Gee, see my clean desktop?

This is an actual picture of my desktop as it is now. Yeap, can’t believe it right? It’s normally, usually very cluttered.

I guess Amilia tagged me just at the right time coz I had to move all the junkie icons into one need “desktop” folder on Wednesday as there was a Nokia launch going on and my lappie really was the star of the show – we ran the presentation off my laptop.

So, what do I usually have on?

1. Microsoft Outlook – Industry Standard Email. ‘Nuff said.
2. Windows Live Messenger – Industry Standard Instant Messaging. One of the actually good pieces of software to come out of Microsoft. I also chat on Gtalk. Hate yahoo! messenger as it screws my PC over with its resource hogging.
3. FireFox – Love it! Absolutely prefer to use FireFox over Internet Explorer anyday. Oh…I also have Flock installed. It’s this really cool browser that incorporates Web 2.0 stuff into it.

That’s about it. I love my desktop clean and beautiful (thought it’s actually, really, always, very messy.)

Now, I’m gonna suggest Suanie writes something about her desktop.

Janice’s Farewell

I supposed I’ve not really posted much recently. Work’s been keeping me really busy and at the same time so many things have been going on that have needed my time. From Church practices, to weddings, to meeting up with old friends.

Well, today’s post is just a short note of farewell to Janice Loh, whom I’ve had the tremendous pleasure of working with at Fleishman-Hillard for nearly two years. Together with Min, Jia Yi and Shanice, we squeezed time out of all our busy schedules to have dinner together, and boy, it felt good.

It sort of reminded me of the good ol’ days at FH where we would frequent Chopstik Noodle House in Mont’ Kiara catching “claimable” dinner in between going back to work and chatting about stuff of all kinds under the sun. From the latest “industry” news to what’s going on with our clients to movies and other non-work related stuff.

Today, we sat in Alexis BSC for more than 4 hours. No thanks to Shanice being late (heh), but it wasn’t a drag. We had a lovely time catching up.

Tomorrow though, Janice flies off to Singapore for a new career as an SIA air stewardess and Min makes a shorter trip back to Penang. It’s so long, farewell, for now. We probably won’t meet again as a group for some time, but when we do, I’m looking forward to it.

I’m sure we’ll all have lots of stories to share again.

Patroitism in the single dimension

No one may have joined him in his cries for “Merdeka” yesterday at Parliament, but Lim Kit Siang’s point didn’t go unheard. A story published in the New Straits Times today said:

CRIES of “Merdeka” rang seven times through parliament yesterday as Lim Kit Siang tried to prove a point on patriotism.

NST says “tried.” I say, point well taken.

Even as Malayan Peninsula begins its next 50 years of independence, the concept of patroitism still takes on a one-dimensional perspective.

For most Malaysian school-children, myself included, singing patroitic songs is almost a guaranteed childhood experience. I remember standing under the hot sun singing “Malaysia Berjaya” and “Demi Negara”at a bunch of teachers sitting in the shade.

Of course, in secondary school it became “Wawasan 2020″ and a couple of other songs that I can’t recall.

Someone believed that singing Patroitic songs would make us more patroitic. Oh, and we were taught that when such songs were sung, we’d need to stand up erect to show our patroitism.

Veteran actor-director Jo Kukathas once poked fun in her parody “Atomic Jaya”, stating that Malaysian’s could invent a new patroitic song every time they had something to hide or had a cause they needed to rally people around.

But patroitism is more than just a song and dance. Sure, it’s easy to get people to say “we love our nation” and wear the Malaysian flag with “pride” but that’s as far as it usually goes.

Not many Malaysians are too concerned about our nation and that shows from the lack of interested voters. A paltry 12 million voters in the last election showed just how much people cared about our Nation’s future.

This is not good for the country. If we want to be Malaysians, we need to start caring about issues, challenging the status quo if it isn’t right and ensuring that the appointed public officials are doing their job.

It’s time to vote. And vote intelligently.