Back From Melbourne (And Not At All Thrilled)

Just got back from Melbourne. It was the most wonderful holiday I've ever had. Really breaks my heart to have to leave, mainly because I had to leave my boyfriend behind (yes yes, for those of you who do not know, I'm currently in a relationship. Can we get back to me now? Oh wait. We never left. Okay then). It sucks even more that I've to wait 4 bloody months before I get to see him again. Long-distanced relationships' such a bitch. Missing him lots already. Sigh.

Anyhoos, will post photos, commentaries, etc from the trip soon. Right now, I'm just too bummed to write anything.

Dear, thanks for the holiday. You made it so much more meaningful. Love you.

PS: Yes, I know it's mushy shit. STFU.

Birthday Wishes

A birthday shoutout to my boys, Sam and Albert.

Sam: Ya ain't heavy (well, dah-link, you're getting there *cheeky grin*), ya my brother! Happy birthday, and hope you liked the watch I got ya (you'd better, it cost me a bloody bomb!).

Albert: To a good friend whom I've not seen in 3 years, no, I haven't forgotten. Many happy returns of the day, and may God continually bless you abundantly. And for goodness' sake, write!

Oooh, it's also Halloween today, so happy Halloween, y'all! Go crazy, dress up, drink, party and be merry. The hangover's gonna be worth it tomorrow *grin*.

The New 'Oh for the love of me!'

Finally launched the new template which I've been working on for the past couple of days.

The original template

I took a lot of inspiration from the very-(in)famous blog review site, I talk too much. Many reviewees (is there such a word?) who got their asses kicked by the bitches (whom I LURVE, by the way), would very much love to hate that site, because they certainly know how to call a spade, a spade. But seriously though, even though I sometimes find them a tad harsh, their ideas and comments sure are rivetting, and very useful indeed. Okay, I'm going to stop pimping them now ;)

I definitely do not want to be a stereotyped Malaysian blog with only pictures of food (which, by the way, I totally detest; I do NOT need to see EVERYTHING which you have eaten), and the overuse of 'lah'. For the latter, I do appreciate and enjoy the sporadic smattering of the 'lah' and whatnots in Malaysian/Singaporean blogs from time to time (I AM Malaysian, after all), but it really irks me when I have to strain my brain to simply understand what the hell it was that you were saying, buried under a mountain of intelligible Manglish. Now, I do not claim to have a bombastic command of English, far from it actually, but it'd be nice to be able to have something to read AND understand, y'know?

I shall digress a little and mention something I see in almost every blog I read. "This is my blog, and I shall write whatever I damn well please, so there". Hey, go ahead and write whatever you want to, but when you traffic-whore by submitting your blogs to public blog directories, ping sites, blog review sites, etc, then you're subjecting what you're writing to everyone who is on the Internet. You get to write it, but we've got to read it. Go ahead, write in all the Manglish and broken English as you please, but for pete's sake, don't bother submitting your blogs to INTERNATIONAL blog review sites, when they can't understand a damn thing you were writing! And don't go home crying to Mummy when your ass have been slapped by these reviewers; you asked for it. It's wise to take the review with a pinch of salt, and learn to improve on the subject of critisms you received.

Anyways. Rants aside, and back to the subject at hand. I love flowers and butterflies (okay, okay, you can stop gagging at the girliness of it all now), so I thought I'd use that as a theme to my blog template. Did a fair bit of Photoshop here and there, with the header and the sidebar (I simply LOVE Photoshop, hehe; I've got so much more to learn). I tested the site on IE, Firefox and Opera, and so far, it's been okay. I'm still trying to 'break' my blog by changing the browser resolution, etc, to test the design.

For now, this is a list of criteria which I built my template (and blog content) upon:

1. Dark text on light background; this makes is so much easier to read (I shall not comment on the infamous BTOD - Black Template of Death, as I do have friends and family who use it. By the way, I do have to say, that the BTOD is pretty good for photoblogs. Less words, more photos).
2. Keep the sidebar neat. With a little bit of HTML coding (which I Googled on the Internet; so can you), I finally managed to hide the crap I've been having on my sidebar.
3. No unnecessary photos of food - really, the world doesn't need to know what I've been eating.
4. No auto-playing music - oh good Lord, why do people even HAVE this?!
5. Multi-coloured text - I admit, I'm guilty of this. Will do this as little (if not at all) as possible.
6. No ADS. 'nough said.
   

Anyways, do let me know what you think. And if you manage to 'break' the design, please let me know so that I can fix whatever errors you encountered. Also, there'll be more features added soon (e.g. the Photos - I'm in the midst of selecting and uploading the good stuff ;)), so do stay tuned.

Cheers.

PS: By the way, the criteria bit is MINE, and it's not aimed at any specific person, so if your site happens to fall under the 'bad' bits ... oh well, at the end of the day, it's YOUR blog, right? ;)
PPS: I finally had the guts to submit my site to I talk too much for a review. I'm so going to get my ass kicked, it's not even funny. Oh well. Here goes nothing *grin*.

Cravings

I'm having a sudden craving for yaki niku (BBQ-ed meat). Really fine, succulent, prime beef, barbequed over the hot grill, with crispy leek. Yummmmm ...

Sorry, I just couldn't resist *grin*.

Of Barbara Cartland And (Needing) A New Job

Random thought - you know something's not right somewhere, when the CEO of the multinational company you're working at comes for a visit, and you suddenly find potted plants in the loos (and when he's gone, the plants disappear).

Oh well.

Went to the bank today, paid my monthly car installment. That's 7 months down, 6 years and 5 months to go. I definitely need a new job which pays more than the peanuts I'm getting. Or at least a more exciting one.

Remember those Barbara Cartland novels (yeah, I used to read her novels. Shut up. "I ... love ... you ... so ... much". Spit it out already, girl! Geez), where the lady works as an au pair (seriously, is this kind of job still available? Call me if it is!) in a romantic, foreign land, and falls in love with the dashing master? And they ... live ... happily ... ever ... after? Now why can't I find such a job?

Of course, the Malaysian version would be: lady working in a not-so-romantic, not-quite-foreign land (Malaysia), taking care of the drool and vomit-covered children, does NOT fall in love with the pot-bellied, chain-smoking master, but gets raped by the horny, sex-deprived bastard, and ends up in The Star and TV3. AND she ends up living not so happily after she gets sent back to her home country, a shame to her family.

Now THAT is romanticism for you.

I still need a new job. Sigh.

Paintball - The Real Thing

Paintball was absolutely fantastic. It sure is gratifying to pay RM60 (supposedly the cheapest) to get shot at and hurt yourself.

There were 21 of us in the game, give or take. These were my colleagues from work, and I guess you can call it a teambuilding event, even though our kiamsiap (stingy) company wouldn't pay for it. To be honest, I was expecting a more spectacular venue, given the really cool pictures you see when you Googled 'paintball'.

The field was pretty small, but there were quite a lot of ... erm ... whaddyacallit, obstacles? Well, a lot of thingies around for you to hide behind and shoot.

All of us had to sign a Declaration of Liability form, releasing Promedia Paintball from any responsibility in the case that any of us gets our head shot off or something. Ooooh ... the anticipation!

The markers

The masks - imagine the sweat and stink you have to endure when you're sharing these masks. And they fog up real bad, till you can't see. Geez.

As there were 21 of us, we were divided into 4 teams, where 2 teams would play against each other, and then the other 2 takes over. We played Elimination, ie if all the members in the team get shot, the game's over.

The game itself was pretty fun, although I was seriously too chickenshit to get out of the base. I mean, the injuries my colleagues sustained weren't at all funny. And when I finally had the guts to get out of the base, I got shot between the eyes.

Yep, that's me. Right between the eyes.

Thank God for the mask, huh?

Not so lucky colleague. It was a pretty close-up shot, thus the severity of the wound.

All in all, it was a great 2 hours we spent, in suspense during the game, and also bonding with each other. Definitely HAVE to do this again. And this time, I'm NOT wasting my time and pellets cowering at the base.

Changes

Oh for the love of me! is currently going through a bit of an overhaul, so it's going to be a bit wonky for the next few days. Hopefully it wouldn't take too long; so many ideas, too little time!

The new design will be tested on Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer (I don't use IE anymore; Firefox is much better, so hopefully I don't forget), but I'm going to need your help on testing it on Opera. So, for those who uses Opera, do give me a holler.

Cheers!

Paintball!

I'm going paintballing this Saturday! Woot!

It's gonna hurt. It's gonna stain. There's gonna be some serious ass-kicking.

It's gonna be so much fun. I can't wait!

Lack of Updates

I haven't been blogging for a while. Call it writer's block, plain laziness, etc, but for the love of me, I can't seem to come up with the words. So many things have been happening lately, but I can't seem to put them in writing. I guess until the inspiration comes in once again, I shall not be updating frequently.

On another note, I shall be off to Melbourne during the Raya break. Stay tuned for photos, if I'm not too arsed to be put it up, that is :)