Thristhan

I had the opportunity to live in Bristol, UK because of my mum. She was sent there by the Malaysian Government to persue her degree. Her family was also allowed to tag along. My dad however managed to get a 2 year no-paid leave so that he can join us there in United Kingdom. This was in the years of 1997-1998. I will talk more about our experience there on a latter blog, but right now I would want to write about my experience in Cotham Grammar School, which was where I did my O’Levels.

My dad followed us to that School on our first day, along with my sister after finding out from some friend that that would be the best school to sign in to. We didn’t have any transport at that point, so we had to walk from the place we were staying, up a hill called the Marlborough Hill. After that there’s about another 20 minutes walk through houses, a few more hills etc. It’s quite an interesting walk because you get a great view of the gardens.

Upon reaching Cotham Grammar School, we were greeted by the administation people. I still remember being introduced to Mr Warlock, which happens to be my Resistant Material subject lecturer. With him was the headmaster. They requested that we sit for an IQ Test, which all student who goes into this school must sit for. We had to answer 140 questions, and in a very short time of 30 minutes. The question consisted Mathematical of nature. Most of it wanted us to guess what’s the next combination based on the previous. I still remember filling my name in the form as Thristhan A/L Subramaniam and was questioned what A/L was. They started laughing after I explained. Since then I fill my name as Thristhan Subramaniam until today. But bloody Malaysian still have some problem with that, especially when I requested the A/L not to be displayed on my Identity Card.

While sitting for the IQ Test, I managed to finish the entire 140 questions 5 minutes before the time limit. I then went throught the answers, which was all objective questions. And somehow had a feeling that I had made 3 mistake. This is an Instinct that I always get when I’m alone. After glancing through the answers, I managed to find the 3 mistake which I did and changed the answers. We had to wait for another 20 minutes for the Test to be marked. My sister asthonishingly managed to score 127 marks, which was already very good. Any score above 100 will allow entry to the school, if not you’ll have to sit for the IQ Test again. Mr Warlock then stared at me, and this is what he said “In The History Of Cotham Grammar, No One Has Scored A Mark That Is Close To You Thristhan”, I was shocked by that remark. I thought for sure I did better than my sister, but what’s my score. He then Continued, “You Scored 140″. I got a perfect score, I got all answers correct, Including the 3 question that I sensed for a last minute change. I guess when you Believe in yourself, and be one with the power within, you can be capable of any remarkable feat.

I was guaranteed entry to the school, obviously :).

There was an incident in one of my Geography classes. There was this boy named Andrew who was a genius, he used to score the highest score in classes, I was very close behind him. He and the group I was in suddenly asked about this Entry IQ Test. They were bragging that they managed to score, 135. And then asked what did Andrew score, he said he scored 138, which was the highest before I came into the picture. One of them sarcastically asked me, “So Thristhan, what did you score”, followed with a cheeky smile, thinking that I did bad. I just said “140″ and there were utter silence. Packed my bag and left for the next class.

I believe everyone has a great time some point of their life, this was one of the milestone of mine. I was getting used to a new country, learning new things, and achieving results. I did not do great, but I did good enough. For me it’s more of the journey than the destination.

One thing I miss is getting the contact details of my fellow school mates. I wasn’t computer savvy then, so there were no emails etc. I’m still trying to find a few of them online through facebook etc. But it’s not easy. Cotham Grammar School is also known as Cotham School in Bristol. Alot have changed since 1997. They have a website which can be accessed at www.cotham.bristol.sch.uk. Who knows, one day maybe we’ll have a reunion and gather to catch up about what we’ve gone through.

Cotham Grammar School

Just to add more details about this school, it had a Computer Lab which I used to spend My break time at. The library was also huge with a great collection of books. I Was here always during the 1 hour Lunch break. They also had a huge Field where we played sports, with a soft mat track. The canteen always had great food, western mostly. There are more that I can remember, and should probably save it or another blog.

I’m about a week late in writing this blog. It’s about the top 24 who made it to the Americal Idol. The photographs below were taken from AmericanIdol.com’s facebook page and all copyrights belong to americanidol.com. That week, my favourite was Andrew Garcia, and I mentioned to bet all my stakes on him after his “Paula Abdul - Straight Up” performance. But he has been performing very bad the weeks after. I hope he does something to step it up.

After the top 24 week, my favourite girl singer is Crystal Bowersox. She has an amazing story and a cute little baby and she is very motivated to perform week after week. Crystal Bowersox takes criticism and learns from them, infact Simon Cowell mentioned that one of her performance was very “Subway” singing style. It was funny because she did actually perform in a subway before to make-ends meet.

My favouride dude would be Lee Dewyze. His performance last week was superb, and that made him go up to the Top 16. He his very humble and even without performing experience, Lee Dewyze is very capable in nailing this competition. Girl fans are already on his side.

So now we are left with the American Idol Top 16 this week. They will be performing tommorow on the official American Idol channel in Malaysia which is the Starworld at channel 711.

Below are the photographs taken by American Idol, copyrights remain with them for the top 24 performance.

Today a colleague of mine mentioned that the Chinese news paper Sin Chiew headed a news about a Taiwanese couple that were so addicted to online games that they neglected eating and sleeping for a duration of 3 days. This caused them to be so unhealthy, infact the husband Died while on the computer due to probably a heart failure. We the users have to be more alert of the effects of long hours of spending time either playing online, surfing online and so on. They should be more responsible, we are all adults.

