Saturday, March 31, 2007

Brand New Nokia E90 Coming Soon

Why have a separate notebook and mobile phone when one device can do it all? Well, almost. The Nokia E90 Communicator is the latest in the company's line of fold-open smartphones with QWERTY keyboards and come with wealth of connectivity options, including both quadband GSM and WCDMA (with 3G and HSDPA for high speed internet on to go), WiFi connection for hotspots and proper HTML browser (use FireFox for clearer, faster and better browsing). You can stay connected with E90 where ever you are.

If you need to do work or blogging!!!, E90 allows users to open and edit office documents which runs on Symbian OS v9.2 so you can expect a level of application sophistication close to a notebook PC.

And furthermore, there are two colours to choose from, cool black (excellent choice for your corporate husband and boyfriend) and hot red (suitable for your wife or girlfriend). E90 will be available soon. Check out more from Nokia.com.

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My Chemical Engineering World Blog Position in Search Engine

I wanted to search and check the position of my Chemical Engineering World blog (another blog that I owned which is more technical) in Google and Yahoo. To my surprise, Chemical Engineering World is at position at #4 in Google and #1 in Yahoo search when I search using "chemical engineering blog". The same blog appeared at #4 in Google and #8 in Yahoo when searched using "chemical engineer blog". I'm very pleased with the present blog's position so far, but I must improve the position of it in Google search engine.

In addition to that, Chemical Engineering World blog position is at #144 (page 14) when I searched using "chemical engineering". It is a more general term/key word that most people would search when seeking information about chemical engineering. I give up searching the blog's position at Google because I cannot find it until page 37! I definitely need to improve on the position when using this broader keyword (chemical engineering) in those search engine.

In order to have better position in the search engine, we have to include/mention the keyword repeatedly in our post, if possible in the title as well. The more keyword we have, chances of having a better rank in the search engine is higher. Then, I will always ping the blog from Technorati to refresh my blog content.

Conclusion: Ultimate goal is to be #1 in Google and Yahoo search engine for the keyword - "chemical engineering".


Chemical Engineering World at #4 in Google
(search using "chemical engineering blog")


Chemical Engineering World is at #1 in Yahoo
(search using "chemical engineering blog")

Chemical Engineering World at #4 in Google
(search using "chemical engineering blog")

Chemical Engineering World is at #8 in Yahoo
(search using "chemical engineering blog")

Chemical Engineering World is at #144 in Yahoo
(search using just "chemical engineering")

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

A Part Time Blogger Concept

I go to work very early in the morning, and return home when it is already dark. Everyday, I arrive home and have a wonderful home cook dinner prepared by my wife (I'm lucky that my wife's cooking is marvelous and she loves cooking for me). I play a little bit with my three beautiful kids. Sometimes they're noisy playing around and sometimes they quarrel with each other. Well, they're just small innocent kids.

Before taking shower, I'll switch on the laptop and modem. After shower, praying, having dinner, I sit at the table with my right hand initially maneuvering the mouse. My eyes are laser focus reading emails and my favourite blogs. After about an hour or two, both of my hands are one the keyboard, posting something for the two blogs that I maintain (this blog and Chemical Engineering World). I will try my best to post on a daily basis for each blogs with such a limited time. To be frank, it is easier for me to post in Chemical Engineering World because of the daily working experiences and continuous learning process that I gained as a chemical engineer in an oil processing factory. However, posting for this blog, is quite a challenge. Actually I can post a lots of things happening around me, my family, friends and community. However, I don't want to be stressing too much on my personal story because I fear the readers will be bored with it. I plan to be more focus on the content for this blog and I want my readers to benefit from it big time. Therefore, I have decided to narrow down this blog scope to 'blogging tips', 'making money' and 'anything that linger in my mind'. Let me explain the concept of the blog.

Blogging tips
: I'll be discussing and sharing blogging tips that I learned and experienced all this while as a part time night blogger. It may cover areas such as increasing traffic, SEO, marketing, link exchange and much more. I'll be doing some link love with other established bloggers around. I welcome some link exchange as well. Just mention it in the comment area and we can be in a win-win position. Ultimate aim is to improve our blog rank.

Making money: Everybody wants to make money. Hence, I'm going to share my journey on making money online via blogging, affiliate marketing etc. I'm new in the industry (just discovered and began blogging last August), but thank God, I already received my first Google cheque last two weeks. My wife had a big smile on her face after the discovering the cheque. She already bank-in the cheque on my behalf. Now, I'm on my way to receive my second cheque. I noticed making money via blogging has an exponential effect. I could still remember how difficult it was for me to learn editing html, script code etc without any help. I went through it by try and error. Well, I'm still learning. It's a continuous process. This is part of the 'making money online'.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm now involve in the stock market investment. This is a great and fantastic area to make big bucks. However, again, we need to learn the market, formulas, tricks, technique and networking with other traders and brokers to get early and accurate information. There's a risks in stock market investment. Therefore, we need to be cautions on our decisions in buying and selling stocks. This is part of the 'making money off-line'. More of the off-line making money stuffs are to be grabbed out there. I'll share some of them in this blog later.

