When two became four.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Half Naked

The luscious flesh is half exposed. Voracious fingers are quickly losing their patience. The desire to fully uncover is unrelenting... And...

What were you thinking of?
I am talking about my half peeled Salak. This one was brought over from Dumai by Akung and Uti Pasha. Have you eaten it before? I do know some people who has never heard or seen this fruit before.

Salak aka Salacca Zalacca aka Snake Fruit is a species of palm tree from the Arecaceae family. The skin is reddish brown and scaly thus the name Snake Fruit come about. The skin has a distinct tip and by pinching the tip, it can be sloughed off and pulled away.

Inside, there are three lobes of edible flesh. The taste is normally sweet and somewhat acidic. Each flesh contains a hard inedible seed. Do not try to bite or eat that!

Anyway, that was my last Salak...

Yet another Sunday at Kizsports and Gym OU

There is a place where Pasha likes to go on weekends. This is the place for him to release all his excess energy as well as an opportunity to get out of the house and meet other kids out there. This place is called Kizsports and Gym. There are a few outlets out there but the one in One Utama is the best for him.

This is one of his favorites. A little swimming pool where he can slide into those colorful balls. Those balls are generally harmless. Most of them would hit your head with a thud but a few of them would hit your head with a "ke-tonk" sound... Those are the few harder ones. We would normally be throwing balls into the pool as well as at each other over here.

And this is the one that Pasha likes the most out of his favorites. You need to climb all the way up there and go down via that spiralling green tube that you can see a bit on the left of this picture. The entrance to the tube is where you see a red pail hanging by a pulley as shown. Mama Pasha and Pasha are up there on the second last landing before shooting down the green tube.

That's where you come out. Both of them made 10 trips into the green tube and Pasha still wanted more... 10 times! Bravo Mama!

And yes, Papa Bear did it too. Once only! It was harder than it looked. You had to crawl through series of tubes, netting and climb up multiple landings to get to the top. I kept on asking Pasha to wait for me as he was zip-zapping his way to the top. He even gave me the stop-whining-and-hurry-up look as I asked him to wait at every landing... Banyak betul energy budak2 rupanya...

For those who prefer a less strenuous action, the big slide is a good choice at it is quite easy to reach and you can take your own sweet time sliding down as the slide angle is not that steep.

And finally, the good boy deserved a good kiss from Mama... By the way, Pasha refused to go home and we had to "bait" him with a trip to Toys R Us... And he grabbed the Action Chugger there...

Baby Allysa, Sate Kambing and Kolak Durian

About visiting Baby Allysa. A little gathering with some yummy Javanese food...

Baby Allysa. Born on July 15, 2010. Latest addition to the family of Mas Adi and Mbak Ira.

Mama Pasha and her kids. Not quite... :) Aiman and Allya, the big brother and sister to Baby Allysa and Pasha.

Akung Pasha and Uti Pasha with the kids. Mas Adi looking on...

Aiman and Allysa, the big brother and sister.

Mbak Ira helping herself to the food... Yum Yum...

Papa Bear and the sleeping Baby Allysa...

Now the food part. Where's the food? Sorry, did not get the chance to take picture of the delicious food. Well, this entry should be more about the baby and not the food. However, there are lots of pictures on Google so, just click the links below...

We had sate kambing aka mutton satay as the main dish, you can view some uploaded pictures in Google here.

We also had some kolak durian aka durian compote, eaten with ketan aka pulut aka glutinous rice for dessert. Very nice eaten warm! See some pictures in Google here.

Apart from that, we also had gulai kambing aka spiced mutton and pepes ikan aka steamed fish in banana leaf eaten with warm rice. You can view their pics here and here.

Lovely treat of Javanese food... Burp! Excuse me...

Students want PTPTN to go to UUM

What a strange title for this entry. Well, it's the Google Search entry again! PTPTN and UUM dominated the Google Search in Malaysia for the last 7 days. These two keywords covered 6 out of the top 10 search keywords. Students and parents were probably trying to secure education loans from Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional (PTPTN). I did not realize that now application can be made online via the ePinjaman.

Many months ago, one big shot from PTPTN was interviewed on BFM. He said that they are running on deficit and yet they can still give out loans... Some local banks still help them... CSR mumbo jumbo...

All I can say to those owing PTPTN, you should pay back since if you did not do that, your children, our children, later, could no longer get anymore loan and you were the one that spoiled the whole thing...

