KL Day 6 - Merdeka Parade and Wayang Kulit Concert

Had only a couple of hours sleep before I was awakened by my ringing mobile phone. One of our customers is in our (Sydney) office today and wanted to see if I'm around. It's actually good that he called - if not, I'll be sleeping till noon. Hopped down to One on One for a quick breakfast, then out of the hotel by 7:30am. Again, long queues at KL Sentral for tickets to Masjid Jamek. With my infinite patience, I managed to get to Merdeka Square around 8:30am. Lots and lots of people milling about. The streets are still closed, and everywhere you'll find Perdana Executives and other flashy cars parked. The Merdeka parade has already started without me. Masses of people in colorful costumes passed by, then floats of different themes, sizes, and shapes. After that came the military troops, the trucks with onboard missiles, and fighter jets thundered across the sky. Due to my average height, I didn't get to see much of the parade. There were some earlier attempts to get the people in front to sit down so that people at the back can appreciate the parade, but there wasn't enough momentum, so everybody remained standing.

By 11am, the sun is at its maximum heat setting, so I decided to head back for the hotel. Paid RM50 for 24 hours of Internet access so I can send off some emails and complete my eValuation. Finished by 3pm, then went to KLCC to cool off. Bought tickets for tonight's The MPO Meets Wayang Kulit. Killed time by window shopping. There's quite a few tempting sales from Isetan, Hush Puppies, and G2000. Ended up buying a pair of Primavera shoes. Much to my surprise, my special friend called up and was asking for a favor. Well, aside from that High School Musical 2 DVD, she wants me to meet up with this guy based in KL, who's the long-time penpal of her friend. Sure, no problem. I'm just a stranger in a strange land - what's the worst thing that can happen to me? I passed by Galeri Petronas and spent about an hour checking out the current exhibitions: Building Merdeka (an architecture retrospective from 1957-1966) and 50 Ways to Live in Malaysia (a series of paintings and works by 50 local artists depicting Malaysian life). The gallery is also showing videos of the more memorable Petronas TV ads for the past few years. Don't understand a word they're saying, but some of them are quite funny and interesting.

By 8:15pm, I proceeded to Dewan Filharmonik Petronas for tonight's performance. Called "The MPO Meets Wayang Kulit", it's supposed to be a fusion of East and West, Kelantanese shadow puppetry meets the orchestra. The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned Adeline Wong to compose “Empunya yang beroleh Sita Dewi”. The piece revolves around the famous "Ramayana" episode, where Sita is abducted by the demon-king Ravana. Most of the piece has dalang Saupi bin Isa narrating the story, and the orchestra provides the soundtrack. I have to say I wasn't too impressed with the shadowplay. It's basically Rama and Ravana fighting each other - portrayed by two puppets chasing and bouncing off each other. After the intermission, we had some real classical pieces: Georges Bizet's Jeux d'enfants and Ottorino Respighi's La Botique Fantasque, with the Overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie for encore.

KL Day 5 - Merdeka Eve

Tonight is Merdeka Eve - Malaysia celebrates its 50th foundation day. My plan was to go to Dataran Merdeka tonight to see the midnight fireworks. My colleague suggested I go to KLCC instead. One, it's less crowded, and two, the fireworks might be better. I can already see myself at the KLCC park taking pictures of the fireworks with the Petronas Towers as the backdrop. Sweet.

9:30pm I went down to the concierge to check Suria KLCC's closing time. Might as well go there half an hour before closing to do some shopping. The shops close at 10pm, BUT there won't be fireworks anywhere in the city because the government wants to "encourage" people to attend the official ceremonies at Dataran Merdeka, and see the fireworks from there. Since the Malaysia Int'l Fireworks Competition is being held in Putrajaya, fireworks can also be seen from there. No way am I going to Putrajaya at this time of night. By the time I got to KL Sentral at 9:45pm, the station is packed with commuters. Four long queues and only two very patient (and chatty) ladies manning the booth. Don't even think about using the ticketing machines because they're all shut down for tonight.

Got to Masjid Jamek station around 10:30pm. The roads leading to the Merdeka Square are closed and replaced with stalls selling banners, caps, light wands, souvenir items, food items, drinks, etc. The whole area is packed with revelers and onlookers. Most of the tall buildings around the square are bathed in multi-coloured lights. Some even have scrolling images projected onto their side. In front of the Sultan Abdul Samad Building is an elevated stage where the local officials and foreign dignitaries are seated. Across the street are rows and rows of seats for special guests to view the street performances. There are song numbers from the local pop stars, cultural dances from the different states, etc. - none of which I can understand nor see, except on the giant screens. It was hot and humid throughout the night, and the camera on my neck is getting heavier every minute.

