Posts

Posted on

Civilization 4

I was tired yesterday and wanted to rejuvenate when I did the mistake of installing Civilization 4 on my notebook. The game totally sucked away my waking hours like a succubus on heat.

What’s different about the game when compared to the previous version is that it has a new concept called “Religion”. Civs can now start a religion and spread them beyond your boundaries. Civs with same religion tends to be more amiable to each other but be careful of overzealous neighbours who will preach to you about your sinful ways.

Another cool thing is that one can run for Secretary General of the UN and set resolutions to be voted on. This allows one to push through resolutions like Nuclear Non-Proliferation (after one has build a HUGE stockpile, hehehe…).

The game that I played last night was relatively a short one (2 hours 59 minutes) when compared to a typical Civ 3 game (which typically takes 4-6 hours). Overall, I was friendly to my neighbours (not a single battle was waged) but the ending was quite tedious as it was a race to space between my Civ and another Civ.

In the end, I proved myself to be the better megalomaniac than the computer.

Posted on

Nigerian Scam with a Sino-Anglo Twist?

I’ve received an interesting e-mail today about a lawyer who had come across a sum of money and how my trustworthiness would entitle me a cut of these said monies. Normally, I would delete the mail but the thing that caught my attention was that instead of being an African despot’s (or the Baath Party of Iraq’s) treasure loot, it was an inherintance from a chinaman called Jimmy Wong.

The full letter reads:-


>From – Barrister Russel Wansfell
12 Campshill Road,
London United Kingdom.
Email – russel_wansfell001@yahoo.com

Dear Friend,

Please permit me to introduce myself to you, I am
Barrister Russel wansfell an american citizen and a
Legal Practitioner in London, United Kingdom. I got
your contact from the UK Chambers of Commerce and Trade,
and I have decided to contact you so that we can carry out this mutually beneficial business transaction.

My late Client Mr Jimmy Wong a chinese citizen,until
his death deposited a total of US$6.5M three years ago with Bank Of America( Rhodes Island)He was a Director with Shell Petroleum Development Company in Gabon,Western Africa.

Since I am the personal attorney of Mr.Jimmy Wong,he gave me the
custody of the deposit documents,and as such entrusted me with the Legal Rights to transfer and execute this deposit to any
Next of Kin after his demise. I have since tried to locate any of his relative to no avail.

hence I decided to contact you so that you can rightfully stand as the next of kin to inherit the deposited sum of US$6.5M

This is a staggering sum,and I need a reliable person to help me with necessary arrangements to transfer the deposited sum from ank Of America( Rhodes Island).By virtue of my position as an Attorney,I will arrange the documents in your name so that you can rightly apply as a Next of Kin to Late Jimmy Wong in a capacity of a Family Friend.

You will be entitled to 40% of the total sum if you will be willing to assist me in this business transaction, and I will get the remaining 60%. I will prepare a formal agreement to guide us in this transaction for accountability purpose.

Please contact me as soon as possible so that we can start processing the documents.for security reasons,contact me through
(russel_wansfell001@yahoo.com )

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours truly,

Russel wansfell (Legal Practitioner)
12 Campshill Road,
London United Kingdom.

Now, we all know that this is a scam from the tell-tale template misspelled strings like “Bank of America ( Rhode Island)” and “Russel wansfell” appears twice in the body text.

I did a Google and found that before Mr. (sic) Russel (sic) wansfell changed his name from Mr. Charles Lambert, he was serving another client who was also a Director of the said company in Africa:-


Dear sir,

Please permit me to introduce myself to you, I am
Barrister Charles Lambert, a Legal Practitioner in
London, United Kingdom. I got your contact from the UK
Chambers of Commerce and Trade, and I have decided to
contact you so that we can carry out this mutually
beneficial business transaction.

My late Client Mr Harold Wilson an American, until his
death deposited a total of US$5.5M three years ago
with Barclays Bank London, United Kingdom. He was a
Director with Shell Petroleum Development Company in
Gabon, Western Africa.

Since I am the personal attorney of Mr. Harold Wilson,
he gave me the custody of the deposit documents, and
as such entrusted me with the Legal Rights to transfer
and execute this deposit to any Next of Kin after his
demise. I have since tried to locate any Next of Kin
to Harold Wilson without success, hence I decided to
contact you so that you can rightfully stand as the
next of kin to inherit the deposited sum.

This is a staggering sum, and I need a reliable person
to help me with necessary arrangements to transfer the
deposited sum out of the United Kingdom. By virtue of
my position as an Attorney, I will arrange the
documents in your name so that you can rightly apply
as a Next of Kin to Late Harold Wilson in a capacity
of a Family Friend.

You will be entitled to 40% of the total sum should
you be willing to assist me in this business
transaction, and I will get the remaining 60%. I will
prepare a formal agreement to guide us in this
transaction for accountability purpose.

Please contact me as soon as possible so that we can
start processing the documents.
[charles_lambert@linuxmail.org]

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours truly,

CHARLES LAMBERT (Legal Practitioners)
12 Campshill Road,
London United Kingdom

Just for kicks, I’ll reply this and see how far the scamming goes 😉

Posted on

Updates, updates, updates

I’ve been silent all these weeks not because I am lazy (okay, maybe a little) but because I’ve joined a new company and suddenly, my life has been injected back into the fast track.

I’m now working in the Segment Marketing team of a telecommunications company and I’ve been extremely busy in the past couple of months. Okay, some of you may be thinking that this is a downgrade but well, life goes on I guess.

The decision to work for a company didn’t come easily. I’ve been running my own one-man show consultancy and was quite comfortable with the relatively abundant quality time that I get. So what made me go back to work for someone?