But why Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)? It beats me. May be those going there have better chance getting the loan... Or maybe students want to go there so that they can easily buy cheap stuffs at Bukit Kayu Hitam... Really? You tell me...

By the way, Cut Tari is third in the list. May be some students wanted to cool off their heads after submitting their online application by looking for her. Or, it could be that some parents, using the excuse of finding out about PTPTN and UUM, actually diverted their searches to Cut Tari. Any better explanation, anybody?

Thanks Google for making blogging fun!

Yahoo! Messenger messes up Firefox

This is for those who are using Firefox and Yahoo! Messenger but very much in love with Google Search.

One fine day you happily installed Yahoo! Messenger on your computer. Then you realized that your happiness was short lived when you discovered that Yahoo!, without asking for your permission, had changed your Firefox Location Bar and Default Search Engine. Now when you put in your keywords in the location bar, Yahoo! Search would be fired up instead of your beloved Google Search. You then looked all over Firefox and unfortunately, there was no way to remove it.

You can now live with it or you can do the following...

Changing the Location Bar search

Type about:config in the location bar aka address bar and press enter.

Type keyword.URL in Filter.

Double-click on the displayed line.

A box will pop up. Change the string value to http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

Or if you want to fire up the Lucky Search, use http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=

That's it for the Location Bar search. If you want it to search using something else, you can always modify the string value to your liking.

Changing the Default Search Engine

Type about:config in the location bar aka address bar and press enter.

Type browser.search.defaultenginename in Filter.

Double-click on the displayed line.

A box will pop up. Change the string value from Yahoo to Google.

Done.

You are now free of Yahoo!

Solving the missing Facebook Badge

Are you using Facebook badge to promote your Facebook on your blog? Have you encountered the problem that after a while, your badge just disappeared and only the links were visible? Well, that infuriated me!

I know that there could be many solutions out there that address this issue but I have found one that works for me. The solution is pretty simple. You just need to change a word that was automatically generated by Facebook.

<!-- Facebook Badge START --><a href="http://www.facebook.com/papaberuang" target="_TOP" style="font-family: &quot;lucida grande&quot;,tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; color: #3B5998; text-decoration: none;" title="Berry Bear">Berry Bear</a><br/><a href="http://www.facebook.com/papaberuang" target="_TOP" title="Berry Bear"><img src="http://badge.facebook.com/badge/661479842.364.1910549269.png" width="120" height="239" style="border: 0px;" /></a><br/><a href="http://www.facebook.com/badges/" target="_TOP" style="font-family: &quot;lucida grande&quot;,tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; color: #3B5998; text-decoration: none;" title="Make your own badge!">Create Your Badge</a><!-- Facebook Badge END -->

Depending on the blog platform that you use, you would get a bunch of code like above. Now look for a code that provide the link to the badge image. Just look or search for the word "img". You should get something similar to mine below:

<img src="http://badge.facebook.com/badge/661479842.364.1910549269.png" width="120" height="239" style="border: 0px;" />

You would notice that the image URL has the word "badge" written twice. Change the first "badge" to "www". Your code should now look like this:

<img src="http://www.facebook.com/badge/661479842.364.1910549269.png" width="120" height="239" style="border: 0px;" />

That's it. Your badge should be there now. Happy promoting!

p/s:

I have not tested this thoroughly. Not sure whether the badge would be automatically updated once you changed your profile picture. Try it at your own risk. So far, I am happy with my result.

No float:center in CSS

What float? Root beer float? Nope, I am talking about the CSS float command. CSS is definitely not a walk in the park to most blogger. Me included. I have no formal training on CSS and so far I have been relying on trial and errors and researches in Google. The most complicated project that I did for the blog was adding a 3-column widgetized footer that you can see today. It's peanuts to some of you but a big achievement for me. Took me many days and had to combine solutions from various experts and/or so-called-experts just to get it working. And this post is related to that footer.

After completing the 3-column widgetized footer, I had the problem of aligning them to the center of the page. CSS does not support float:center and Divs does not recognize the <center> command. CSS only allows float:left and float:right and that's about it. I guess it does not make sense to float things to the center of nowhere...

My first workaround was to play with the margin.

float: left;
margin: 0 0 0 190px;

That code started the footer 190 pixels away from the left edge of the screen and that worked for me. However, one or two visitors were complaining that the chat box, which is on the right footer was way too far down. I did not understand the problem at first. Then upon testing it on a 800x600 screen, I found that there was not enough space for the right footer to be on the right. So, it went below the left and the middle footer. Duh... Back to research then...