Similar story on 5th march 2010. Online game addiction in Korean society has gone far beyond a mere social nuisance, resulting in accidental deaths and even murders. The police detained a married couple who, seriously addicted to internet games, left their three-month-old daughter to starve to death. The 41-year-old husband and 25-year-old wife met through an online chatting website and were both gaming addicts. Since moving out from the wife’s parents’ house, they spent most of their time in internet cafes, reportedly leaving their newborn girl completely unattended. They only occasionally dropped by to feed her powdered milk. Last September, after a 12-hour gaming-session, they came home in the morning to find their daughter dead. The baby’s malnourished body fueled police suspicion that the couple was responsible for the death because of neglect. They then requested the National Institute of Scientific Investigation to perform an autopsy. It is sad to hear such stories.

So to me dear friends out there who are game addicts, you may not know that you are one, but alot of you’ll are. If you spend playing online games for more than 4 hours a day, you are a game addict. So something more useful in life, get a better hobby and go spend some time outside. Live Life To The Fullest.

Internet Addict

Today was quite a boring day at office. I had quite a number of things to do, managed to tackle the important once. Eventhough a boring day, today went by so fast. It’s now nearly time to go home. So before I leave today, below are some comics to entertain your week that I grabbed from Google Image search. This relates to computer, which was my field of study.

Malaysia being a very closed country in terms of explicit content tends to censor everything that has sexual content. Including movies in the Cinema, movies on our Cable TV, namely ASTRO and so on. I strongly believe that since we’re paying for this private channels, we should be able to gain full view of the content, in other words, there should not be any censorship involved. For those with children below a certain age that parents dont want them to watch such contents, should be able to activate a child lock that wont allow them to this content.

In the similar field, the Internet Providers in Malaysia are also banning alot of website with such content. There are many ways to overcome this, one way is to use a proxy server website that can redirect your IP to an international one. Google for proxy server and you should get a list of them. Two Internet Providers, namely Maxis and Streamyx are currently banning certain websites.

One famous website that is banned, infact I realised this a few weeks ago is RedTube and GutterUncensored.

I do appreciate that the government along with the service providers are doing their part in order to filter certain contents, but that defeats the purpose of the internet, which is to obtain unconditional knowledge. Everyone may have their own views, this is mine.

Albert Einstein was one of my Idols during my younger time. I use to wonder at the marvels and the way his brain functions. It was not only what the media potrayed about him, neither was it his nobel prize in physics that amazed me, it was just him.

Albert Einstein based on a documentary that I once watch, is one of the Human who managed to use the most capacity of the neurons in our brains. Based on that statistics, the regular homo sapien uses lesser than 1% of the total available space. Einsten was said to have used to nearly 5% of the capacity. How that calculate this I do not know. But I’m pretty sure it’s not Right Click > Properties.

Albert Einstein was born on the 14th of March 1879 and died 76 years later on the 18th of April 1955. You can visit Wikipedia for the full write up about Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein

Today suddenly out of no where while sitting at my desk in office, I decided to change the Tag that I created for thristhan.com to “Since 1982″ (which is the year that I was born). The previous tag that I used was “Not Just A Blog”. I guess I was already tired of this and needed a change. I hope the new one is much more simple and meaningful. Would like to hear some suggestion if you think you can come up with a better tag for Thristhan.com.

Something I received from my email today. Not that funny, but I found the little mouse cute.

Caller: Hi, our printer is not working.
Customer Service: What is wrong with it?
Caller: Mouse is jammed.
Customer Service: Mouse? Printers don’t have a mouse you fool!
Caller: Mmmmm??.. Oh really?… I will send a picture.

We had a long weekend last week, so a bunch of school mates and a few new mates decided to check out this new place that was located at Ijok, Kuala Selangor. One of our friends have been there before and he recommended that we tried this place.

My friend, Jimmy picked me up from my place at 6pm, we were to gather at Kapar at 6.30pm and cruise together to Ijok’s New Begger’s Delicious Restaurant. This place is actually located just before the Kuala Selangor Town if you’re heading from Kapar. It’s about 50kms from Klang. There is an inner road that we have to take to reach this restaurant, it’s quite deep is so it would be a good idea to contact them for the directions.

This place a special cause they use a different technique to prepare the dishes. They wrap the food with foils and cook them underground. Or at least that’s what were told, we did not have a change to view the cooking area.

We went as a group of 10 people, so we decided to try the set meal, which cost nearly RM400. Along with this set was a Chicken dish, Duck dish, Pork Dish, Glutinous Rice, Vegetable dish, 2 types of fish, Prawn dish, Pig Stomach soup, and Fruit dish. My favourite was one of the fish dish that was made in Sour Thai style, it was spicy too. The glutinous rice was good too, it contained salted egg yolk. To me the entire experience was more of a gathering with friends instead of enjoying the food. It was good, but not up to expectation.

This restaurant is only open on selected days and it would be a good idea to make a reservation before going there as they are always full. To my Muslim friends, this place is non-halal.

Check out the photos below.

Finally I decided to register the plugin with Akismet. This is an application that can be used for your blogs that will reduce the number of spam comments. Last week alone I received roughly 400 spam comments. And it can be very irritating deleting them one by one.

Akismet basically stands for Automattic Kisme, is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.

Below is some statistic as of NOW, 11.38am, 24th February 2010

14,615,802,134 spams caught so far

1,701,289 so far today

83% of all comments are spam

The signing up process is quite simple and straight-forward. You will need to register to receive an API, which is free for personal use. The API key will be emailed to you after you register. If you have multiple blogs, like myself, you can use the same API for all of them, so multiple registration is not required. All my blogs are currently running under WordPress and Akismet is working perfectly fine in blocking all spam comments.