Month: August 2010

Conversations with my BF.

My boyfriend is an extremely Malaysianised white person. He speaks like a local, and by local I mean with the correct tone, accent and all, not just peppering his conversations with the occasional “lah”.

Once, we were queuing up to pay for our groceries at Tesco when a chinese couple at the counter decided to whip out their calculator. Already holding up traffic due to their huge amount of shopping, my BF huffed out a rather loud, “Macibai!”, instantly attracting attention from the others in the queue. You can imagine their reactions upon discovering that the ever popular cuss word originated from a 6’5″, blue-eyed, menacing looking white man.

Or that time when I was trying to order a vegetable dish at a restaurant but for the life of me, couldn’t remember the name in cantonese. After seeing me struggle for a couple of minutes, the BF looked at the waitress and said, “Por lei sang choy!”. My entire being crumbled in humiliation, the waitress grinned at me in amazement first, then followed by a mischievous smile as though asking if I were chinese.

How about those times when I couldn’t differentiate kopi-o-peng from kopi-peng. Yeap, that’s right. The BF enlightened me.

It’s true that sometimes while in bed getting ready to sleep, I’d turn to him and it’d suddenly struck me that I’m dating a white man, “OH MY GAWD, YOU’RE WHITE!”.

“Yes, I am”, he’d nonchalantly respond.

There are moments though, funny moments where his whiteness would escape a little. Like that time during a drive to Penang for a short getaway, he suddenly exclaimed with excitement about a certain jungle.

“Wow!!! What a beautiful jungle!”

As it turned out, it was an oil palm plantation. I think I probably laughed for over 20 minutes.

# – Beautiful jungle. Not!

How about that time when he asked if I like some “lor” right after a hearty dinner.

“Balitung? But we just ate dinner!”

# – This is popular local seafood, ‘lor’. Pronounced as the english word “law”.

“Mango “lor” lah”, he answered.

Of course, he had meant the dessert, ‘mango lou’.

# – This is the popular Hong Kong dessert, ‘mango lou’. Pronounced like the english word “low”.

On a totally unrelated note, we were chatting about installing roman blinds in the new house and he suddenly asked me if I knew how to make roman blind. I told him no, cause I’ve seen someone blogged about making one before and it looked damn difficult.

Caressing my arms, he tenderly assured me it’s very easy.

“Just jab him in the eyes”.

DIY Nail Art Tutorial – Lavender Bling.

As some of you may know, I’m living on a budget now thanks to the house renovation. Have cut down on a lot of luxuries, particularly manicures/pedicures. My last one, a spa manicure/pedicure at that, was a free one thanks to a voucher given to me by Kerol. Thanks babe!

Since, my nails have been left unattended for weeks and they’re now stubby and unkempt :(

Today, I couldn’t stand any longer looking at my ugly nails so I decided to do-it-yourself. Felt like back in college, where I used to DIY my own manicures courtesy of student budget. I used to rock cheap, long, plastic nails at school so much so that I was asked (read: forced) to cut them off on the spot for a netball game, FML.

This is how my nails look like now.

# – DIY manicure ftw.

I opt for this design because it’s foolproof, and mistake-friendly. I shall call this the Lavender Bling :P

# – Lavender coloured polish, pink glitter polish and silver glitter polish. I love this DHC brand from a stall at The Curve (near Royal Selangor Pewter and Nokia). They’re very reasonably priced and dry up nicely.

# – After applying base polish, apply the lavender polish. It’s very sheer and just gives off a slightly pastel purplish sheen.

# – Next, apply the silver glitter polish at bottom half of the nails.

# – Then, apply the pink glitter polish at the upper half of your nails. At this point, the colours will look abit flat.

# – Lastly, apply silver glitter polish over the pink glitter polish to create a gradient and more 3D effect.

# – Voila, Lavender Bling!

# – Rocking the Lavender Bling.

# – Am very pleased with the results. Saved at least RM60 for this manicure :D

Happy cause I don’t have to walk around with banshee nails now.

How to get back your missing AppWorld on your Blackberry.

Okay, a few months ago, I was prompted by my Crackberry to update my AppWorld to version 1.1.0.35 and so I did. It seemed like a routine update but it all went downhill the moment my Bold 9700 Bold 2 rebooted. The AppWorld icon had disappeared and it was nowhere to be found, not even in the Download folder.

I looked and looked through my phone and finally confirmed that the AppWorld was indeed installed and updated on my phone, however it’s only visible when I do the following steps; Options > Applications > Add-ons. It didn’t matter though because I still couldn’t open AppWorld or download any other application. Even when I tried to download the file directly from native browser, it’s useless. Basically AppWorld was b0rked and with it, so was the ability to install other applications.

Missing AppWorld :(

Then I did what anyone would have done, reinstalling AppWorld. I think I did it for like 6 times, all futile attempts. AppWorld refused to be saved. I searched the forums and realised that many people have also been experiencing similar predicaments and the problem does not limit to Bold 9700 only. Other models like Curve and Storms are also facing the same issues. Then someone mentioned that doing a security wipe to the phone and reinstalling would “probably” help but it seemed such a chore to backup and reinstalling.

So I lived with the problem for a couple more months hoping that RIM would come up with a more convenient solution. I don’t know if they ever did.

In the meantime, I kept trying to update my phone’s firmware but the damn Blackberry Deskstop Manager was giving me problems as well. Everytime I want to update my phone, this message would pop out, “Blackberry Application Loader needs to be updated before you can continue. Do you want to want to update it now?“.

When I click Yes, it would take about an hour to download more than 17MB of file (that’s probably my ISP’s fault) then this message would pop up,”Existing BB software has been detected, on you computer and must be closed before proceeding. Disconnect your device and click OK to close these applications. Otherwise click cancel to stop the installation.”

So I’d disconnect my Crackberry and then click OK, but then the Blackberry Desktop Manager would opened again and the whole damn cycle repeated itself! So I didn’t update my phone for a while due to this. After several attempts, I gave up updating my phone’s firmware.

You probably think that by now, I should just do that damn security wipe but I don’t know why I held on.

Today, I tried reinstalling AppWorld again but the icon refused to appear, as expected. So next, I tried to update my phone’s firmware and went through the same “Blackberry Application Loader needs to be updated blablabbla” thing again. However I did something differently this time.

Instead of disconnecting my phone and click OK, I disconnected my phone first and manually closed Blackberry Deskstop Manager which was running in the background. Then only I clicked OK. And voila, almost instantaneously, the Application Loader installed and updated normally. And then I connected my phone to my PC again, opened Blackberry Desktop Manager to update my phone’s firmware and it did so without a glitch (although it did take about 2 hours to finish updating).

And then, guess what…my AppWorld icon came back and it’s working like normal! Like nothing ever happened!

Yay! It’s back!

I don’t know if my scenario is exclusive to everybody out there who’s got a vanished AppWorld, but it’s worth a try to update your phone’s firmware to get it back.

By the way, my Bold 9700’s latest firmware is 5.0.0.593. Good luck!

p/s: And uhmmm, please do this at your own risk. I’m not responsible for you bricking your phone following my instructions!