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.

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

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

I was watching the telly yesterday and I happen to flip to 8TV and there were playing some music videos. A new version of the We Are The World amazed me. It was a modified version from the original featuring all latest artist. Mostly were RnB and Hip Hop artist. The video was really touching, frankly I felt like being in tears, but machoness had me control it. They remade this song for the victims of the Haiti earthquake on January 12, 2010.

We Are The World 25 for Haiti

Some of the artist that I remember being in that video are Will.I.Am who seemed to have a big part in this video, he must have produced it or something (Later found out that Wyclef John was the producer of this song), then there were Akon, Wyclef John, Kanye West, Busta Rhymes, Miley Cyrus, Jamie Foxx, Janet Jackson, T-Pain, LL Cool J, Snoop Dogg, Fergie, Pink, Usher, Barbra Streisand, Michael Buble, Jason Mraz, Rob Thomas, Celine Dion, A.R. Rahman and many more.

“We Are the World” is a song and charity single originally recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, and co-produced by Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian for the album We Are the World. The song was recorded in fourteen hours by over eighty artists on February 1, and was released on February 12, 2010, during the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics. “We Are the World 25 for Haiti” was released as a CD single and a music download.

A few singers couldn’t make it for the recording because of the timing or they had other things to do. One of them was Taylor Swift who was on going to tour in Australia.

Check out their official video on Youtube:

Sometimes I just wonder how inconsidered a person can be. I used to curse at those who park at a disabled parking and come out of the car walking perfect fine, they are just too lazy to park at the proper place.

Today, during my visit to Tesco Setia Alam, guess what I saw at the disabled parking. All the trolleys were stacked there, exactly at the disabled parking spot. I believe this is not the fault of the customers but the Tesco workers who have compiled the trolleys there.

They should do something about this, it’s not fair to the disabled. Below is a photo of it, and it was the same on the other side of the disabled parking.

I have visited alot of blogs online and sometimes wonder how to they get so many visitors and ratings (website hit). I know that I’ve not been writting on my blog for sometime now, but there must be a trick to it. So with that in mind, I’m going to Google out some answers.

Before that, below are the top blogger sites in malaysia.

No	Blog Title	Technorati Rank	Category
1	kennysia.com	Rank: 234 (4,828 links from 2,406 blogs)	Personal
2	SapiensBryan.com	Rank: 604 (2,676 links from 1,577 blogs)	Technology
3	Hemmy.net	Rank: 1,667 (1,862 links from 932 blogs)	Humor
4	JeffOoi.com Screenshot	Rank: 2,009 (2,824 links from 836 blogs)	Politics
5	LiewCF.com	Rank: 3,346 (1,532 links from 613 blogs)	Technology
6	Yasmin The Story Teller	Rank: 3,594 (1,026 links from 585 blogs)	Entertainment
7	Afdlin Shauki	Rank: 3,750 (874 links from 569 blogs)	Entertainment
8	PaulTan.Org	Rank: 7,360 (863 links from 369 blogs)	Auto
9	Alex Allied	Rank: 8,367 (589 links from 345 blogs)	Personal
10	Rocky’s Bru	Rank: 8,402 (1,015 links from 344 blogs)	Politics
11	Lim Kit Siang	Rank: 8,593 (826 links from 337 blogs)	Politics
12	Hot-screensaver	Rank: 8,976 (531 links from 323 blogs)	Personal
13	EVERiBODi LAFU ROJAKS	Rank: 9,411 (785 links from 310 blogs)	Humor
14	5Xmom	Rank: 10,439 (1,131 links from 297 blogs)	Personal
15	masak-masak	Rank: 11,717 (648 links from 269 blogs)	Food
16	smashin’ pOpstar	Rank: 12,698 (669 links from 254 blogs)	Personal
17	cheeserland.com	Rank: 13,733 (439 links from 236 blogs)	Personal
18	Kahsoon.com	Rank: 15,091 (427 links from 218 blogs)	Humor
19	minishorts.net	Rank: 16,256 (398 links from 202 blogs)	Personal
20	Patric Teo Tokkok	Rank: 18,289 (282 links from 182 blogs)	Personal

From the top blogger list, here are some add on statistics
* 28% of the Malaysian Top 50 Bloggers write about personal stuff
* 16% write about politics
* 16% write about technology

So I am writting about personal stuffs, that’s a right step so far. I refuse to write about politics, especially being in a very unfair country. Technology I do talk about now and then. I realised that most of the top bloggers have at least a few thousands blog already written. Thristhan.com only contains around 50 blog articles. Time to boost my blog.

