I know, it’s stupid.

It’s not going to make a difference that I watch one or twenty TopGear episodes. It’s how I manage my time. And my previous post already reveals signs that I haven’t been doing much good with my time, and the fact that I’m blogging about it at 2.30am in the morning is absolute proof that I have no control of my life whatsoever, apart from anxiously waiting for that UK visa.

It’s the same effect as someone watching TV in the 80s. I’ve not gone any further than I intended.

Sure, I’m one step closer to a dream job, travel opportunities, settling down… but there are no real guarantees. I have no idea if I’ll succeed, let alone find what I want – simply because I haven’t got much of a clue how to get there.

I have the same basic formula that makes sense. Get in, apply for a job, do my best, and hope to win. I don’t have a magic formula.

The only thing I have is motivation. Not from myself, of course. But from all the junk I’ve consumed over the last 29 years of my life. I’ve somehow managed to piece together that it’s the right thing to do.

Here’s what I’ve been consuming over the last year:

• The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman
• The Art of the Start (ChangeThis edition), Guy Kawasaki
• A whole bunch of stuff from Seth Godin
• The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
• TopGear
• BusinessWeek.com
• Wired
• Usability blogs and books
• Brazen Careerist and stuff from Penelope Trunk
• FreelanceSwitch
• T3 and Stuff magazine, but they don’t count

From this, I can summarize all the motivational sources that led to my decision to go to the UK and pursue a user experience career.

• Cars (preferrably nice and affordable)
• Design, innovation and startups (big topic these days)
• Where work sucks less
• Great user experience

It’s like saying, I am what I consume. So if you want to end up in Japan, read tons of manga, learn Japanese, drive a Nissan, etc.

From what I’ve been reading, of course it’s the right thing to do. Of course innovation is important. Of course the world is flat. Of course user experience will revolutionize computing. And it would be great if everyone’s doing the same thing, singing the same praises, and having a good time together.

But they’re not.

There’s no revolution. No great ideas. No great destination. No news. Nothing. People talk about what’s on telly. The Olympics. Michael Phelps. Or games they’ve been playing. Or movies they’ve been watching. They go to the same places to eat. They talk about the same jobs they’ve been having. They mull over stuff they don’t have. And I wouldn’t be able to prove them wrong. That’s just life.

But you know, it really makes me feel out of place. And I hate that. Because I’m not like that at all.

The reason why I hate it is because I want to feel a sense of belonging. I want to share something in common with someone else. I want to really have something to talk about. But I don’t. Nothing that comes out of my mouth makes much sense to other people around me. It only makes sense to me.

My decision to go to UK is a final attempt at finding out if I’m normal. Because I want to be normal. I don’t want to be the geek, or the outcast, or the “guru”, or the inspiring guy anymore. I just want to be normal. I want to just do my own thing, and not have to convince anyone that I’m right or wrong. And I don’t want to change myself to get there.

Maybe I’ll find it, maybe I won’t. But it’s worth an attempt, and it’s worth the story I get to tell my grandchildren.

I think you’re crazy… Just like me !, originally uploaded by Nas .

They say that learning isn’t like a ramp, but like a step. A leap of faith would be succinct, to put it another way. Because, to be honest, faith isn’t grown, it is learned.

Ever since I started work, something in me has radically departed its core, in search of bold new worlds that may have never existed before. Part of me always wanted to create something worthy. And I thought I could find that in an office.

As much as I tried, I never quite felt as accomplished, which explains why I end up taking too many side projects. I’ve learned to work too much with too many limitations, mostly monetary. A born innovator, I began to remove assumptions one by one…

Assumption: Don’t piss off the boss

Assumption: Don’t piss off your colleagues

Assumption: Don’t do stupid things

Assumption: I need to save face

Assumption: I’m mostly right

Assumption: I can’t afford expensive things

Each time I challenged an assumption, I gained a new learning curve. I learnt how to piss off the boss, how to piss off colleagues, how to do stupid things and get away with it, how to lose face and still manage to survive, how to stay mostly wrong but get to talk about it, and that Alfa Romeo.