Ten seconds before the clock strikes twelve, everyone started the countdown. 3..2..1..Blah! No fireworks. The emcee shouted "Merdeka!", and a few politicians made some rousing speeches. What a night! When there was still no fireworks by 12:45am, I gave up and walked back to the train station and had a meal at Burger King. As to be expected, the place is full, so more queueing and jostling for seats. Just as I was enjoying my burger and fries, I heard loud noises and cheering. They've started the fireworks without me! Wolfing down my burger, I rushed out of the restaurant just in time to catch the last few fireworks over the KL night sky. Better than nothing.

KL Day 4 - Thean Hou Temple

Spent most of the day helping the local engineers fix up the TA rulebase to allow MMS and walled-garden FOC charging. Also started going through the SGSN datafill for a new RNC to be integrated next week.

Left the office a little bit early at 5pm. The plan is to go to Thean Hou Temple just a few kilometers away from Le Meridien. The tourist pamphlets recommend taking the Putra train to Bangsar, then from there it's a short taxi ride to the taxi. Something must've gotten lost in the translation because the Bangsar taxi passed by my hotel, circled around it, then continued on to the temple. The cabbie even charged me a contract rate of RM15 because it's the peak after-office hours. After dropping me off, he asked if I want him to wait around or if he should come back to fetch me because the place is pretty isolated, and there's not many taxis around. It's true that the temple is situated on top of Robson Hill, and the only way to reach it is via small side road off Jalan Syed Putra (Federal Highway). Still, I told the cabbie I'll take my chances.

Spent about an hour exploring the temple. For one of the largest Chinese temples in Southeast Asia, it doesn't get much visitors. It's quite grand and majestic though. The temple has four levels. The first level houses the marriage registration office, a souvenir shop and a canteen. On the second level is the multi-purpose hall where cultural and religious activities are held. The admin office and resource centre are on the third level. The main temple shrine is on the fourth level. Upon entering the temple hall, the central altar is dedicated to the Thean Hou Goddess. To her right is Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. To her left is Shui Wei Shen Niang, the Goddess of the Waterfront.

After the tour, I realized I'm in a fix. The place is deserted, and I'm the only patron left. The long downhill walk to the main highway is pretty dangerous because the road is winding, there are no sidewalks, and cars would be whizzing by just a few feet from me. From the highway, it's another long walk to the overpass to allow me to cross the road. After like half an hour of trying, I managed to flag down a vacant cab. The ride back to the hotel? Only RM3.

KL Day 3 - Lunar Eclipse No-Show

Update on the Iu-PS problem: the local engineers did a CRP hard disk swap last night. Upon my request, they did a TU reset. Didn't fix the Iu-PS problem. I went to the office early, and tried out the dummy-RNC solution. No good. I'm really hesitant to do a bbsig debug trace - it'll take me days just to sort out through the logs. Out of desperation, I asked the RNC guy to recreate all his configuration. He said he already tried that yesterday, but just the same he did it again. This time SSN 142 came up, and we were able to make a PS call. Somebody else would've given him a good sermon. I'm just so relieved it works, I even gave him a pat on the back.

Found out that there's going to be a lunar eclipse tonight around 7:30pm till 8pm. Unfortunately for KL, it was drizzling, and the whole sky is covered with thick clouds. Went to MidValley Megamall for some much-needed R&R.

KL Day 2 - Faking up Is Hard to Do

Worst part of my job is having to do something that you have no idea about. Officially, I'm here in KL to do some MVI work - making sure our 3G SGSN works with a competitor's RNC. My colleague, whom I replaced, assured me that most of the work has been done, and all I need to do is babysit the systems and provide logs if necessary. Easy peasy - that I can do while enjoying my time in KL.

