Mach 3 Turbo Vs Quattro Titanium

Hair on my body and face (except on my head) grows exceptionally fast.

Although I am quite lazy to shave as often, I am being forced to do so at these times when I am hunting for a job to at least look presentable in front of the people who might turn out to be my next employer or even people who might help to get me a job.

All these years, I have relied on my trustworthy Gillette Mach 3 Turbo to perform the heavy duty of trimming and shaving my facial hair.

I think when I bought it 4 year back, I paid about RM25 for it and now it only cost about RM18 and comes in two different colors, blue and red. The cartridges are killer though. Cost a whooping RM35 for a packet of four.

In terms of design, it has 3blades and the green strip at the top turns white after a few uses indicating it is time to change those blunt blades.


I am currently back in Melaka and I have forgotten to bring my Gillette back with me. So I bought myself a new one. Only this time, I wanted to try out something different. My attention was caught while I was browsing through the men grooming section in Jaya Jusco. It is called Schick Quattro Titanium.

Sounds really cool right?
Well the price was about the same as the Turbo but a packet of 4 cartridges costs only RM25. The thing that really caught my attention was that it has 5 TITANIUM blades. 4 at the front and another at the backside for precision shaving on sideburns and goatees. Sounds like you going to slaughter rather than shaving with those Titanium blades.


After all, I am an Indian and immediately the Indian in me was telling, "more blades means MUST be better."

More blades does not mean I am going to end up like this

So having 5 blades really any better than just 3?

In terms of comfort, I think the Mach 3 does a better job than the Quattro. Even a brand new set of Quattro can cause a slight pain when shaving. Not sure why though. Its either the Titanium blades is really useless or my facial hair is super strong. I am thinking it is because the Mach 3 has blades that are more flexible and is designed in such a way that it mimics the contour of your face when shaving. Quatrro lacks a little in this department.


As for the shaving itself, both the blades perform almost identically. Despite the Quattro having 1 extra blade at the front, it is of no use when compared to the power of Turbo. But the 1 extra blade on the backside is really useful. It makes it easier for me to shape my sideburns more easily.

There was one major flaw that really turned me off while using Quattro. You see from the picture above, the cartridge of a Gillette and a Schick are almost of the same size. That means the blades of the Quattro are more closely packed. This causes hair build up in between the blades and these things are impossible to be removed. As you use it more often, the hair just keep clogging and as a result, shaving causes agonizing pain as though someone is using a pair of tweezers to pull your hair out.

Less cycle means more money spent on buying the replacement cartridges. A Mach 3 cartridge can give me maximum 5 to 6 shaves while the Quattro only gives maximum 4.

To sum it all up, saraslacker's weapon of choice is still Gillette's Mach 3 Turbo. This also proves me and my Indian mentality wrong that more blades = better.

Think of it this way, when you do cut yourself while shaving, you have one less blade to worry about.

Just don't ask your wife/girlfriend to shave you

United in Malaysia

No I am not going to talk about Malaysian politics but instead I'm going to talk about Manchester United's pre-season tour to Asia. I know you might complain that I am outdated and bla bla bla..but I've got nothing much to update besides this.


Well most of you know that on the build up to this tour, various competitions were held throughout Malaysia and the most attractive competition that got every Man Utd fan salivating is this


And all you have to do is fill up this form below and send it them


Just in case you don't know how the competition works, after you submit the form, if your slogan is catchy enough, the Hitz.fm DJs will give you a call and you are expected to answer most Manchester United related questions correct within 30seconds. When the competition ends and if you are among the top 3 with the most correct answers, you will be invited to the Hitz.fm studio with the morning crew to answer more Man Utd trivia questions and then commentate on the 'imaginary' Malaysia XI vs Man Utd match. The person with the most correct answers and best commentary gets to follow the Man Utd team wherever they go during their stay in Malaysia. How cool is that!!

Although the age was a major stumbling block for me to enter the competition, I just tried my luck. No harm in trying since I've always been quite lucky when it comes to joining Hitz.fm competitions.

And so I filled up the form and just in case you were wondering, I did not lie on my age nor my IC number. When it comes to slogan I suck big time. I always can't think of anything creative. Although there were 300 characters given to complete the slogan, I figured slogans are supposed to be short, creative and catchy. So I just simply typed what came to my mind and it was something like this

Nike and Manchester United form the ultimate partnership because both are best in the business.

