Work

Just finished a 20 sec ad made in 3D. It is a proposal for Orang Kampung. Hope the client love it, they are previewing it in Malacca.

Now I got to do my Asia Media video presentation. Tomorrow is the presentation.

Oh and today, I'll be signing my ArtXpress Sdn Bhd registration. Gonna be me and me wife. The shop looms nearer but it stil a tad too slow to start.

Hope for the best. Cash running extremely low now. Dunno when I can get back to my feet.

A busy week

A busy week for me. Lots to do and not much time. Need to do time management.

A fever

I had a full outdoor week last week. It was bright, hot week. Oh, better add the extra bright. Too hot for comfort. Yes, it is me directing finally after almost a year being refrained from doing so. I went to interview RapidKL bus passengers, corporate bosses and took some of the activity people do in a bus. And boy, even the air-conditioning in the bus can cool us down. The heat, was unbearable. Well, in Malaysia, if the weather is too hot in the afternoon, there gonna be heavy rain in the evening. The fast change of climate do have effects on our body.

Since the shooting took almost to the night, I don't have time to get my wound dressing at my usual pharmacy. Instead, I bought a paraffin based gauze dressing as a temporary dressing to my wound. It was plain stupid idea to change my usual bandage to other brands. But I got no choice as I was out of supply. And the pharmacies that carry my usual brand are all closed.

Yesterday morning, I felt extreme cold till both of my hands shook. I was shaking miserably. My body was aching and was hot all over. When I look on my right thigh, there are full of spots. Sign of allergies. Luckily, I bought my usual brand using the last cash I got. I replaced the dressing but it was too late. I am in for a fever. The temperature just rose sky high. I couldn't go to the clinic as I was too weak to drive myself there.

There I lay on the bed, totally oblivious to the world. The pain was unbearable. The fever just took me down. My son, took the liberty to massage me and care for me. While my daughter make a concoction of tamarind and ice water and soaked a towel in it to dab on my forehead. It is a remedy to cool the head. Well, if the brain got too hot, it can caused serious problem. Mind you, I don't even recalled they did this till my wife told me this morning. I only remembered my wife woke me up to do my evening prayers and gave me a pill and milk. After that I was knocked out till 2 am. Then, my fever have broken temporarily. I went down to have some bread and honey to regain some energy. I was knocked out from 11am till 2am. That's about 15 hours. After a pop of 1000mg vitamin C. I went back to sleep. I woke up at 6am for my morning prayer and went back to sleep. The cold has ebbed but my body was sore all over. The allergies has gone but the bandage smells a bit odd. I got a bit panicky, worrying it will get gangrenous. I did a quick nip to the wound and it looks fine.  Need to change the dressing tomorrow anyway.

The fever was due to my body trying to fight the bacteria or whatever hits me. My body has fought and won. It was a terrible battle as the body weakens as the war progress, It was either me recovering or the infection/allergies won. I sure don't want to go through it again. It has taken me down flat. Feeling helpless is something not a man want to be in. Thank to Allah, my wife and kids are with me and cared for me.

As of tonight, I am still feeling sore on the whole body and the mind is still blurry and woozy. But I guess I am recovering as I am writing this now. :-)

Wish me well.

Today I see death

I was on the way back from picking up my daughter from her school when we noticed a lady picked up a cat from the middle of the road and placing it on the sideroad. It was a cat about less than a year old. It suddenly dashed back to cross the road and was run over by a car coming from the opposite way. The head was smashed and the body keep on twitching as I passed by it. I was too stunned to stop and the traffic on my side was bumper to bumper. The school kids were looking at it and everyone was like I. Too stunned.

A lady save it from being run over but it was still run over in less than a few seconds, it still end up dead. That goes to us too. If it is time to go, we can't stop it even a second longer. So live life to the fullest, savour every tick of the second. Remember who we are in this world. We all have a purpose. Be learned in filling our soul with goodness and kindness. Be learned in getting the knowledge for the betterment of our life and mankind. Because when we leave this world, let us be remembered for the good things we have done, not the bad things.

Subhanallah.

Ouch

Shooting postpone. Tomorrow its pre pro time. Estd shoot Wed to Sunday. Guess I have to do the tee-shirt printing on Monday to Tuesday then.

