In Google Calendar:
Sarawak Government School Session
Sarawak Public Holidays

Question: How many Mirians does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer:

• 139,200 will be in an isolated place without any Internet connection to take notice of this.
• 200 will quickly make a posting in MiriCommunity.net Feedback For Our Miri City forum in hoping for an answer.
• 1,000 will mistakenly post the same question in the Classifieds forum.
• 100 will have their posting removed because didn’t read for any existing topic with the same content.
• 500 will be hijacking other topics to ask the same question.
• 50,000 will be too busy queuing up to buy lottery to take notice of this.
• 10,000 will be caught in jams at Pujut Roundabout while trying to read the progress of bulb change using their mobile phone.
• 2,345 will be slowly driving their car on the right lane of the 2-way highway while thinking about this question.
• 20,000 will be slowing down their cars just to see an accident by the roadside in hoping to spot the car plate number for today’s lottery.
• 6,000 in the oil & gas industry will be working offshore and surfing to MiriCommunity.net observing the same topic being asked over and over again with no serious answers.
• 1,000 will start and rev their heavily modded cars with all the bells & whistles just to switch on the headlights to assist with the light bulb change somewhere.
• 200 will close their browsers and turn on their online game to kill time while waiting for someone else to do the job.
• 345 will stand close to take multiple pictures of the light bulb in macro mode in the dark and use Photoshop to adjust the brightness later.
• 200 will take pictures of the light bulb 1 kilometer away using their DSLR equipped with telescoping lens and thinking how much closer they could have zoomed-in if they have spent a little bit more on a better telescoping lens.
• 500 will be getting hungry just by the thought of the task, and look-up MakanManiacs.com to find which other restaurant they haven’t tried yet.
• 40 will be hungry too but pretending to ask on behalf of their friends what restaurant is new in town.
• 700 will take the opportunity to ask why is the seahorse the mascot of Miri after spending too much time in the crawling jam from the North to the South of Miri everyday.
• 15,000 will realize that the pink flowers by the road side are called Periwinkle when their 4WD ran over them while overtaking cars using the shoulder of the road in heavy jam caused by either JPJ or Traffic Police.
• 5,430 will pick up their mobile phone and call someone to ask about the procedure to change light bulb while taking notice that it has past 1 month and time to change a new phone.
• 50 will be asking those jogging beside them at Taman Bulatan, Taman Awam, or along Piasau Camp which type of energy saving bulb should they use instead because of the high electricity bills they are getting.
• 200 will be making Classifieds posting in MiriCommunity.net to sell cheap energy saving bulbs from China.
• 400 will take the opportunity to go out and gather with Mat Rempit at Lutong Airstrip to release stress from the question.
• 100 will be thinking whether there are energy saving lamps/LEDs for their RC cars, helicopters, and airplanes.
• 20 will be registering in miricom using blub related usernames, and create referral links to tell people to make money online.
• 2,000 will be complaining that Streamyx sucks as well as the blown bulb, but still not dare to potong.
• 300 will be wondering whether the bulb could have caused their Celcom Broadband line to drop.
• 500 will be complaining & agreeing with each other in miricom that the light bulb needs changing.
• 20 will make a project out of this to change out all light bulbs in Miri and silently release for favorite contractors to tender.
• 50 will be talking to local news reporters on how they have planned this great project for them to publish in the newspapers tomorrow.
• 2,000 will be speculating that changing the light bulb is a conspiracy theory orchestrated by some powerful people to divert attention from the troubles in the jungle.
• 700 will be displaying old & used parking coupons when they park their cars to buy light bulb.
• 50 will be practicing their negotiating skills with the authorities when caught without their safety belt on while speeding to get the light bulb changed.
• 200 will be chatting in old coffee shops about this issue.
• 400 will be eavesdropping in old coffee shops and start telling others that they themselves have changed the light bulb.
• 20,000 will be flocking to newly opened franchise restaurants and complain that they can change the light bulb faster than the waiter can serve.
• 1,000 will be seen exercising in gym or go out cycling to get into shape so they could climb the ladder in full grace.
• 4,000 will be inviting those tired of planning the task a quick getaway to local disco & kareoke bars before coming back and then forget to change the light bulb.
• 900 will be trying to convince expats that changing a light bulb is much more interesting than solving the mystery of asking a local girl out for a date.
• 300 will be thinking that the government could have done a better job to ensure that we don’t need to be changing light bulbs.
• 450 will still be telling people in West Malaysia that our tree house still needs to have the eco-friendly light bulbs changed.
• 12,000 will be complaining that their salary is low and they have to work on Saturdays so they need a break from all of this.
• 50,000 will be switching on their c-band parabolic dish to watch free TV channels instead.
• 3,000 will be talking about this over a mahjong/cards/holo table trying to take their minds off their losing streak.
• 8,000 will be taking their partner/family to shopping malls looking for a light bulb in the wrong section, and rummaging through their deck of cards to find the correct member card when paying.
• 50 will be asking for refund on the faulty bulb, but to find out in the end that there is no such thing as refund here in Miri.
• 100 will either be blaming the council for lack of care or the people for vandalism of lamps in this resort city.
• 5,000 will be setting up a makeshift platform for the blub change because they were once a crew on platforms or rigs in the oil & gas industry.
• 2,000 will be assessing the safety aspect of the job because there are not enough HSE jobs in Miri.
• 2 will be holding the step-ladder while staring at their mobile phone to SMS/MMS/Camwhore.
• 1 will be standing on the ladder changing the bulb because it is worth the risk after borrowing a huge sum of money from ah longs, or their girlfriends/boyfriends have dumped them, or they are caught on camera with China Dolls, or they are in a notorious video currently circulating in the Internet or mobile phones.