Finally, after hours of research and reading articles from mostly frustrated people who wished that there was a CSS command that would center everything, I bumped on the solution. It was really simple. Instead of using float, I just need to play around with the auto margin function. Found this while reading the whole CSS of this theme one line at a time...

width: 960px;
margin: 0px auto;

See, there is no need to float it anymore. It is important to specify the width so that the browser knows where the center point is.

p/s:

This entry might make no sense to most of you but I need this as my own reference when tweaking new themes... Yup, Papa Bear does not create, only tweak...

You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine

If you have watched Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, you would know Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel that was obsessed with acorns. In Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Scrat was torn between his love for acorn and Scratte, the female saber-toothed squirrel that could fly...

Pasha is now obsessed with Scrat and he calls him Misquit. I had to put the video in his PC so that he could watch it anytime he wants...

And now the song You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine is stuck in my head...

Here is Pasha's favorite scene.

And here is the full song for you to enjoy...

Pasha hopes you like that!

The Prince of Brunei wants to give me lots of money

Best giler! I received an email from Prince Jefri Bolkiah! Go on and read...

Dear Friend,

I believe i can call you friend. I am Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei . I am the youngest of the Sultan's three brothers. But its like a joke being called a prince. The Bruneian royal family have turned me into an outcast. I am presently in Europe . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Prince_Jefri_Bolkiah

My Brother the Sultan of Brunei masterminded and initiated much evil against me. He envied me as a person, he envied my life style, he was intimidated by my way of life, and thus plotted with his infidel advisers to get me arrested for nothing. He levelled all forms of corruption allegations against me. He accused me of taking US$16 billion of the royal treasury's money. He labelled me a criminal and ordered for my arrest.

My Brother the Sultan of Brunei did this to me his younger brother. Yes i agree that I spent Money, but I am bewildered by the accusation that i misspent $16billion. It's not that easy to hide, I keep asking the lawyers, where did it go? I have already turned over billions of dollars worth of property, including the Plaza Athenee hotel in Paris , The New York Palace Hotel, the giant yacht, Airplanes, the car collection, and more than 100 paintings by Picasso, Renoir, Modigliani and others. Late last year, I surrendered five rare diamonds, secured in a Europe vault, valued at roughly $200 million.

My Brother the Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, has ruled since 1967. He is the world's wealthiest ruler, with an estimated fortune of $22 billion. DESPITE HIS WEALTH, he still feels intimidated by my little Money. I have turned over the various assets, but my brother the Sultan will not let me keep enough money to maintain a more modest version of my prior lifestyle. Now the Sultan's advisers have started legal proceedings to evict me from my London mansion. We don't know where we are going to live.

They want me to give it all back, now i am worried that i may soon be homeless and forced into bankruptcy. While in Brunei , my favourite car to drive was a Ferrari 550, a sleek sports coupe that i used to take for a spin late at night when the roads were quiet. Now, I like the Mini. I drive a black small mini around Europe . I am been watched by private detectives employed by my Brother the Sultan. He wants to ruin me, but he cannot.

My friend, i don't know you, but i strongly need you to be of help to me. I want you to take me as a friend in need and do something for me that will also benefit you. Right now i cannot trust anybody close to me. I have been betrayed by my friends and family and I am tired of talking to lawyers. I prefer to take the risk of soliciting the assistance of a stranger. You may think i am going crazy, but i am very sane. As it stands, i am about to go into hiding and this would mean living in worse conditions than i am now but
i believe that it would be better of because i am placing faith in this letter that with your help i would live the sort of life i deserve with my family.

I have some funds stashed in foreign countries, but i cannot touch these funds hence they are discovered by my King Brother watching my every move like a Hawk. I need you to assist me in these financial steps of securing my entitlements. You will benefit immensely from this financial exercise. I am an easy going gentleman, so please be rest assured that my business relationship with you will be very sincere and this friendship will extend to our children.

Yours Sincerely,
Prince Jefri Bolkiah.

There you go! Papa Bear is going to be very rich soon. So, if any of you need money for anything, put your requests in the comment ya!

Ya right! Fat chance! Dream on!

LOL!

p/s:
This "Jefri Bolkiah" <princejefri222@gmail.com> must have read the wikipedia in very details to be able to come up with such an email... and I wonder is there any idiot out there that would really fall for something such as this...