So, I was just issued a brand new Dell Latitude D630 today as a work laptop. Well, this does come at a good timing, as my own person Lenoivo had just broken down a few months ago.

To be *completely* honest though… I’m not sure if I should be happy or sad… On one hand, it *is* really better than the old work desktop. (At least now I can manipulate a half-a-gig excel file and save it to disk w/o having to completely freeze my excel every time, rendering the file almost completely useless!)

On the other hand, however, Dell is definitely not the smallest/lightest laptop out there. The one I have weighs 5.4 lbs (2.5 kgs!) and with its standard-issued laptop bag, it’s a whopping 10 lbs (4.5 kgs!) And THAT doesn’t include all the print-out documents that I’ll have to carry with me when I start to take my work home. Seems like unless I get a good set of wheels for this laptop, I’ll get to do weight lifting on a daily basis.

Which brings me to another negative (maybe the most negative) point about having a laptop. Now that I have a laptop, then I can take my work back to do at home. Now that I *can* take my work back to do at home, then I’m going to be *expected* to do work at home.

*sigh*

While that may not be right in terms of work-life-balance… it does seem to be the culture here and I don’t think I’d be able to break out of it, at least not while I still want to progress up in here.

Anyway, when I went to pick up this Dell (darn… I’ll have to come up with a better name for this baby!!! Nothing obvious comes to mind, unlike the case for my Lenoivo and my Noikia…) at the IT department, I made the mistake of *casually* mentioning to my friend who was also there that the laptop comes at a very good timing… right after I had just broken my own laptop! The staffs there gave me a stern look, and told me that’s not exactly the kind of thing they wanted to be hearing about… ^^% Well, I do hope that they won’t have to hear about me breaking this one or anything anytime soon!

SO yah, what *should* I be naming this baby? I’m still open for suggestions!

Despite getting my driving license almost 8 years ago, I once considered myself to be a perpetual driving newbie, someone who’ll never get better at the arts of driving.

That statement is, well, at the very least, mostly true. While I haven’t made any new dents in my car lately (*knocks on woods!*), I still come close to doing so several times in the past few months. I’m still really, really, REALLY bad at parking, rather horrible at changing lanes (to the point of being scary, according to my dear bro and my dear mom!), and I still have absolutely no sense of directions!

Having said that, however, I just realized how far I’ve come along this driving-learning-curve today when I was driving behind a brand-new-red-license-plated car today in the parking lot! I could swear that car was going at no more than 2km/hour at the speed it was going! OKay…. sure, we shouldn’t really be driving fast in a parking spaces anyway, but heck… it doesn’t hurt to step on the gas a bit, you know.

Actually, I was a little disappointed that the car made a turn right before exiting the parking lot, because I was so curious to see if it will continue at this snail speed once outside the enclosed space of the parking basement.

So, I’m *DEFINITELY* better than that now, right? I wonder if I was ever like that while I was learning how to drive (both the first time when I first got the license and the time 2 years ago when I started driving for real)?

I’m the type of person who can’t really play any game that requires any coordination between any of my body parts… (seriously, when I was growing up, I couldn’t even get through the first stage of the original Mario Brothers on the good ol’ Nintendo!!! That’s how bad I am…)

So, maybe that’s why, when it comes to my preferred form of gaming entertainment, I’d stick to something really simple and something that requires more mental than physical ability; something like sudoku.

Anyway, my addiction with sudoku had pretty much subsided when I got back home a while ago, but yesterday, my dear brother rekindled my obsession again by introducing me to this Simple Sudoku software. While I was very skeptic at first (“hey! I don’t need anything to help me solve a sudoku, and besides, I prefer the conventional method of pens and papers!”), I came to really like playing it this way.

I’m trying to not get too addicted to the game this time around… After all, I only need to play to get good enough to beat my brother, and that’d be the end of it for me. d :

My first experience getting the peel off mangoes was a complete DISASTER!!! It surely looks easier when other people do it…

Luckily… the mango was for mango lassi in the maiden trial of my brother’s new blender… so it really does not matter how *absolutely horrendous* the thing looks. :)

For future reference, the ingredients are:

1 cup of yogurt
1/2 cup of milk
2 mangoes
a tad bit of salt
served with a lot of ice

For the next time though, I think I’ll use the cut-mangoes from supermarkets instead of having to peel them myself!

I just came back from the first of a series of many “sheng meng” (aka. ancestor-worshiping at their graves) that I have to participate in this year.

The ones today was primarily for my mom’s uncle (my grandpa’s older brother) whose immediate family is now all in China. He just happened to unfortunately passed away while visiting my grandpa many many many years ago (long before I was born), and so my grandpa took up the responsibility of taking care of the whole “sheng meng” thing each year.

Of course, now that my grandpa is unable to make the annual trip to Saraburi, the responsibility got passed on to my mom.

Like last year, I accompanied mom on this trip. Unlike last year, thanks to my garmin, we were able to locate mom’s uncle’s location (and also mom’s aunt’s — who happens to be located in the same graveyard) without having to spend more than an hour getting completely lost.

To be honest though, I don’t really know much about the process of “sheng meng”. (Maybe someone ought to publish a Sheng Meng For Dummies or The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Sheng Meng or something…

But to be even more honest though, I don’t think I don’t really care much for the exact process. I just feel that it’s probably not the right idea to be too ritualistic to the point of being a hassle.

So, I’m just really glad that my mom agrees with me.

Anyway, there’s DEFINITELY a plus for going to sheng meng today though. The grave that we went to is practically next to my dad’s factory (correction: the factory my dad works at… he doesn’t own it or anything…)

So, I got to take another tour of his workplace (quite a privilege really, since access isn’t allowed even for the big shareholders who aren’t actually working there.)

The way dad operates his factory always impresses me, and it seems like every time I get to visit, there’s always something new that dad just implemented.

I probably should not get into the details of what his initiatives are, but I can definitely say that he is an important reason why his company has the highest return/dividend yields/margin/etc. among his peers in the industry. (Heck… most of his peers aren’t even making any profit right now, with all the increased raw material/energy prices and such the intense competition and all.)

Seriously… if anyone’s interested in topics about lean/kaizen/5S/anything-relating-to-cutting-cost… you really should come talk to my dad… he’s probably the best one around!!! (: