It's official that I'm out from Pantai Hillpark, and the cheque of my deposit return has cleared, so now, living in Pantai Hillpark is now in history. It is a memorable 3 years of my life here, building my life after I started work, through high and low times.

Being a person with high sentimental value (the trait that I realized during house moving process before), it's really incomplete without me taking some photos as a token of reminiscence.

This is the gate to Pantai Hillpark Phase 2, the gate that I passed though to and from work for the past 3 years.

On one boring and unproductive evening January 18th last year, I took this photo of Pantai Hillpark Phase 2 from my house on 14th floor.

On the left is just another ariel view of the swimming pool taken in front of the lift, and on the right is Phase 5 view taken from my bedroom's window.

So, how did I go to work from here? Living in Pantai Hillpark is pretty convinient for me to get to work at Mid Valley Megamall. Most of the time, I just call cab to office. Queing for cab? Whoaa.. It's really nightmare here. You can read all about it from this entry.

This is the place that I usually wait for the taxi after calling it.

But for the sake of taking photo, I will not take taxi to work today, but I will take bus instead. I don't know when I will be using this route again to office, so let's ride the 46D Rapid KL bus for the last time.

So this Pantai Hillpark bus stop. I purposely wait for the 46D bus to arrive before taking the photo. Hehehe

So here is my stop, Bangsar LRT station. The first orange booth under the stair is the booth that I regular went there for my usual morning "nasik lemak" treat. I'm so regular until I know the "makcik" that sell nasik lemak there, and I'm known to her to buy "nasi lemak" with 3 or 4 types of "lauk".

From Bangsar LRT station, there's this Triton free shuttle bus to Mid Valley. So can save that 90 sen to ride Rapid KL no 5 bus, or RM2 to take the cab from here to Mid Valley.

Back to my living at Pantai Hillpark, this is the latest block where my rented house is at (Block 7). I change block 3 times during my 3 years here. Why? I guess there will be another blog entry for this as the case is quite complicated.

And here are various photos that I took inside the house on the last night that I'm here, right before I met my old landlord to pass over all the keys and get back my deposit.

And I will definately miss this "kedai mamak", a very convinient place for me to get lunch or breakfast if I'm quite lazy to go eat outside.

Well, that's all about Pantai Hillpark. The rest will remains in my memory.

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Finally, it’s the day today that I will move out from Pantai Hillpark. Last night was the last night that I spend here (cleaning the house). So earlier today, I gave a call to my landlord, and he said let’s meet between 9pm to 10pm.

I got there as early as 7:30pm to do my final cleaning up, throwing rubbish away and mopping the floor. Then, I just assemble all the keys to the house and to all the rooms that I collected from my housemates, tested it on the door and arrange it nicely.

I also prepared the tenancy agreement, proof that I have settled all the bills, car sticker and the proximity card to enter the gate at guard’s house.

It’s 9pm. As usual, I’m not expecting my landlord to arrive sharp at 9pm (from my past experience when I need to see him). 10pm, he still not arrive. Gave him a call. No one picks up. 5 mins later, give him a call again, still no one pick up. Called her wife’s mobile, no ones picked up. 10.30pm, my housemate called him. Not picked up too. Then I gave his wife’s number to my friend, and my friend call. Ahh finally his wife picked up. Damnnnnnnnnnnnnn…. It’s really obvious that this guy is trying to avoid me. That old guy has my mobile and my friend’s mobile number, but his wife only have my number. So my reasoning is, when my friend called her wife’s mobile number, she thought that it is another person calling to enquire about the house to rent. So she’s picked up. I’m so damn hot….

My friend finally get a hold to the landlord. That old guy said sorry that he didn’t bring his handphone and left it at home. Bullshit… Handphone is like wallet or car keys nowaday. You can’t leave it behind just like that. And you know what happaned after that that makes me hotter. He said that he is outside with his wife and kids having dinner. He will arrive here in 1 hour time as he got to get back home first to get the cheque book. What. You and your wife eat at different table arr? When I called your wife’s mobile, why she’s not picking up the call? Why doesn’t she pass the phone to you for you to pick up?

Why this guy is so brainless. I told him since last week that I will move out this Thursday. And this afternoon, I called him again to remind him that we will move out tonight, and will pass all the keys tonight too, and he’s the one that said let’s meet between 9pm to 10pm.

