Me, Myself and Mayvelous
23 Jul
Yesterday, I went to see my brother’s squash game at Defence Club. There is this Fiji Bitter Squash Tournament going on here at Suva for this whole week – every evening after 5pm. My bro’s game was supposed to be on Monday but his opponent didn’t turn up so they postponed the game to Tuesday (yesterday). He played against one Indian man around 40+ (hmm I forgot his name) and was thrashed badly.
It was the very first squash tournament for my brother since he started playing squash a few months back. We use to play Badminton only and this year my bro started playing squash with some of his friends so he still has a lot to learn before he can compete in the tournament. Nevertheless, he signed himself up in B Grade thinking C Grade is for kids and he would do fine in B. Well the result was he got knocked down pretty badly; he wasn’t really in his best form also and the opponent was quite experienced player who knows how to make him run around in court. So he lost his game and went into Plate pool and will be playing again today at Victoria Park. I guess I’ll go watch again this evening.
Aung’s very first squash game
One of the Ministers, Mr. Kenneth Zinck (and a few other big faces I sometimes see on TV), came to play as well, I’m not sure he came just to play for fun or was in the competitions as I couldn’t stay long to watch his game. He was cheering his buddy’s game quite loudly/actively. I was taking a few videos of the game and itching to take him as well but that would be awkward to directly shoot at him so I was waiting for his game but I left early and missed the game. I think he wanted his picture taken as well cos’ he kept smiling at my way while cheering for his buddy (Ok may be just my thought) .
I know him as one of the most active sport lovers among Fiji Government Ministers especially on Rugby games. We are sure to see him cheering from the front row in almost every Rugby games, yelling and waving his things (the flag/the banners I mean) at the camera. LOL. So we normally search for him everytime there is a Rugby 7 game on TV. Quite a celebrity he is.
I also remember him very well after seeing him wear Tweety Bird necktie on one of the interview sessions on TV. Quite a fashion for him. It was so funny to see a Minister wearing some childish necktie with big Tweety bird at the bottom. I guess it must have been a gift from his kids or something. But that was one of the unforgettable sights about him.
There were some players from Nadi and other towns participating in the tournament as well. I met 4 young guys from Nadi; their coach was pretty nice man who encouraging us to join their club and telling us about his 4 players. His son plays in A Grade and other 3 guys play in Bs. He was also coaching a Korean girl who lost in ladies game against a Fijian girl. He said he also will be playing in the competition but I missed his game.
Coaching a Korean Girl
The Game with a guy from Nadi
Well you see, I had some ulterior motives, it’s not just watching my brother’s game but I went there to check out some good looking players but turn out only the old men were there.
The Nadi guys are quite cute but they’re just too young, under 19. hehe Oh but there is this handsome organizer, I heard he’s very good player and former Fiji representative or something. Aww but it’s a pity he got ring on his finger haha. Nah I’m kidding, I just went there to cheer for my brother’s first game and also getting some material for my blog (Ok there’s still a motive behind but good motive).
Here are some more short videos I took: Two Games Mix + Score Sheet | Another Mix Game | Practice Games | Game Sheets
I’m going to watch the games today also at Victoria Park. One of our colleagues is playing in C grade and I’m sure more games to see today. They are having this tournament in 3 different places, Victoria Park, Merchant Club and Defence Club due to limited availability of courts in each club. Anyways, I hope I can watch some nice games this evening and hope that my brother and our colleague play well in their game also.
22 Jul
Nothing much, just dropping a short post during lunch time. I rolled 2 new blogs to my GReader recently. The first one is “Geek Dreams” written by Shiva; he recently commented on some of my posts and that’s how I visited/came to know his blog. And the second one is “Geek What” by Tony Chung; I came across his blog via Shiva’s blogroll links.
I don’t normally roll all commenters’ blogs but ofcos’ those I’m interested in only. (Well I do roll a lot of not so interesting blogs as well just for the sake of tracking news for GV). Here are the things that make me want to roll these guys’ blogs. First impression counts seriously.
“Geek Dreams” got me with this dashing green frog. Where was he from again? hmm I think I’ve seen him on Sesame Street or something…There’s not much information in the “About” page but I did a bit of looking around and thought this guy must be someone linked to Paradise Not Found gang since he links to one of the members from the Paradise Not Found.
He also got some interesting posts about the concerts he went to and how he got IPhone etc. But the thing that make me laugh was this post where he gone crazy over Chris Martin’s hand gesture.
Woooohoooooooo!!!!! Oh my fucking god chris martin waved at me!!! Feel like a giddy school girl right now!! He saw me!!!! He saw me!!!! He waved back!!!!! Chris martin waved!!!! Don’t care if u call me crazy..chris martin waved at me!!!
There he really cracks me up. Obviously he seems crazy about Chris Martin, I wonder what he would do if Chris Martin shakes hand with him. Now that something I like to see.
Alright, good enough, rolling now.