Anything that linger in my mind: This is the portion where I'll post whatever I'm thinking. It can be personal experiences, family outing, movies, vacation, food and beverages and many more. Sometimes, just posting about blogging tips and making money could be boring. Why not I include some piece of 'anything that linger in my mind' to spice up the world!

As I end this post, my wife is already asleep. She's exhausted and not feeling well after a very hectic day. Marsya, my first daughter has already slept as well. Ikhwan and Alya are still actively awake! For your information, it is already 1.05 am in the morning. I've been the laptop's best friend since 8.30 pm just now (that's why sometimes my wife complaints...). Tomorrow, I'm going to wake up at 6.00 am and drive to work at 7.00 am still being sleepy (the distance between my home and my work place is about 50 km and usually it took my one hour to reach there).

I can say this is my daily routine as a part time blogger, in progress to be part time stock market investor and full time chemical engineer. Not to forget, a full time husband and father. I'm tired and sleepy but I could not sleep without posting to this blog. OK, now that I've completed this post, I want to have some sleep. Adios!

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Monday, March 26, 2007

Getting Traffic To Your Blog

There are tonnes of techniques driving traffic to your blogs. Just google the keyword "increase traffic", or "traffic tips", or others, you name it, you'll get hundreds of blogs and websites teaching you techniques to increase traffic. Some of them give out free tips, free e-books, free newsletters, and others. Most of the time, there are too much to read and digest (if you don't have all the time in the world). Even if you are given 24 hours a day without sleeping, there are still too much of informations to learn and absorb, and our fatigue eyes could not stand staring the monitor.

Hence, I include some of the vital strategies/tips to increase traffic to your blog which I borrowed the some of the original content from Seth's Godin blog. Well, those are just 25 basic stuffs not to be missed out for bloggers.
  1. Learn enough to become the expert in your field.
  2. Break and announce news.
  3. Be timeless... write posts that will be readable in a year.
  4. Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic.
  5. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
  6. Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.
  7. Be snarky. Write nearly libelous things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.
  8. Share linklove and expect some back.
  9. Include polls, meters and other eye candy.
  10. Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.
  11. Do email interviews with the well-known.
  12. Answer your email.
  13. Use photos. Salacious ones are best.
  14. Encourage your readers to digg your posts. (and to use furl and reddit).
  15. Post your photos on flickr.
  16. Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS or to email.
  17. Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
  18. Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.
  19. Point to useful but little-known resources.
  20. Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current blog readers (eg. blogging/gadget).
  21. Have relevant ads that are even better than your content.
  22. Write posts that each include dozens of track backs to dozens of blog posts so that people will notice you.
  23. Utilize forum. It's a great package to maintain your readers.
  24. Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.
  25. Ping Technorati. Or have someone smarter than me tell you how to do it automatically.
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Thought For the Day

A close colleague of mine at work that I respect email a very meaningful thought (below). After reading it, I felt connected and could relate myself to the message. I believe everybody reading it will feel the same. As we grew older, our physical/body keep changing slowly, progressively, but our self remains the same. Sometimes, we wonder and think, am I for real? Is true I'm already 20 years old? or 30 years old? or 40 years old? When I'm going to die? How will I die? I already have 3 kids, but yet sometimes I act like a child? But I am still my self. And I shall remain like this even after having grandchildren. In this short life, we should live in a meaningful way. We should be good to ourself, family, relatives, friends and communities. We should live happily even though we don't have everything we desire. Sometimes, we struggle financially but we still have a wonderful family to support and love us. We are still ourself!

"Suppose there is a plate, tumbler and spoon made of silver. Their names and forms are different, but silver is common to all of them. Names and forms change but silver remains unchanged. Likewise, a child becomes a boy, then a man and later on, an old man. The form keeps changing but the spirit remains unchanged. Do not repose your faith in the body, which constantly changes. Body is like a water bubble; mind is like a mad monkey. Do not follow the body, do not follow the mind. Follow the conscience. Conscience is the “Self”. Have total faith in the “Self”. You are bound to face problems if you rely on the body, the mind and the senses. However, so long as you live in this world, you have to discharge your duties using your body and the mind as instruments."

