First of all, let me welcome you to my blog. Credit given to the original designer enirtep. Believe it or not, it took me 7 straight hours to change the skin. I know that for you guys, it may only take minutes to do it, but for a complete beginner to the whole web programming and photoshop. believe me 7 hours went by so fast. So today, again I apologize since I’m now too tired to write a new entry. Let me just introduce you to my new house instead 🙂

The main objective is basically to widen my chat box since that is the major problem with the previous skin. So hopefully all my friends visitting me can say hi without the need to find their spectacle in the process 🙂

I also moved my menu to the right handside to make the loading of the content way much faster. Well for me, It IS relatively faster since I’m just a 5KB/s user. This is because I noticed that previous skin had force the browser to load all the script before the content.

Learning from previous mistakes, I also took the liberty of downloading Firefox to check the compatibility. So far, I think it’s acceptable. Firefox sure is fast ya?

All being said, I really appreciate if fellow friends can give me feedback on the new design, any bug or compatibility issues.

It’s true what people said – The more you learned, the more you don’t know. (i.e. There are so much things we found out that we don’t know)

Hey.. there’s a lesson in this post after alll. 🙂 So it’s now an official entry to my blog then hehe.

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An Experiment – Can you read this?

“I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit any porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt”

This is actually sent to me via email. I however still believe that spelling is most important in a word. But it is interesting though. A few conclusion I can draw from this experiment are –

• I believe only english will have this effect since English words are usually very specific. If a Bahasa Malaysia word “Memahami” is changed, I doubt we will be able to read it – Mmamhaei

• Maybe it is imprinted in our way of thinking that what matter are only the beginning and the end. That is why when we watch a movie, we expect the ending to be conclusive. If for example, the movie had a “to-be-continued” type of ending, people tends to be frustrated with it ~ Matrix 2 etc

• Maybe we are so used to spelling error in sms that this is no different

————— Personal Note ————————–
English wise, I was very active since I’m in Standard 4. I competed in a story telling competition in both Standard 4 and 5. There was one incident I will never forget. I was in standard 5. And before going to the interschool competetion, the teachers had organized a rehearsel for me to do the storytelling in front of the whole pupil of my school. It would be some sort of preparation. I had no problem with that. I was then up there on the stage, giving all my best when suddenly I heard some voices from just in front of the stage. They were actually trying to distract me by giving comments on my attire, my look and even my nostril hahaha. They actually succeeded when I forget entirely my script. And in the middle of the story, I walked away very embarassed. The teacher was ever angry with me, but I don’t care, I actually did however win the interschool competition but lose when further representing the district. 🙂

So dear friends, do you have embarassing moments back in school years? Share it la… let’s be embarassed together hehe 🙂

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Yesterday was my day off, and I have a whole lot of plans to do, House to clean, bills to pay, Harry Potter to read. I spend almost my whole day doing 2 out of 3. I bet you know which one I ignore. Yes.. House cleaning.

I know no one is going to clean the house if not me. And I know sooner or later, I will be the one who will do it. In the end, I started cleaning my house at around 10.00pm and I’m supposed to go to bed at around 1.00 am. This is a real example of procrastination.

Basically we all know procrastination. It is when we skip one task (which is usually the most important and not fun) to do another task (which is more fun) or not doing any task at all (which is super fun hehe). And it has been illustrated in almost all self-help book on how to overcome it; the whole to-do list, prioritize etc.

I am not going to reinvent the wheel and elaborate on that. I am more interested on how we, the real people, handle it. This is what I did –

• Smaller But Frequent Rewards – After every 5 pages of Harry Potter I read, I will get up and do 2 small things; wash the dishes and take out the garbage.

• Procrastinate Consciously – Sometimes when I really hate the task, and it is not that important. I choose to procrastinate conciously. For example, I have to prepare monthly maintenance report, which is very tedious. My mind go blank already with no mood what so ever to do it. I know for sure that if I force myself doing it, the report will be badly written and I may have to do it again. In that case, I usually decide to procrastinate without any guilt, and play that damn addictive “pikacu” game my wife introduced me. Later, I found out that I am able to do the report effectively for about 15 minutes before I’m out of mood again. At least 15 minutes of work done right?

• Lie to Self – Working under pressure sometimes do give me a bit motivation to overcome procrastinate. Usually I just lie to myself saying that in 2 hours my manager will be coming for tea at my house. I repeatedly convince myself that that will happen. And then you can see I work at 110% efficiency.

I still believe procrastinate is a bad attitude to have. But it will always be there. And sometimes it wins.

So do you guys have any secret way to tackle procrastination? motivate yourself to do things you dont like?

————— Personal Note ————————–
My worst case of procrastination is when I was studying in the university. I need to submit all my reports the next day, and I still had to do 14 weekly reports all in one night. The pressure that night was so overwhelming that I even thought that this might be how people who commit suicide feels like. Not that I have that idea. I finished all the reports in time, but the lecturer failed me. That was one lesson I will remember for the rest of my life.

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Summary – Defining craziness
Thinking back, luckily the incident in the previous post involved drunk. It would be a different case altogether if it involved crazy people.

Today’s post is dedicated to define the word “crazy”. I’m not referring to the people who talks to himself, or those in the Hospital Bahagia. I am actually more interested in the crazy things we, normal people, do everyday.

The best definition of “crazy” in my opinion is “To do the same thing but expecting different results from it“.

One good example to illustrate is hoping to wake up at 6 am when we sleep very late in the morning, obviously we will be late to work, waking up at 7am. Tomorrow.. we do it again, going to bed very late, and we expect to wake up at 6am? That is just crazy.

I guess, we always hope that luck will be on our side once in a while. Doing the same thing, and maybe with luck.. we get up at 6am.

The thing is, depending on luck is a very inefficient way of doing things. When you want to wake up at 6am, you must try sleeping a bit earlier. If that still doesn’t work, maybe you can get a louder alarm clock. or ask someone who do wake up at 6am and wake you up.

The same goes to other things in life

• Relationship – you irritate your girlfriend when you smoke, and you don’t want to. just quit smoking.. don’t expect your girlfriend by luck will change and accept it
• Health – you gain weight and you want to lose some. you must then control your diet and exercise. There is no way you can lose weight if you doesn’t change anything in your lifestyle.
• Material – your computer always hang when you swith it on and you wish this wouldn’t happen. Send the computer for repair. The problem will always be there if you didn’t do anything.

Imagine those who gamble at Genting with no particular strategy to win, spending hundreds on their luck. Repeating the same methods of throwing dice, expecting to win. Don’t you think that’s crazy? Or maybe you can share other craziness happening everyday in front of you?

————— Personal Note ————————–
I have had the opportunity to go inside the Genting Casino one time I went there for a seminar. No I dont gamble. I will never bank in my hard-earned money there. I just went there to see what’s it like. And from the way I see it, psychologist will make a fortune there 🙂

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