Thursday, October 31, 2002

Here's something for all the Jane Austen fans. Pride and Prejudice ... Bollywood style!

It's gonna be set in contemporary England and is to be directed by Gurinder Chadha who's recent film 'Bend It Like Beckham' was recently shown at GSC's International Screen. Did anyone manage to watch that? I saw it on VCD months before it came to the cinemas and I liked it.


On another note, I just found an internet radio station that plays song from musicals. Hurrah!
The last one I listened to, NetRadio, has shut down. A disadvantage of this station is that they don't give out enough information about the song currently being played. All they show is the song's title. No information of which musical it's from. No information about the singer or if it's a cast recording. If I find a song that I like and would like to know which musical it's from, how do I find out? That was what I liked about NetRadio. All the information.

Whoops! I was mistaken. There's a button on the player which does list those information. My bad.

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

Ever heard of the joke about testing condoms? Well, it seems that the test actually exists! This condom company has openings for condom testers. However, openings are only for Brits.

Talk about dream jobs!

Monday, October 28, 2002

Sime Darby Group Games

Well, we didn't win the games this year; I think we came in third. However, the squash team managed to retain the squash cup for the 4th year running.

Hurrah to the squash team!

Expecting a celebratory dinner sometime soon. Hope the don't forget li'l ol me when that time comes.

Me muscles are aching right now. Must be getting old. :)

Friday, October 25, 2002

I'm trying to find that blog which the blogger claims to be a vampire. In the blog, she writes about how she became a vampire and how all the other vamps are pissed at her for writing in her blog.

If any of you have seen it, please drop me a note.
Nothing much today.

Just work and reading up on XML and RSS. The latter are my own interest. Not for work.

Skipping squash practise to go for choir practise at Istana Budaya tonight. Then after that, dance formation practise or class. I'm not too sure yet. Mr Lee said that he's changing our class to Friday at 10pm and I've asked Sae Min to call him to confirm. However, up till now, he hasn't called me yet. I'll just have to make sure I'm there by 10pm. Class or practise won't make much of a difference.

*sigh* I need to take my new practise shoes back. It's too narrow. I wonder if they'll change it for me.
Yummy, yummy ... BRAINS
1st runner up

... which means we lost. Or if you're the optimistic type, we won second. For this matter, I'm gonna be the optimist so, hurrah! We won!

Of course, I'm talking about the cha-cha competition at Orange. What else could it be? What else did I have on that's a competition?

Well ... besides the company games that is coming up this weekend.

Anyway, I'm sort of relieved that they even gave us second placing cause we did a lot of mistkaes. Mistakes after mistakes. Forgotten steps, loss of balance, muscle cramps, the whole enchilada. Both of us.

Sae Min's cramps were due to the hair show he did back on Tuesday. Mine? I don't know where it came from. I don't usually get muscle cramps.

Not when I swim without warming up.
Not when I play squash without warming up.
Not when I dance without warming up ... up till today.

About ten seconds into our routine, during the solo portion of the competition, this is where we have the whole floor to ourselves, my right calf muscle started cramping. I know this cause I do a lot of spins where I land with my weight partly on the balls of my right foot; therefore flexing the right calf muscle. So, I couldn't do a full flex and this was also a cause for my loss of balance. The other reason is that I'm just not very good at stopping after spinning.

The right leg would have helped a little but without it, I'm a lost cause.

La di da ... that's over. Guess it's just more practise, practise, practise in order to remedy that.

On another note, the cute guy I've been eyeing happens to be Margaritte's son. Margaritte's got a bad throat and can't MC today so she asked her son to help out. He seems like a nice boy; helping out his mom almost every week. Well, I'm not quite sure if it is every week but for all the time that I've gone to Orange on Thurdays for the salsa class last time and the past two times for the competition, he was there. Cute and filial ... mama's boy?

I had a good time 'cuci-ing mata' tonight. There's mama's boy and then there's Estaban. I still think he looks sexy when he danced. Sexy ... mmm mmm mmm!

Also, met Jason tonight. Danced with him some. One thing though ... "Jason, you need to learn your timing for salsa. I know I'm not an expert but I think you're starting off on the wrong beat."