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Sunday, March 25, 2007

Transformers Movie Teaser

Transformers Movie

I went to the cinema with my wife today, just the two of us, alone. Nowadays, it's difficult for us to watch movie because our three kids are still small to join us. Luckily, we have a good and trusted maid to take care of them while we were out. We don't have any movie in particular to watch. We just went there, scan through the movie listing, and decided to watch a Malay movie called "Mukhsin".

However, a teaser theatrical triller shown before the movie (Mukhsin) really caught my attention. The sound effect, stunt, action and fire power made me wonder what movie is this?
To my surprise, it is Transformers the movie and it is not a cartoon. Transformers was my favourite robot cartoon series since I was small. I always watched and sketched most of the robots. My robot heroes back then were Hot Rod (race car), Blaster (stereo cassette player), and of course Optimus Prime (commander of the heroic Autobots).

It's going to be a super great movie and I know it definitely will be simply because Steven Spielberg is the man behind it. The movie is going to played this July and look forward watching it.

When Transformers The Movie cartoon was played in the 1986s, I immediately grab hold of the video and watched them repeatedly. My guess, I have watched the cartoon movie almost 30 times or more. I even have the DVD now at home (which I borrowed from my younger brother), and my 5 year old son is always playing it. I believed, he has been watching it for more than 10 times already. Like father like son!

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Saturday, March 24, 2007

Google Checkout Referal

Now, in addition to AdSense, AdWords, Firefox with Google Toolbar, and Google Pack, you can now refer your users to Google Checkout through AdSense. Checkout gives your users a faster, safer, and more convenient way to shop online.

Every time you refer a user to Google Checkout, you make a little money. It's a simple process that includes all of three steps:

(i) You place the Checkout referral button on your site.

(ii) Someone clicks on the button, signs up as a buyer with Google Checkout using a valid U.S. credit card, and completes a purchase of at least $10 through Checkout within 90 days. (The current $10 minimum purchase corresponds to existing $10 promotion for new buyers, so this amount may change in the future.)

(iii) You earn $1. Please note that Checkout referrals are currently only available for U.S. publishers (which means a lot of publishers around the world including me could not yet take this opportunity), and Google Checkout is currently only available for buyers with a U.S. credit card. We hope to make both Checkout and Checkout Referrals available in more countries soon.

It costs nothing to sign up (in fact, you'll even get a $10 bonus) and it'll make shopping online a easier. For more information, please read Jack Chou post in Inside Adsense: Referals, Now with Google Checkout. As a publisher outside U.S., we look forward to use Google Checkout.

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Friday, March 23, 2007

Making Money by Investing

I finally met my broker yesterday after work. The broker was a young man, aged 24, majoring in business administration, recently graduated from Multimedia University, a private university in Malaysia owned by Telekom. He explained some basic stuff about the stock investment market as well as some regulations related to it. I listened tentatively and asked few questions to ensure I really understood everything. He was very helpful and well verse on the industry (or maybe I'm fresh and still green?!).

When asked, how much am I willing to invest? I answered, as a beginner (still new and plenty to learn and absorb), I'm ready to gamble (not the correct word); invest MYR 2,000.00 (that's after discussing with my secretary and accountant, which is my intelligent wife). That figure is not that much, but it's still valuable money that we can use for paying off some of our accumulated debts (ops...did I talked too much?). I'm going to bank-in the money this weekend to my stock account and will further decide on which company to "take over!!!" ha ha....

I hope, with some research and a little bit of luck, I can gain some profit from the stock market. Wish me luck and pray for me.

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Learn Website Traffic From The GURU

"I'm having very poor traffic",
"Nobody is coming to my site",

"I'm frustrated with the number of unique visitors coming to my blog"
,
"How can I increase my traffic?"


Can you associate the above statement with you? If yes, you need to check out HarpZon. This is the ultimate blog discussing about "IDEAS AND TIPS TO INCREASE WEBSITE TRAFFIC". I stumbled upon Harpzon about three weeks ago. It is a brand new blog packed with various information on techniques to improve website and blog traffic. In addition to that, Mitchell Harpz, a 24 year old good looking lad, a successful entrepreneur (interspire.com), a dedicated owner of the blog, discussed and shared some of his personal life and blogging experiences. Check out how tasty his breakfast was and some healthy tips which is practical to follow.

For a new site in the blogging world (can be considered blogging industry now!!!), I must say I'm impressed with the number of readers Mitchell managed to attract. In fact he is very generous to compile and give out a free copy of "Blogging Traffic Blueprint". I downloaded the blueprint, comprehend and digested it yesterday. I highly recommend the Blogging Traffic Blueprint for any bloggers having burning desire for better page rank and a flux of traffic.

Mitchell has also introduced a cool and brilliant concept called link love. He gives opportunity to other bloggers to review his blog (positive or negative....anything will do..) and in return, he will provide a back link to the reviewer's blog, which will somehow help to increase traffic.