Disclaimer: This is just a joke from my own limited observation. No harm intended in case you choked or get offended.

As I walked into the room where they told me Ryna would be, there she was on the bed – with a smile beaming across the room and literally lit up the place as she holds Baby Ash in her arms. I don’t know how to express this in words but it’s exactly as what they said – a very uplifting and great feeling to be a daddy.

Day 1: A bundle of joy with a baby tag.

Day 1: Ryna’s gaze of fascination daze.

As I sat on the side of the bed with both Ryna and Baby Ash, it was as if all the worries and problems in the world ceased to exist. All that matters the most is the little fragile angel resting in our arms. With the hard part over marking the closure of the only-me-and-you-in-this-small-family, it is time to take a quick and much needed rest before we tackle the next stage in life together – parenthood.

Day 2: It wasn’t a dream after all.

Day 2: Baby Ash in sleeping mode.

Day 3: Inik giving Baby Ash her first bath at home.

Day 4: Photo theraphy for minor Jaundice – no, it’s not about working on Baby Ash’s tan.

Day 4: The “tanning booth”.

Day 5: Baby Ash taking a break from photo theraphy and without the eye-protectors.

Day 10: My girls gets discharged from Hospital.

Day 10: Baby Ash back at home again.

Day 15: A visit by Poh-Poh and Er-Ku.

Day 16: Baby Ash learning new sleeping position.

Day 16: Er-Ku, Poh-Poh, Ta-Ku came for a visit.

After days of unending hectic, it was great to finally get some rest in the night and waking up the following morning in anticipation of doing it all over again until the new parenthood rhythm sets in and we learn to optimize each tasks to make each available minutes count so we could steal some quiet moments with Baby Ash.

Problem: Important electronic documents were everywhere in the adopted & managed communication methods – email attachments, thumbdrive, portable HDD, CDs, DVDs, and sometimes in file transfer via IM.  Hardcopy documents (e.g. test certificates, class approved drawings, equipment manuals, design specifications, etc) were either neatly organized and stored in a central library, or lost in someone’s cubicle.  Besides that, there are the revised documents that needs to be tracked, controlled, and issued on a timely manner in order to meet progress milestones.

Solution: A simple webserver (XAMPP) running on a Windows XP Professional box, a free & open source wiki (Mediawiki), a wiki administrator & a couple of trained staffs in the document control department, a dedicated and official email address to receive these electronic documents, the design team ensures these documents are checked before passing it onto the wiki administrator, and a simple procedural rule:  that anything on the wiki is the approved and the latest.