Sunday, Apr 12

Totally unproductive last nite because of the driving on Saturday. But then I still knocked out at 6am after the morning prayers. The body clock has totally wrecked since 1998. Past midnite is always the best time to do work. The serenity and quietness makes you focus more. But then, I will still on the telly to have some sound in the background. Too quiet would ponder the mind elsewhere. :-) Tomorrow, I will be doing my first outdoor directing ever since I had my surgery 10 months ago. It gonna be a week long and it is a business presentation video. I'll be interviewing people off the bus about the video panels installed on board. After that I will do the post editing and motion graphics to it. It is easier to edit when I am directing because I will know what I want to have on the video. I've done a lot of editing of other directors and sometimes it is frustating to have no content to support the script. So I hope I can pull this off sweet and simple. My wound is still on its way to recovery. From a big gaping wound, it is now at just at a length of the index finger. But then, it is still a wound. Ten months is a long time to heal but then the location of the wound causes it to slowly heal. It is at the upper thigh.

This was the wound in Jun 08











and this is the wound as of April, 09












Gory eh? LOLZ Some may think that the limp I had is because of ghout or muscle cramps. It is worst than that. When I explain I had surgeries due to what, it causes amazement to their eyes. This is because I had gas cavity in my upperthigh. I was supposed to be operated like 1-2 times but because one stupid doctor on my 2nd operation, I was operated 6 times. The doctors make-up diagnosis is I have cyrogenic cyst meaning my skin is dead and needed to be removed. There was no mention there was gas cavity in my thigh. How it get there is still a mystery and I do get people telling me I got hit by someone. I laid that to Allah. There is always a reason for whatever happening in life. If it is because someone green-eyed emotion, let Allah gives him/her the best. But then, this has surely burrowed deep to my pocket, without insurance and working on my own, I was totally broke after the operation. There is no more savings and much of the cash I earned now goes to dressing the wound. For the past few months, my wife did my dressing as to do it at the clinic, I would definitely can't afford to.

Anyway, the right leg still having water retention if I sit or stand for a long period of time. And when it does, then I will have to rely on my cane to walk up or down the stairs. I hope I can get this done and over with soon just in time for the rafting event my alumni have cooked up in May 1st. If it doesn't heal, I willl just be a spectator.

Ho ho ho i rambling again about my wound.

To many, when they see me, I always look jovial and always in high spirit. Maybe it because I don't want to think about it and I look at life in a different perspective. Instead of thinking of my handicap, I'd rather be looking at issues and task that lies in front of me. But then traveling around do kinda cost a lot and sometimes, I rarely have the budget to do so.

Life starts at 40, people says. Mine is starting back. From scratch. I hope I can pull this through. A lot of my friends are trying hard to help by giving me editing jobs. And the video directing project next week will definitely will boost my morale to face this world. Watch out world, bob is going back to action. LOLZ

Cheers and happy Sunday to every single soul in this world

Early sleep

Gonna hit the sack in a few minutes. The body ached because of staying awake for 2 days. It has been 2 days since I did it but I am still drowsy. Hopefully tonite, I can get my energy back. Had a great wholemeal sandwich with meat sausages. The kids love it and so do I.

Tomorrow, I will be on a brainstorming session in the afternoon. At 7am, I'll be at my daughter's school. She is having a sports day. Can't miss it. Need more collection for the photo album.

So Good Nite whoever you are, wherever u are.

Cheers.

-bob

48 hours

In the next 1 hour, I will be not sleeping for the past 48 hours. Need sleeeeeepppppp. ZZZZZZZZZ

Result of Repair

It was one of the drive that causes the problem. Once, I opened the casing, it clearly shown the HD has overheated with marks on the outer side. Have sent the drive for replacement but it gonna takes two weeks for RMA. Ouch. 

I've set the OWC casing to JBOD so I can use the drive singly. But as I writing this, I am getting unpleasant sound emitting out from the drive. Hopefully not the 750GB.

I am totally backdated on my work. Got a presentation tomorrow and I haven't done anything as the HD problem really took my time away.

Gonna do some thinking and working now.

Cheers to me and good luck. I need it to pull this off.

