ZMM

It was my first day in India, I was walking though the underpass between Bangalore bus station and 'the other side'. The underpass was doubling as a little market at the time, with people sitting on the floor selling stuff. One of these 'stools' positioned next to the side wall was selling books, so as I usually do, I went to check them out. Amongst few that caught my attention was the little book with quite worn out pink cover and a funny title: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, Robert M Pirsig. Being only 100 Rupee ($4) it was a no brainier.

This book entertained me through thinking, questioning, remembering... learning. I enjoyed it, lovedIt...!


Ps: During Saba holiday, it was first Dan (nick name, not a typo) who surprised me when he said that he wanted to read the book; it took me only another month to finish it and I already promised to pass it on to Veki, otherwise I'd be happy to share. Later when Chiara sow it, she was like 'wow... this is my favorite book ever' (Chiara was 16 when she read the book - impressive). After I got to the end, I looked it up and, this time with no surprises, found that there is whole lot of info out there. If it looks like an interesting read (full text(or here)), I suggest you (fight of the temptation :) and go though it by starting with a 'blank sheet of paper' before you learn more about the book, idea, author, journey's route and photos from it. Also this Prof's review is worth while.

KISS

The temporary street mural says:
1. BREATHE DEEPLY
2. THINK POSITIVELY
3. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

Christchurch, 2004...!

uTube

I was thinking that sharing and grading home made videos would be a good idea, but never did I think of anything even close to the actual impact:

It was through students' heavy dependency on youTube to watch Taiwanese and Koran TV soap operas that I got inspired to look for NBA and F1 clips/news. This then led me to stumble upon some impressive clips: from one's desire to express opinions on social issues; via crazy phone experiment; to the feel good Free Hugs story. Wonderful...!

PS: C.C. Colton said that Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, thus guys at youTube/Google should take the news from Sony as a compliment.

Love Me!bourne

From MelbVisit 29M...

I used to say: like Melbourne a lot, love Zadar. Though after this last visit Melbourne's moved up a notch.

10 months removed from daily visits to the city, and all of a sudden the journey from Spencer St Station to Domain Rd, (went over to Vesna's work to pick up the car and the house key) was just like 'wow with the big grin on the face', thinking to myself: Melb didn't look this good for a reeeeaally long time, if ever... So vibrant, filled w/ personality ... (I know that one of the keys to happiness is to avoid comparison, but as Ray liked to say 'just a human')

It's amazing how the fresh perspective changes things. The city didn't change, but it's been for the first time in a long while that I walked those streets while actually observing things and noticing what's happening around, as though my specks have been cleaned.

The visit was short but sweet. Most days I was running around meeting with friends, just interrupting their daily routines with 'catch up' conversations, and then making it home for the dinner with the family.

tillNextT...!

Saba

From Saba, 16-28Mar07

...Sun's warmth on a skin, freshens of the ocean breeze in lungs, beautiful white sand between toes, surrounded by crystal clear waters that are filled with colorful corals and shit loads of all kind of sea creatures... from crazy little fish that bites, graceful turtles, to 'friendly' sharks n everything in between -> Sipadan...!

webBrowsing

I spend part of the day upgrading my Firefox browser. I heard bout it long time ago, and sparingly used it here and there, but it was only recently that it became my default browser - it's just way more stable then IE, I don't remember when was it that it crashed last.

Considering how much running I do on the web, it makes sense to take some time to fine tune the 'running gear' (better late then never). So after reading the article about the top add-ons for Firefox, I installed:
Gmail Manger, All-in-One Gestures, FoxyTunes, Answers, Session Manager, ChromaTabs, CoolirisPreviews and FireFoxShowcase.

I've first seen Björn use mouse gestures on Opera (if I remember correctly) last year. He was exited by them, and I must say that I second that as they considerably speed up the navigation though pages/windows/tabs.

Customised search engine tool bar with Google, wikpieda, YouTube and Amazon is just great.

ChromaTabs is simple and useful.

CoolirisPreview is quite sweet, and so far (few days) I didn't get much use from FireFoxShowcase nor Session Manager.

