When I started writing this entry, I was thinking of yet another “BOOO!” to the Malaysian government. But I think there’s more than enough of that on the Internet.. my adding to it won’t help matters.

The fact is, petrol prices have gone up. And we have to do something about it. No, not by complaining.. but by changing how we do things. Here I’ll present to you what I’ve been doing to save petrol.

1. Avoid taking unnecessary trips.
2. If possible, do your driving in the morning or evening. Cooler temperatures mean denser air which is easier on the engine. Plus, cranking up the air-conditioning in the afternoons just adds to your petrol consumption.
3. Similarly, top up on your petrol when it is cooler. The cooler temperatures mean denser petrol.
4. Don’t drive aggressively. Curb that right foot! The harder you accelerate, the more petrol you burn.
5. Plan your trips to avoid jams and heavy traffic.
6. Let your car coast in neutral. Of course, you have to make sure the situation is safe as a neutral engine means a lack of engine braking.
7. Don’t leave your engine idling. When waiting for someone, turn your engine off. Too hot? Get out of the car and in the shade.
8. A friend of mine does this in Australia, he turns off his engine when waiting at a long traffic light. Of course, you need to be familiar with the lights and anticipate when the lights will turn green so you don’t bring any unnecessary attention on yourself.
9. Don’t drive with your windows down or your sunroof open. These create drag. The more drag you have, the more your engine has to work. Remove that bicycle rack when you’re not using it! Thinking of adding some cool rear spoilers? Think twice… those spoilers may look cool, but they also add drag. Besides, how fast do you think you’ll be going that you’ll need to add more rear downforce??
10. Ensure your tyres are properly inflated. An underinflated tyre creates more rolling resistance. It also wears your tyres out. Oh, and remember.. a tyre’s pressure goes up after some driving due to heat build-up. So, if you drove 10 minutes to the petrol station and then inflated your tyre to the recommended pressure, chances are, it’s still underinflated. The recommended tyre pressures are for COLD tyres. So, overinflate your tyres at the station, get a pressure gauge and measure the pressure in the morning when they’re cold and adjust the pressures down accordingly. Need I mention not to overinflate your tyres past their recommended limits?
11. Make sure your car is in tip-top condition. If your spark-plugs aren’t working as they should it means your petrol isn’t burning as completely as it should. Keep your air filter clean… a dirty filter means an inefficient engine.
12. Polish your car! A clean car means less drag.
13. Carpool! Yeah.. the added weight makes your car less efficient, but it sure beats driving two or three cars to work or to that mamak.
14. Reduce weight! Stop carrying that bag of golf clubs in the boot!
15. Do you leave your car to warm up in the mornings? Don’t! Just drive gingerly and you’ll be fine. Leaving the car on idle for 10 minutes is a sure fire way to increase your petrol consumption.

I’ve been practising some of these tips for the past 3 months. And it does affect my petrol consumption. My car’s trip computer calculates an average distance (km) per litre of petrol (L)consumed, or km/L. I used to get about 9.8 - 10.1 km/L. Now, I’m averaging 10.8 - 11km/L. At the maximum, it’s a 1.2km/L increase which means I can go 50.4km further on my full tank (42L) of petrol.

Give it a shot… and see what kind of improvements you get!

Okay, I’ll start the ball rolling.

Whiskers
I wish I had the ability of Deflurevertodomuportation. It is defined as the “ability to teleport casually discarded rubbish into the homes or cars of those people who threw it. It is closely related to Deflurevertogastroportation, the ability to teleport faeces back into the intestines which originated it”.

This is Part 3.

Part 2 is here.

Part 1 is here.

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When she arrived in Adelaide, she gave me a call and we realized that we have fallen in love with each other while she was in Sydney. It just happened. I never thought I could fall for her. She too was surprised with her own feelings.

But she was also in a dilemma. She WAS supposed to patch things up with me and my ex. This is her best friend we are talking about. She was ridden with guilt. She did not know what to do. Should she be loyal and ignore her feelings for me? Or should she come clean and tell her friend that instead of trying to patch things up for her, she herself fell in love with me?