The reason is….I needed the security of a 9-to-5 job. Yes, Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore.

Ever since I met Cheryl, I had this unexplained desire to provide the best for her and I couldn’t have anything as unstable as a freelance career, regardless of how many hours I get to spend watching “The West Wing” or playing “Gran Turismo 4” or read Salman Rushdie or tweak with audiophile system or upgrade my system to the latest version of Mac OS X.

In that respect, I surprised even myself in the way how my mind works. Perhaps this is what happens when one finds the right one to settle down with 🙂

So anyway, I was just writing about my job and it turned out to be very interesting. One thing that holds true in the mobile telecommunications company in Malaysia is the fact that it is hyper-competitive and one always have to be on one’s toes in order to get ahead of the other.

Being in marketing gave me the opportunity to witness first hand how certain decisions are made and the reasons behind such decisions. It gave me the perspective that I once lacked when commenting on the telecommunication industry. And so far, the ride has been a very rewarding one indeed.

Posted on

Myopic Leadership

Myopic leaders in the country have played the race card in forwarding their own personal careers at the detriment to the nation and its people.

While on the global scale, China and India are moving forward to become the next economic superpowers of the world surpassing the United States and Japan, in Malaysia we chose instead to talk about how much the Malays have not achieved in national economic terms against the rest of the other races.

The correct debate should be how much we Malaysians have not achieved in international economic terms against emerging economies like Singapore or Korea.

It is with incredulous short sightedness that some of us choose to whine about how unfair the division of the pie is in our small pie shop when our big neighborhood bakeries had snapped up all of the raw materials and, most important of all, customers away from us.

If MAS or Proton could benefit from the expertise of a CEO, regardless of race, color or creed, then so be it. This outcry over a rumor that a foreigner is being considered to head GLCs is ridiculous and down right dangerous. If we base our hiring decisions on race rather than on qualifications then our country is doomed and we will no chance to survive in this new century.

When our GDP falls and we live on hand outs from countries like Singapore or China or India, that will be when the real colonialization happens. By that time, it will be too late.

Posted on

Chapter 1: Goldhalbinsel

A long time ago there was a village called Goldhalbinsel. In this village, there lived a few big families. These families were not small like the families of yours and mine. Indeed these were very large families. In fact, they were so large that cousins would bump into each other in the streets and they wouldn’t even know that they had the same great-grandmother.

As in all tales, this one is no different as I will start the story from the very beginning, or atleast, at a beginning that is important to the story. So I shall start with how the village came to be.

Of all the families there, the largest of them was the Bodensohns. They were the family that fled from a nearby town to found Goldhalbinsel. When they first arrived, the town was filled with useless trees and plainly equipped with neither commerce nor activities. They decided among themselves that they liked the place. Therefore, they drew lines in the soil and started to settle down there. They befriended the local lumberjacks working in the forest nearby and started a small trading shop, attracting people from nearby town and villages.

After that, tumultuous times befell the village. Foreign families came and plundered Goldhalbinsel. Of these marauding families, none stayed as long as the Steife-Lippes. They stole trees, crops and other natural resources for the giant scary beast that they worshipped back home called Industrialisierung. And while Steife-Lippe were in Goldhalbinsel, they destroyed the idyllic lifestyle of the village and smudged the landscape with roads, schools, railroads, modern buildings, water piping and introduced electricity, and bureaucracy. To help them retain their grip on the village, the Steife-Lippes became advisers to elders of the Bodensohn family.

The Steife-Lippes also encouraged the arrival of the second family of our tale. They were the Dracheabstammungs. They left their own village, a mighly and a big one called Mittleres Königreich, to go in search of better opportunities elsewhere.

Following closely was another family, the Schwarzes. They arrived seeking a better life for themselves. They came from one of the oldest village in the world but now, the village was getting too crowded and it was difficult to make ends meet.

As they had skills that no one in the village had back then, the Steife-Lippes welcomed them. The Dracheabstammungs were particularly adept in alchemy, seemingly able to turn anything into gold. The Schwarzes, on the other hand, were intelligent and seemed to be very proficient when equipped with quills and parchments. Soon these 2 families slowly made Goldhalbinsel into their own home too.

All this while, the family elders of the Bodensohns had had an understanding with the Steife-Lippes. By appeasing the Bodensohn family elders with corrupt mechanisms like outright bribery, concessions and preferential treatments, the Steife-Lippes ensured their continuing presence in the village.

However, this practise can only go so far as the Bodensohns in general grew resentful of the plundering Steife-Lippes. Soon they made calls to get rid of Steife-Lippes from Goldhalbinsel. The Dracheabstammungs and the Schwarzes also came to realize that a secured future meant being independent from the Steife-Lippes. As a result, the 3 families of Bodensohn, Dracheabstammung and Schwarze got together and decided that they shall rule Goldhalbinsel together. They relied on each other’s strengths while overcoming each other’s weaknesses.

With combined efforts, they ran the Steife-Lippes out of their village. Or so they would like to believe. The truth is, the Steife-Lippes would have left the village anyway because the family fortunes were running dry.

But back in Goldhalbinsel, the families celebrated their new found freedom. They’ve installed the Bodensohns elders as figurative leaders but everybody knew that the real power rest in the hands of ordinary Goldhalbinselians. In fact, they liked that idea so much that they started thinking of themselves not as Bodensohn, Dracheabstammung or Schwarze but as Goldhalbinselians.

The 3 families had all the recipes of being able to live happily ever after but our tale does not end here, as troubling times laid ahead for Goldhalbinsel.

More of this tale in days to come….