It was a very funny session. Last Thursday, 2 people came and check the phoneline. They then called the Streamyx tech who came to the house and all 3 started quarrelling. Or so says my granny as they didn’t tell me that they were going on that day.

So, last Saturday, the Streamyx tech came by and explained to me the situation. Ruling out the issue of my PC and modem having problems, it was finally the phone line that had problems.

Problem 1 : My house wiring system
The way the existing phone line was connected, one of the connections outside the house got damaged during heavy rains. In fact, the Telekom contractor wasn’t even suppose to have split the line in such a way that the split connection point is outside the house. So, Streamyx Tech Office (Kuching) has help to arrange for a telephone contractor to come and rewire the house. This will cost me about RM50++ to do the entire wiring works.

Problem 2 : Telephone system in the old Tabuan Jaya phases
This one is not easily solved and it falls on Telekom on whether they want to upgrade the telephone system in the older parts of Tabuan Jaya. Because the phone exchange and system is more than 20 years old, many of the wiring works have weaken such that the Streamyx signal will not be strong. My account had to be downgraded from 1MB to 512kb. It was downgraded last Thursday and there was definitely a noticeable improvement to the line i.e. I didn’t have frequent disconnections. I live in one of the older Tabuan Jaya areas (Phase I or II, I think) so if you’re also getting frequent disconnections, it’s a good idea to downgrade it. So, I save about RM20 a month. According to the tech, once the system is improve, Streamyx will contact me on whether I want to upgrade the package or not but only if the lines have improved a lot to the point it runs a lot better than now.

Plus Note
Because my ZTE modem is one of the older modems, apparently it’s more stable. Phew! That was the only plus point for that day. The newer ZTE modems are apparently less stable and more problematic. And to think I was thinking of changing my ADSL modem to another brand. I wonder if it had to do with the firmware being from DLink. According to Mr. Wong who help to troubleshoot my modem, the firmware interface is exactly like DLink except for the name of the company on top.

Looks like it’s going to be a terrible month. The past one month has been a stressful month where it’s impossible to stay connected onto Streamyx for more than 5 min during peak hours and about 1 hr during off-peak hours.

And TMNet has just recently changed their website. They also sneakily took down their Announcement page which use to be full of notices of technical problems. Now, it’s no longer there so you’re never going to know whether it’s your computer or a Streamyx problem.

It’s gotten to the point where I have to put up a firewall just to play games and even surf the net. And usually I don’t.

There was a problem with some connection problems in Taman Tun a few weeks ago. Presumably, all the residents there are calling up the Helpdesk for help. Sigh. And so, the phoneline is always engaged so there’s not much that can be done on my side.

I wish the Kuching team that handles Streamyx can find out what the heck is going on because it’s getting extremely tiring having to pay RM88 per month for a lousy connection and poor service.

Football + Chocolate = RM119 box of TV snacks

Taken at SENSO, Hilton Kuching.

Currently weight loss up till today is 8.71 kg. That’s in a period of 3 months. Yeah, I know, it’s slow. The 1st month, I cheated too much in Miri so weight loss wasn’t that great. Too many family dinners!

But now, am back on track. I’m actually taking a meal supplement because it’s harder now to lose weight with cutting down on meals and not getting enough nutrients. Yeah, it’s tough work but on the bright side, I’m losing. Steadily.

And suddenly, reaching my ideal weight suddenly seems a lot faster. Phew!

One of the reasons why I decided to go on a diet program is that I have 2 mothers who are forever reminding me that I’m suppose to lose weight. Ok, now I am. :p Hee hee! It’s also ironic that the roles are reverse now and I’m sometimes reminding them to lose weight as well. Haha! Putting on weight easily runs in the family.

I have just finish reading a piece of essay forwarded by a friend from KL. Apparently, this was the winning entry of the 15-18 year old category for the Commonwealth Essay Competition. It was written by a young Singaporean girl who wanted to “Through my story, I attempted to convey the unique East-versus-West struggles and generation gaps that I felt were characteristic of young people in my country”.

It was a good story but with a terrible ending. It wasn’t the fact that the daughter is neglecting her mother. The bigger picture was that as I grow up, I see the same repeated story theme over and over again. There’s this big arguments between Eastern and Western values. If you remove the words “East” and “West”, you start to notice that it’s really not that different in other parts of the world. It’s more of a generation gap than anything else. And frankly, I’m bored of these kind of story themes.

Sure, stories like this makes big bucks. Sells books. Gets a lot of sympathy. At the end of the day, this theme starts to wear off pretty quickly. I don’t know about you lot out there but I have enough worries about living my own life that I don’t need to be influence by stories of dysfunctional relationships.

I’m also a person who prefers happy endings as well as having to live a life with as less hassle as possible. And that means being more patient with my Granny, other grannies, parents and relatives. It’s giving and taking but I do try not to think about it too much. If it’s not too much to ask for, then I’m fine with it. If not, then it’s time to reason with them.

Yes, it’s an unpopular trend to be happy and to not be interested in dysfunctional-relationship-stories that I’m following. Heck, it’s my own life and I’m enjoying it as much as I can.

Don’t you think that a lot of people these days are more fearful of happiness and contentment because it involves being honest, truthful, patient and actually having to forgive someone?

Think about it.

I’m always trying out new features to put on the web. This time is another experiment, similar to my Frappr one. Only this time, it get’s a bit more interesting.

I’ve been playing around a bit with Google Earth so I’m testing it out at the moment. I’m still not sure how it works and it looks like it’s manual updating of locations. Plus, you need to have Google Earth installed in your computer to view the locations. Check whether your PC requirements can handle it or not. A broadband connection is recommended because of the amount of data that passes through it.

Here are some downloads for you to view on your PC. Note that Google Earth needs to be installed first :

My Foodspot links. Only 2 at the moment while I’m still testing it out.
Kuching landmarks that are useful.

But, somehow, I get the feeling someone would put up a better one than I can. I get lazy after awhile or when the glamour has worn off. Ah well.