Harpzon is now one of my favourite blog that I must read everyday (exception if I'm going outstation or vacation or my modem is spoilt). I cannot afford to miss any new multiple content published daily by him. I hope Mitchell will continue posting quality fresh content that will benefit and enriched his loyal hungry readers like me. And I wish him more and more success in future.

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Preview: United Internationals

A plethora of United players will be in international action as the Reds take a break from domestic football (adopted from Redview 23th March 2007 Issue 149). I don't really care about the International game. I'm just interested watching Man United achieving another treble this year and not Chelsea stealing a quadruple...

Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick and Ben Foster all trained with England at the new Wembley on Wednesday, ahead of the crucial qualifiers against Israel and Andorra. Kieran Richardson could go one better, and be the first United man to play there when England's Under-21s host Italy in a friendly on Saturday.

Two United players will go head-to-head next Wednesday when Serbia host Portugal. Before that, Nemanja Vidic and Cristiano Ronaldo will play away to Kazakhstan and at home to Belgium respectively. Ronaldo must be careful as his opponent have bad intention to get him down under 2 minutes!!!

Jonny Evans, currently excelling on loan to Sunderland, has been called into the Northern Ireland squad to face Liechtenstein and Sweden.

John O'Shea and Darron Gibson are involved for the Republic of Ireland's matches against Ryan Giggs' Wales and then Slovakia. Wales' second game is against San Marino next Wednesday.

Edwin van der Sar's calf injury keeps him out of Holland's qualifier against Romania but he'll be assessed again before the clash with Slovenia. Tomasz Kuszczak is in the Poland squad to face Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Ji-sung Park is in the South Korean squad for their friendly with Uruguay, while Dong Fangzhuo has been called up by China for their games against Australia and Uzbekistan.

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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Heart Attacks And Drinking Warm Water

This is not just about warm water after your meal, but also about heart attacks. This really make sense. The Chinese and Japanese drink hot tea with their meals, and not cold water. My parents drink warm water as well after meal. Maybe it is time we adopt their drinking habit while eating!

Nothing to lose, everything to gain!

It is nice to have a cup of cold drink after a meal. However, the cold water will solidify the oily stuff that you have just consumed. It will slow down the digestion. Once this "sludge" reacts with the acid, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food. It will line the intestine. Very soon, this will turn into fats and lead to cancer. It is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal. That's why now, I'm drinking hot tea with less sugar (I love it when my wife made me hot tea with perfect temperature and correct dosage of sugar concentration) or warm plain water for lunch or dinner.

A serious note about heart attacks: You should know that not every heart attack symptom is going to be the left arm hurting. Be aware of intense pain in the jaw line.

You may never have the first chest pain during the course of a heart attack. Nausea and intense sweating are also common symptoms. 60% of people who have a heart attack while they are asleep do not wake up. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let's be careful and
be aware. The more we know, the better chance we could survive.

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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Importance of Good Blog Entry Titles

Having an excellent content alone will not guarantee the success of our blog. We need to have a combination of factors to create a good blog such as a keyword selection and suitable post title. The reason that titles are imperative is because of how we scan information and make snap decisions on whether to dig into a story further or not. I found a very good article made by Dave Tylor from The Intuitive Life Business Blog. He has brilliantly explained the importance of having a good blog entry titles. I need not to elaborate further, but it's worth reading. At least, I learned something about "targeting search engine" with Dave's "cellphone" versus "cell phone" example.

Part of Dave's insights....

"Obviously, there are specific words that are always going to draw your eye, and these are used - ad nauseam - in advertising. The most common? Sex. Yes, you know you already saw that on an informal scan of the page and have had to come back to this paragraph to see and identify the context, right? Uh huh.

Should you use these high engagement words in every headline on your site so you can maximize the chance of engaging readers? No. Just like seeing twenty adverts that each suggest you'll become sexy and have gorgeous fun-loving friends if you consume that particular product, you'll just end up creating fatigue in your readers and it will backfire as they recognize that what you're doing is trying to manipulate them rather than help them identify whether a given article is worth reading or not." Continue reading HERE

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Red Alert

Manchester United Asian Tour ticket offer is now made available for the red devil die hard fan. I wanted to part of the tour but perhaps later when my kids grew older. It's difficult to drag them all around when they are still small. Oh boy....I'll miss the match....

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Centre of the Earth

These are some amazing beautiful pictures of the centre of the earth emailed by my friend. I am not sure of its location, but it sure is beautiful.

Amazing, isn't it.

What Does Blogging Means To Me?

