After I bought my Fixie a couple of days back, I could not get off my mind cycling to work. I’ve got the urge to hop on the bike and ride all the time. When I got the chance yesterday evening, I went exploring the neighbouring kampung. Today, I went looking for an alternative route to work. Halfway on the route I was quite tired. The fear of not having enough energy to get back kicks in and I made a u turn. At this point the muscle pain on the leg sets in and I am not sure if I will be able to walk tomorrow.

On the bike yesterday and today brings out the joy of cycling. Fixie or fixed bike is very different from my previous bikes. It keep reminding me that I am not on a normal bike, especially coming to corners where I have to slow down. I have to use my led muscle to slow down and it’s something I have got used to. I still haven’t learnt to skid, maybe because of my front brake which I keep putting skiding off.

Riding on my Fixie to work is like living a lifestyle dream. I have yet to make it as a sustainable lifestyle, but I am getting there. I’ve got the hardware and the will, what’s left is just living through it…

Kiehl’s @ Gurney Plaza is offering a complementary deluxe size product (body or hair) for the Foursquare mayor.

Gowalla and Foursquare have been going head to head since pioneering the location based social scene a couple of years back.  I was initially pulled to Gowalla because of it’s Item collectability and once a year, free stuff giveaway.  Since then, there were not much changes in Gowalla, still not many users/players and the appeal has since drop.  I have yet to finish my collection of items as some of them can only be obtained in the US.  The player pool has grown a little, but not significant, and not much exciting.

When I first play Gowalla, I was also venturing into Foursquare.  I stop after a while as there were no special mayorship incentive in Malaysia and nothing to collect, except badges.  Again, there were not that many players/users in Malaysia then.

Recently, I started to check out foursquare again.  To my surprise, the users/players has mushroom exceeding those playing Gowalla.  Better still, there are special offers for foursquare players right in my City of Penang.  Below are three of that I discover at the time of this post.

I got to know about the Shan Children’s Home through Alvin of PECC a few months back.  Thinking of getting the kids a book each for Christmas, we went over to the home to find out their ages.  We talk to Dr. Chandra, who is the home Administrator/Director.  He told us that the kids would benefit more by having the complete set of the LadyBird Keyword series.  This is because some of the kids may not be reading at their respective ages.  So, if we were getting them say Harry Potter, they may not be reading the books at all.  At the same time, the home also need book wraps and cellophane tapes as it is going to be a new school semester soon. 

We went to check out the LadyBird Keyword series and found out that there are a total of 12 series with 3 books for each series totally to 36 books.  The MRSP for each book was RM9.90 and we work out the total cost needed.  Thanks to a few friends, namely EC, Mok and Dora, we manage to get two sets for the kids and two huge roll of plastic book wrappers and plenty of cellotapes. 

We went over to the home at Dec 18, 2010 and handed over the books.  When we arrived, the kids were all sitting quietly reading.  The Ivory Group also arrived at the same time and they were having an event with the kids.  After leaving the books on the sofa, and briefly talked to Dr. Chandra, we left the home happy finishing one of the task we set to achieve.  We hope the kids at Shan Children’s home benefit from the Ladybird Keywords series and may they reap greater knowledge from reading. 

This is one of the insane activity that I put myself and my poor wife through just for the fun of it.  We woke up at 4 something am and I check lowyat forum on the situation at Gardens iphone pickup.  There are still people picking up phones at that time, so, if I were to go down, I have to leave now. After reading my friends facebook that Digi Penang iphone soldout, I decided then and there we have to go.  My wife was already up and she went to wake her sister up.  We left the house at 5am and the journey to pickup the iPhone 4 begins.

Traffic was to the minimal, there are still quite a number of cars on the road at this hour, but less than day time.  Dawn arrives when we almost reach Ipoh, my wife ask to go for Dim Sum, I had promise her earlier that we would.  Not wanting to queue too long to pick up phone, I took a rain check on the dim sum and whiz pass Ipoh.  As we enjoy dawn and the beautiful scenery, the whole world lighted up and the sun came.

We arrived at the Gardens at 8.30am and started to queue up.  There was more than a hundred people in front of us.  We queue up to the car park and I was drench with sweat by 10am when they started to give out numbers.  We receive 3130, not sure if we were the 130 customer for the day.  Once we got the number, we get to go into the foyer to play around with demo sets, have apples and drinks and wait for our number to be called.

At 11 something am, our number were up and we proceeded to the registration counter, once that done, we go to another payment and phone collection counter and finally that done, there is the activation counter.  Plenty of Maxis staff helping along the way, they try to make this as painless as possible and try to accommodate as many patrons as fast as possible as the previous day, they went home after 4am.

There were 25% discounts on the phone covers, and we got a nice leather flip cover and went straight for lunch.  I tried to restore the 3GS backup to the iphone 4, but itunes need to download the latest OS4.1 to do it.  The download speed was so slow that I cancel the restoration and finish up lunch and head back.

We reach Tapah at about 5pm and went to have Curry Chicken Bread.  One huge bread shared by 3, stuff with carbohydrate and loads of curry chicken, we continue our journey home. We arrived at home at 8pm and the day is yet to be concluded.

I am currently restoring the 3GS backup onto iPhone4, and it is taking forever…

There and Back Again for iPhone 4….