Result: A streamlined central repository where the Management, Project and Design Team of the public listed Sealink International Berhad were able to boost efficiency all the while creating more headroom for productivity.

Here are some screen captures of the SealinkWiki (the document controlling system) which I’ve cracked my head for months before it became the backbone of the engineering team:

Project References:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Sites_using_MediaWiki/corporate

In 1998, I was 18 years old and studying in Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT) college in Kuala Lumpur.  At that time, I just got myself a new desktop PC running on a Pentium 2 with a Creative Riva TNT 3D display card, a new Jaring dial-up account, and was financially broke the whole time.  My level of exposure to online chatting/discussion was mainly confined to emails, Instant Relay Chat (IRC) and ICQ (an instant messaging provider).  A friendly roommate of mine by the name of Ah Phang from Ipoh introduced to me the popular Malaysian online newsgroups (e.g. tmnet.communities, etc) that ran on the NNTP protocol and we had to either use newsgroup reader client application or via certain newsgroup websites to access it.  I was plainly using Outlook Express at that time to get my daily dosage of local jokes, news, how-tos, directions, etc. from the local newsgroups.  It was from my exposure to such old technology that got me thinking “What if there was something like this specifically for my hometown Miri?”.  Well, I tried searching around for anything that resembles a bulletin board, forum or newsgroups about Miri.  But alas, all I’ve found are broken and/or unmaintained websites about Miri as a tourist destination.  Heck, I can’t even find anything useful about Miri when searching for it in Yahoo (yes, Google was not famous as a search engine that time).

With such findings, I went on to assess the probability of setting up one system for Miri.  But the system setup design hit a wall when the cost of hosting a server on a reasonably fast internet line was too much to be feasible at that time – there was ISDN but no cable modem, DSL, or WiFi Broadband during those days in Malaysia for an average subscriber.  In addition to that, hosting and setting up a server to run on the most economic dial-up connection proves to be a joke as well because everything will come to a crawl as it passes through the dial-up connection bottleneck.  And so, I had to shelf the idea until there is some improvements and changes to the local Internet Service Providers (ISP).

Then sometime in 2003 when I was working for Meridian Surveys (M) Sdn Bhd (ironically I got the job by applying it from a newsgroup posting), I realized there was a missing piece amidst the modern communication technologies (e.g. emails, instant messaging, VIOP, electronic documents, satellite communications, etc.) adopted by this technologically advanced company.  Under the close supervision of Mr. David Baker (the lead system engineer & developer), I have been inspired to find a way to capture technical information and have it centralized and available to employees all around the world.  It was then, I had a first try with setting up a production & live webserver using PHPBB – a famous open source online forum system.  Creatively utilizing a forum system to capture and document technical information by various employees, it was proven to be a successful project in terms of structuring data and turning it into useful information.

Being the only admin for the PHPBB forum in Meridian Surveys, the knowledge gained was the only missing piece as to what system the Miri Community Network will be using.  During those days, Streamyx was starting with its nationwide rollout (TMnet’s affordable broadband package).  And with that, it got me to start thinking about my old projects which are still left on the shelf.  Looking back at where I left off for the Miri Community Network project, my first instinct was to resume finding a domain name.  Without a proper name, it will become an issue later when it comes to ownership and branding.  So, without thinking much, I went to look-up domain names: miri.com, miri.net, miri.org, miri.info, etc.  All were taken.  The following are emails both Ryna and I wrote to owners of the domains listed above attempting to buy from them:

——– Original Message ——–
Subject:     Re: Miri.net
Date:     Thu, 12 Feb 2004 13:32:50 +0800
From:     <mike@miri.net>
To:     Jackson Liaw <me@Jacksonliaw.com>
References:     <402AC1DA.26470.267F8C6@localhost>

Hi Jackson

Our community site was created in the response to the call of tourism and
getting the general Miri information to the public at large. We were suppose
to revamp the site, but things are bz at the moment.

We sort of gathered some info and uploaded the site that you are seeing now.
So its kind of a quickie thing.

If you are interested to participate in the program as a free service to us,
cause its a community web by all means let us know what u can contribute.