-bob

Drive Error

Three days. Three days to fix my external firewire 1TB. (Did I say fixed. It's still not fixed, just all data recovered.)  I got Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual RAID casing from OWC (It's a great casing; quite and good speed for video editing) and the drives bought separately were 2 WD 500Gb formatted using SoftRaid. It was doing fine till the power outage occurred. Softraid started to pop up messages both partition has Read Error until on Saturday, it just don't wanna boot up when connected.   

I was so darn worried I would lose my work data and of course, my collection of TV series downloaded since 2007. I've tried lots of apps to retrieve the data. Tried repairing using Disk Utility doesn't seem to work as it says the drive is OK. Tried Drive Genius and it can repair and rebuild the drive. Tried TechTool Pro, it fixed the problem but for a short period of time. Surface Scan indicates nothing wrong with the drive but then the error messages pops back again and now, my MacPro will just froze.

Earlier today I googled to see if anyone has the same problem, I stumbled to this site and got a suggestion to use DiskWarrior, so I ask if any of my buddies have em and I was lucky. So, I tried using DiskWarrior, a very small size app with minimal feature but it does it work a charm. I managed to rebuild back the directory. Though SoftRaid still giving occasional error messages, I can now be able to read the data. Luckily, I have a spare 750Gb. I took out my 1.5TB from the MacPro and plug that in the internal SATA slot. I copied a few gigs and then the drives just goes offline. I got to unplugged and replug to get the system to read the drives. A tiring repetitive process. But after 6 hours, all the data is recovered to my 750Gb.

Now, I need to see what the hell happened to my drive and if I can reused it. I erased the data using Disk Utility and still find  weird sounds emitting from the drive. Initializing using Drive Genius was not successful. As I wrote, I am doing a total scan of the drives. Hopefully by the time I wake up, it can determined the condition of my drives. I wonder is it the drives, casing or the SoftRAID that causes the problem. Hmmmmmmmm

I am unable to do my work because of this. Deadline looms closer. Darn, what a time to have this problem. Hope I can solved this.

Need sleep now. Cheers. (for data recovery)

-bob

Dinner

It's dad making dinner tonite. Made a wonderful dinner. Sup tulang. pre-prepared instant mee by Maggi. LOLZ

To make it more delectable and tasty, 

I heated up veggie oil on a kuali. 

Then I thrown in: 

2 garlic, smashed. 

1 cut-upped onion and potato.  Sauteed till it turn brownish and smell good.

Once done I put about 150gm of tenderloin beef, diced in small pieces and marinated in oyster sauce, black pepper and a pinch of salt.

Mixed the whole thing and put a lid on the stuff to let the beef juice flows and the meat cooked. Don't overcooked it.

Add 4 large cups of hot water

Add in the ingredient on the sachet, 2 is enough if you are cooking 4 packets of instant mee.

Let it boiled.

While waiting it to boil. put the 4 pieces of mee into hot water and let it soften. Rinse the mee.

Pour the soup into mee. Serve hot.

Enjoyed the sweat while eating it.

He he he 

Wow 3 years

Wow... Never did cross my mind that I made a blog in 2006. 3 years has passed and today I stumbled back to this blog.

A lot has happened the past three years. Admitted to hospital last year. Life is rough because up to today I've joined the rank of O.K.U (disabled person). Though at shopping compleses, I do get some privileges.

I've joined a social networking group which I was a moderator. End up being banned thrice for voicing out things are not right and standing up on my principles.  Now, I am in better managed group. If you are a mass commite in ITM / UiTM, please do join in this group. alumni mass comm uitm. 

Life as an independent video editor with difficulties to move about is a vast strain on my livelihood. The right leg will swollen up after a few hours standing or sitting. I now can't work on a video editing job for a length of time. Need to level the leg to bring the swollen down. So, for now I can't do excessive work as I usually do in a shoot or doing editing in a post house. I am stuck in my house doing everything on my MacPro. 

With the world economy expected to get worst this year. I just wonder what will become of me. Alhamdulillah, the rezeki may not be much but I am surviving. I haven't stooped to eating rice with just soy sauce. Praise Allah on that.

Nuff said for now.

-bobazhar

BTW on my previous post, I got suckered by the production house. Did two episodes on Mountain Biking and 4X4 experience. Then they refused to pay my outstanding. Found out I was not the only directors to get conned.The only reprieve, I kept the footage tapes. Beware of Manqana or Vyvx.