…my cuppa iced coffee…

I read the article yesterday in The Star newspaper on my home after work. It’s about an accident involving a school bus and 4 cars in Ampang. I thought, ok.. this is something worth commenting. So this morning I tried to find it in the archive of The Star Online but surprise surprise, I couldn’t find it.

I checked with my colleagues and they confirmed reading the same article. I searched Harian Metro Online and yep, the article is there. Funnily enough, when I searched Berita Harian Online, the article is NOT there. Ok, perhaps they did not report it. But The Star?

I guess they forgot to include the article in their online version.

Hmmm yeah, I’m pretty sure about it.

Any of you guys out there interested in playing competitive netball? Yup.. you heard me right. I’m talking about men’s netball. Surprised? Well, it’s quite new in Malaysia, but yeah, I’m not kidding.

Ok, first of all.. if you feel uneasy or shy about playing netball, I understand completely. Netball is widely known as a women’s sport, so some of you might feel your macho image is threatened if you play. But as with every other male-specific sport nowadays (e.g. soccer, sepak takraw, rugby) that is not true anymore. Women play those sports too. So it’s only logical that sports dominated by women will also be played by men, no? Besides, in countries like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and many others, men’s netball is common and often played at national level. (I was told that by this South African player I met.)

Ok, here’s something about my team.

The team name is LEGEND. Originally only for women but in 2005, the men’s team was formed. Under the tutelage and guidance of the coach, Puan Siti Zaharah, and the team’s captain, Firdaus, Legend is now one of the elite teams in Malaysia. We have participated in a lot of tournaments and we usually reached the semi-finals or finals, often the champion or the 1st runner up.

Training is conducted at least twice a week. We also have regular friendly matches with some of the top netball teams around Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. Once in a while we also played against the national teams. (There’s a plan to play against the Singapore’s national team soon )

So.. you guys interested? Come for a try out. Don’t worry if you’ve never played netball before. We will train you. I myself didn’t have any when I first joined the team. Thanks to the coach and my teammates, I have improved a lot and am now a much better player than when I first started.

Some words of caution, though. To join team Legend, we require only one thing from you: serious commitment. Training will be hard and you will be regularly pushed to your limits and beyond. You will be challenged physically and emotionally. Our target is to be the best men’s netball team in Malaysia, so we require serious commitment from every member of the team. No kidding.

So.. have I scared you enough already? Hehehehe.. Don’t worry. Even though we are serious, Legend is an extremely fun team. Try us out. You won’t regret it. Contact me personally if you are interested. My email is awangku.yusli@gmail.com.

Oh, incidentally.. it would help if you come from sports background. At least your body won’t be shocked too much after training.

No, I haven’t done it yet. My blog is still hosted at WordPress.com, although I’ve already signed up with a webhosting company last week. Quite cheap too, at RM80 per year. That’s less than USD25. I chose this company since I already have one forum hosted with them. So far, I’m pretty satisfied with the performance and support provided.

Ok, that’s enough free advertisement for them. It’s not as if I’m getting paid or anything. Their name? You will have to ask me personally

My endeavour started on Saturday morning around 9 am, 27/10/2007. Here are the sequence of events for the next 2 hours or so:

Read the WordPress.org installation page.

1. Considered the options whether to do self-installation or get professional help from the guys at WordPress.org. Ok.. let’s try the self-installation first.
2. Downloaded the zip file of the latest version of WordPress and extracted its contents into local drive.
3. Accessed the cPanel and created a database and a user. Drat! What’s this “ayusicom_” prefix doing in my database and username??
4. Amended the wp_config file. Mmm.. is the hostname localhost or something else? WordPress says it’s 99% chance “localhost”, but not always. Mmm ok, let’s try that one.
5. FTPed extracted WordPress files from local drive into a folder called “blog” in remote location. Well.. that took a while.
6. Oh, hang on. Do I type “http://ayusli.com” or “http://ayusli.com/blog” later on to access my posts? Ok, to be on the safe side, let’s move all files to root.
7. Ok.. what’s next? Ah yes.. I need to change the DNS of my domain name to the new server. But if I do that, nobody can access my blog. Oh no!
8. Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhh !!!!
9. Ok, calm down. No need to panic. The pros can help. Let’s register at install4free.wordpress.net.
10. Eh?! What’s this?! Error with page? Damn! Now what?
11. Ok, I give up. It’s almost noon. Time for a shower and that cuppa coffee.
12. Deleted all files, logged off everything, closed SmartFTP and FireFox, and went for that refreshing cold shower. I’ll do this again another day. *sigh*

So there you go.

Oh, by the way… no. 9 was actually not true. I thought it’s a good addition to the whole story. For that dramatic effect. You know.. just to spice things up a bit. Hehehehe..

“Kak.. could you enter the expiry date, please?” the cashier asked my colleague who wanted to pay for lunch using her Maybankard.

“Expiry date?” asked my astonished colleague. “Dik.. that’s an ATM card. It doesn’t have an expiry date.”

“But the machine is asking for an expiry date,” the cashier insisted.

“Really? That’s odd. I’ve used the card a number of times before but this is the first time I was asked for an expiry date.” She then took her ATM card back and paid lunch using her credit card.

How odd indeed! When she told us about the incident, I immediately took out my own Maybankard just to double check that there is no expiry date printed on the card. Yup, no expiry date. In fact, no date at all anywhere on the card. We had a good laugh, at any rate. Expiry date for an ATM card? That’d be a first.

“Kak.. your credit card is not valid,” the cashier told the next customer.

“What?! But I just used it to buy stuff at Guardian!” said the amazed lady.

So we made a conclusion that the machine was actually faulty. Hahahahaha…

I remembered being laughed at when I showed my old identity card (IC) to this lady when I wanted to borrow books from my university’s library. That was in 1991, I was 19, the library was at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and my student card was not yet ready. I didn’t really put much thought about it at that time but after I got my student card a few days later (which looked like our current MyKad minus the microchip), I started to realise that we Malaysians were quite behind in this kind of technology.

When MyKad was introduced in September 2001, there was quite a buzz about it nationwide, particularly since it was touted as the world’s first smart identity card, which can be extended to other uses such as driver’s license, ATM card, passport etc etc, all with the purpose of making life easier for the people.

To current IC cardholders, however, it was just another round of hassle and stress since the process of MyKad application is really a pain in the ass.

Sidetracking a bit, I remembered the hassle I went through to get my replacement MyKad. I arrived at the JPN Taman Maluri office very early in the morning. There were already a lot of people queueing up in front of the door by then. When they opened the door, it took me about one hour to move about 10 metres just to get a number. I was number 80 something if I was not mistaken. Then it took me another 3 hours to get to the counter. Why? Because they only opened TWO counters. It would’ve been much faster if they opened more counters. People didn’t have to waste so much time waiting.

Hopefully things are better now.

Okay.. back to my ramblings…

It is now towards the end of 2007 and based on the efforts of the government to equip everyone with MyKad, I assume that everybody has it already. So, my question is: Why do we need old IC anymore? Most of the time, whenever I filled up forms, I was asked for my old IC number. I don’t get it. If MyKad is to replace the old IC, then what’s the point of asking for the old IC number? Shouldn’t the new one suffice?

I personally think that the old IC should be buried forever and the use of MyKad is enforced fully. What’s the point of having new things if the old ones they are supposed to replace are still being used?