First day I walked into the customer site, the project manager informed me that the PS is not working. Two out of four ATM links are up, CS is working, but not PS, and I need to fix it quick. What?! This is not my idea of a junket. First thing to do is to bring up the other two links. Bounced the links - no. Recreated the entries - no. Modified a wrong configuration - no. Turns out the RNC guy didn't create the link entries on his end. All links up - yes. PS working - no. RANAP just won't come up. It was a pretty stressful situation, I tell you, with everyone standing around watching you struggle to make things work. I decide to use my "Call-A-Friend" lifeline. After extensive consultation with my colleagues, we still don't know what's the problem. One option is to restart the TU and SMM cards. If in doubt, reboot. Another option is to do an SMM debug trace. This is going to be hairy as this is a production system - it'll produce humongous amounts of logs and might even bring down the whole box. I decide to leave it till tomorrow.

Later tonight, I got an advice from another colleague to create a dummy RNC, apply-save, then delete the dummy RNC config. Said it worked for him before. That'll allow me to sleep a little bit better tonight.

KL Day 1 - Three Movies and a Grand Prix

Yup, I'm back to Malaysia for some MVI project work, and you know what that means - 3-in-a-row in-flight movies. First movie I watched is Shrek the Third. Nothing special in here - same cast, same voice actors with the addition of Arthur, Merlin, and a few fairy-tale villains. The story continues from Shrek 2. With King Harold of Far, Far Away on his deathbed, Shrek is next in line for the throne. Feeling out of place, Shrek sets out with his pals Donkey and Puss in Boots to look for Arthur, who is the next heir. In the meantime, Prince Charming rounds up the villains at the pub and they mount an attack on the castle and managed to take the whole kingdom. Shrek and company arrive at the city and defeat Prince Charming. Arthur decides to take on the management of the kingdom. Shrek and Fiona go back to the swamp and have lots of ogre babies, and they live happily ever after.

I was up for a foreign movie next, and I chose a Japanese film called Gegege no Kitaro. Had I known it was based on a manga series I would've skipped it. Live-action adaptation of manga characters rarely work, and this proved to be the case. The movie is about a bunch of yokai ghosts, who are sympathetic to humans, headed by Kitaro. Being a Japanese film, even the ghost spirits are outrageous and over-to-top. Kitaro is portrayed by this cool dude with silver hair. When fighting, his hair turns spiny and shoots out like arrows. Kitaro's Dad is this single naked eyeball with two legs. (Go figure.) We also have Neko Musume (translated as Cat Girl), who has a crush on Kitaro. She looks normal enough, but turns into a cat-like monster when angry. There are a few other characters, like the walking-wall Nurikabe, the flying-cloth Ittan Momen, the sand-throwing hag Sunakake Babaa, the old-man Konaki Jijii, etc. I would've mentioned a little about the plot here, but it's so forgettable I can't remember any of it.

Next is legal thriller Fracture starring Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling as the main characters. Hopkins plays Ted Crawford, a calculating aeronautical structural engineer, who shoots his cheating wife point-blank in cold blood. Gosling plays Willy Beachum, a hotshot public prosecutor who takes on the supposedly open-and-shut case. Crawford has his perfect crime all planned out and manages to have the case dismissed due to lack of evidence. Beachum and his team managed to find a gun inside the house, but all the bullets are in the chamber and the gun has never been fired. After some thinking, Beachum figures out that Crawford must have switched guns with the negotiator when the police first came into the house. That's the reason they never found the weapon. What the cops should've done is trace the clean gun and check who the owner was. It's also strange that the negotiator never bothered to check his gun all this time. Anyway, after the trial, Crawford authorized the doctors to take away his wife's breathing tubes, effectively killing her and completing his unfinished business. Beachum figured out that Crawford did a switch. With the incriminating bullet from the victim's head, Beachum starts another case against Crawford. Crawford was hoping that double jeopardy will save him, but as Beachum pointed out, the first case was for attempted murder. This time, it's for murder. No such thing as a perfect crime.

Back at the hotel, I spent the night watching the Turkish Grand Prix. Massa's Ferrari started from pole position and led the race all the way till the end. Teammate Raikkonen jumped McLaren's Hamilton off the grid to take second place. Due to a late tire puncture, Hamilton had to settle for 5th place.

City2Surf 2007 Results

The official results are out. The complete list of finishers and their times are printed in today's issue of SMH. I was too lazy to scan the list for my name, so I waited till the City2Surf website switched on their online search facility (by name or bib number).

It tells me: "Well done Albert on completing The 2007 Sun-Herald City2Surf. You were 20293rd over the line with a time of 100:42." Not as good as last year's result. The upside is that I didn't feel any pain during the race, and I can still actually walk after the race.