Plus, c'mon, honestly, tell me what you think of my dancing.

C'mon spit it out.

You don't have to be nice about it. Tell me what you liked and what you didn't like. I need to know so that I know what needs to be furthur improved on. Ok?

Right then. Time for a quick shower and then ... TO BED! TO BED!

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

The scrabble battle has ended.

Thanks guys. That was fun!
I keep buying chocolate bars and not eating them.
Last night, I bought a Kit Kat Chuncky.
Two days ago, a Time Out.

They're both sitting on a tray in the fridge at home now.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting to be eaten.

I wonder when I'll eat them.
I wonder if it'll still be there to be eaten when I want it.

I wonder what chocolate bar I will be getting tonight.

Update: Time Out is no more. Long live Kit Kat Chuncky

Monday, October 21, 2002

It was a restful weekend.
Didn't do much on Saturday. In fact, can't remember what I did on Saturday.
One sec, let's have a look in my planner to see if it might enlighten me a little.

Ah yes.
Watched James Dean on Astro at noon, squash training at 5pm and Billy Elliot at 10pm. See, a planner is a good thing. It reminds you what you have to do and also what you have done.
Good old planner.
Now, if I can only make my stingy self go buy one of those fancy palm top; I'd have a planner which actually gives out alarms as well. Something that would remind me that I have something to do without me having to open it up and look in it.
Yes. The ultimate lazy tool.

Then on Sunday, the usual dance practise was cancelled. Yay! More time for sleepin'.
Like a pig, slept till 12.30pm then went for bak kut teh.
Man! This is the life.
Eat.
Sleep.
TV.

Wasn't totally stationary though. Had dance class at 4pm, then practise till 7pm before rushing home to treat the family to a dinner cause I got my bonus.

Oh yes, installed a program for my dad on Saturday as well.

Friday, October 18, 2002

Found a new paper to read on Wednesday. It's called Faces: Of the night (I think). It's a fortnightly paper where they report events (read club events) which have gone on in the past fortnight and also reviews on fashion, food and places. A pretty interesting paper with lots of pictures. However, I would think that for such a paper, they would have a list of events that would be coming up so that the readers will know what's the next 'happenning' thing/place to go to.

I was actually at the magazine shop to look for the August issue of Wired. Being the el cheapo that I am, I was waiting for MPH to bring in their stack of RM24.50 Wired for that issue and didn't buy the RM31 copy that I saw. Somehow, I must have missed it cause I can't find it anymore. So now, I'm scouring the back issue magazine shops. Have to check the back issue shop at Sungai Wang then. The one in Damansara Jaya doesn't have it yet?

Also, I got my new pair of latin shoes from Superdance. It's a plain black, 3 incher with flare heels. Costed me RM118. Considerably cheap. Needed a new shoe for practise cause may old pair has a huge hole at my left little toe and it's sort of loose now therefore I'm having trouble trying to balance in it.

Hmmm ... I'm feeling a little Memento effect here cause the events stated above was in reverse chronological order.

It actually went shoe --> look for Wired --> found Faces.

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

My first layout change. What do you think?
Great movie deal at TGV. RM3 for movie tickets this coming Monday and Tuesday. Whoo hoo! Gotta jot that down in my planner.
I am Belle!
Which Disney Princess are you?
Chicago ... can't wait for this movie to come out! Saw the musical almost 2 years ago and loved it. Wonder if the pirate copies are out yet. I'll have to keep my eyes open.
I got a strangely huge number of hits (for me anything > than 30 is huge) from blogger on the 11th and 12th.
Strange.

Anyway, Monday was work for a whole 13 hours.

Since I didn't manage to do any installation on Saturday (server wasn't ready) and Sunday (had to rush for the ad rehearsal), I thought I'd get in early on Monday to have it all done before official work hours began. The installation shouldn't take more than 2 hours really. The program had a setup program and after making sure the setup is correct, all I had to do is transfer my modified codes from the other server.

Simple si?

Well, it would have been if everything with the server is going fine and the codes worked perfectly. The codes were easy to fix once I found out what was wrong and searched the net for the fix. But the server ... the server we still have no idea what is wrong with it. The new server is suppose to be online so I'm suppose to be able to be able to access the application from any network. However, it works fine for one network and goes off and on on another.