I am proud of being a Malaysia for certain reasons, but what ever we are trying to do, there are still flaws, there are still negativity, there are still a bunch of group who will never be united.

1malaysia

There are talks about 1Malaysia, where all malaysia are united, no matter race, age and background. You can see so many hundreds of thousands of ringgit being spent on the advertising. On my way to office, I see a bus advertised with 1malaysia concept, even in the LRT Train stations, most billboard spots are already taken by the 1malaysia campaign. But what is so great about it? and so I decided to visit their website for some details, www.1malaysia.com.my. Is there something wrong with their website or is it just not loading on my computer, disappointed and I’ll try again later.

How ever much the govermment tries to unite all malaysians, I do still think that without giving us equality, no one is going to bother even trying. Until the race issue of fairness is settled, I believe there is no use in even trying to come up with these sort of campaigns.

I’m not being racist, but when one race is given priorities in studies, scholaships, privilages we will never unite as one. Sometimes I just dont get it. We are all originally from another country so many years ago, the Chinese, the Indian and the Malays, just because one is a majority, they get most of the benefits?

My advice is, before talking about Unity and the concept of 1Malaysia, think about equality and fairness. Once this is achieved, the rest will fall in place and we will be the most united country to exist.

Malaysia just celebrated our 52nd Independence day last 31st August 2009. And I am really proud of being a Malaysia. We have many races living in this country, many languages being spoken with, many kinds of food that we can offer. Not many other country has these sort of variety.

With that being said, I was once really interested to come up with a website that speaks about all the beautiful places and attractive scenes that one could visit. Food, hotels, airlines, places of interes, anyone can visit this website for those details. But due to time constraint, I was not able to complete the site.

Today siting at my desk in office, thinking about what the future holds. Working a multitask job, nearly sitting here 12 hours a day, reaching home and only hitting the bed about 2am, getting up again at 6am, earning peanuts, keeps me thinking whether I’m at the correct path.

Viewing the website drafted last year, www.myvirtualmalaysia.com, far from complete but somehow wakes me up again and seems that this could be an opportunity to get out of this “rat race”.

Now to put on my thinking hats, work on gathering a good team of people and I should be in the path to success.

Having trouble to sleep yesterday night and constantly needing to go to the toilet (as I was having a terible diarrhea) made me wonder, what extend of capacity that I was able to take my mind to.

Earlier the day before, I was having a conversation with a work colleague that it has been ages since we played the Chess, and both started comparing how well we used to be at chess during our school times. That night as I was about to doze off, I decided to go to my level (I will explain this in future post). At this level, I believe that I, and probably many others can Imagine an event and making it seem so real. I wouldn’t say it’s fantasy land, but somewhere in between fantasy and reality.

The intention of this mind exercise, was to play chess without having the physical board. It took me about 30 minutes to create a clear picture of the board in my mind, the board alone took so long as my concentration was bringing me back to reality. Somehow I managed to hold on the the image of the board. Then slowly placing the piece on the board, black pieces first, then the white ones. Once that was complete, I was able to rotate the board with the pieces on it 3-dimensionally. Imagine turning the board upside down, while the pieces are still intact. Takes alot of concentration and believe.

Finally I started playing chess with myself. I have this habit of splitting myself into 2, the so called bad side and good side. First I had to try the famous “4 Step”, it was hard trying to remember in mind where the pieces were moved to. Many times I had to track back to retrace the moves. But as I was doing it more, the easier it became.

Sadly, I was not able to stay awake until the game was over. Getting up in the morning, still wondering how I managed to play chess in my mind. Is it possible to play chess like this with another person who is connected in the zone? Wonders of the Mind.