auyongtc’s blog

… how do you think this will affect the turnout to the polling booths? Did the Election Committee/Suruhanjaya Pilihanraya (SPR) notice this coincidence prior to finalizing on the raceday as the polling day?

Seems like no one brought up this issue (if got, please let me know)… weird… in one country, I remember that another sporting event had to be postponed because it was a F1 grand prix weekend at that country…

I really wonder what will the local spectators that bought tickets to the race will react when they are required to exercise their rights of democracy on the race day itself… I know, the polling will be held the whole day, but that’s alright for people living around the Klang Valley going for the race… but what about people from other states? Especially those who planned to take a weekend holiday down in KL and enjoy the race? Hmm…

Really interesting to see how this will affect the election outcome… will this swing to the oppositions such as PAS’ favour?

Or will SPR place polling booth inside the Sepang International Circuit on that day just so that the spectators can vote? But that’ll be difficult anyway, if not impossible, to transfer the votes back to the respective areas in time for the count.

Update: Forgot to include this, remember that just recently some minister came up with the comment telling TV stations to not air any shows that will attract voters to stay home and be a couch potato instead of going to vote? So, with that, is TV2 gonna can the live telecast of the Malaysian F1 Grand Prix?

Any comments?

… when I won the Mild Seven Renault F1’s lean mean racing machine… it’s a Mild Seven Renault F1 mountain bike that supposedly cost over RM 3,000 (how much of that is true I’m not sure, normally marked up for marketing reasons, however the parts fitted seems quite good with Michelin tyres )

It was at the Kafe/Club 7’s life screening of this season’s F1 opening race. The event was organized by Mild Seven and I guessed correctly in the SMS quiz live at the event about how many points Renault F1 team would get at the end of this race

It was a dream start by the Ferrari team, and a superb effort by Renault after a rather weak qualifying effort yesterday. However, it’s nightmare come true for Raikkonen and the McLaren team when the race winner last season, DC only manages 8th place. Hope that McLaren can sort out their car’s reliability issues soon… anyway, here’s the result in full:

1 M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari 1h24m15.757s
2 BARRICHELLO Ferrari + 0m13.605s
3 ALONSO Renault + 0m34.612s
4 R.SCHUMACHER Williams + 1m00.444s
5 MONTOYA Williams + 1m08.590s
6 BUTTON BAR + 1m10.512s
7 TRULLI Renault + 1 lap
8 COULTHARD McLaren + 1 lap
9 SATO BAR + 1 lap
10 FISICHELLA Sauber + 1 lap
11 KLIEN Jaguar + 2 laps
12 DA MATTA Toyota + 2 laps
13 PANIS Toyota + 2 laps
14 PANTANO Jordan + 3 laps
15 MASSA Sauber + 14 laps
16 HEIDFELD Jordan + 15 laps
17 BRUNI Minardi + 15 laps
18 WEBBER Jaguar + 29 laps
19 BAUMGARTNER Minardi + 45 laps
20 RAIKKONEN McLaren + 49 laps

… and once again (yawn!) it’s a Ferrari 1-2 at the front grid for tomorrow’s race at Albert Park, Melbourne, Australia…

1 M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari 1m24.408s
2 BARRICHELLO Ferrari 1m24.482s
3 MONTOYA Williams 1m24.998s
4 BUTTON BAR 1m24.998s
5 ALONSO Renault 1m25.699s
6 WEBBER Jaguar 1m25.805s
7 SATO BAR 1m25.851s
8 R.SCHUMACHER Williams 1m25.925s
9 TRULLI Renault 1m26.290s
10 RAIKKONEN McLaren 1m26.297s
11 MASSA Sauber 1m27.065s
12 COULTHARD McLaren 1m27.294s
13 DA MATTA Toyota 1m27.823s
14 FISICHELLA Sauber 1m27.845s
15 HEIDFELD Jordan 1m28.178s
16 PANTANO Jordan 1m30.140s
17 BAUMGARTNER Minardi 1m30.681s
18 PANIS Toyota no time
19 KLIEN Jaguar no time
20 BRUNI Minardi no time

I feel that both Prancing Horse cars are fueled lightly for a 3-stopper race tomorrow. Same feeling for Montoya and the unlikely faces of Button, Alonso, Webber and Sato… I guess the likes of Ralf and the McLaren drivers are on a 2-stopper… this will definitely make the race tomorrow interesting…

Sad for DC though, he had a small bump off the grass on the last corner during his flying Q2 lap… let’s just wait and see how the race shapes up the 2004 F1 season…

… I’ll most probably end up playing this Flash game:

You can try the game here

Best Score: 3285
hehe… Chee, IN YOUR FACE!

… was celebrated last Saturday at Souled Out… Present were the usual gang of what’s-left-from-the-unofficial-union-of-ex-ZingASIA-staffs of myself, Richard, Sasikala Nair and Chew Bee San plus special appearances by my gf Sarah and Richard’s date, Grace…

L-R: Sarah, auyongtc, Sasi, Richard, Bee San, Grace
*Sorry, low picture quality as it’s a Polaroid and Richard can’t scan well!

We had dinner there at around 7.30pm and because I forgot to bring my camera, you’ll have to make do with the Polaroid pix above, complimentary of Souled Out… food there was only so-so, nothing much to shout about, tho there’s a wide variety to choose from, including Northern Indian food and local chinese selections like fried rice and cantonese fried noodles (which we suspect they buy off a mamak stall and a chinese kopitiam instead… )

After dinner, Bee San and Sasi wanted to catch a movie, Mona Lisa Smiles to be specific… so we droved to Midvalley but can’t get any tickets… so we ended up yakking the night away at Coffee Bean outlet instead…

If you’re wondering how come Richard’s only 7 this year, it’s because his birthday falls on Feb 29th and if you don’t already know, that day only comes once every 4 years (if you really don’t know about that, please flush yourself down the nearest toilet bowl)… poor guy eh?

If you have yet to contribute to Au Yong’s Educational iBook G4 Fund, please refer to this link. Thank you

… but my birthday is so far away (May 20th! )…

Last Saturday was out with Sarah and some ex-colleagues to celebrate Richard’s birthday (will post more about it when he sends me the scanned Polaroid pix) and after dinner, we walked into AppleCentre in Midvalley Megamall…

Sasi and I both wanted to get a mini-laptop, the Apply iBook G4 specifically… it’s so sleek and cute… best of all, it’s a Mac! *drool*

I’m so in love with the 12-inch model, the one that comes with a 800MHz PowerMac G4 processor and 256MB of RAM with a 30GB HD and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive… it retails at RM 4,499

Now, you may be thinking what’s a Windows/Linux guy like me doing wanting a Mac platform for a laptop… well, basically, the cool factor of owning a Mac is just too irresistable… and knowing me, if I own a Windows laptop, I’ll probably try damn hard to replicate the same settings/softwares of my desktop PC just so that I can comfortably work on both Windows and Mac platform…

And then again, if I have a Mac laptop, I don’t have to be anal about all those settings as it’s a different platform… so I’ll just simplify the use of it for mobile computing… instead of a replica of my desktop…

Now… since my birthday is a good 2 months away… I just wanna shout out to see if there’s anyone out there reading this blog is willing to chip in and get me this baby of a Mac

I shall officially launch the Au Yong’s Educational iBook G4 Fund. Contributions of any amount in any currency form is accepted. Please e-mail me at auyongtc@theuseless.com if you want to contribute.

After all, if I get the laptop, I’ll have more chances to blog more often…
let’s hope I get enough funds collected to get the iBook G4 this lifetime…