He arrived at about 11:25pm. Stup*d. I’ve been in this empty house since 7:30pm, keep yawning in boredom, and I only get to meet him at 11:25pm? He said sorry… He’s so tired today. Just came back from Lumut. And when he got home, his wife ask him out for dinner. You know women. I think you’ll know when you get married. Also I’m leaving to Bangkok tomorrow night with my wife bla bla bla bla… Yeah yeah… Whatever…. Like I care…

Show him that the house has been cleaned, all the bills has been settled, no damage to walls, toilet, all lamps works etc etc. So I’m expecting to get RM3076.65 from him
RM2400 – 2 months deposit
RM600 – Bills deposit
RM38.53 – Previous tenant’s unsettled electricity bill
RM38.12 – Previous tenant’s unsettled water bill

There are also this bunch of letter for the landlord that I collected all this while. Looks like lawyer letter to me. So I pass to the landlord at the same time.

After he opened it, yes, it is from the lawyer firm about the court action of not settling Indah Water bills for 4 years. I have a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling.

Then, at the time the landlord wants to write the cheque to me, he said that he needs to deduct the Indah Water bills from my deposit too. It’s RM8 a month, a total of RM96 for my 1 year stay here. F**k… F**k… F**k… F**k… I feel sooooo regreted to give those letters to him. I should have only left it in the mailbox. Damn! Damn! Damn!

So, here’s the cheque that I get after that amount has been deducted. Sob sob sob

Apa2 pun, pakcik kayo kejap……

But my deal with my previous landlord doesn’t end here until the cheque that he gave has been cleared. Who knows it’s a bounced cheque. I told my housemate about that possibility, and he just have an idea on what to do if it’s true (the cheque is a bounced cheque). I just hope that the cheque can be cleared and we don’t have to do what we have planned if he cheated us. Muahahahaha….

Added on 29th January, 2:59pm
The cheque is cleared already. Now I can close the case. My business with that old landlord of mine is over.

• 4 Comments

Alhamdulillah. It’s pay day already today when I’m almost broke due to the excessive money usage during my house moving (lorry rent, new house deposit, buying a few home appliances). Waiting for tonight when I will get back the deposit from the landlord of my old house.

(re-edited)
Alhamdulillah also, when I check my bank account online today, the amount that I’m getting is more than usual. That means I get a salary increment this year. But come to think of it, it’s so little. I really expecting more :(

2005 being a very good year for me, with me accomplishing so many things. Even my super boss (boss of my boss), during her last visit to Malaysia, said that I should expect promotion and quite big salary adjustment this year. How this company judge people anyway? 4 years here, I realize that the back end people (people like my department) didn’t really get good acknowledgement of what we accomplish like what the front people get (those hensem/beautiful/good looking researchers, project managers, project directors). No doubt that those peoples bring clients into the company and that generates revenue. But they cannot underestimate the back end people like us that keeps the company running in the background.

It’s kinda heartache to see people that join the company later than me, initially as Assistant Researcher now being promoted to Project Manager, earning RM5k a month. And can you sit still to see someone, who joins the company the same time as you as researcher, now has become Project Director earning RM8k a month???? Tak Adil!!!!!

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Dear all. I’m back to “dunia persada blog tanahair” after a very long silent. I feel so guilty for abandoning my blog for the past one week. Sorry blog. I’m sooooo busy. Tied up with sooooo many things, workwise and lifewise…

• Busy with packing up my stuffs at old house to move to my new house
• Busy with buying stuffs for the new house – get a new fridge and washing machine, went to Ikea to get some home appliances also
• Busy entertaining my Penang friends that came over the weekend to give a hand while I’m moving
• My computer has been packed up (and still in box), new house still don’t have internet connection – cannot update blog from home
• Too busy with eQuesta panel database setup at office, taking the most of my time for the past several days – can’t update blog from my office
• Helping my super boss (boss of my boss) on giving data for her annual businness report for 2005 which she will present to her boss for review in 2006

…so to list the reasons why I’ve been quite for a while.

Even though it’s rather quite tiring with all this moving thingy, but I’m very exited about it. It’s like you get a second life, living in a whole new world for you to explore, with new environment, new sight, and with determination to decorate your house to its best. I’m so exited about this, and all you will hear today is about me, my stuffs and my new house.

With all this moving out process, I realize that I’m a person with a high sentimental value. Yeap. There are all sort of boxes out there in the storage area that I keep from buying things all these years. Even though it has no further use to me, but I can’t throw it away. My heart is filled with anxiety if I happen to throw any box from the things that I buy. Why arr??

So here are the list of my stuffs, that I still have the boxes which are still in mint condition :

My D-Link wireless router with its box. I use this to share internet with the rest of my housemates at this old house, and also it allow me to browse internet wirelessly from my room (I hate cables running under my door, on the floor and on the walls)

My O2 Xda II Mini with its box. Well. It’s basically PDA with phone function.

My Casio Exilim Z4 digital camera with its box.

