SHAH-AZZ, INCORPORATED

its more than 2 months that i haven't write anything here...yup, that's a very long period...possibly the longest period that i kept myself idle...was i too busy or what? I dunno...

as usual, i had a general idea of what was i going to write in certain months...since i was, am, (and always be?) a lazy guy, i put just one entry per months for this past 2 months...hope that this will show you that i still didn't abandon this blog, and keep in touch with you guys and gals..

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what did people usually do in their 1^st month of salary? Like them, I always had a plan to spend wisely, buy only important stuffs, and keep some of it for my future use, and also give some back to my parent.

But since I never really had the experience of receiving a salary before, I never know that I would follow this 'pattern' of money-spending.

So on 10^th April 2008, I've got my very 1^st, official work salary, in a form of a cheque, for the month of March...(don't ask me why it was late, and also why they couldn't bank in directly)...I could see the value of my work for March...it was a 6 FIGURE INCOME!! I'M RICH yeah!!...yeah right...decimal point also included, and certainly there was no number '6' in front of the figure :p it was a Maybank cheque, and I only have Muamalat, so I had to bank in there...I never bank in a cheque before, so I let the security guard filled the form for me...the service charge cost me RM0.50 and it will be cleared in 3 days...so I could feel the agony of waiting to get some of my hand to my own so-called 'titik peluh' or 'sweat spot'..(Whether I was fully deserve the money, that's another story)...

After 3 days, I checked at the ATM, and of course, for so long, finally my saving account had come alive again! So I took out some cash to support myself for a couple of days...and that was at Muamalat ATM HQ at Masjid Jamek (I tried avoiding other ATMs, don't wanna waste my precious RM1.00...

About a week later, one of my staff-mate asked me to follow him at Pertama Complex (near Sogo)…He said that it is the ‘heaven’ of a cheap, branded hp (a lot of it are 2^nd hand anyway)…that day was concurrent with my promise with Jamal to treat him when I got my salary…Jamal also just got his job at OUM as an executive…but I thought that I’ve got some time to come here, as this was the 1st time I came to Pertama (so n00bie)... anyway, my staffmate wants to look for some variety of hand phones he would like to buy, and I also surveyed with him…I came across a counter where that darn seller started to promote the hp he sells...and I came across a model which I thought I could use to upgrade (read:buy new) my current K750i...FYI, this hp had lost its ability to detect any MS Duo when it is inserted...if there is an attempt, then my hp will hang with a 'white screen of death'..even after I disassembled it (yes indeed), i could not pinpoint the exact location of where the malfunction was...I read at the forum which had similar problem like mine, and I found one answer that said that I should check if the hp has been grounded properly...the silly part was, that guy did not reveal where the heck was the ground on the circuit...emm, where was I? ok, I've looked upon and found a model which i think it is suitable and has more function that my current K750i...originally, I did not intended to buy on the dot, but that seller was very clever...he successfully exploit one of my weakness; I could not stand all those 'bunga-bunga' words so I became...WARGH! TERGODA I (funny, why that there's no girl did this to me? :p)...and my staff-mate did not attempt to pull me out of trap...in the end, I succumb and immediately went to the nearest ATM (which wasn't a Muamalat...there goes my so-called precious RM1) and burn about RM450 for this blasted hp (which, in the end, I kinda like it...it's a natural replacement/step up I believe)...The model was...'

A Sony Ericsson W810i...I know, I know...it's an old model...and most of you, either already have it, or already throw it away and buy your latest and greatest hp...whatever the reason is, I intended to keep this one until it broke, so no need to promote me any new hp, unless you want to give me for free...hahaha..

Jamal met me at BTS..We've bought ourselves the ticket of the movie 'Forbidden Kingdom'...Since it will start on 4:30, and it was around 3:00pm, we decided to look for some gadgets at Low Yat, the heaven for technogeeks. This was the place I've planned if I got my salary...In fact, I've got my 'target' stuffs to buy...It was a Graphic Card...an ATI Radeon HD2600Pro AGP...According to Tomshardware.com, this was the best AGP graphic card for below $100 (RM350)...Why I still mantain on AGP? I'm not ready to fork out some extra cash to buy a new motherboard, which will result of me getting a new PCI-Express based card, then a new processor, and also new RAM...that could cost more than a thousand!...I thought that changing my graphic card from my beloved 6 years old Geforce 4 Ti4400 to this one would be the last upgrade I'll ever made, and will give some bit of lifeline on my PC....Hey, it support DirectX 10 games, with the latest pixel/vertex shader, and I also could turn on my Aero experience without any significant performance hit, that is, if I'm using Vista (which is I'm not).Can't wait to try Crysis on my PC...hahaha...

But of course, changing graphic card was not enough as my current processor (P4 1.8Ghz) will surely become its bottleneck... So I thought that I could give it a little more oomph…My motherboard (specifically, the i854E chipset) only supports Northwood/Willamette type P4, Socket 478 with maximum L1 cache of 512kb and 100/133Mhz front side bus with a maximum speed of 3Ghz…No HT support (darn)…the problem was that it will be a miracle if I could find one in any of the popular PC outlets here, say, Thundermatch, Compuzone, PC-Zone, All-It and etcetera…So, we had to look at the none-popular ones, the one that sells 2^nd hand computers and parts…We’ve came across one of the shop which had the 2.8Ghz P4….After some negotiating, we’ve got it for RM200 (which is actually the cost of an Intel Dual Core 1.8Ghz processor, which I thought that it is 10x more powerful than the one I bought…grrrr)…So in total, another RM500+ went down into the drain…

Anyway, back to BTS…our 1st activities were movies...We watched 'Forbidden Kingdom', which was quite ok for me...After that, we ate at...emmm....this place was soooo familiar., like it was 3 years ago...Just that we didn't sit at the seat that I've sat on those years (sit sat seat...try to mention this 1000x ala tongue twister)...Overall, this raked up to RM100…

So what’s left on my 1^st month salary? Enough to sustain my life for another week or so, then I had to (shamefully) depend on my account at FAMA…Always draw out, when will be the time that I could finally bank in?