I discovered blogging less than a year ago. That time, I don't know what does the word 'blog' means. I soon realized that blog was derived from the a combination of "web" and "log", which became "weblog", and finally "blog". Blogging gave people like you and me a platform to express and share ideas, opinions, thoughts, knowledge and more than that too. Anybody can create a blog and compose whatever they want.

I wish I knew about blogging earlier. I love to write and post articles in magazines and bulletins. I was always directly involved in publication since primary, secondary and tertiary education (using my mother tongue language). Now, that my work place does not provide me any means to write, they just want me to work and work and work. Hence, as soon as I discover blogging, I immediately sign up under Blogger and start posting. My first blog was Chemical Engineering World. That blog is progressively getting some attention from fellow chemical engineers around. Initially, it was not easy managing that blog. Slowly, I learned positioning some script code the hard way by try and error. It took me some time to learn and grasp the technique and skill. Now that I'm comfortable with blogger, the new Blogger was released. To be frank, I'm not comfortable playing around with the new Blogger, but I'm glad they introduced "Labels" to categories our posts. I'm still struggling to adapt with the new Blogger and you can see that my adsense and other ads are not optimumly positioned. I'm still working on that.

Another good think about blogging is the income that can be automatically generated from it 24/7. Earlier, I never thought that blogging can become that generous. I must admit, some successful blogs out there inspired me to create and produced a good quality content blog. Yesterday, while reading "I've made $4,375.75 online! Here's how you can too...", I discovered more ways and tools to monetize our blog. It really open up my eyes reading Paula's teachings. If you have not read that article, you better spent 10 minutes reading it. It's a great post and I'm glad Paula share it with her readers.

Enough about blogging and making money. It's already late at night and I still have a job to take care tomorrow. I'm going to work harder to improve my blog with some little time that I have at night. Thanks to my wife for understanding and supporting me. For my readers, thank you for reading my blog. I hope you'll find it useful and enjoy it very much.

p/s: Besides Google Adsense, try AuctionAds to monetize your site.

Utilizing Carets

I came across this interesting and useful technique while I was reading the computer tips and technique newsletter from Worldstart.com. I think it might come handy especially when we are handling, editing and saving documents routinely. Check it out below.

Here's a quick one for you! If you often save different versions of the same file in different folders on your computer, you should try using this simple tip. I promise, you won't be disappointed!

When you go to save the file, after the regular name, type ^1 behind it. This makes it a version one. To get the caret (^), hold down the Shift key and hit the number six on your keyboard. For the second version, type ^2, after the file name. For the third, type ^3 and so on.

Now, go and do a search by clicking the Start button, followed by Search. In the search criteria box, type ^ (just the caret). When the search is finished, you can sort your list by name by clicking View and then Arrange Icons By > Name.

You now have a list of all the files you save “in versions" and in order, by version number. You can now delete the ones you don't need. That's pretty convenient, isn't it? Give it a shot!

Monday, March 19, 2007

Life Without the Internet

We lost the privilege and luxury of internet for 4 nights. Now I realize that, it (the internet) is not just a privilege or luxury, but instead a necessity! I felt lost without internet, not knowing what to do. I gives me a hard time to think of what to do to kill the time, because 75% of my waking hours at home is usually filled with facing, starring, touching and embracing the laptop. That three quarter fraction of time was left vacant for that four nights when my modem was badly injured by the lightning. Therefore, I decided to use that space of time to do some cleaning, organizing, and sorting out my study room which can also be called a store (storage of documents, papers, books, newspaper cuttings, boxes, paper bags, stationaries, cards, letters, bills, stamps, etc). Well, I did some small modification on the house arrangement as well (with my wife's help + opinion + discussion = decision on how to rearrange). We did some furniture re-arrangement, some cleaning and sorting. At least I'm glad I managed to do something useful while not on-line.

I still need to do some catching up on with my favourite blogs. There are still a lot to read and digest. My wife did a great job in handling the modem situation and get us us back on-line as soon as possible. That's why I managed to published this post tonight. Thanks baby....

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Ooopppssss....

Sorry...I didn't know that he has already posted something for you guys on the lightning thing. Anyway, you guys heard it from both of us already.

On hold

I am writing on behalf of my husband here. Unfortunately our modem and laptop have been struck by lightning yesterday and now we don't have a means to access the internet at home. Due to that my husband will temporarily not be posting in this blog because that's the only way he acceses the internet (blogging is strictly not allowed in his company). I am writing this from my office because he asked me to. We are truly sorry. He's really down now because he loves blogging so much. We are doing everything we can to handle this. We've called the internet provider and will soon have a replacement for the modem. As for the laptop, thank God it's fixed already.