Okay go on..laugh all you want..I know it sounds lame.

When I clicked the submit button, it said an error had occured and asked me to try again after a few minutes. I already had my doubts as I was thinking the form got rejected because I did not meet the age criteria. So I tried again and the same error message popped up.

Dejected, I gave up on the competition.

On 10th 0f July 2009, Friday night at about 11.20pm, when I was walking in my house in my boxers thinking what to eat, my phone rang. It was a Selangor number. I picked it up and it was Adam C from Hitz.fm on the line telling me I was chosen to compete for the Nike Reporter Competition and I was the last contestant chosen. Overjoyed and at the same time totally unprepared for the questions that they are going to ask me. Nevertheless, I managed to answer 5 out 6 questions correct but Adam told me I am unlikely to be in the top 3. I will get a Nike goodie bag instead for my participation (which have yet to arrive).

Can't really complain as I wasn't really expecting my form to be entertained in the first place since I did not fit into the age range and I wrote a lame slogan. It turned out my slogan was not so lame after all..

I went up to Sunway on the 16th and on the 17th Man Utd landed in Malaysia where they stayed in Mandarin Oriental Hotel. That very day, Indonesia was rocked by the bombings at Ritz-Charlton Hotel and JW Marriot Hotel, one of which Man Utd were scheduled to stay during their tour there. Immidietly, United's official website announced that they are cancelling their trip to Indonesia fearing for terrorist attacks.

Su Ann called me on that morning asking me if I wanted to join them to follow the United team around KL. I agreed and together with Wai Kit, Jon, Aaron Raj and Syaza, we headed to the KLCC park where Nike futsal competition was being held. There we saw

From left: Darren Fletcher, Darron Gibson, Nani and Rio Ferdinand

They were sitting merely a few meters away from us. They played an exhibition match with the winners of the tournament. Here are some more pics form that event

Adam C, host for the event

Me, Su Ann and Wai Kit before the event

Syaza said I looked like some football coach in this

Goofing around after the event. Jon in black polo T while Aaron is in England jersey.

Walking back to carpark. Syaza is the one beside Su Ann.

After a short rest, we headed to Bukit Jalil stadium to watch the team's training session. By the time we reach there, the session has already started.

On the 18th, Alex joined the group and we reached Bukit Jalil at 2pm. By then it was already packed with people. We had fun taking pictures and doing the mexican wave around the stadium and booing others who dare to turn up with rivals jersey such as Liverpool, Chelsea and even Barcelona. The Barcelona fan supposedly took off his jersey after being booed countless times.
There was also an Arsenal fan but fortunately for him he didn't turn up in the colors of the gunners.

Aaron acting as though he just attended an Arsenal match. Check out Su Ann's hand at the side

As I have yet to recieve any pics from my friend yet, I will upload the matchday pics later..

United won the match by 3-2 but Malaysia gave United a run for their money. I'd have to say for both of Malaysia's goal, luck played a huge part in it. Rooney and Nani scored in the first half while Owen scored the winning goal on his debut. Both Malaysia's goals came from Mohammed Amri Yahyah.

After the match, United's website announced that a second match with the Malaysian XI is scheduled on Monday to replace the cancelled Indonesian game. But since none of my friends wanted to go, I didn't attend the match.

Overall, it was a very memorable experience. I am glad I went for the KLCC Futsal Tournament as I managed to get a close up on some of the stars of Man Utd. This whole experience is like a warm up before I head to Old Trafford to watch United play again..one day..

Bitter Sweet V 2.0

As promised this is the second version of bitter sweet.

My classmates and I have been planning a BBQ by the beach for quite some time and we decided to have it straight after the exams on the 1st of July 2009. The venue selected was Port Dickson beach. Not the best, but nonetheless, a beach it was. With the juniors included, there were 20 people turned up for the BBQ.

Myself and Jason, as the organizers of the event, was given the task to buy all the necessary items and foods. In the morning on that day, Jason Ng, Pang (from electrical) and Alex went off to Giant in Pyramid to buy all the stuffs and then meet up at Vj's place to marinate the chickens.