Now, why doesn’t anyone tell me that the answers I really want come in the form of random sets of occurrences that come one after the other as though you were suddenly taken up into heaven and got to meet the Son of God himself, and then sent back down to begin life again.

I have a weird admission that it does happen only to people who avail themselves so much that the system cracks at one point in time. I think in physics this is called entropy, but I really don’t know much about it. Something about energy or the lack of it.

But anyway, I fulfilled two big parts of my being by convincing to someone that life really is worth living the way our gut says it should. I think people ignore too much of their gut. I think everyone’s gut isn’t a magic dice. It’s got a lot of potential, and it tells all sorts of things from what clothes to wear to what person we should date.

Sometimes, it tells us to keep going in one direction and never stop even though it may hurt sometimes. THAT’S the part of gut that I think people are avoiding.

I think a lot of people know what it’s like to chase something and get it and be utterly satisfied with the entire experience. I believe ultimately, chasing God has to become that pursuit. But I also believe people chase God in different ways.

Mostly, we all chase God through the purpose in life we believe we have been created to achieve. And I feel that God was the one who put that gut in us that tells us what that purpose is. It gets activated the moment we awaken to consciousness as a toddler, and it doesn’t stop chasing us until we breathe our last breath.

Now, the problem is that, because we already have the impression of chasing something that’s attainable and deeply fulfilling, we continue chasing things that are somewhat off-course, purely for the sake of the chase, instead of obeying our gut. This includes things like chocolate, the new M1 supercar, your very survival, and the fairy godmother.

Because, frankly, at times our gut can only point to things that are faraway and scary and intimidating, and it has no concept of manners or common sense. It just points to something big, and everything is beyond us.

I’ve been learning that my gut has always been right. I’ve screwed up trying to follow it, but my gut has been right all along. In fact, it doesn’t matter if I’ve screwed up or not. It doesn’t matter if I win big while doing it. All it matters is that I obey my gut, and live to tell the story of what happened while obeying it.

And I believe that’s what God placed us here on earth for, sometimes – to tell the story of how we followed our gut, messed up, made some wins, and survived the whole journey to the very end.

Somehow, that’s extremely satisfying, knowing that we have obeyed our gut. I do not know why.

ikea-sale-1, originally uploaded by offernutz.

It’s back again…!

Let’s hope they’re selling that Edefors cabinet at half price.

Oh well, I guess I can always use more photo frames.

Dad bought me a lovely Canon 400D body for my birthday recently (Thanks, Pa!).

I’ve been shooting quite randomly – at plates of sushi, ceiling lamps, people, friends. I really like it. It’s a lot more 21st century than the Nikon FM that I loaned from my dad years ago.

I’m still big on wide-angle, and hopefully I’ll get to save up for a nice L lens like the 17-40mm. The current kit lens is pretty good for starters. The colors aren’t so vibrant, and it’s not as quick – meaning I need to take more shots to get a good one.

I haven’t played with the aperture and shutter settings yet. ES and I will be planning a trip to do some outdoorsy shooting soon – together with SY, EK and MVO, hopefully… camera jocks themselves.

I’ll post some piccies when I have time to upload them. Anyone wanna sponsor me a Flickr pro account?

For some odd reason, emotion got the better half of me, and I decided to go buy the Bialetti Mukka Express Cappucino maker. I blogged about my initial discovery a few months ago, when I had dinner at Neroteca with LL.

It operates in the same fashion as Bialetti’s original Moka Express espresso maker invention by Alfonso Bialetti, back in 1933. The only difference is that this one makes cappuccino and latte, assuming the inclusion of milk (yum!) and frothing.

I’ve always wanted a stovetop espresso maker, but I’ve always refrained from it due to the fact that I already have a french press (two, in fact), and I’m not too expert about mixing espresso and milk and doing the frothing bit to get my lattes and cappuccinos.

The Mukka Express makes it dead simple. It has markings to tell you when to stop pouring water and milk, and you only need to fill enough coffee grounds to fit the filter reservoir. The rest of it boils down to choice of grounds, water quality, milk type, and heat.

My first cuppa tasted creamy and rich, which is the way I always like my coffee, but I failed to produce the froth. I think I didn’t press the pressure valve or something. A clean pressure valve also tends to guarantee proper production of milk froth.