Spoilt Modem

I returned home and switch on the laptop and modem as usual. To my surprise, both the laptop and modem could not turn on!!! I checked and inspected them together with my wife and luckily the laptop was OK. However, we tried everything to start the modem but it just would not be allright. We suspected that the lightning has caught and spoilt the modem. My wife called the network company immedietly after that, and hopefully within 24 hours we can get a new set of modem (a replacement - it is under contract) and continue blogging as usual at home.

This post was published in a cyber cafe nearby my work place.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Some Updates

I still feel some headache but it is lesser than yesterday. My fever has also reduced. I have not surfed the internet for few days because of going to KL and also because I was sick yesterday. As a result I have to catch up reading all my favourite blogs. Up to now, I have not yet read all of them yet, but I'm going to read them. And I'm going to post comments as usual on Paula's site, a good blogger friend and loyal reader of this blog.

So, here's a little bit something to share about what's happening around me for the pass 1-2 days:

1. My company credited some money - encashment for replacement leave - I work during public holidays. Not bad. I received MYR 300++.

2. I called my broker just now and say hi. I'm going to try my luck on stock and investment.

3. I gave my wife some assistance on her slide that she prepared just now for her Ph.D first stage examination tomorrow. She's an expert in a last minute work.

4. I have not really eaten for 2 days due to lost of appetite. I tried having Mcdonalds for dinner and I managed to finish my BicMac Meal.

5. I have loads and loads of unfinished business that I have to attend to at work and I'm wondering when will it be over???

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Not well

Zaki is currently unavailable because he is now a little under the weather. His temperature is 38C/100F. He spent the day without eating anything today coz he lost his appetite. He just took the fever pills and went straight to bed. He will not be posting anything here for a while. I hope he will recover soon enough and be with you guys as usual. Get well soon honey.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Taking A Break

My family and I went to Kuala Lumpur (KL), capital of Malaysia, last Saturday and we took the opportunity to meet up with some friends and visiting places. I can't really recall the last time we went to KL. What I know is, we always don't have enough time to spend in KL. Furthermore, we are traveling with 3 small kids of mine, which make it even difficult and troublesome to travel longer hours. Sometimes, I wish I can spend one or two weeks in KL, visit everybody and every places that we desire. However, that cannot happen now, I hope it can be achieved later in the future. KLCC is one of Malaysia's landmarks that we went to. Yes, we went there, but I think we only cover 15% of KLCC. Thanks to the kids, they went mad and restless. They were exhausted and just want to sleep!

Suria KLCC is a great place to spend money

My wife, kids and her fifteen- years- have- not- met friend

My wife took this photo. I have very few photo's of myself because I was busy capturing other people's photos

To the rest of our friends in KL whom we do not visit, we're sorry. We have very limited time to spend. We'll visit you guys later. Hope you guys understand. Cheers.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Credit Card vs Car Craze Contest

I received my Manchester United Credit Card replacement yesterday and I'm glad having it. That credit card is important to me because I pump my fuel using this card, filling up my petrol at Petronas station. Me and my wife chose Petronas because they are having "Prizes galore in the Petronas Car Craze Contest". Six cars and other great prizes are offered for the customers who spend minimum MYR 30 at their stations. I pray and hope I'm the winner of one of the cars contested. Fingers crossed.

Blessing In Disguise

Today I received a small compensation from SOCSO (Social Security Organization) (cheque) following the accident that I had during my plant shutdown. SOCSO basically is an organization that provides a comprehensive social security protection for Malaysian workers.

I was surprised to receive the cheque, mainly because the process is faster than I expected (just over 1 month). They gave me MRY708.00 from the nine-day medical leave (MC) given to me due to the temporary disablement that I experienced. Well, that's not bad. Of course the money will be a lot of help to me and my family. It's not that hard to spend that little amount of money..ain't it. I can't wait.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Paula's Link Love Makes Me Smile


Check this out, Zaki Yamani World in Paula Mooney's blog. I was overwhelmed and happy when I saw Paula's writing about my blog. I really enjoyed and loved reading it. Thanks Paula...

Fixing Our Defense

We did some minor adjustments to our gate yesterday. We fixed this nice green PVC netting to inhibit unknown adolescent dog from entering our house (obviously an adult dog won't fit through the gate bars). Previously, last weekend, a lost wandering teenage dog entered our drive way via the gate and destroyed 2 of my healthy grown chili plants. I was so furious after realizing my beautiful chili perished after the dog's attack.

Somehow, on another occasion, the same little dog came in again and attempted to get close to my youngest daughter, it was nearly licking her. Luckily, my wife managed to grab hold of Alya and chased the dog away.

It's not that we don't like dogs. Dogs are cute and adorable but being Muslims, we are prohibited from touching them. We don't want to go through the trouble of washing our affected body parts with seven earths to cleanse it. Well, that's what our religion has restricted us. I hope nobody is offended.