Incidentally, the website actually has a picture of me crossing the finish line up for sale. (Yes, that's me checking the time on my mobile.) Makes me wonder how they did it? Did they use some pattern-recognition software to identify the chest bibs or did they simply hire lots of people to pour through the thousands of pictures looking for matches?

City2Surf 2007

My 4th City2Surf in a row. As usual, I'm with the (Soul) Back of the Pack. I wonder when I can quality for the SH2 group, for people who finished between 75 and 99 minutes last year.

This year, the race started an hour earlier at 9am. The Back of the Pack started running around 9:30am. It was a glorious day - the sun was out, but not too hot. My only complaint is that the walkers and slow runners are all over the place. I mean, people should stay on the left lanes unless they are overtaking - just like on the escalators and expressways.

Maybe it's because I started a little in front of the pack, but I noticed less people who dressed up this year. You still have the fairies, the guys in full body-color, guys wearing only buggie smugglers, etc. This year we also have the ANZ ATM, runners from the Sydney Children's Hospital hoisting a kid strapped on a stretcher, and Borat in his trademark neon green thong also made an appearance.

I finished with a time of 2:01:10. That still has to be adjusted for the late start. By my own reckoning, I finished the race in 90 minutes, but we'll see what the official time is when the results are announced/published on Tuesday.

After the race, it's off to Swiss Grand Hotel for lunch buffet with the P&G guys. A lot of the people are already there, and I believe my sister dropped in an hour later. Then, it's a kilometer-long queue for the buses to the city. I personally don't mind standing in the cold in my T-shirt and shorts, but it really bothers me that some people still have the gall to cut in pretend they didn't know there's a queue. The more outspoken ones in the line would admonish them, yet they suddenly go deaf in the hearing. I was telling the couple behind me that maybe we should've headed straight for the buses half an hour ago, and be done with it. In the end, it's all about doing the right thing.

NSN Fusion Day and U-nite: Of Pirates and Zombies

What better way to build camaraderie among employees of a Finnish mobile company and a German conglomerate by having a costume party and two days of team-building. In past company outings, we would take a coach to the site, then do our team-building activities there. This year, we did it Amazing-Style race with puzzles and challenges and multiple pit stops along the way.

Everyone congregated at Refinery Park, and teams were formed. First challenge is to devise a four-line chant. Then we were given a character-substitution puzzle with the cipher key given. Being one of only two locals in our team, I quickly guessed Tumbalong Park as the next pit stop, even though we only partially solved the puzzle. We were first to move out towards Darling Harbour, yet we got there almost last. I figured everyone else just followed in the general direction. Unfortunately, a few our my teammates announced that they don't feel comfortable running.

At Tumbalong Park, we were asked to draw portraits of two team members and make a presentation of it. We got the portraits, but the presentation didn't happen as were running short of time already. We were told to head for Dixon Street in Chinatown, take some tea, and sample the weirdest food we can find. For A round of (service) tea and a takeaway box of seafood, the restaurant charged us $40. They must've thought we're the real deal. We didn't get the chance to sample the food because our coordinator was rushing us to the station to catch the 11:03 train. In our haste to get to Central, we forgot to get the next clue. So we were standing in line to buy the tickets, yet we have no idea where we're going. The guy in front of me said it's Parramatta. And I go, yeah right. Just goes to show watching Amazing Race does make you lose faith in your fellowman. Turns out we ARE going to Paramatta.

For our next challenge, (while on the train) we have to go to www.thrill.com.au (the event organizer's website), and identify some Sydney landmarks. Isn't technology amazing. A few years ago, who would've imagined that using your mobile phone, you can connect to the Internet and browse any website in full color? Upon reaching Parramatta, we ran all the way to the next pit stop, St. John's Cathedral.

After some drinks and fruits and muesli bars, we were given a Detour: recreate a 16x16 matrix from memory, or re-arrange 7 tangram pieces into a square. As as admission of our age, the team opted to solve the puzzle. Our next clue is in the form of another puzzle, which we deduced to be an Irish pub in Emu Plains. O'Donoghue's is the best pit stop of all because this is where we had our lunch - finger foods and drinks. No rest for the wicked, though. While waiting for the food to come out, another Detour: the team has a choice of either telling two jokes, or doing a karaoke number. I wanted to tell the joke about the similarity between women's breasts and a PS2, but the team decided to maintain its wholesome image. So I went for the vampire and the dentist. All thanks to the jokes section of GQ on Mobizines.