The video on the website gives me some indication of what I should be aiming for. The best part is, the coffee improves with regular use.

I was expecting the price to be RM100ish, but the lady said they were selling it for RM260. I decided to buy it anyway, since I thought I’d be making coffee more regularly now. Oddly enough, it’s selling at USD89 on Bialetti’s website, so RM260 is quite a steal.

It’s going to be tough if you’re looking to get one from Neroteca, ‘cos I got the last one in stock. But the lady said they’ll bring more in the near future. She also said there were 3 sizes although there’s really only one. What the hey?

Update:

The trick to getting froth is to turn off the heat when you hear the “pop” sound from the frothing. Pour immediately.

I feel like I just entered a time warp into the future. Since a decade ago, I’ve been gradually ignoring pop culture to the point of now not ever watching a single episode of Heroes or Lost, not ever listening to Fly.FM or ever being in line to watch Transformers.

I’m now in an odd dilemma as I seem to think that getting a TV would be a good idea, despite all my comments about me not ever having or needing one.

The thing is, I never paid attention to the vast improvements in flatscreen TV technology, and I find myself absolutely lost walking around electronics shops lately. I have absolutely no clue whatsoever why a TV would cost RM7000 when TVs used to cost RM700, and what makes a difference between one TV and another of the same size.

Why are there plasma TVs and LCD TVs? Why does it make sense to label them as such? And all this talk about ratios and high definition is dizzying, and it gets more complicated when I need to think of whether I’m using it for terrestrial TV, hi-def TV, Astro TV, DVD, VCD, or PC… since it does seem to make a difference.

What I really want is a flat screen that’s about RM2k and is pluggable to a standard video out coming from a PC or preferably a Mac Mini and allows me to watch YouTube videos and playback my media using Front Row.

For some reason, I seem to understand LCD monitors. Not LCD TVs, mind you. An LCD monitor is like the photo at the top. It has a stand. It has an “on” button. It has some other buttons which do pretty standard stuff. And it has a plug that plugs into your standard PC video outlet.

Now, Dell has recently released a really nice one just like the one in the photo… except that it’s a little small. I know, you’re probably staring through a standard 19″ monitor reading this post right now and thinking 24″ would be absolutely gorgeous.

But that’s exactly the problem – it’s gorgeous for a workstation. I want to mount it on my living room wall.

Why they don’t make LCD monitors as large and pretty as LCD TVs, I don’t know. And I don’t know why they charge so much. I used to be able to sit down for hours reading articles on countless models of product X and Y, but now I just want not think so much.

As I begin to arrive at the big 3-0, I’m beginning to wonder if this is what life is going to be like after this point. You grow gray hair. You think less. You watch some telly. You meet some friends. Then you die at the end of it all.

It’s as if people who were left behind in the last decade were given an ultimatum to decide if they were going to play catch-up, or resign to a fate of societal numbness and aimless wandering in a sea of postmodern strangers.

Either that, or I could be ushering the end of TV decade… who knows, everyone in 2020 could all be having flatscreens plugged into mac minis watching user generated content all day.

We got our hands on a Nabaztag at the office – the original one, not the one with the belly button. It’s not as big as its larger-than-life on-screen persona. And it doesn’t offer much instant gratification at the touch of a button, as it really only streams content from the web.

It is still a very very cool toy to have, though. I should have picked the tag/tag up when I was in the UK. If I get it from PageOne in Singapore, it will cost me almost RM1000 for the tag/tag, and RM700 for the normal nabaztag. That’s RM300 more expensive than it should be.

LL mentioned before that she wouldn’t mind a rabbit in the apartment. I don’t think it fits with the building’s pet policy, so this might be an option. Maybe my fellow rabbit fan, MVO, might like it.

The best part about it is that it looks good, and it does random things like reading out messages, the air pollution index in France, traffic alerts in London, podcasts, storybook narrations, blinking colored lights along the way. It’s its own thing.

Everyone cheers it on. Then gets bored. Then cheers it on again.