It was quite a troublesome process to fix it and I thank my wife for helping me twirling the steel wire to attach the netting to the gate. However, watching it nicely fitted to the gate makes me forget of how irritated I was when it seems like it will never end earlier. It looks quite nice, isn't it.

Man United 1-0 OSC Lille: Farewell Larsson strike

Yahooooo, finally Manchester United made it through to the final eight in the UEFA Champions League after winning the clash against Lille yesterday. I did not watch the live game (too exhausted to stay up late at night), but managed to get a glimpse of the sweet victory which might be the last strike ever produced by Henric Larson for Manchester United. The Swede has become a great and lethal United front, and he will be surely missed when he return to Helsingborg. Enough about Larson, United must march on, look forward and work its way to grab the prestigious UEFA Champions League Cup. Glory-glory Man-United.....

A FINAL GOODBYE
Henrik Larsson says goodbye to the Man Utd faithful in the best possible way, by scoring the winner against Lille. The Swedish striker is off home in a week, and United will miss him.
GettyImages

THAT'S WORTH A 10.0
Flying winger Cristiano Ronaldo, goes... flying, in the 1-0 win over Lille. The Portuguese international was booked for this effort, but did set up the goal later on.
Empics

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

As the Chili Grows...

I have been practicing planting and nursing chili for for about 4 months in my house compound. I was thinking to purchase or rent a piece of land, to plant chili, tomato and other crops on it. The agricultural industry is a very profitable sector and I want to become a part of it. The Malaysian government is giving a full support to farmers cum entrepreneurs to boost the industry. They even give out grants and loans to help the beginning farmers to start up or expand their business.

I started planting my first seed of chili last November. It grows from a tiny little green creature (small photo) to a beautiful big chili tree now. It's fun and aspiring watching it grows. I can't wait for it to give us its first fruit. I have quite a few of them that survived despite of lots that died. I hope to become a successful professional farmer despite of my chemical engineering degree. What a change of career, isn't it?

When The Power Combine

The past two months were scary for the dwellers of Bandar Pulai Jaya. We hardly have a nice comfortable sleep. Few houses were intruded by robbers at night and early morning. There were cases where the robbers hurt the house owner besides stealing their cash, jewelry, hand phone etc.

One month ago, a meeting was held to discuss and form a group called "Kawasan Rukun Tetangga (KRT)" which roughly means "Peace Neighborhood Territory". The group will organize shift of security rounds to monitor and watch over the neighborhood at night. I have been in the shift (1 to 5 am) twice since KRT was formed. It's quite tiring though to have the same people doing the rounds weekly. Not all residents of the neighborhood participate, which is quite unfair.

Therefore, yesterday, we had another meeting (photo) at the basket ball court in the play ground in front of my house, hoping that everybody will turn up, basically to discuss methods to improve the existing KRT group. We tried to gather as much house owners to participate in the group. I hope more people will join to ensure peacefulness of our neighborhood.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Two WAJA's

After the accident, I temporarily lost my Kancil (it's at the workshop undergoing some operation). I turned to my father and begged him to lend me one of his cars. He let me use his Proton Waja for a while. Now, there are two Waja's in our drive way and we lost some spacious area for my kids to play around. Anyway, I really thank my father for lending me the car.

My New Sandal

I lost one half of my sandal during the accident last Wednesday. Having just another half is useless. Therefore, my wife get me a new pair, which looks good, comfortable and cheap - MYR5.90. However, I realized that I cannot where my socks wearing this sandal. Well, I use to where socks in car before going to work. I will only wear my shoes at my work place.

My Delicious Home Cook Dinner

I had a home made dinner of "Nasi Ayam" (Chicken Rice) specially prepared by my wife last last Sunday. I really love and admire her cooking. This was the fourth Nasi Ayam dinner I had this week, which means I'm already addicted to it. According to my wife, it is not expansive to prepare a meal like this. If I'm not mistaken, my wife told me that the cost of dinner is below MYR10 only. It's really cheap and easy.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

My Technorati Ranking

I really put more effort improving and developing this blog since last month. The Technorati ranking shown above is basically for my record. I hope it can have better position next month. My Chemical Engineering World site, has a slightly better ranking then Zaki Yamani World.
The ranking based on Alexa.com for both sites are as shown below. However, ranking based on Alexa.com is not really representable.

Accident Location

My father expressed his desire to see the location where I had the accident. So, I brought him and my mum as well as my family to the scene. I went down, to search for my wallet and spectacles, which were washed away from my car in the river (the water level has reduced extensively) after the accident, but I found nothing, as expected.

I fell quite high and luckily I'm OK.