Kind regards

Mike

P/s Cool personal website u have there.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Jackson Liaw” <me@Jacksonliaw.com>
To: <info@miri.net>
Sent: 11 February, 2004 11:59 PM
Subject: Miri.net

> Dear Sir,
>
> I am from Miri and I have an interest in further improving the Miri
> Community online bulletin board.  Could you please acknowledge my
> mail and allow me to further elaborate my free service?  Thanks in
> advance.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Jackson Liaw

—– Original Message —–
Date sent:          Wed, 18 Jun 2003 13:30:47 +0900 (KST)
From:               G  Hwang <hgtae@dreamwiz.com>
Subject:            Re:Miri.com
To:                 ryna@skinned.com
Organization:

Dear Ryna,

Thanks for your interest in miri.com.
I am willing to transfer this domain name to you if you suggest a
resionable price.
How about the price of US $12,000? Please let me know.

Best regards,
Hwang

>—– Original Message —–
>From: ryna@skinned.com
>To: hgtae@nate.com, hgtae@dreamwiz.com
>Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 10:52:15 +0800
>Subject: Miri.com
>
>Greeting Sir,
>
>I`m Ryna from Skinned Studio, I am interest to know more regarding
>Miri.com that are now sell out. I wish to know the offer price for
>miri.com domain name and I wish to know in more details.
>
>Kindly please let me know as soon as possible, thank you .
>
>Best regards,
>Ryna

——– Original Message ——–
Subject:     (Fwd) Re: Miri.info
Date:     Wed, 11 Feb 2004 23:44:33 +0800
From:     Jackson Liaw <me@Jacksonliaw.com>
To:     pdann@miri.com.au

Greetings Paul,

I wonder if you are still keen in selling the Miri.info domain?
Please let me know.  Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Jackson Liaw

——- Forwarded message follows ——-
From:               Jackson Liaw <me@Jacksonliaw.com>
To:                 “Paul Dann” <pdann@miri.com.au>
Subject:            Re: Miri.info
Copies to:          ryna@skinned.com
Date sent:          Tue, 13 May 2003 23:38:38 +0800

Greetings Paul,

Thanks for answering my previous mail.  My allowable budget for this
domain (Miri.info) ranges from USD 30 to USD 50 depending on it’s
remaining balance of subscription.  I really hope we can come to an
agreement for this deal.  Please think it over and reply to me soon.

Cheers,

Jackson Liaw

On 13 May 2003 at 16:27, Paul Dann wrote:
> Jackson
>             My apologies for the delay in reply but I have been
> overseas and your enquiry has been left on my PC.  If you are still
> interested in Miri.info we may be willing to part with it so please
> advise your offer if you still have an interest.   Best regards -
> Paul Dann
——- End of forwarded message ——-

After the unfruitful attempt to acquire the simplest form of relevant domain name, I was faced with another problem: Streamyx broadband rollout was still not widely adopted nationwide due to various problems (e.g. not enough DSLAM ports, flaky copper lines, poor support, inexperienced technicians, etc).  With that, I decided to shelf the Miri Community Network plan yet again until broadband has reached many household with stability, and the owners above forget to renew their domain names.

December 2005.  1.5 years after resigning as Technical Manager from Meridian Surveys.  Had been working on various projects as a freelance system developer.  At that time, Ryna and I both went back to Miri for a month-long holiday and preparing for our marriage registration.  I remember one late night I was laying on the floor in Mark’s bedroom (Ryna’s brother).  Everyone else was asleep, and I was cracking my head in the dark finalizing on which domain name to purchase for Miri Community Network: MiriPeople.net, MiriKommies.net, OurMiri.net, Mirians.net, iMiri.net, etc.  I recall having the urgency & desire to accomplish and realized a dream for my chosen field of specialization before I turn to a new chapter in my personal life: marriage.  That night, I remember sleeping with a smile on my face when I decided on MiriCommunity.net as the domain name of the Miri Community Network projects.

31st December 2005.  My freelancing paycheck was delayed and went broke because of the spendings during the holidays back in Miri.  That New Years Eve I was at my parent’s place fixing up the green house at the backyard and consciously reminded about quickly paying for the new domain name which I’ve booked before my big day on 11th January 2006.  It was then, I walked up to my mum feeling ashamed of the untimely paycheck, and I asked for her to lend me some money to pay for the invoice to register for my new Miri Community Network project.  She couldn’t understand and grasp the concept of the project when I explained because the details of the project itself is unheard of for a regular email and casual web surfing users.  In the end, like every loving mothers, she did me the favor and helped to deposit the payment to Integricity.com (the appointed web hosting provider till 2007).

