I woke up this morning by the sound of a friend’s txt message, wishing me a happy birthday. Yah, a year older again; who wants to celebrate their “YOU ARE GETTING OLD!!!” day anyways. So I slept again till 8:30 and finally woke up when my big mouth bro came to yell some lines in Japanese at my ears. Don’t know what he’s yelling about, saying birthday to me or swearing at me for always making him late for work. Lately, he’s been watching too many Animes, picking up quite a few words that I can’t keep up with him anymore.

I was thinking of taking a leave just to lazy around on my birthday but then I’m expecting some emails from customers and came to work anyways. See how responsible me is.

I got a few birthday wish emails from friends and a friend asking for cake. Come to think of it, I hardly have cakes for my birthdays, am sure I only have less than 10 birthday cakes to-date. The main reason is, I’m not fond of cakes and I tend to ask for other food (Burmese food like Kyar San Chat, Ohn Noe Khout Swal etc) than cakes. Anyways, mom cooks my favourite prawns today and I’ll ask her to cook something yummy for dinner as well.

It’s a bit of noisy day at work but same old routine so not much to talk about. A friend share his good news of receiving two job offers today and heard my boss’s happy about getting some $$ or something. It’s always good to see happy people; in my attempt to join their happiness, I checked my account and found out that I’m FJD 1.51/2 richer today. hehe. You see, I recently opened my new very first saving account (joint with bro) and that’s the interest I got for the month (rather 10days). Hey it’s better than nothing rite?

Surprisingly, I don’t wish or reminisce over things at all this birthday. I’m not quite sure it’s because I’m either content with my life or don’t care a thing about it at all. I’m just treating like just another day; guess age is catching up.

Anyways, got to get back to work; I’m just dropping a few lines on my long ignored blog in memory of my birthday. So do wish my boring life healthy, wealthy and sane.

I went to Nadi, (TPAF, Namaka), to train the trainers for this project we did for this customer yesterday last week Friday. It was the second session to train them on a very simple first phase (out of three) of this project. The first time they funded the return flight ticket; unfortunately, this time they cut down their budget and provided a four wheel drive pickup for me.

As planned, I woke up at 4:30am, got myself ready and revised my training manual while I was waiting for the pickup. They (an Indian driver and a Fijian gal) got to my place at 5:15am and stopped at service station for coffee and hot bread before we left Suva around 5:30am.

It was a cold and drizzling morning with a pitch black sky and not a single soul on the road until we pass Lami. We had a small chat on the road and found out that the driver is very fluent in Fijian. He conversed with the girl in Fijian nonstop to keep himself awake or just being his talkative nature.

They laughed their heads off several times in their conversations and checked back at me a few times to see how I was doing. Myself being a quiet nature, I didn’t/couldn’t join in their conversation and just dozed off at the back.

(more…)

My brother, Aung a.k.a Zatlite, has started blogging yesterday after a few years of persuasion from me. He started off with twittering ,which was also the result of my persistent persuasion, and has been a good regular twitterer to date. Yesterday, he suddenly made himself a blog and now he’s crazy about it.

His very first blog, “The private life of a badminton maniac“, talks about all his passion on racquet sports, especially badminton and racquet breaking hobbies. I’ve posted some of his actions on the past Badminton games in this post and; photos and videos of his squash tournament here. (more…)

Did I mentioned I purchased 2 years DreamHost plan? I think I’ve twitted about it. I got some good promo code and got a good deal of $42.96 for 2yrs. That great deal is already passed but if you happen to purchase a year plan, you can try this code 117M, that should chop down a few bucks.

I’ve been wanting to switch over DreamHost for ages but due to my limited knowledge on LAMP platform and DreamHost price is a bit expensive compare to my .net host, I couldn’t dare to test it out. But with this good promotion deal, I can afford to play around on DreamHost for 2years.

I want to keep my current DotNetPark windows hosting too in case if I happen to host .net site but I don’t plan to publish a new site anytime soon; I only have this mayvelous blog and 1 hosting should be sufficient enough.

Anyhow, now mayvelous.com is sitting on DreamHost and I’ve placed quite a lot of plugins which I couldn’t with previous Windows host. Mayvlous is now with,

• Friendly URL
• Related Post Links under each post
• Photo Gallery
• Post Rating stars
• Affiliate Logos & Links at the side bar
• A few widget ads programs which can only seen by certain countries

and many new plugins I’m still playing. I want to change my theme too but I still love the current one and too lazy to search for good themes so I’ll leave it as it is for now. Ok, Just drop by to say hello and let you know the updates…right, that’s about it.

Got this link via N3 post, “Turn your name into a face“, and thought I’m gonna try it as well. Quite amusing how those faces turn out from your name.

Here is the true face behind “May Hnin Phyu“.

Oh lord, did I just see a beard? The mouth and the hair look quite similar but I don’t have a beard for sure. (more…)

I have never encountered this much pain in the arse customer than the current one before.

I’ve done twice/thrice more complicated and bigger projects than this project in the past but never ever had this much of discussions, arguments, back and forth explanations and long meetings after meetings with the customer before.

I grew a few white hairs after handling this project and going to grow some more since the project is no near to the closing stage.

I thought I’m 90% done after sending out the last build and the user manual. I’m only expecting minor bug fixes but NOOOOOOOO he just has to go change the whole damn lot and have to fix almost everything from the DB schema to almost every form.

It’s all because of this F*ed up requirement spec and F*ed up customer to start with. I need a bad ass project manager to handle this kind of bad ass customer. Unfortunately, there is no proper project manager was assigned to this project, thinking it’s going to be a small one. I know I should
turn myself into a bad ass bitch to take matters into my own hand but the problem is I can’t become the bad ass bitch; I don’t know how.

It’s not that easy to become a good “bad ass bitch” when you’re trying to become one. You need certain skill in that area as well. I’m terrible in that area. The most I can do is I start raising my voice and become angrier but there is no art/tactic in it.

My main problem is that the angrier I am, the quieter I become. I’ll just yell back a few words then I won’t talk anymore. I got mess up in the head that I can no longer put those mess into proper word. I need some trained/naturally talented bad arses to back me up with the arguments. I think I need to go take a course on the art of bitching. Let me know if anyone providing one.

Anyways, my boss is just so nice dealing with customers. He accepts anything if they pay for it. Ok, it’s actually a good thing if they pay for it but what if they don’t pay and just keep bullying me and dragging the project on and on?

There should be a time when we say, “That’s it, no more, we are done, no nil nada F* off!”, and close the damn project.

Anyways, I’ll have to do more analysis and effort sizing on the new changes. I’ll bitch more about it later. Bye!

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.