After the light lunch, we're off to Katoomba. During the 1.5-hour journey, we were asked to fashion a train out of ice cream sticks and rubber banks and Scotch tape. Took us the whole journey to do it. Little did we know that the other teams made use of additional materials like water bottles, which saved them heaps of time and effort. From Katoomba, another puzzle led us to Echo Point where we are supposed to should out our (former) company names. Yeah, great way to build morale. For our last challenge, we have to solve another character-substitution puzzle to get to the final pitstop. I managed to solve it, but doesn't really matter because the mini-bus took us straight to Peppers Fairmont Resort in Leura. Before letting us off to our rooms, we had to go through an aboriginal performance, then everyone has to imitate animals like kangaroos, dingoes, etc. What a way to end the day.

The costume party starts at 7:30pm, and the theme is Pirates of the Caribbean. Most guys don't really care because by 7pm, they're still either at the bar, at the sauna or playing pool or tennis. Instead of a swashbuckling pirate, I chose to be a music pirate (see previous post), but nobody seemed to notice. Place is too dark anyway. Only a couple of people asked, and I had to show them my shirt and how I'm supposed to be a music pirate. Cheeky, they said.

I stayed around for the food, but left the moment people stood up to dance. I really can't take strobing lights and thumping beats and senseless gyrations. Went back to my room and watched British cult comedy Nighty Night and a zombie movie called Severed: Forest of the Dead on SBS. Pretty engrossing. It's about lumberjacks becoming zombies when they come in contact with sap from genetically-modified trees in the forest.

DIY Pirate Costume

The company's having a costume party soon, and I don't really want to buy or rent a costume that I'll only use once. What to do? When in doubt, DIY. The theme this year is Pirates of the Caribbean. I'm not going to fashion my own hat, eye patch, fake beard, dirty clothes, etc., so I opted to come to the party as a music pirate. All I need is a customized shirt. The front will have a picture of a skull-and-crossbones wearing headphones. At the back of the shirt are the words MUSIC PIRATE in bold white. Put on a pair of real headphones and an mp3 player to complete the look. Neat, huh? Hopefully, there are no RIAA agents at the party.

Horsley Park Half-Lunch and Civic Centre Half-Salute!

It's a day of halves today. I was supposed to have lunch at a friend's house at Horsley Park around noon. Had a badminton session at Homebush from 11am till 12 noon, so by the time I left the house it's already 12. The TomTom application on my E65 tells me Horsley Park is only half an hour away. It probably didn't factor in normal road traffic because I got there 45 minutes late. From Horsley Park, it's another half-hour to Chatswood where I'm supposed to attend a farewell concert by the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra and Choir starting at 2pm. Again, the TomTom didn't factor in the fact that I left the concert ticket at home, so I had to abort a nice vegetarian lunch, drive all the way home, then drive (quite fast) to Chatswood.

The concert, entitled Civic Centre Salute, promises to be a grand one. After 35 years of being home to the Willoughby Symphony, Willoughby Civic Centre is transforming into the Chatswood Civic Place, and this is going to be the orchestra's last concert in this venue.

By the time I got to the Civic Centre, people were just coming out for the intermission. That's half of the concert gone already. Apparently, I have missed Rossini's La Gazza Ladra Overture, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, and a few others. The rest of the concert is worth all the hassle though. The second set opened with Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. Then we had the Willoughby March. The host gave us this bit of trivia about the piece: it was composed in 1969 by Albert Keats, the first Musical Director of the Willoughby Municipal Symphony Orchestra, and first performed on-site by the orchestra on Feb. 28, 1972. Next we had Mozart's Requiem and Tchaikovsky's third movement from Symphony No. 6. The highlight for me was when the choir sang the O Fortuna chorus from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. Chief conductor Nicholas Milton borrowed a violin and started playing the opening bars of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5 (very slowly), then the whole orchestra joined in - playing fast then slow depending on the conductor's whim. We also had Verdi's Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore, and a few others. For the finale, the orchestra played Strauss Sr.'s Radetzky March, and everyone started clapping along. Reminded me so much of the Vienna New Year concerts that I used to watch on TV. I was sitting along the second row, so the music's really loud and you can see clearly how the music is being created. Very nice.