Chang, one of the network guys around, thinks it might be the php configuration. Since I have no clue whatsoever about php configuration, we have to wait for the idiot to get to it.

So, we wait.

Yesterday, was a day of almost no work. Had to go to Putrajaya to check out why the Human Resource project people can't update information.
Problem easily solved.

They didn't click the save button.
They made changes, walked away from the application.
Application timed out.
Data not saved.

See, this is why I told Azreen (the business guy) I didn't want to go there. It had to be something stupid like this. Urgh! And then, Aishah, the lady who gave me the requirements for the application, got confused with two of the fields that she told me to include. Also, she requested for some changes. She's already signed the User Acceptance form. So, in truth, I've handed over the project. It's done. I told her she had to talk to Azreen about the request since I don't know if it would be a chargeable modification. I think it should be though. She has agreed that the application fulfilled the requirements so, any additional thing should be charged. Right?

During lunch, skipped over to Subang Perdana?, the area after Giant USJ, for a short preview of our cha cha sequence to a client for a Friday event. Sae Min called me later to tell me that they didn't want the cha cha sequence anyway. I had a feeling that they didn't during the preview cause they didn't look thrilled with it. I think they wanted something more acrobatic, something with lifts and stuff which is not permissable in competition hence not in our routine. Consolation is, I'll be getting Rm75 compensation for having gone there twice for previews which in total must have lasted a whole 20 minutes in total. Cool!

After getting back to the office, I had a meeting with the boss and a few other colleagues. There's a new project. I was really reluctant to go. Another project? OMG! I already have two that's in the back burner right now waiting for the WTS project to finish before I continue with them.

Thankfully, it doesn't look like I'll be doing this one. They're either going to use Mei Ling existing application which she's built for another client or create something based on the idiot's 'super' engine. Yes! So long as they don't ask me to work with the idiot, it's good.

So, one more bad news and good news before I go.

Bad news ... I didn't get in on the ad. Mel called to ask if Jacklyn called me for the dress rehearsal scheduled for today. I didn't. So, I shot off an SMS to Jacklyn to check if I'm still in cause during all the rehearsals, they haven't made up their mind?! Few minutes later, Suhaimi called; all appologetic and everything saying that he's sorry that I had gone to all the rehearsal but they're not taking me for the ad. I told them it's fine but that they should have at least called to tell me that. I mean, it's the decent thing to do. Whether I'm in or not, they should tell me.

Good news ... we're in the cha cha competition finals. Wonder how they got they result so early thought, since the second heat hasn't finished. That's scheduled for tomorrow. Ah, who cares. I'm in. I'm in.

Sunday, October 13, 2002

Server installation didn't finish until about 12pm yesterday. Which gave me only 30 minutes of official working time to install my app and see if it's workable. Mind you, the server installation wasn't tested. Rosli, the guy who installed the server, have no idea if the installation MySQL and PHP will work together.

I couldn't stay back too long to finish up work cause I was suppose to go to Kampung Baru for the advertisement rehearsal. I knew something was terribly wrong when I got to the place at 2.30pm and there was only one car at the parking lot. Started making calls to Margaret, a friend (although I'd consider he more as an aquiantance than a friend) and Jacklyn to check on the venue. Nobody answered their phones, so I left messages and sat there waiting in my car for someone to call back. I've decided that I would wait till 3pm and then I'll leave if no one returns my calls.

Just as Josh was going into the chorus of 'Gira Con Me' my phone rang; which I think was quite cool cause that's my ring tone - the chorus of Gira Con Me. :)

Anyway, Jacklyn called to say that the venue has been changed to the gym at Crystal Cown? or Crystal something or another ... it's where Coffee Bean and Bravo is, near Modesto's KL.

Unlike what I was told by Marg and Mel, there were quite a number of chinese girls there. According to M & M, there was only 3 on Thursday. Where the girls popped out from they have no idea.

Rehearsal was quite fun if a little messy. Can't remember the steps sometimes. Then at about 5.30pm we stopped rehearsing and waited for the director who's suppose to have been there at 4pm. He finally arrived at 6+pm.

