The 44th annual Grammy Awards was held last night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Much to my delight, U2 and Alicia Keys deservingly won in most categories they were nominated in. The soundtrack for "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" also garnered several awards making it the only other soundtrack to have won that many Grammys since "The Bodyguard". As far as performances go, U2 started the show with a rousing performace of "Walk On" and then Christina Aguilera, Pink, Mya and Lil' Kim performing "Lady Marmalade" in their outrageous ladies of the evening costumes with Patti Labelle (the original singer of that song back in the 70s) wailing the song to the end. Train was up next performing "Drops Of Jupiter", backed by a string orchestra. Alejandro Sanz dueted with them real fine ladies of Destiny's Child with a Spanish number. N'Sync started off with "Gone" before breaking into "Girlfriend" featuring Nelly. Alicia Keys' performance was one of the most looked forward to and she definitely didn't disappoint. Who would've guessed she'd do the tango to "A Woman's Worth"! Dave Matthews Band did a rather sombre performance of "The Space Between" and Nelly Furtado performing "I'm Like A Bird" with Steve Vai backing on the guitars. "Cool!" was the first thing she uttered upon accepting her Grammy! India.Arie's, who sadly got totally shut out from any awards in all 7 nominated categories, performed her hit song "Video" before the show ended with some gospel song. John Stewart hosted the show this time around.

Certainly good show throughout and certainly refreshing to the ears, especially after being bombarded with crass bubblegum pop over the airwaves day after day.

I was contemplating of doing a test install and upgrade of my Windows 2000 Professional operating system to Windows XP this afternoon but then decided not to when I realized that I don't have the complete set of drivers and XP compliant software for some of the devices in my machine, namely the Broadlogic AB2030 Satellite Express broadband card and the AsusLive program that would enable the video-in functionality on the video card (so that I could watch tv on my computer screen). You're wondering why am I compelled to upgrade when everything is just peachy and I'm able to do everything just fine on my current setup and configuration. One key reason is that Windows 98 is still living on my machine and I'm really itching to get rid of it. I can't at the moment since I still need it to be able to run FastTracker 2.08 to do some MOD/XM compositions (Yes! I still do MODs/XMs instead of MIDI!). To date I still haven't found any decent MOD/XM editor in Windows. Also, I'm getting tired of having to boot into Win98 everytime I want to play Frogger (Hey! It's a fun game!). Besides, getting rid of Win98 would mean that I can regain some one additional gig of hard disk space. Speaking of which, my hard disk is in need of some major housekeeping and also repartitioning. One thing at a time, dude! One thing at a time...

It's sometimes funny how Malaysian Muslims celebrate Eid. Eid-ul Adha is actually the bigger celebration as compared to Eid-ul Fitr but we get it the other way around here. And since it falls on a Saturday, it pretty much went by like almost any other Saturdays, at least to me. We performed the Eid prayers as usual in the morning and after that just pretty much lazed around to let the afternoon pass by. Went to Md. Zin's place later and Bart made it to my place after that. On his way out to grab the camera in his car, Bart accidentally walked into the sliding door glass and smashed it. Heck! I would too 'cos the glass door's too freaking clean! It was bound to happen sometime. Anyways, good thing he only suffered a minor cut near his eyebrow.

We later went out to KLCC in the evening and since they're there, I brought them up to my office at the 64th floor of Tower 2. Heh! Yeah, I know it's rather lame bringing your friends to your workplace but where else can you actually get a good view of the evening skyline in KL? ;) Got to watch "Shallow Hal" later at Bart's place after dinner at Ampang Yong Tau Foo. I was hoping it would out-gross "Something About Mary" but it didn't turn out so. Wasn't too disappointed though. It's still enjoyable. I'd give "Shallow Hal" a 6/10.

The haze is back. It happened a couple of times in the past and it's happening again. I kinda sensed that this was about to happen just about a few days ago seeing that we've been having some really, really warm and dry weather, just the right kinda stuff that's suitable for bushfires to start and subsequently spread uncontrollably. Hope this time the authorities could get this one under control before it becomes something like that haze back in '97.

First it was petrol (gas to you Yanks!), then toll and now phone. I suppose it is inevitable. So beginning March 1, local calls would cost slightly more. What boggles the mind is that Telekom makes profits (and I mean, big-ass profits, in the *pinkyfinger-to-mouth* hundreds of millions) year after year and not once have they announced any price cuts or such. So, what's in store for us after the price hike? I'm guessing nothing. We still have to put up with their piss poor service and such and neither do I recall they do any upgrades to their facilities that will allow for a more pleasant user experience after gaining such huge profits. My other guess is that the pie has to be made bigger so that it is able to be shared among many more of those high staffed people at the company. Here's something to ponder upon: Most companies would opt to run their company "lean" and some high execs have even opted to take pay cuts during this economic conditions for the sake of saving the company and most importantly, their customers. I guess that principle doesn't apply at Telekom.

Heh! This is gonna go down as a classic marriage proposal among nerds and geeks! Cupid's arrow certainly hit the bullseye for Rob and Kathleen. He posted a proposal on the ever popular News for Nerds site, Slashdot. He waited with sweaty palms, checking his email every 20 seconds before Kathleen responded 15 minutes later with a "Yes" in the subject line and a "Dork. You made me cry. :)" in the body! Heh! Congratulations!

Update (3:45pm): It even made the news in Wired!

So, it's February 14. Couples all over the world are going all mushy and smoochy today. Love was definitely in the air this evening. I was doing my usual evening run at the KLCC park and couples were just all over the place! You name it, man-woman, boy-girl, man-man (!), they were there. Even saw a young couple (boy-girl) french-kissing at a spot in the park. Awwww! Heh! But it's certainly something you don't see a lot of in public, especially here in Malaysia, since most people here have something against public show of affection, even between married couples. I dunno. I really don't see what's wrong with that. It's not like they're lustfully groping each other or anything. *shrug* Anyways, I don't really see why there should be this one special day that you'd want to celebrate your love. To me, each and every day you spend with a loved one would be a day that you'd want to celebrate and your love for that someone is not just heightened on this one day. Commercial outlets are of course, taking advantage of the day by offering Valentine's specials, with most of them hiking the price of chocolates, greeting cards, teddy bears, etc. I don't mind them dinner specials though 'cos some of them are really, really good! Hmmm, I'm going hungry whilst people are going smoochy. Happy Valentine's to all you couples out there!

The Chinese lunar calendar today ushers in the Year of the Horse. So Gong Xi Fa Cai to all my Chinese friends. As is usual in every year, the house that my family visits every year is my God Grandma's place in Sungai Chua. Surprised that I have a Chinese God Grandma? Well, if it weren't for her last time when I had a fit as a baby, God knows if I were able to be here and be doing this very thing right now. Alas, she hasn't really been in the best of health and her memory is fading in and out, especially since she had a brain tumor removed a couple of years back. She also used to make the best "Kaya" (a kinda paste you spread over bread) ever! We really, really miss that.

Took some time later in the afternoon to visit my good ol' friends, Roger and Raymond. I've known the twins (and their folks) since kindergarten (pre-school to you Yanks!) and I'm just glad that we're still able to keep it up to this day. Finding new friends is easy but keeping them over the years is another thing altogether.

Since I had nothing much to do today I decided to start cleaning up my room. It's starting to look so cluttered and messed up with things strewn all over the place. Cleaning my room has some sorta therapeutic effect on me. Whenever I'm pissed off with something or whatever, cleaning my room just helps and depending on the degree of cleanliness and tidiness that I get in the end result, the cleaner and tidier the room gets means that I was really, really pissed off! So anyways, I'm neither angry or pissed off at the moment so it makes the starting attempt a bit difficult so I ended up doing just my desk for now. It was the messiest anyhow with scraps of papers, notes, cables, tools, etc. strewn all over it. At least I can see the desk itself now so, heh! That'll do! :P

Hardly a month passed by and here we have another one of my friends from Purdue who tied the knot. So, many congratulations the both of you! Uhmmm... I didn't bring my camera this time around so I don't have any pictures at all for this wedding. Sorry! :P

Right after the wedding, some of us were thinking of making it up to Genting Highlands tomorrow and spend the day there. I was really looking forward to that until later in the evening when Amy informed me that it was called off since Bard is down with a fever. Ickkk! Looks like another uneventful Sunday for me tomorrow...