Later, we had some refreshment and had some "cendol" (icy coconut milk served with sugar syrup and sweet dumplings) and "cucur" (fried seasoned dumplings).

Indian Wedding

My family and I attended my colleague's wedding yesterday at Dewan Serbaguna (Multi- purpose Hall) Taman Johor Jaya, Johor. It was our first time attending and experiencing Indian cultural wedding. They served Malay, Chinese and Indian cuisine for the multicultural and multi races guest who came. What a beautiful country I'm living in. It's a warm feeling being in a place where all of us can have a good time regardless of our race.

Check out the Nasi Minyak (butter rice) come with hot red chicken source, beef curry, some sweet sour pineapple mixed with cucumber and some slices of fresh oranges (click on the photo to see how delicious this meal is). It was a colourful and wonderful wedding when two hearts became one. The audio was not bad at all but it was definitely Indian traditional music.

Indian tradition - I don't know how to explain this

Me and my family posing with the newly married couple and my boss's family

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Paula Mooney: The Wheel in the Sky Keeps On Turning...

I met Paula Mooney's blog in John Chow Dot Com recently and since then I've been reading her blog. She came out with an idea called Link Love, which I can say it's almost the same as John Chow's backlink concept.

There are tonnes of updates and informations dedicated in making money and improving site in her blog. As far as I can see, she is really dedicated in maintaining her blog. She provide brilliant and useful contents on a daily basis. Sometimes, she post twice a day. That type of commitment is extremely good to make a fantastic readable blog.

She have great relationship and love to be in touch with her readers. That's one strong point I can see from her and I really like. The blog have a lot of features to improve it's ranking too. I must learn from her to improve my site.

However, there are few things that I am not really in favour about her blog. I think the blog is crowded with a lot of photos and other informations. The arrangement, especially the bottom half of the blog is not properly organized and the spaces are not fully utilized. I believe, if Paula can improve on this, her blog appearance will become more attractive and cute. Keep up the great job Paula. I know you can do it!

Liverpool 0-1 Man Utd: O'Shea Stuns Anfield

Great Hot Sizzling News: Manchester United produced a smash and grab 1-0 victory at Anfield that could well see them clinch the title. It was a great game with some nerve wracking drama as well. Paul Scholes saw red and United were left with 10 man at the 85th minutes. However, substitute O'Shea made the difference by scoring the only goal on injury time. Now, Manchester United is 12 points ahead of Chelsea and I'm smiling.

Friday, March 02, 2007

The Accident

I'm a very careful driver especially when it is raining. Previous experiences made me very cautious and a slower driver then before. Although I have tried my best driving safely, still, I could not avoid myself from accident. We have to be extra careful, because there are still reckless drivers on the road.

My car inside the river. Rain has stopped and the water level has reduced by the time this photo was taken. Earlier, the water nearly covers the top of the car because of the heavy rain.

Another angle of the car from top of the river bank.

The experience gained on last Wednesday afternoon, driving on my way home in a heavy rainy day, will be an unforgettable one. A speeding van hit the rear side of my car (kancil) and the momentum was transfered to me. I lost control and drifted swiftly. I still remembered, I've time to think what's going to happen to me? What am I going to hit? Is it going to be tree branches next to the road? Is it going to be some metal rail installed by the road side? Am I going to be injured badly? Am I going to die? What will be the faith of my family when I'm not around?

This was the van that slammed my car.

The front part was damaged and the left front door cannot be closed.

But, instead, I felt into a river!!! The car toppled few times before it landed in the water. Immediately, water rushed inside the car and fortunately I'm conscious. I fear the car will go deeper into the river and forced to follow the current of the river. I opened the door and got out of the car. At one moment, I thought about all my personal belonging. I attempted to get back into the car to retrieve my wallet and hand phone. However, I cannot feel or see them. The car was half filled with water. Then, I decided to rescue myself first, fearing anything worse might happen.

The car is being pulled up. It's a very tough process.

The uplifting process continued.

I tipped my head and saw two man on top of the river bank (5-7 meters high). They shouted and asked me whether I'm OK or not. I signaled them that I was OK. I climbed up and they helped me up. One of the men was the one who hit me.

This was the part of the grass area that I passed through before diving into the river.

The car just touched the river bank. It was already dark.

At that moment, I'm entirely glad that God have saved me from unwanted injury. I experienced some knocks on my head and a few minor injuries (that's why I went for the medical check-up). I called my wife (using the guy's hand phone who hit me) and first I have to calmed my wife that I'm OK. I asked her to come and be with me.

The car was successfully lifted to ground zero.

I lost my wallet, spectacles, another half of my slippers, and a lots of soaking wet nearly destroyed magazine, books, notes etc.

The rear window was broken. It's just sad to see my car like that.

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