New Radioblog, Old Songs

Found out recently that radio.blog has a new version out (v3.1.8). I've stuck with v2.5 for quite some time because one, it works, and two, I'm not too sure if the new version works in the non-PHP mode. Only one way to find out. There's a few UI enhancements like new layout and support for playlists. Still the same old songs though. Ripway is only giving me 30MB of online storage space and 150MB of bandwidth per day, so I can't really put up more songs.

I guess it's also time to look for a better webhosting service. When I first set up my radio.blog, the best I can find is Ripway. This time, I found ZendURL, which gives you 100MB of space, gigs of bandwidth, PHP/Perl/CGI/SSI/MySQL support, FTP, POP, etc. All for free. My only complaint so far is that it's a bit buggy and tend to be offline from time to time. I've already integrated the new radio.blog to Blogger, though it might not show up if ZendURL is down. If you prefer the old player, go here:

http://aching.50webs.com

Roasted Duck, Smokeless Star City

So nice to have a free hotel lunch now and then. My colleague received a $30 lunch voucher from Star City, so the three of us went to make good use of it.

First thing I noticed when I first stepped into the casino is the clean, clear air. My colleague tells me that a total smoking ban went into effect in NSW starting July. That would explain why there's a lack of cigarette smoke and punters on the tables. The Trophies Food Court is packed though. Love that roast duck rice and the $6.50 meals (including soft drinks).

So Many Toys, So Little Time

First was the Microsoft Xbox. A few hacks and modifications later, it became a full-fledged multimedia center. During my recent trip to Manila, I came back with a Magic Sing karaoke system. You gotta give it to those Koreans. Literally thousands of songs (actually MIDIs) built right into the microphone. When my sisters came back from Manila, they brought with them an MP4 player with karaoke functions. Works quite well with the MP4 DVDs I brought before. Chalk one up for good compression codecs - thousands of minus-one videos on one DVD. Our latest acquisition? A Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) PC game complete with a Topway dance pad. Sure brings back memories of weekends at the arcade (watching, not dancing).

Asian Cup 2007: Australia vs. Japan in Little Portugal

Went to Little Portugal along Marrickville Road for dinner to celebrate my sister's birthday this week. We got there 5 minutes into extra time of the Australia-Japan match in the Asian Cup 2007. The actual game played out yesterday night in Hanoi, but since I haven't read the news, it's still an exciting game to watch.

After 30 minutes of extra-time play, the score is still tied at 1-1. Japan could've closed off the match with some promising attempts, but Mark Schwarzer managed to block the balls. The game went into penalty shootout. Japanese goalkeeper Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi turned out to be the better man, denying Harry Kewell's and Lucas Neill's penalty kicks. Despite Schwarzer's valiant attempts, Japan won the game on penalties 4-3 to move on to the semi-finals. Such a sorry ending, but the food was great though.

From the street, Little Portugal looks like a take-away shop. Don't mind that, just walk straight in and you'll find the (small) dining area. We ordered a whole Portuguese chicken and large chips, which were served almost immediately (after the complimentary bread and butter). My first time to try Portuguese chicken - quite a distinctive taste. And the chips is at par with McDonald's. (That's a compliment.) Our other dishes took a while to come out, so they must be freshly prepared. We had diced pork with potato chunks and pipis and another dish called Bifina (beef steak, bacon and egg, served with wafer thin potato chips, pickles and rice). The servings were so generous we didn't get to finish everything. So no dessert or coffee for us.

Bankstown Bites and Badminton

Bankstown Council is again hosting Bankstown Bites for the third year. This year's highlight are cooking demonstrations and book signings from celebrity chef Iain 'Huey' Hewitson. There are also eight food tours to choose from running at 10:30am, 12:30pm, and 2:30pm.

I got to the Bankstown City Plaza around 10am. Since I'm relatively early, I get a free shopping bag filled with brochures and other goodies. The food tours have interesting names such as Wok It Up, European Eats, Tantalizing Tea, Sweet Treats, Little Lebanon, Know Your Noodle, etc.

I'm a sucker for desserts, so I signed up my friend and me for the Sweet Treats tour. First stop is a Lebanese sweets shop a few block from the town center. The place is basically one long gallery of all kinds of sweets. They also make their own ice cream. The shop owner is pretty generous - everyone gets 2-3 scoops of ice cream and 2-3 kinds of sweets of your choice. We moved on to the cake shop on the next block. There's free hot chocolate for everyone, pastries, and a mini-takeaway package for everyone. Back at the town centre, we visited two more Chinese bakeries where they just plied us with cakes and cookies and pastries. My friend already gave up after the cake shop.