My various game consoles with their boxes. Hey. I thought that you gave away your old bulky PS2 to you brother on your trip back to Kelantan before? No ho ho ho… I can’t throw away the box. So much sentimental value with that since that PS2 is the thing that I get using my very first credit card, 3 months after I started my job.

The trolley with ~RM2500 worth of loading. I guard this trolley while my friend go and get his car from the parking. He’s helping me to get my stuffs to the new house. Thanks buddy!!! Huhuhuhu…. Can’t afford this trolley to go missing.

So Saturday, 21st Jan is the big day. This is the day that I rent a 3 tons lorry with 3 workers, for RM200, to move my big asses stuffs (bed, cupboard, tv rack, cd rack, dvd rack and a few big boxes) from my old house to a new house.

And again, I realized, I’ve been collecting so much things already. So if I get married, I don’t really have to buy much for the house. Hehehehe

Some stuffs in my living room – dvd rack, a portion of the cupboard, 29inch tv, fan, lamps, various cables for my electronic appliances, speakers for my home theatre

in the middle room, boxes containing my DVD and games collection, computer monitor, dvd rack, bag with my clothes,

and in the master bedroom, computer table, portions of disambled cupboard and bed, Vono mattress and bed side table.

Phew… Just wondering how long will I take to get everything tidy up.

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New year resolution. Hehehe. I don’t have any yet, until today. I have found 1 resolution already for this year; that is to clear my debts.

So as the first step, just now, I went to Maybank to close my Maybankard American Express credit card. I have stop using this card for so long (by cutting the card in two, or else I will keep using it).

And here is the latest credit card statement for this month. Let’s settle that outstanding amount in full, and close it for good.

Yay! Mission accomplished. Now, got to concentrate on settling my other debts

• Citibank credit card
• EON Bank credit card
• Direct Access credit card (this one is gold card, and free lifetime membership. I will just settle the credits for this one, and still keep the card)
• Bedroom set installements with Courts Mammoth
• Sony Handycam installements with Courts Mammoth

I wish myself luck!!!

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I have a very high expectation on how MiTV should be. This entry of mine already imagining that MiTV should be that powerful, that it is closer to how TiVO works.

But when my eye first land on MiTV, I’m so frustrated. Those crappy JPEG image quality display really turns me off. I guess it is due to the Internet Protocol (IP) over Ultra High Frequency (UHF) used, where the stream has to be compressed so it flows seemlessly in the bandwidth that IP over UHF offers.

The broucher use all the jargons out there about the technology that MiTV uses; that can impress most of the people.

So, I really want to have my second look on MiTV. And I get the following promotion broucher at the MiTV Road Show in Times Square.

Talked to the MiTV salesperson there. Huh! As expected, they are only good with sales and persuading people to buy, but when it comes to answering the question about the technology behind MiTV, they failed. I can sense the answers that they give is somewho a pre-written answers for to common question that MiTV prepared for any technical related queries.

Some bad asses side of MiTV

• Expensive start-up cost. RM799 for the IMT???!! Man. How can you expect to sign up. Spending RM799 in one shot is really a lot for most of the people.
• Lossy image compression used for the video – no pure satisfaction when watching the TV
• Crappy channel selections – other than TV1, TV2, TV3, NTV7 and 8TV that I can watch for free using my antenna (and also already included in Astro), there are only 3 other Malay channels that MiTV offers, and 2 Indonesia Channels. Others, chinese channels and Indian channels

And on the other hand, the good things about MiTV are

• Reasonable monthly subscription price – RM30
• Current promotion gives you 4 months free subscription, and RM30 per month subscription until December 2007
• Uses “reload” basis. Meaning, you are not bound to compulsory monthly payment. If you short of money this month, you can choose not to top up your account for that month
• Works over normal UHF antenna and no satellite disc installation required. Meaning, if MiTV has been deployed throughout Malaysia, during my holiday, I can bring back my IMT and Smart card back to my hometown, plug it to my mum’s TV and can watch MiTV from there
• Cool web based services. Imagine you can write email to your friend, surf internet, chat, browse for Electronic Program Guide and manage your MiTV account (check balance & top up) all from your TV set with USB keyboard and Streamyx internet connection hooked up to IMT.
• MiTV has MTV Indonesia. Yeah!! I can capture the very hard to get Indonesia song video clips using my TV capture card
• I just love trying new technology
• Isn’t it cool to have another pay TV service accompanying my usual Astro pay TV?

So the Pro and Contra list of MiTV really put me in doubt now. Should I, or shouldn’t I get it? The only barrier that you have to pass is spending RM799 for the IMT. And also, you have to live with the lossy, pixelated JPEG image quality video shown on MiTV. But MiTV is relatively new. Every new thing has teething problems. Really hope that MiTV will improve in the future.