After about 2 runs dancing in front of the director, I told Jackly that I had to go cause I had a show at Holiday Villa later tonight and that I should have been there at 4pm. Actually, I have been trying to leave even before the director arrived cause of the show thing but she said that he was gonna arrive soon. So I stayed.

So, M & M and I left. They have had enough as well cause it seems that not everyone who was there was already casted. They're gonna do a re-casting. While we were waiting for the elevator, Jacklyn rushed out to ask us to do another run through for the director.

I was torn.

On one hand, the ShaSae people have been at Holiday Villa since 4pm and it's unfair for them that I'm not there with them. On the other, I might be in a commercial. A new experience for me. I'm already there so why not? M & M gave the nod and so we went back in the gym.

I've already taken off my slippers and was in the process of putting on my shoes when Jacklyn came back and say that we didn't have to do it. *eyes rolling in abundance*

We finally left. I dropped M & M at Brickfields and headed for Holiday Villa.

When I got there, they had only just begun rehearsal. It seems that the sound man has just arrived. So I put on my shoes and jumped into the dance.

We didn't get to practise all the dances cause there were already guest trickling in. The organiser told us to cease.

The show went on pretty okay. Again, some mishaps happened, wrong steps, forgotten steps, wrong placing etc but luckily, no revealing boobs. :)

Jacklyn SMSed to say that there will be a shorlisting at 10am today.

At 10am this morning, I was still at home.
Eating my curry flavoured maggi mee with two eggs.
I was feeling tired from last night and Mel called to say she wasn't going. Didn't feel like going so I went for my latin class instead.

So, here I am now, at the office, writing on my blog instead of working like I should be since I have to go for the ad thing again at 5pm.

Mel called to say that Jacklyn asked Margaret to beg us to come back cause the director said that the SYTs from yesterday were too young for what he had in mind.

Hmm ... I wonder if that was a compliment or an insult. They're begging us to come back but that's cause we don't look young?
Hmmm.

Starting work now. [Click]

Saturday, October 12, 2002

More dancing last night. Practising for gig tonight. We practised until 1am. I got home at 2.30am. The dancing if feeling more and more like a second job now except there's no consistent pay. Slept at 3am after listening to Stef's cold war (read: argument) with mummy and trying the last remaining piece of Tim Tam that was left from the pack that I bought about a week ago. Darn it Stef! Stop finishing my food! First the ice-cream now my Tim Tams.

Working on the report module for the WTS now. I'm hoping and praying that we will be able to meet the newly revised timeline which I just mailed them yesterday. The new schedule allocates 10 more days of programming. *fingers crossed* Please, please, please let this project be finished. I'm so sick of it already! The engine sucks! I don't want to use it anymore.

Hmmm ... I wonder if my new server has been installed. Am suppose to install one of the apps I'm handling into the new server after the technical guys have finished installing the web server and PHP and MySQL.

Friday, October 11, 2002

The callista.f2o.org page seems to appear fine in IE6. Wonder why it looks weird in IE5. Odd.

Much rescheduling yesterday.

The ad rehearsal changed venue for the third time. It was somewhere in a kampung in the middle of the city. I don't know how to get there and the map that Jess faxed over isn't much help. Mel called today to say that it was indeed a difficult place to find.

As you can tell, that would mean that I didn't go for the rehearsal.

Jess confirmed that the shoot will be on next Thursday instead of Wednesday. My cha cha competition's heat was scheduled for next Thursday. Meaning I can't compete and still be in the shoot.

Luckily Sae Min called the competition organisers if we could compete in last night's heat instead. They agreed. So we had our heats last night.

We haven't practised our cha cha much this past couple of weeks so I'm kinda worried that we might forget our routine. Added to that, the first two competitors that I meant when I first got there compete in the Amature and Pre-Amature level. I'm only a Novice! Ack! Pressure.

Anyway, I think we did quite okay. Not sure if we're gonna be in the finals yet. Will have to wait until after the second heat finishes next week. *fingers crossed*

After the competition, the organisers got Esteban Cortez & Evelyn Rivera to dance a tango for the audience. They're from Uruguay and according to Margaritte, the organiser, are the premier Uruguay couple in tango. Their dancing were gorgeous. That's the kind of tango I'd like to do. Esteban Cortez was so sexy when he danced. God! Yumm. He didn't look sexy when he was just sitting around and judging or talking but when he danced ... Ma Ma Mia!