We loitered around and watched Huey do a cooking demonstration. Had a quick lunch of fried rice and Filipino BBQ, then off to badminton.

Want a Charge with That?

Seems like selected outlets of Burger King in Manila are offering customers free charging of their mobile phones with every order. This being in the Philippines, I'm pretty sure people will be standing beside the charging station munching on their burgers and fries while waiting for the phones to charge up. If you're not careful and blink your eyes, you'll lose your phone.

(Just looking at the picture, it's obvious that Nokia is the market leader. Go, Nokia!)

Update: A colleague wrote in to say that mobile charging stations can also be found in selected McDonald's and Wendy's outlets and Ayala Cinemas.

Rail Jam at Harbour Bridge, Inferno at Broadway

The one day when I have to meet up with a friend in Burwood and have a nice dinner. Right around 4:30pm, I got an internal email saying that there are problems with the North Shore line on the Harbour Bridge, and people are advised to seek alternative means of transport if going to the city. I figured I'll leave the office (relatively) early at 5pm and just take the many buses going to the city. Wrong. I went down to the North Sydney station to check things out and found a huge throng of people still confused as to why no trains are coming. Outside the station, there's people everywhere waiting for buses and flagging taxis. There's not even a proper queue anymore. A CityRail officer came by with a megaphone and announced that there are buses waiting along Walker Street. I rushed off to find this long long queue going around the corner and stretching all the way down the road. It's a cold winter night and the wind is blowing hard. Not a good time to wait for buses. Took me an hour to reach the head of the line;15 minutes to get to the Circular Quay by bus.

Good thing my friend is nice enough to offer to drive to the city and meet me at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. Still, that's a long walk from Circular Quay to Chinatown, I tell you. To get away from the cold, we ducked into Broadway Shopping Centre and had pizza and calamari at Inferno Cafe, then hot chocolate at Gloria Jean's to cap a long day.

Hacked!

Just yesterday, my laptop got infected with some malware and trojans. Serves me right. That's what you get for downloading cracked S60v3 applications for your E65. Who would've thought that a self-extracting archive will also come with a batch file that auto-runs, executing all the trojans inside? The trojans are pretty sneaky, too. My PC started slowing down and disk activity started picking up. First thing I thought of is to disconnect from the Internet. Not easy when you're using Wi-Fi. I pressed the key combination to disable Wi-Fi. Nothing happens. Sneaky malware - I'm sure it's their doing. I had to manually walk over to the cable modem to turn it off. Hopefully, the spyware agent didn't have enough time to extract my passwords and bank details and send them off to its master.

Now, this is the first time I personally encountered trojans in my many years on the Internet. A quick look at the Task Manager showed some unfamiliar processes. Not surprising. Spybot - Search & Destroy came up with a few minor culprits, but not the ones I'm sure slowing are down my system. Symantec's real-time scanner popped up a few warnings, but wasn't able to do anything. At the risk of the trojan sending off more data, I re-connected to the Internet to get Kaspersky to scan my system. After downloading an ActiveX control, plus a 7MB signature database, the scan found 5 infected executables. (Kaspersky scans, but does not remove.) I immediately deleted them all after killing them via Task Manager. Of course, I cleaned up their entries in the registry, too. HijackThis identified a few rouge DLLs that are registered as BHOs (browser helper objects) and associated with critical services like explorer.exe and winlogon.exe. You can't simply delete those DLLs because they're in use. Deleting their registry entries and deleting them with FileASSASSIN and HijackThis' "delete on reboot" function didn't work. They just kept on coming back. Killing explorer and winlogon in order to delete the DLLs also didn't work because Windows would've frozen up by then. I also tried booting from a Linux live CD, hoping to delete the rouge DLLs while they're dormant. No such luck. Pointsec encryption is so good, my Linux can't find any NTFS partitions.

So finally, this is how I licked the problem. I figured that since the bad registry entries keep being re-generated after every reboot, then they must be being injected during logoff. Using FileASSASSIN, I flagged the bad DLLs for deletion upon next reboot. Then, I took out the battery pack of the laptop for an instant shutdown. No more proper logoff. Next time I booted up, the DLLs are gone. Problem solved.