ask him to go around and read it honestly. But anyway Halim, if you want to read the insight of my life when I was still new to UK, you can read my Jurnal dari Pinggir London – October 2006.

Otherwise, here are my answers. Bleh tak aku nak demand di’cameo’kan dalam ko punya cerita. Cameo jer, bukan watak utama pun. Haha.

- kiblat hala ke arah mana? waktu solat camne?

Kiblat arah 120 darjah dari utara. Hampir-hampir ke arah timur/matahari naik. So kalau katakan sampai ke tempat yang tak tahu arah kiblat, pastu takde kompas, biasanya mengarahkan diri ke timur lah, as oppose to Malaysia, ke barat.

Waktu solat plak berubah mengikut musim. Macam sekarang, subuh masuk kul 5 lebih, matahari terbit dalam 7.30 pagi. Zohor dalam 11.45 pagi dah masuk dan Asar plak kul 1.45 macam tu. Kul 4.10 dah Maghrib.

Kalau waktu solat Jumaat, kitorang still stick pukul 1 tengah hari (walaupun dah ujung-ujung Zohor tu) sebab orang break kerja pukul 1. This thing happen all around UK – sepatutnyalah sebab kat London, Glasgow dan sini pun camtu. So aku generalisekan lah.

- hang selalu turun london ke? brp lama tmpoh pjlnan dr durham ke london?

Jarang gak la. Sebab costly dan perjalanan agak lama. Sebenarnya kalau beli tiket train awal-awal bleh dapat murah dalam 10 pound sehala. Kalau beli last minit, mau 40 – 70 pound return. Kalau naik train best, sebab 3 jam dah sampai London. Kalau naik bas, sampai 7 jam. Mana taknya, dia stop banyak sangat untuk pickup orang. Tak macam bas transnasional.

- kalau sewa keta, apa prosedur or terms & conditionsnya?

You know what, talking about car renting – that’s the time I feel bad for being young. Mana taknya, kalau bawah 25 tahun, kita kena bayar 10pound extra per day untuk sewa kereta. Sebab insurans pemandu muda nih mahal sikit.

Biasanya kitorang sewa syarikat Enterprise, sebab bleh dapat dalam 10 pound sehari untuk kereta kecil. Kitorang pernah sewa kereta 7 seater, pun boleh lah sebab dalam 30 pound lebih sehari, bahagi 7 orang taklah teruk sangat.

Term and conditions? Hm.. takde aper, tempah, pastu kalo dengan Enterprise, diorang mai amik kat rumah. Tunjuk lesen, tunjuk passport, tunjuk dokumen yang ada alamat rumah (sebab dia nak make sure kita duduk kat situ) dan bayar 100 pound deposit. Pastu dia tanya nak amik insurans excess tak (untuk cover kerosakan di bawah 500 pounds sebab insurans asas hanya cover kerosakan yang lebih 500 pounds sahaja), pastu aku biasanya amik insurans excess kat syarikat online, sebab murah sikit, pastu amik kereta.

Hmm.. camtu jer.

- hang ada kenal sape2 yg ngaji medic kt UK? aku nk tanya dia nnti.

Kenal tapi tak rapat. Ader la bebudak kampus kesihatan Durham yang aku tau nama dan pernah bertegur sapa setakat ‘hi hi’ macam tu. Tapi takde contacts address diorang.

- kalau ada tips baik punyer ttg khidupan di UK, tolong inform aku!

Aku pun tak tahu tips apa yang hang nak. Tips mendapatkan orang-orang UK kah? Sebab aku tak tahu yang itu. Hehe. Tapi, kalo hang betul-betul nak insight of foreigner living in UK, aku cadangkan hang try membaca blog-blog berikut

  • Blog lama aku tuh. Banyak gak cerita-cerita fasal life in UK.
  • Blog sorang budak Newcastle nih. Aku tak kenal. Tapi dia pernah tinggalkan komen sekali kat blog aku. Link di sini.
  • Arni, Zeah, Mahadi, Kak Nur dan Amirul. Tu suma kat UK tuh. Link kat senarai link di sebelah kanan.
  • Blog Faiza (kawan Kak Nur, dan aku kenal dia sebelum tu lagi kot friendster). Dia baru sampai di Preston dan blog dia banyak cerita fasal pengalaman dia baru duduk kat UK. So, masih fresh lagi dan up to date la. Link di sini.

That’s all Halim. I’m glad to answer anything more (suppose that I’m not busy). Jangan lupa, cameokan aku dalam buku hang. Haha. (Sorry aku belajar demand-demand cameo nih dari Shahrill!!)