• 3 Comments

Had a little chit chat with Malique just now, and he is busy with his new FonNovela project (stay tuned OK to receive an announcement from him once everything is ready).

Talking to him give me an idea of hosting my blog on my own web hosting using WordPress. Setting up WordPress is very simple, and I got my WordPress blog set up on my web hosting in just 20 mins. Here’s the address:

http://www.mohdimran.com/wordpress/

But I have to beware, hosting the blog on my own, I’m bound to the space limits that I have on my hosting, and also the bandwidth that I get with my hosting is just 10GB a month. For my pictures-rich blog entries posting, that shouldn’t be a problem as I can host the images on my Flickr account.

But will I move there? I have to say that I’m very comfortable with the way Blogger works. After my little investigation, found out that WordPress didn’t work the same way as Blogger.

WordPress renders its blog entry page directly by reading the information from the database, and write to the page dynamically. The address to the entry will look something like

http://www.mohdimran.com/wordpress/?p=4

where 4 will be the entry ID, and this is used in the query to get the content of the page.

Whereas, Blogger creates individual pages for its entries. Meaning each entry will have 1 file for it. That explains why we need to republish everytime we made changes to the template. Example of Blogger’s link

http://blog.mohdimran.com/2006/01/gift-from-los-angeles_16.html

Why I like Blogger way? It’s for search engine of course. Sometimes, the text in the link plays quite a vital role in getting our page seachable in search engine. And the link to the entry looks rather descriptive then just having an article entry as the query string in the URL to the entry page.

Anyway, I found out that Movable Type works almost the same way as Blogger works. But the bad thing is, Movable Type uses Perl, and it requires so many Perl’s CPAN Modules that can’t be easily installed on my hosting.

Guess I stick with Blogger for the time being, and again, as a matter of fact, I love Blogger very much.

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Anda berbakat menulis novel? Adakah anda sedang mencari platform untuk menghantar karya anda? Inilah satu-satunya peluang untuk menonjolkan bakat anda yang terpendam itu.

Ayuh, sebelum bakat anda itu terkubur, sertai kami dalam menghasilkan novel-novel pendek samada dalam bahasa Inggeris atau Bahasa Malaysia. Kami bersedia untuk memberi platform untuk anda menghasilkan novel dan menerbitkan karya anda.

Setiap karya anda akan dibayar mengikut piawaian dari kami. Semoga dengan sumbangan dan sokongan dari anda dapat mempelbagaikan bahan bacaan kepada masyarakat umumnya.

Sekiranya berminat, sila hubungi Idani di 03 27805008 atau email pertanyaan anda ke idani( at )meta-dome.com

Untuk Keterangan lanjut sila layari:
http://fonnovela.blogspot.com

• 4 Comments

I’m slowly packing up my stuffs for my house moving thing. And one of the thing that I have to pack is my finished jigsaw puzzles. So here are 3 jigsaw puzzles that I have finished in the past

• Jigsaw puzzle project 3
• Jigsaw puzzle project 2
• Jigsaw puzzle project 1

And what really happened to my jigsaw project 4? Well. Still unfinished.

Been away on vacation to often lately, and getting busy with work also recently. Don’t have much time spared to complete this one.

I’m kinda thinking now how can I get this shifted to my new house. My friend suggested to disamble everything, and start all over again at my new house. Hhhmm.. I have to think twice/triple/quadraple. Too much time is spent already to get to what I have this far.

Mr Alimin will be in KL this Saturday. Perhaps I can ask his help to bring this puzzle board to my new house in his Avanza. The back of Avanva is big enought to place this board I think.

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At office today, I received the following parcel from Los Angeles, California, USA. I wondered what is it and who sent it.

Ahh. It’s the Spartan Total Warrior Xbox game. Then I remembered December last year, there’s someone on behalf of M80 and Sega sent me email regarding this entry of mine, and asking my help to post a reviw of Spartan Total Warrior game for them.

I remember that I used to send my reply email in Malaysian kind of email (the use of phrase ‘lah’) since I thought that the sender is from any Malaysia company. Then his reply after that with full address at the bottom. Oh. The person is from US them. He also said that he will get a copy of the game sent to me in the mail. He ask me what platform that I prefer.I then said Xbox. So here’s the game.

And suprisingly, he gives me an original set of the game, complete with Certificate of Authenticity sticker.

Then I opened the box. Wow! Everything looks so crisp inside.

Without further delay, I pop the game into Xbox, reset the switch,

and walla! Here’s the opening screen of the game.

I will start playing this game, and write a review here pretty soon as I what promised to the person from M80 that emailed me.

• 6 Comments