Plus, there’s a public API that allows me to develop my own services. How about a last.fm feed? Or a daily take of my friend’s blog posts? Or an online recipe of the day, or one for each mealtime? Rabbit ear calisthenics?

I want one.

I’ve been toying around with an appleTV, which was acquired at my company recently for showcase demo purposes. It’s pretty slick, if you don’t think too hard – because you start to realize quickly that you can quickly reproduce a lot of functionality like that on a normal PC.

Hence my interest in getting an mac mini and converting it into a HTPC. That stuff’s all the rage, nowadays. I don’t have one. Simply because I don’t have a large plasma screen.

In fact, I don’t own a TV.

Most people are simply astounded by the fact that I don’t own a TV in my own apartment, and I don’t really want to have a TV. In fact, I’ll admit that I don’t even like watching TV, and that’s TV with cable and all the paid premium content.

I’m still convinced that in all its glory, there’s not enough TV programming to satisfy an entire nation, because simply put, the Internet just does it better.

I don’t particularly enjoy being fed information. I like it the other way round. I don’t like TV companies, advertisers, actors, producers, and other people who appear on programs in order to catch my attention, especially when I didn’t really ask for it.

Of course, there is occasional stuff that’s very novel and worth watching. But most stuff on TV is boring.

The great appeal of a HTPC is in choosing which content you really want to watch, when you want to watch it, in whatever way you want.

In fact, the other appeal of a HTPC is that it’s just there. Waiting. For you. All the time.

It doesn’t pretend to have content that it claims will ease your mind or satisfy your curiosity or tickle your consumer senses.

That’s also the reason why I don’t really want robots. I want plain dumb things that do their job really well. Like play a movie. Or make coffee. Or make wonderful sounds out of a tailpipe when I cruise down a freeway at 100mph.

A HTPC may just be the next best thing to a computer. Because it is a computer, and more. And that may just be the reason why I WOULD want to be a plasma TV.

Even though I said I wouldn’t want one.

If you know where Istana Hotel is, at the side of that hotel is a smallish main road that leads to Changkat Bukit Bintang. If you turn right on one of those small lanes (the one that takes you to No Black Tie), and just keep going straight, you’ll end up at the Somerset. Neroteca is just at the bottom.

It’s a longish cosy restaurant with a bar and tables that neatly sit 4 people. At along the walls of the restaurant are shelves of italian foodstuff and some coffee products.

We ordered the starter special for today, which was the bacon wrapped around cheese and some rocket salad (i think). That was a wee bit salty, but probably because of the bacon, but very good nonetheless.

The mains were barbecued pork ribs and another pasta special, which was some ear pasta (or pasta that looked like ear, according to the waiter) with pork, brocolli and lovely garlic (was it fried?).

I think overall the food was decent. The service was good. The coffee was savoury, and the ambience fit the mood for a light celebration. My wife and I were there for almost 2 hours, talking about… uh, stuff.

I was especially delighted with a cappucino coffee maker called the Bialetti Mukka Express, Bialetti being the brand. It’s a very cute stove-top espresso coffee maker that has those cow patterns. And it’s supposed to make quite good cappucino. It also does espresso and lattes too.

It’s selling in the US for USD89, but for some really odd reason, it’s selling at Neroteca for less. Maybe they’re used units. The new ones come with 2 years warranty. I seriously don’t mind getting one since a proper espresso machine will cost me 10 times more.

Anyway, I thank the Lord for tonite as it was a really wonderful evening. We went to see the new Eye On Malaysia, which is partially a disgrace in comparison with the London Eye. After that we drove around KL for a bit, and went home.

Wikipedia describes it as

a long, curved arm extending eight feet from the marble base which had to be moved “by two people inserting a broomstick through the hole in the base.”

The original model is manufactured in Italy by Flos lighting (for whom it was designed for). Its price tag is a cool USD$2,448.

You can get copies for much less, though. I’ve managed to find a few at a fraction of the cost, but still within the high hundreds.

The great thing about it is that it fits almost any living room, in any environment, at any time of day… even when it’s not switched on.

It’s inspiring, functional, and iconic.

“One of the classics of modern lighting design-and part of MoMA’s permanent collection”: link

I want one.