DiGiTAL – OSMOSiS

An auspicious day to start work

Today is a an auspicious day to start work… according to the Feng Shui masters.

With Chinese new year comes a lot of traditions, many of them being ways for a person to maximize their good luck and prosperity for the new year. 2012 is the year of the dragon, and for me being born in the year of the tiger there are calculations based on the Chinese zodiac on what is lucky for me.

Apparently the 30th of January is the very best day for me to start work in this new dragon year. Some companies even open up according to what is the best and luckiest day for their business as predicted by a Feng Shui master, I kid you not So, as you can see I donned a lucky Chinese costume for work. Red is the color symbolizing prosperity and it’s also one of the lucky colors this year.
There are even charts for people born in the different zodiac years on what colors to wear to maximize their luck. This year I wasn’t able to find any chart so I based my choice on general recommendations.

So now I have many months of good luck to look forward to. Being a tiger is not bad after all.

2012 is the year of the black water dragon, if you want the specifics

I’ll keep you posted on my supposedly lucky progress this year. Most importantly I’m keeping to my new years resolution to blog more, so until next time… Cheers!

/Andreas

My blog was hacked

Some of you may have noticed that digital-osmosis was down for 1-2 weeks after the new year.

Well, I have no idea why anyone would want to hack my blog, but recently it happened. I got an email from my web hosting company stating that my website had been suspended due to a bruteforce attack on my wordpress blog. It has taken some time, but through back ups I have cleaned out the mess the hacker made and today my website was re-opened.

So weird, I saw in the attacked files that the hacker injected a lot of encrypted code, but I have no idea what that code was actually meant to do. Too bad I didn’t save the code, in case any hacker/programmer out there would know what it was. Good thing my website was suspended so the code was not accessible for any of my readers.

I guess it could have been a frustrated reader that wanted me to write more often.
Fair enough… I will resume blogging this year, in fact I shall make it my new year resolution!

See you soon again!
/Andreas

What should I write?

I noticed that I am getting more and more readers of my blog and I’m thinking to myself, what should I write that they would find interesting?

I have quite a few articles lined up, but struggling with time to finish them. Sometimes it’s easier to write shorter posts when you have a clear idea on what to write.

So, my question to you is this… what would you like to know about being a foreigner living in Malaysia?

Please comment on this post with suggestions and I will try to write about them all.

Cheers!

/Andreas

Getting a driving license in Malaysia

My driving instructor

I guess unless you take your driving license straight away when you are of age, it could take a long time before you get going. I myself belong to one of those people, but I thought if I don’t do it before I turn 40, might as well not do it all. The prospect of the latter of course didn’t sit well with my wife, so one fine day I set out to sign up for a driving school. Actually it was my wife that pushed me to a driving school promoter in a shopping mall (thanks baby). Here I started on my journey to get a driving license, in another country, where they drive on the wrong side of the road, where lots of drivers seem like bad Schumacher wannabees, where there are far too many cars on the roads… this could be exciting, yeah? Read the rest of this entry »

What motivates people in creative tasks

This is refreshing! A masterpiece on what motivates us in our tasks as work. Not only is the presentation brilliant, but it’s also brilliantly executed. The artist is really good in speed drawing.

This youtube clip is a well invested 11 minutes if your day feels slow or your inspiration has run dry. My guess is that it would be extremely educational for a lot of managers out there. I know it makes MY fingers itch to do something creative for the good of others around me.

Watch it and savour it

/Andreas L

Buying a condo in KL

Resort style condo

Wow, this must be by far the most serious project I have ever undertaken. Investing in a place to live for myself and my wife. In Sweden the most common way is that you rent from a property holding company, but here in Malaysia it’s different. You usually rent from an individual owner instead. So, come to think of it, it’s actually only natural to consider investing. After all, why would you want to pay off someone else’s mortgage when the monthly “rent” you pay could go to yourself instead.  I spent about one year to look at places of interest, dealt with so many property agents, learned so much about condos and learned so much about Malaysian laws. Boy did I wish that someone before me wrote an article like this! Just thinking of the many things to explain almost gets me exhausted. I’ll start off with what is the fun part… viewing new prospects

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Living in a condo

View from the lap pool

Some people might think, what is a condo? There is no equivalent to this type of living in Sweden for example. A condo can be summarized to be a nicer type of apartment with shared facilities. It’s quite affordable depending on which area you choose to live in. But a rule of thumb is to choose a condo not too far from work. This saves you a lot of time to do other things than being stuck in a traffic jam. In a major city it’s my absolute preferred way of living. In fact, it’s something I will sure miss when and if I ever move back to Sweden. All examples of costs in this article are based on local prices 2010.

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Tanamera paintball event – the movie

Due to our excellent war correspondent Zel, we got so much excellent footage, but also movies of our previous adventure. So your’s truly were compelled to create a little movie to commemorate our little adventure. Read the rest of this entry »

A pain(t)ful Saturday @ Tanamera paintball park

Steven and Jonas on a call of duty

And so the big day came, that so many of us have waited for, for so long. Yet again we awoke too early for a Saturday morning and went sleepily to Tanamera paintball park in Sungai Buloh about 30 minutes drive from IKEA. At 0900 hours we arrived and yet again we were the first people to arrive on the scene. This time we managed to get together a group of 24 players, quite a crowd compared to last time. We even got our own war correspondent, my fiancee Zel Thanks to her we got over 170 pictures of our little adventure, and 2 movies to go with it. Most of you probably think, enough talk oredi, show us the pictures, so here is the entire gallery of 170 pics and the rest of the story is below. Enjoy

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Coming soon, yet another pain(t)ful event

It was a while ago we played paintball and we got the bruises we still remember. Still, the minute we brought up the subject of going back for another event, all my friends became very “kanchong” (Cantonese and means excited more or less).

I guess that the adrenaline rush and the fun we have is more than enough to forget the pain, exhaustion and dehydration it causes. Anyway… 23rd of May is the date of the event. This time we will have a dedicated photographer with us, so hopefully I have even better pictures to post compared to last time.

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