Grasshopper 5: The Gathering

I dont @$%#^&%(#$ believe this lah... now the chinese grasshoppers are working together with the indian grasshoppers.... gosh!!... i need to buy more bug spray.....

It was a pretty productive week (last week). My company was closed on the 25th of Sept... So I decided to service the Satria myself for half the price even thought i had to buy an oil filter wrench. The best part is i was able to buy the black oil with a better grade then the what is used by the garages. Changing the black oil and oil filter was easy enough but i did have an issue of filling in too much oil.... which was over the max line by about 5mm... got a little messy after that cos i had to go back under the car and drain it again ...slowly... but other then that it turned out ok... i even gave the car a wash.

But before that i had gone to get my beetle's road tax and insurance sorted out... annoyingly the premium had increased and the agent cldnt tell me why... i got a little annoyed after that but i felt better after when i got a good deal on an oil filter and oil filter wrench at a shop right next to the insurance shop. Then when i renewed my road tax i found that its now cheaper by RM20 ringgit... cool...

Had to stop over at work but then after lunch i made my way to a vw workshop in kayu ara which is not too far from my office. To my shock the whole place has been flattened and there is going to be an apartment built there.... Alamak!!! not where am i going to get a 'radio delete plate' for my bug before its painted...... i had heard that if you continue driving through kayu ara you will land up in taman megah or the old lim kok wing building... so i though i will just give it a try since i had the time.......... i found myself near the Projet Petrol Station near Atria..... imagine my surprise and delight when i drove by another VW workshop called APD Auto which is run by an elderly chap named Francis Lai...... he is a pleasant guy who has run the shop for the past 15 years... and guess what? he has the radio delete plate that im looking for ........but he doesnt have the chrome trim that goes with it... no matter..... i will get it anyway.... but he has a few plates which are from beetles and ghias of a few model years.... unfortunately he and I cant seem to different shade which is from which year because the differences are so small... so i will be taking the whole bunch tomorrow to match it with my car in Klang and picking the one that looks best on it...... i cant wait lah...

It was an eventful week i tell you....... It was not all good however because there was an incident at work which really got my heart boiling last friday...... lets just say that there are people in the world who are so naturally rude that they are so brave in being a jerk ...so easily... but cant seem to be brave enough to admit they were wrong and offer an apology... but then again ...why do i have expectation when they are only being their natural chicken shit self......

luckily it was a friday and I had the treasure hunt the next day which im sure u guys/gal read in my last post... was really really fun...... that really helped my demotivated self....

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just a footnote: If the only other reason to come in to work other then work, is a funny bald Irish guy.... then one needs to seriously rethink things....

Grasshopper 4: Hopper's Quest for the Ultimate Curry Leaf

Guess whose back!! ..........no it ain't Arnold .......... its the Hoppernator.................. In a cinema near you...

Also check out pass movies like Grasshopper , Grasshopper 2 and Grasshopper 3: Rise of the Insects .

Grasshopper 3 : Rise of the Insects

Yet more grasshoppers invading my garden.... this time its a different kind of species. It seems to like munching on the leaves of my coin plant.... I guess they are not Indian Grasshoppers then..... hmmm lets see... The Chinese consider the coin plant to be a symbol of prosperity..... I just like the coin shaped leafs..... hmmmm.... so can these be Chinese Grasshoppers then....???

I was going thru some of my old pictures and since we are talking about insects I thought I'd put up the picture below. I have always hated taking pictures of butterflies. They never stand still long enuff for me to take a decent picture of it.... I guess i never had the patients. Then one day last April I went outside my house to wait for the sun to set... with camera ready at hand i waited but to my disappointment the sky just fizzled and died....

Then just as i was heading back into the house I notice these two butterflies just sitting quietly on this flowering plant..... even though light was fading fast... I slowly went closer and toke a few shots about 5 feet away.... .... then I went even closer some more and took more shots.... to my surprise they did not even budge.... so i went closer and closer... until finally after about 30 shots later i was about 6 inches away from these two little butterflies which were a no bigger then a 10 cent coin .......

The shots were really underexposed because the sun had already set and slowly got dark so I had to brighten the photo alittle and incressed the colour and contrast a notch or two... Im sure all of you know by now that these pictures where taken in Marco mode. Make sure you know the minimum and maximum distance your camera can go to take go macro shots...

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Grasshopper 2

like a bad sequal to a bad movie i found two grasshoppers on my curry leave tree..... this means war!!!

Filler-Flash Indian Grasshopper

It was a lazy saturday and sunday. I burnt a few photos and playing around with the camera. Also went and bought a few DVDs so i managed to watch Snakes On A Plane and Little Miss Sunshine. Snakes was enjoyable if you left your brain in the next room and Sunshine was interestingly funny. Snakes 4/10 and Miss Sunshine 7/10.

The two pictures below is to illustrate the need for filler flash. As you can see the first photo is underexposed. Sometimes even when you select automatic, the camera will not be able to decide when to use flash and when not too. This occurs when you are faced with a back lite object or when you are under a shade in the freaking sun. The camera detects that there is enough light in the area, so it will not activate the flash. This can be easily fixed using Filler-Flash or by changing the flash settings in your camera. (usually has a lightning logo in your camera).

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(Backlite by sunlight coming thru the door)(Me in the lastest head wear from KIOKS)

If you are wondering whats that plastic bag doing on my head, well my wife was going to put it away and i exclaimed that it was 'my' plastic bag. So she came over and put it on my head and said "then dont leave it laying around the kitchen". I looked in the mirror and thought hey! it kinda looks good.... 100% rain protection and 68.3% UV protection for my head.

We decided to have the Mcdonalds Breafast yesterday. We had one Big Breakfast set each and it was the first time i had eaten it. It was really good. I dont know why they even call it sausages when it looks like a little burger but i loved it. The Hashbrowns were good too. The scabbled eggs were ok only lah. They werent kidding when they called it Big Breakfast because I felt full the whole day after that ...and it did not help that Daisy was celebrating her birthday that afternoon. After Mass we headed over to Daisy's place and had a vegetarian meal ....Idly and mee hoon, saambar and vege. There was chicken curry too but i refrained cos i was still full from breakfast... no nothing to do with lent.... but i did have cake :) ... i am such a pundi!! BTW Happy Birthday Daisy!!!

That everning I looked around the garden to check on my curry leaf plant. You see ... i found that a lot of the leaves were being eaten but there were no caterpillars on it. So i suspected a grasshopper... and true enuff i found one munching on the curry leafs. Took a macro shot of it where you can see its guilty face looking at me like saying ..."oh-o, i am busted"..... just before i sprayed it to dead. Felt guilty afterwards :( .... but hey you mess with my curry leaf you as good as dead! Strange thing is that it did not eat any other leaf from my garden. It only ate the curry leaf. was it Indian? Anyway..... Rest In Peace, Grasshopper....

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