Thursday, October 10, 2002

Ad rehearsal was post-poned to later today. Instead of yesterday ie. it's now on Thursday instead of Wednesday. Some of the people at the studio said that RM150 for a day shoot was a bum deal. However, if the ad requires lots of people, > 20, which is the case here, that's about the correct price. Still quite low. Don't think it even covers my salary rate for a day, which I would need to take, a day off, work to go on the shoot. But I'm going for the experience. I thought I'd find out what a shoot is like. It might be fun, it might be boring as hell but at least I'd done it before. Have you?

Since the rehearsal was cancelled, I was able to attend my ballroom class. More tango today.

After that, Sae Min and I practise our cha cha routine. We tried doing the routine at Soo Ping's wedding and we couldn't remember it. Thank goodness we're not going into the first heat of the cha cha competition that's gonna be held at Orange beginning tomorrow. That give us one more week of practise.

Thank you Mr/Ms Organiser.

Hmmm ... my page at f2o.org is not appearing correctly. I wonder what is wrong with it.

Anyway, La Femme Nikita season 3 started. Yea!

Wednesday, October 09, 2002

Last night, after running around the confines of the squash court chasing the little black ball and getting all sweaty and further placing more pressure on my never-gonna-heal right foot, I rushed home for a quick shower and change before heading off to the dance studio where we were suppose to meet before heading for Beach Club to meet the visiting Aussies. [Hmmm ... that was a pretty long sentence.]

Soong, Sae Min and Vivian were watching the tape of the studio's dinner and dance. They've taped the rehearsal in the morning as well as the performance at night.

I finally got to see how dangerously low that white tube top of mine fell.

It was really low.

We've decided that we're gonna all add halter straps to that costume. Lest we give another striptease performance the next time round.

Anyway, we didn't make it to the club.

The Aussies were still busy packing for their flight which, if I'm not mistaken, was suppose to have departed at 0630hrs this morning.
I don't understand why it would take them so long to pack but Sae Min said that when he saw them at Sungai Wang in the afternoon yesterday they had bags and bags of stuff with them. They must have had a brilliant time shopping in Malaysia. Everything is half price to them. Maybe that's the cause of the never ending packing.

So, basically I rushed home to get all gussied up and rushed to the studio; just to sit and watch the performance we did last Friday.

Bummer.

Tuesday, October 08, 2002

Kevin Mitnik's Toshiba Satellite T1960CS, 486 laptop computer seized by the FBI on February 15, 1995, in Raleigh, NC, during his arrest, was sold at eBay for USD15,200.
Just got a call from the lady at the casting agency. I went for a casting call two weeks ago.
I've been shortlisted for the deepavali ad. First rehearsal is tomorrow. It involves dancing. Hence the rehearsal.
Don't know where I'm suppose to go yet. The lady's suppose to fax me a map to the rehearsal venue.

Checked. No fax yet.

Monday, October 07, 2002

Another one bites the dust

First it was Cats, then it was Miss Saigon and now Les Miz.

Guess that means that should I ever get the chance set foot on good old Broadway, I'll never be able to watch one of my favourite musicals there.
Maybe I should catch some of those big musicals before they close in the East End as well, when I go to UK at the end of the year.
Should experience watching those shows where they are originally opened and have regular shows throughout the year.

I am of course assuming that these people would be better than the touring cast. Not to say that the touring cast are not good. I am just assuming that the non touring cast will be better.
What am I basing this assumption on?
Nothing.

Sunday, October 06, 2002

*Phew* Two shows down, one more to go, plus some competitions coming up as well.