Answers works similarly to wordWeb, though it has more info and it can tell you about many phrases. But before all applications end up on as web services, I'll still need wordWeb as it runs on any application, and also it's much quicker.

FoxyTunes is not much different to having windows media player in a 'mini mode'. I thought it would play streams from Digitally Imported without a need to open a music player. Though it will eventually work as a music aggregator of sort.


Ps: there is the spell check w/in Firefox - priceless (for me :)


April 25

Update after using the customized browser for two weeks; in order of appreciation:

1. search engine text-box w/ custom drop-down list of search engines (Google, Wikipedia, youTube, Amazon)
1b. mouse gestures
3. Session Manager - save everything that you have currently opened to continue next time. It also works in case the browser crashes.
4. ChromaTabs.
-the others: not so much.

Dude, WTF is my passport

It's 29th March, 21:00h; one and a half hours before the flight to Melbourne is scheduled to depart. I left Melbourne on the 15th of July last year, so I'm looking forward to the first visit, though not nearly as much as my Mum is - apparently to her it seems like it's been 7 years since I left. I'm all packed and ready to leave the apartment, taxi has given me a call and is now waiting in front of the lobby. Before exiting, I do the last, formality like, check for the three essentials: money, passport and ticket.
Money: wallet is in the pocket - check.
Passport: looking into the school bag's pocket where I usually put it when travelling - not there. Whoops, ok sometimes I put it into this pocket here as well, hmmm... not there either. Check the next pocket, and next, and still nothing... Well I'm VERY sure I've put the passport into the plastic wallet, the one travel agents give you when they issue a ticket, together with the ticket, and then all together, into the school bag.
Ticket: for most of the day it was on the, now overfilled with stuff, table - it's not there anymore.
So the back tracking begins. David and I must of looked everywhere - at least twice! I even unpacked the things Vesna packed after the Thailand trip and left for me to bring over. There was no logical sense for the passport to be in that bag, but the logic has left the building quite a while ago now.
At first it was funny... sure ha ha ha, dude where wtf is my passport. But after we covered all of the apartment - I looked into the fridge, closets, n many drawers that I don't even use - in some 15 min or so I started feeling the despair, and then anger, and then after some yelling flipped the table. I lost it... it wasn't really bad losing type, I was aware of my actions, and yet choose to do so (picked this expression from Vesna, who was 'choosing to' smoke while on the holiday - in that respect she's still on the holdiay :). No, that acting out didn't make me feel any better, actually quite the opposite. Note for a next time: (try hard/er to) just keep laughing!

The fact that I arrived back from two week long Sabah adventure just the night before, and was quite tired the whole day, yet I was still running around and trying to do quite a number of things that I should have just rescheduled after the Melbourne trip, was not helping. And of course, the taste of missing the flight just a month ago was still quite fresh.

Well after a while, there I was, calmly sitting on the floor of the apartment that looked as though it was just broke in by the robbers who were looking for that one gem. I gave up on the passport fight and on catching the flight. And then, somehow, the image of the little bag appeared between the ears. The little bag I recently bought for packing the few things I take when walking around a holiday destination. It occurred to me that I haven't looked into it. I immediately remembered that I've packet it into the secondary big pocket of the school bag. And there it was, the plastic wallet, with the passport and ticket inside, nicely packed next to the little bag inside the school bag, where I thought it should've been all along.

Where would the entertainment be without our stupidity...

Taxi driver waited for half an hour in front of the lobby. He got me to the airport in 30 minutes but dropped me off at the wrong terminal (Note: Qantas at Changi is on Terminal 1). At info desk they told me they cannot do anything for me, I just have to catch the sky-train to the other terminal and report to the check-in desk. After some screaming and backpack kicking across the nicely polished airport floor (yep, briefly lost it again), lots of running and almost leaving behind Vesna's suit before boarding the sky-train. I finally managed to check-in at 22:15, 15 minutes before the departure. Budget airlines, Tiger and AirAsia, have the strict policy of check-in no later then 45min before departure, to my surprise Qantas didn't say/ask anything -> Lucky...!