We talked about it more through the phone. I told her what I had with her best friend was more of an infatuation. It was never that serious once I looked back. So she now have to call up her friend and come clean. I too had to call up my ex and explain my side of the story, though come to think of it, I did not need to give any explanation.

She called. I called. What we feared… the betrayal, the accusation, the finger pointing… did not happen. My ex accepted it. We were broken up anyways. She gave her blessing to us…

Fast forward to 2002…

We were married in a beautiful ceremony in her parents’ house. Followed by a reception in a hotel. We have been married for 6 years now and have been blessed with two lovely kids. Lovely lovely kids. A girl and a boy. A pair that’s just perfect in every way.

Let me tell you this, our courtship and marriage is not all smooth sailing. We had our ups and downs. More downs than ups.

Emotional downs.

Financial downs.

We even went through a cancer crisis.

But my wife being her, went to through all of our problems with her head held high and kept a positive attitude. With every obstacle, we grew even closer. We love each other more and more.

My wife is the perfect half of me. I went to Sydney to be an engineer and also to look for my soul mate. I found her. She was from my hometown and yet we fell in love thousands of miles away. If it’s meant to be…

You know that Bryan Adams song Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman? The song have this line in the lyrics:

Then when you can see your unborn children in her eyes

I saw mine in her eyes when I starred into her misty eyes as she boarded the train…

And I knew at that moment…that she was my soul mate…

This is Part 2.

Part 1 is here.

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The year was 1996. I got accepted to a university in Sydney, Australia and flew off with hopes of one day becoming an engineer. I also flew to Sydney with hope of maybe, just maybe finding my soul mate there. How true that became…

My first year in Sydney was quite uneventful. I maintained my geeky persona and as consequence never attracted the attention of the female species. I had few female friends but none of them were interested to pursue anything more serious with me than just being casual friends.

Second year came and I expected much of the same. Until one day I received an e-mail from her. Out of the blue. Without any warning from anyone. She e-mailed me. From Adelaide, Australia of all places. And her e-mail contained just one line.

“Oi! Are you still alive?”

My first thought was holy crap she’s back! The irritating and annoying girl from Std 6 is back! That time I even forgot I bumped into her few years back in the bookshop back home.

So that fateful e-mail reconnected us.

I replied.

She replied back.

I replied back again.

The e-mails became more frequent. It got longer. And then the phone calls started. Short conversations became longer conversations.

The main reason she wanted to e-mail and talk to me was, to get me and my ex, who happened to be HER best friend back together again. Of all the intentions! She wanted me and her friend to be together again!! I told her it was useless. That relationship cannot be salvaged. She insisted it could. Oh well, I told her, good luck.

Before long, she made plans to come up to Sydney during one of the breaks to see the city. Since she needed a place to stay, I offered my apartment for her and her friends that were coming along with her. I fetched her from the train station that day. On the way to the station, my heart was beating faster than usual. I was quite puzzled then because somehow seeing her again made me excited. I did not know why then.

Her trip to Sydney was great according to her when I ask her again after all these years. She had a wonderful time touring the city with her friends. I showed her all the touristy places I could think of. We got along quite well when she was in Sydney. I was actually surprised to find that I like her. The irritating and annoying girl from way back. I actually can get along with her! Imagine that!

The day came for her to head back to Adelaide. I saw her off at the train station. It was then I realized something.

I felt a heavy ache in my heart seeing her go. I felt great sadness seeing her go.

The train pulled away, becoming smaller and further, and when it was finally out of my sight… I realized that

… I had fallen in love with her.

Continued in Part 3

I’ve come across quite a few situations that follow the theme above and will be posting them as I remember them. So this will be the first of a few I plan to write.

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I used to take life quite seriously. Carefully planning each step and getting pissed when the plans don’t work out as I wanted it to. Blame it on youthful outlook of life I guess. After a while I began to notice that while you may plan all you want, at the end of the day, it depends on how much you work on the plan and also god’s willingness to let the plan play out.

The above statement became more apparent when I looked back at my love life and how I came to meet, court and marry my wife.

The missus and I were classmates way back in our primary school days. During our Std 5 and Std 6 years. Back then as we all know, boys are boys and girls are girls. Boys hang out with boys and girls hang out with girls. Very rarely do the gender line crossed. There were a few exceptions, those that matured too early would attest to that. Heck, even in my row of tables in class, the girls called themselves the UN and the guys, Communists.

So it’s not unusual for me to state that back then I hated her. Her, as in the missus back when we were 11 and 12 years old. I always thought of her as a high and mighty girl that seemed to get off by scolding boys. She was a prefect and so was I, but me being me, I too got my share of scolding. Even though I was a prefect! To be honest, I was a mischievous prefect. Hehe…

When secondary school came, we went our separate ways. I carried on with my life in my hometown while she went off to a boarding school. Life was great then. I have always been a geeky sort of guy so girls were rarely attracted to me and I was content to stay geeky and maintain the status quo. The years in secondary school was ok I guess. I have a few close friends that I kept in touch until now. Two became my best friends. One of them even left for Australia for greener pastures but we still are best of friends.

Come Form 4 and I grew up. I started noticing girls. Hormones took over. It was then I had a short relationship with someone. She too was my schoolmate during primary school. Unlike my wife, she stayed in town. Suffice to say it didn’t last that long and we parted ways shortly after that. I remained single for quite some time.

As for my wife, I ran into her in a bookshop for a brief moment sometime during pre-college. Chatted with her for like 2 minutes before leaving the shop together with my ‘Australian’ best friend. That time he was still here in Malaysia. Tehehe… It did not occur to me then that was gods’ way of sending me clues and sign by letting us bump into each other. I did not even give that incident a second thought until much much later.

We went on our separate ways again.

Continued in Part 2

Here’s wishing everyone a very good new year from us at WTF.. Don’t go breaking those resolutions!

Michael Schumacher and family were on their way to the airport in a taxi. They were running late and Schumi decided to take the wheel.

…the former Formula One ace, plus his wife and two children, caught a taxi back to the airport they were short on time and, after a polite request, cab driver Tuncer Yilmaz watched in wonder as Schumacher took the wheel.

I bet the taxi driver woke up thinking that his day would be as usual as the rest. And he even got a tip for it!  AFP has the full story.

I decided to try my hand at the vocabulary game at Freerice.com and found that it was so addictive, I raked up 8000 grains of rice within an hour!

However, most of my answers were intelligent guesses and morpheme matching. For example, anything with ‘necro’ in it, has got to do with death, and ‘nefra’ is definitely kidney related, so you just look for the closest answer.

It’s not a truly valid test of your vocabulary, but it’s fun, AND you get to donate rice to those who need it. Keep going there when you have the time.

Whiskers: Rice of the machines

1. They are watching TV (I need to concentrate ok? Men can’t multitask as well as you women)
2. They are reading (See above)
3. They are driving (Contrary to popular belief, driving does require one to be alert)
4. They are at the edge of their seats watching an exciting sports event (Look, Formula 1 only comes once every 2 weeks.. and for only 2 hours, why pick that time?)
5. They are brushing their teeth (Do you think you will get something intelligible out of us men on any normal occasion? Don’t forget the toothbrush in my mouth)
6. They are just about to doze off to sleep /nap (Our brain is preparing to shut down, don’t wake it up!)

I was discussing this with a friend just earlier today. And my conclusion? You women are holding us to ransom. You know we want to get on with what we’re doing, so you pick the times when:

• we can’t run away (the TV is there or we’re on a highway doing 110kph or we’re stuck in a traffic jam)
• we don’t want to miss that goal / overtaking move / smash / hole-in-one, so we listen intently or at least try to
• we don’t want to continue looking silly

So, on behalf of men everywhere… QUIT DOING IT! We know what you’re doing… and we won’t stand for it! Er.. yeah!

With whiskers joining the team (welcome dude!) and posting non-stop, I’m now beginning to feel the pressure to post more. Even foxtrot has upped his game!

What to write? What to write? Homina homina homina….