First impression on “Geek What” is that the site look pretty neat and informative. You can see his photo and a short intro on the header. Ok, seem like we are in the same age and somewhat similar tastes, he got my attention from there. He got pretty good write up on “About” page too, you get to understand more about the blogger. Anyways, I checked his about page only after I rolled his blog. I rolled him straight after checking out his very first vlog post. Actually I was thinking of trying out vlogging as well after reading much about citizen media and video blogging posts on GV and Raising Voices. So I thought, so this person just started it, I might as well learn some stuffs from him like what kind of thing he vlogs about blar blah. And I go click, click and there he is…
So what do you think? He accomplished his 1st vlog splendidly didn’t he, he did make people smile, at least I smiled, no, I LOL. I had a great laughing at his video. Actually I rewind and watched it 3 times (serious!) and every times he never failed to amuse me. That’s it, he got me with this one video, I just have to roll you boy. LOL
It’s a pity, I couldn’t see comment box on the post. I guess my Firefox Adblock Plus must have blocked it. He uses some kind of comment system and I can only see that on IE.
Do check his vlog post as well, the write up is fun too. I hope he doesn’t mind me embedding his video here.
Alrite that’s it I guess.
21 Jul
I haven’t written about office muses for a while and thought I’ll write something about last week muses from our department. Here is the story.
You see, we have this disc stakka where we stored all our department softwares. It’s attached to a spare box sitting on my desk and I kind of become an unofficial librarian. Whoever ask to borrow software from me, I’ll just eject the discs from the stakka and hand it to them. There is no record of how many discs we have and who borrowed them. The stakka itself is installed for everyone hence anybody can login to the box and eject any disc as they like. The result is we lost a few important discs over the months. I have no idea who took them but discs are obviously keep missing from the disc stakka. We sent a few notification emails to everyone in the office asking about the missing discs but nobody responded.
I kind of feel responsible about it since it was sitting on my desk and I am the one who is giving out the discs most of the time (unless ofcos they login to the box and eject the discs themselves when I’m away). The problem with me is that whenever I am into something or concentrating on a task at hand, I seriously don’t care about things happening around. I don’t see or hear anything unless someone pokes at me or waves in front of face. Even so, I don’t hear half of the thing they are saying. So when someone asks a disc from me while I am busy, I just remove the disc and give it to them without looking at their faces or noting their names. That must be one of the reasons people take advantage of my ignorance to snatch some discs from me.
Anyways, last week we had a very loud and noisy discussing about how to maintain our softwares. Most of my colleagues say not to borrow software to anybody outside our department. Our HR manager disagrees and wants everyone to share the software the company owns. (Ok, I wasn’t in the discussion/arguments as it was happening at one of our colleagues’ desk and I just over heard bits and pieces.) Finally we agree to properly keep track of the disc movement in some way. Boss made up a software borrowing register spreadsheet and mail it to everyone saying, unless and otherwise people fill in the register prior to picking up a disc, we are not to give it to them. But the spreadsheet was editable by everyone which is not a good idea so I created a form out of it and pass around the form. After checking the form, one of our colleagues argues that the form is very easy to fill and we like to make thing difficult for whoever comes to borrow our discs. So he suggested a few adjustments to the form.
Here are some of his suggestions:
Way too easy, we need some pain here. Can we add some more fields :
Put this under “Borrower Details“
- Weight (kg)
- Height (cm)
- Eye colour (offer Green, Blue, Grey, Brown)
- Blood Type (offer A, B, AB, O) (suggestion to add negative, positive as well)
- Hair Colour (offer Black, Grey, Brown, Red, Blond)
- Random Question from http://www.survey-machine.com/take_survey/627331 that we’ll change every week or so, we’ll start with no. 1 “Have you ever peed your pants after age 8?”
Make all fields required.
There is a few more input from other colleagues as well such as “Do you have any recent health problem say in last 6 months?”, “Provide the medical certificate to prove your blood type”, etc…
How about that!? Is the form painful enough yet? Haha, I’m not sure how many borrowers will be able to fill in that form and surely throw some serious curses at us.
Anyways, I felt sorry for whoever have to fill in the form, and I did not implement those “Borrower Details” but left the simple form as below and see how things turn out. We had a few beta tests with our gang and now it is released to suva_everyone. One serious flaw we try to ignore is that anyone can login to the machine and remove the disc while I’m away from my desk. But for the time being, it’s doing quite well without complaint, a few minute ago, someone filled in the form and took 3 discs from me. I wonder how long this system will last though.

So how do you keep track of the softwares in your organization? Do share with us some of the cool systems you use in your company. And ofcos’ you are most welcome to make suggestion to our system above as well.
11 Jul
I’m not sure it’s a spam mail or a proper mail. I did not write anything about salt on my site but posted a short link on GV the other day. Is that why this person email me or am I thinking too much out of spam mail? Well who cares, if it is a spam mail then it’s pretty good one. If it’s a proper mail then I’m sure whoever see this post and interested might contact him?
Feed Back Message from Mayvelous.com
Shahidul Haq Sikder
10 Jul
One of the GVers asked on mailing list, “How do you say freedom on your language?”. She’s doing some bookmarks and stickers with “Freedom” written in different languages or something….So lots of GVers answered her back in their language. Here are a few I noted from the list.