Return to the Badminton Court

It has been nearly two years since I last stepped in to the badminton court. Well, thanks to my new colleagues, Desmond and Chiang (along with a host of other company stalwarts), I've now dared to venture back to the game of badminton once again. My ankle injury is not yet completely healed, so I'm still cautious about dancing all around the court chasing the shuttlecock. Better not take chances - my German boss has before injured his tendon as a result of a ill-fated friendly game in Taiwan!

I took this opportunity to get myself a pair of badminton shoes. Previously, I played using my tennis shoes, which sort of served as a multi-purpose shoe for all occasions. That status was of course revoked when I discovered (the hard way) that tennis shoes have zero traction on wet ground....

Anyway, the rest of my gear is the same. My old racket's still strung (smash as hard as we can, we can't match the power of real professional players, so no chance of snapping the strings). Shuttlecocks are "expendable" - a tube of a dozen now retails for roughly RM40~RM50, depending on brand. In our experience, the expensive ones seem to last longer, though, once again, our non-pro smashes are partly responsible for their prolonged lifespan.

The biggest shocker was the new scoring system! I tell you - I no longer know how to count the score and figure out the serves!

The latest scoring system as per Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton#Scoring_system_and_service

Hopefully it stays that way - I can't imagine changing the rules of the game, for whatever reason. Just a bane to purists of the sport!

So now I try to get off early from work every Friday to join my colleagues for an hour of badminton at the Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan SJK Malim, opposite Taman ASEAN. This is proving to be quite a challenge in itself, as some enterprising soul booked the court from 6.00pm to 7.00pm. Not so easy to do when you have a job like mine.

Well, speaking of badminton, tonight (or rather last night, as it's way past midnight now) was the Semi-finals of the 2010 Thomas & Uber Cup. Malaysia was up against China. So, no badminton session today. Unfortunately, due to work commitments, and attending to tiny family members, by the time I actually sat down to watch the game, I found out that it was all over for Malaysia. Hmm, at least, from the interview of a sad-looking Misbun Sidek (current coach for the Malaysian team), and the empty chairs in the background, I sort of guessed that China won. Sadly, scrolling through the Astro guide, I found that there would be no replay / delayed telecast later. Sigh, Astro was actually quite notorious for repeats, except now - just when you expect one.... :(

Well, good effort from the National Team to have made it this far - hope they grow stronger with this experience and double their efforts for the next time round!

The BSOD strikes again!!!

Users of Microsoft's (in)famous operating system, named after the architectural structure that allows you to see through walls, are probably no stranger to the white text on blue background as depicted in the screen shot above.

Affectionately known as the "Blue Screen Of Death" or BSOD, though informally to many it would probably go by some other creative acronym that would not be appropriate to post here in my family-friendly blog! :)

Well, it's not really a screen shot, since at that moment in time, my PC decided to take a break and leave me wondering in the next couple of minutes if there was anything I was doing that I haven't "saved" yet. Luckily, I have my Panasonic Lumix handy for moments like these!

This was not the first, second or even third time. I reckon it was likely the sixth time in 2 years.

This being the standard corporate-issued laptop, the supplier's customer service replied promptly upon receiving the mini-dump file extracted from the deep recesses of my PC's system folders. Sadly, to date, no one has yet to pin point the exact root cause for this.

As the computers these days have grown vastly more complex, there was as much a possibility of this being caused by Software as it might be by Hardware. For the inquisitive who really would like to know, the Operating System that I'm running on is not the latest one (just replaced by version "7"). As for Hardware, my laptop manufacturer's name, by shear coincidence, sounds like "Hell" - if you can't guess after that clue, take a closer look at the photo and you will see it somewhere on the bottom center.... :)

Well, thankfully, though it happened in the middle of a working day, as far as I can tell after the recovery, there were no open, unsaved files at that time. The last thing I remember doing was clicking on the Search button of my E-mail Client.

So, until the problem is finally resolved (which I have no way of verifying, since I can't consistently reproduce this phenomena), I'll have to get myself into the habit of constantly saving important files after each milestone entry. I hope that the customer support people figure out what is causing this soon, so that I can have some peace of mind at last!

Farewell to Tan SH

As mentioned near the end of my last post, yet another of my long-time colleagues would be leaving the company for greener pastures.

Well, two weeks ago was the time to say my goodbyes to Tan Swee Heng from Product Development (same department as mine, but for a different product family). Though we had never worked together before, in such a small company, it was hard not to frequently bump into each other during our daily routines (especially since we shared the same office building, separated only be by the wall of our cubical).

Soft-spoken and mild-mannered, Swee Heng was more famously known for his technical prowess than his commanding presence, but rest assured that if a problem or issue ever came into his sights, it would be dealt with systematically and swiftly.

Swee Heng adds his name to the bottom of the long list of colleagues who have since gone beyond the walls of our factory. As with the others, I'm sure that he would go far in his career with his next step forward. According to my sources (considered to be reliable), he has found a new job still in the small state of Melaka, in a Multi-national semiconductor-manufacturing factory (given how small Melaka is, making a correct guess here would be easier than striking first prize in the lottery).

Well, one evening, a few of our office colleagues got together for a small tea-time function, to bid farewell to him. There was subsequently an "offsite" dinner for this occasion, but alas I was out of the country and thus was unable to join....

In any case, may fame and fortune favour the bold - especially those like my dear friend, Tan Swee Heng...! :)