4th January 2006.  Back in Mark’s bedroom at night, I sat on the floor with the network cable plugged into my notebook and read the confirmation email from Integricity.com stating that the hosting account is ready.  Without hesitating, I quickly installed the PHPBB forum application on the new hosting account and registered my MiriCommunity.net admin user account.

14th January 2006.  3 days after our marriage registeration in Miri, we were already back in KL and started to get comfortable with the new relationship status.  I received a call from my dad asking to meet at Sungei Wang Plaza.  He has a gift for me.  When we met there, he asked for me to pick a notebook as we all stood outside the Fujitsu shop.  Well, he knew I liked Fujitsu P-Series notebooks because my previous P1030 model was bought when I went to Singapore with him sometime in 2001.  And so, as the proud owner of a new P7010, it gave me the much needed power to progress the Miri Community Network project.

15th January 2006.  At this stage of MiriCommunity.net in production mode, I was ready to elevate the project to the next phase despite having me as the only registered member so far.  There is an obvious need for a registered business entity to act as the business operative arm for this huge piece of intellectual property which I’ve created because Malaysia’s copyright acts have somewhat matured at the beginning of this decade.  And so, I sat in my home office listing down the potential general business directions that needs a registered business front in order to proof legitimacy in the competitive business world.  When that list was done, a permanent mental note was made, and the document was kept away (yes, trade secrets are real if you haven’t heard of it by now).

20th January 2006.  After a few days of pondering and deciding on prospective business partner for the business operative arm, I must say it was a hard because many have not heard or even ventured into such form of business.  Feeling a little let down from rejections, I turned to look for friends that suit the profile of an outgoing person and have tasted the life of a freelancer.  One prominent name came up, and I can still remember the phone conversation we had:

Jack: “Tauke, free to meet today?”

Ryabren: “Am a little bit busy today.  What’s this about?”

Jack: “Got a nice business proposal for you.”

Ryabren: “We can meet this afternoon around 5pm at AmpWalk when I go pickup my darling from work.”

Jack: “Ok, Ryna and I will be there.”

27th March 2006.  After much meetings and discussions on the roadmap of the Miri Community Network project, we finally registered a business partnership as the business arm of the project.

31st March 2006.  Finally, the name “Miri Community Net” for the business partnership certificate is received and ready for some real action.  A BBQ dinner was held at my place to commemorate this event.

The application works flawlessly in terms of exporting the model to a .KMZ file, or directly into Google Earth (you have to make sure it is running first). I’m hoping to see in near future we can export the models created in Google SketchUp into other formats outside of the Google’s realm. Anyway, you can also directly save a screen capture of the current view for quick distribution:

Now comes the fun part: When you’re done creating your 3D models, export it into Google Earth and/or share it with the world!

For your info, you can also use Google SketchUp to model things other than building or structures. You may take a look at the Google’s 3D Warehouse community site to see how others are modelling their imaginations.

All you need to do is to register yourself an account, select which tools you want on your toolbar, you will have it installed and running on your browser within 5 minutes. The tools offered ranges from various famous search engines, RSS news ticker, quick URL links to your favourite sites, email checker, RSS reader, online radio player with your choice of stations, web chatting interface, weather forecast for your location, pop-up blocker, and many more. They even have a customizing area for webmasters to write their own tools.

Besides just creating your own toolbar, they have also have free banners for you to advertise your own toolbar!

Their support forum is very helpful and lots of people have published their own codes for additional features such as Page Rank detection from Google, Traffic Rank from Alexa, and many more. Once you’ve done creating your toolbar, you’ll be given a free permanent link to download your toolbar from – you can even place that link on your website to market your toolbar to other web surfers encouraging them to download and install your toolbar.

So if you’re a webmaster and want to improve your blog/forum/website/portal, a custom toolbar would certainly help to bring back your loyal readers and improve your virtual community.