Monday, January 17, 2011

A brand new year

My dear fav readers,

Sorry I have taken such a long hiatus...:) This is a long overdue message but I still wanna wish everyone a Happy New Year and may the brand new year brings us more entertaining and memorable drama series! Lol!

In case anyone has been remotely curious what happened.. well nothing much really except a lot of personal stuff going on and I just run out of bandwidth. Just been travelling alot the last few months, really alot and I feel exhausted.

During Xmas till New Year festive hols, I went to India with my better half (- v-). It was a good but super tiring trip, esp when I had a super bad strained neck that limited my neck movement to about 45degrees. It didnt help that India's roads are full of potholes and it was hours and hours of bumpy rides one after another. We hit New Dehli, hired a car and went to Rajasthan, to Jaipur, to Argra etc... And mid way thru, I feel sick and had the worst vomitting session ever. I never expected to see my fish dinner meal to be so well preserved after 6 hours in the tummy. Solid chunks....sigh.

The Rajasthan deserty countryside was beautiful with lots of mustard seed field that just have that beautiful yellow cheering up your spirits. The sleepy rural towns had lots of bright eye children who loved waving "Ta-Ta" at us as we drove by. The braver ones will run after us and board on the spare seats at the back of our jeep and hitch a short ride. It was fun. The simplicity of life, the simplicity of hearts.

I had a certain set of idea about India before I went, and after arriving, it wasnt near to what I imagined. To be frank, while I enjoyed my trip, it didnt feel as exotic or "different" as everyone made it out to be. Maybe I was told too much stories about the sights and scenery that upon arrival, it didnt feel that vastly different from another non-cosmopolitan Asian city. Sure, the roads had its funny set of non existent road rules, and they had tons of stores by the road sides which makes one wonder about the hygience with all the road dust and exhaust spilling fumes all over it...still, its not an uncommon sight in a non-affluent city. India, minus the language, was just another city to me. I wasnt in awe, in shock or even surprised. I was surprised at how easily I accepted everything before me as natural. I had Malaysia cousins and I used to visit them alot when I was very very young until my very young aunt passed away in an unfortunate accident. So The India before me didnt seem any different from the Malaysia that I rem in the early 80s except Msia was cleaner and had more Chinese. So to me, it was more nostalgic and heart warming than anything else.

I finally saw Taj Maha. It was a misty day. In fact it even rained with lightning and that was very strange for India;s winter which was to be dry. It was misty for many days. truthfully, while it was nice, again, I didnt find it spectacular. I dunno what I was looking for, but I didnt feel OMG as I stare a it. A lot of tourists were there and out of the flock of thousands, I couldnt locate a decent person to know how to take a proper picture for us. How sad is that?

Even after being back for so long, I havent download the pictures. I didnt feel any motivation to. How lazy.

And of course, I finally fixed up my computer and not from Dell. And I officially boycott Dell from henceforth. They charged about US$150 to inspect and quoted a ridiculous amount to replace my video card. A card that is outdated, they wanted to charge even more than the latest graphics card model? I couldnt locate anyone to send back my PC until 2 weeks later. Email to the contact always bounce or they are away on holiday with no backup. Even after getting my PC, the Dell service staff did not have the professionalism to assemble my PC back in the same proper state. They simply dumped the racks and loose screw inside the PC and that's it! I was appalled!

In the end, I went to a local computer shop, who fixed up my PC with the latest graphics card, changed my power supply as they told me my original Dell configuration was under powered thus damaging my original graphics card which should have lasted at least 4 years instead of 1yr. Including OS reinstallation and patches update and Antivirus and delivery, I paid 1/3 of the Dell's quote. Dell is such a bloody fraud and became such an unethical company. Profit over service. I hope it will fold soon. They do not deserve to carry on doing business with any consumer with that sort of money only mindset.

So my new PC has been reborn, and happy.  From this, I too realised how hardworking HK people are just to make a decent living. The technician who fixed and delivered my PC even stuck around for 2 hours to reconfigure all my settings, loading software, ensuring the new graphics card was in order - without additional charge. Seriously, I cannot imagine getting such service anywhere else. It almost made me feel guilty for having a comfortable life...

Alot of things to think about this new year.
I hope it will be a good year ahead for me, as well as everyone who has befriended me through this blog, readers included. I sincerely thank your invisible friendship and support and hopefully I will work harder on this blog and stop being so lazy:)

Have a great year ahead and till the next good drama!