The dance studio's dinner and dance was a huge success! ShaSae, our dance group did two dance pieces as one/two of the performances that were shown that night. The Kylie piece, 'Can't get you out of my mind' was embarrassing and hilarious both at the same time. Why? You see, the girls costume were black pants and a white tube-corset like top - basically a piece of rectangular cloth with four holes at each of the two short ends, held together by a length of string. Looks kinda cool huh? Yeah but the thing is, you see, it's dangerous. Dangerous for us girls cause of the risk of exposure. During the full dress rehearsal, our tops were slowly sliding lower and lower, revealing more and more skin (is the polite word for it, tits for us less refined people) but still not so much that it was absolutely indecent. Just a slight slip down south. On Friday, for reasons unknown, maybe it was because we were putting in more ummph into the performance, maybe we didn't tie it tight enough or leave it loose enough, two of us, yours truly and Soong, almost gave the audience more than they've paid for. :D I did realise that the top was slowly sliding lowere but didn't think that I was in extreme danger of my nipples showing but looking around the dinner tables, I see familiar faces giving me indications that I should pull my top up. I wasn't too sure if they were indicating to me or my friend but I did adjust the top. Everyone must have seen me adjusting it. I know I should be fidgeting during the dance, might not be the profession way to do it but c'mon! I'm not a striptease act alright!

Anyway, the second piece (Madonna's 'Don't tell me') went off better thanks to the safer sleeveless t-shirt as costume. After that was a whole lot of dancing and bumping into people on the dance floor.

I must say that I have never, I repeat, NEVER ever been to a dinner where the dance floor was so jam packed. Can't say that I am surprised. It was a dinner and dance for a dance studio so it's easily assumed that all the people who would attend the dinner are dance nuts. And they were! Good surprise.

Soo Ping's wedding was nice. She looked absolutely gorgeous. Our performance for her (Madonna again) went well, almost without a hitch. Almost, except for the front part where Sae Min misstepped. But it was ok. That was really at the beginning of the whole thing. The rest of the dance went well. Then everyone from the dance studio dominated the dance floor. :)

And now the time has come for me to head for bed. Practise tomorrow starts at 9 am. Full dress rehearsal for the high school reunion gig on the 12th.

Oh yes! Finally bought Sarah Brightman's Time To Say Goodbye album today. Have already listened to it on my newly installed car CD player.
Thanks pa, for installing it.

Thursday, October 03, 2002

Cats - the musical

The show finally came to Malaysia. Ticket response to the show has been incredible; so good that they have decided to extend the season for a further eight shows. All this on top of the Vanessa Mae performance which was held last Sunday - the opening weekened of Cats!

My, my. It seems that we Malaysians are just soaking up each and everyone of them that comes our way.

[empress raises her hands high] Yup! Me included.

I was one of the few kiasu people who booked the tickets just as soon as the online ticketing service opened the booking for the show. Being a Maxis One member (or rather, I could get hold of someone who's a member), I managed to get a 40% discount for the tickets. The seats were excellent. Not too close (like when I saw RSC's Merchant of Venice) or too far (my seats for Fame). As Miss Little Red Riding Hood would say, '... it's just nice.' *sigh*

The show was quite good. I don't think there was much of a storyline. The whole thing was about a bunch of Cats who called themselves Jellicle(sp?) cats and the ball which they have once a year where the big shot among them decides which of them gets to be reborn ... I think. It's based on a T.S.Eliot poem. Since I'm not much of a poem lover, I don't know how true to the poem it is. :)

But anyway, I watched the whole show with a smile on my face. Mainly cause it had lots of dancing. The whole show was dance dance dance. My fave type of musicals.

Now for the things which I didn't like about it. Not too much that I didn't like really. However, I do think some things could be change? Improved on?

1. Rum Tum Tugger - couldn't they have picked someone sexier? He's suppose to be the cat that all the ladies faint over. This fella didn't have that air about him and his fat tummy doesn't help much with the image either.
2. Don't like the lady singing Memory. Her delivery seems too practised. Too technical. Emotionless on such an emotional song.
3. The lady accompanying the lady singing Memory - her voice was kinda flat. How did she get casted? Do they not have anyone better?
4. The staged seems too cramped for all the felines onstage.

Things I liked ... (yes I do like some stuff sometimes!)
1. The choreography and dancing ... of course
2. The white cat and also the main cat (the one who started singing and kinda have the role of MC or something like it. easily noticeable by his proud stance)
3. Jennyanydot sequence.
4. Train cat sequence.
5. The lighting.

Yeah ... so, there you have it. Something I did last Friday which I've only posted today. Something that I think I should have recorded somewhere.

... it's recorded.

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