We left our backpacks (3 in total as for Alex, his Oakley was all he needs for the trip) in the boot of Jason's car and went off for about 40minutes. And when we came back, all our bags were missing. BLOODY MISSING!!! On closer inspection, we realized the keyhole to the boot was jammed by a screwdriver or some sort to open the boot and the bugger took all our bags. The worst 'mangsa kejadian' was Pang as he lost his Zara shoes and a few clothes as he was planning on another trip after the BBQ with his classmates. I lost a number of things, which includes

1. My Nike backpack which served me well during all those trips for four years
2. The towel that was bought by special someone
3. My external HDD with my collection of 'stuffs'
4. My crappy MP4 player with very good SONY earphones (I really liked this earphones because it was the only one that can fit into my ears as it has the silicone type ear buds)
5. My house keys

I was just glad I didn't bring my PSP along that time.

Since we parked in the old wing, which was supposed to be the in the vicinity Sunway Resort Hotel parking, we reported to them but they, in turn led us to the Sunway Pyramid Parking Helpdesk. Although the people at the helpdesk were not in charge for these kinda incidents, they were willing to help us and showed us some CCTV footage but to no avail. What is lost is lost and nothing we could do about it. The plan must go on. And so we headed to Vj's house. Throughout the journey, Jason was constantly apologizing for what had happened but it was not his fault at all. So no need feel guilty my friend. Moral of the story: Park in new wing or bring your bags with you all the time or better still, be like Alex, act macho and don't bring anything at all except your Oakleys (that's very important).

We dropped Alex back in Uni as he with his CFBC (Carol Fan Boy Club) members wanted to leave for Seremban early to hang out with TPK before us and taste the pantat tantat there.

After marinating and loading all the stuffs onto the car, we gathered in Uni to wait for others and left for PD at around 3plus and reached PD at around 5pm. Had a small kicabout around the beach and soon it was time to set up the BBQ pits ans get the party started.

We bought chickens, burger patties, hot dogs, marshmallows, crab sticks, fish balls, 10 bottles of soft drinks and a few packets of Twisties. We managed to gulp down everything except for the Twisties. My personal favorite was the marshmallows. Slightly burned on the outside while inside oozes with the creamy chocolate (Am I getting you salivating yet?).

We had some uninvited guests from the Majlis Perbandaran Port Dickson. They gave us a friendly advise to clean up the mess before we leave and they were walking around the place as thought they were looking for treasure. Then I realized they were actually looking out if we had any alcoholic drinks with us.

We had the second session of kick about n the middle of the night where you can't even see the ball nor the person standing in front of you. We just kick in the hope that it reaches someone.


At around 11pm, everyone parted and the sorrow of losing my backpack was lost at the end of the day.

Here are some pics from the BBQ.

An intro to a new person in the blog: Lancau Paul. He was very upset coz no one told him the dress code for the beach outing :-S

After having the first session of kickabout, he walked back to the mat and he turned to this..


All the worried engineers performing 'life-saving' surgery on Paul

The terrorist giving some insight on the procedures.

ITS ALIVE!!!!

Soon he was laughing..

Jesper the Sabah-an (Loves to get touchy-touchy), Vj and TPK. It always cracks me when I see TPK's face in the pic and the shirt he is wearing..so contradicting

More pics to follow

When I went back to my apartment, I had another headache trying to get into my room.

Bitter Sweet V 1.0

It seems like life in Monash just started. Boy time does fly. 4 years on and I'm almost at the end of the journey already..almost..hopefully there won't be anymore hiccups.

Throughout this journey, I've met various people, just name me and I've met them. Crazy, cool, smart, annoying and funny to name a few characteristics.

Turning the clock back 4 years, I remember just joining Monash and was very depressed due to lack of friends and companion (although the class was very big). Everyone seemed to be not friendly (TPK will surely beg to differ, arguing that I lan see and do not want to mix around). The handful that I know of didn't really click well largely due to language barrier I would say. In order to overcome my depression, I used to travel back to my Taylor's apartment to spend the weekend with my old housemates (Chong Bing and Ngie Chang) and Su Ann. A huge thanks goes to them for saving my life then.

Move on to 2nd year, the number of students branched into Mechanical were just a handful (most went into Electrical). This allowed the mechanical bunch to get to know each other well. The one who can't get along gets left out. Fortunately for me, together with Wei Lun and Zhou, we formed the 'holy trinity of noise'. No matter where we go, we won't be out of the spotlight. Wanna know why? Well I'm sure most of you know how loud I laugh. Imagine when it triple folds. That is 'HOLY TRINITY OF NOISE'. During exam period, anyone studying with us will move out due to the noise made by us. We even had friendly bets to predict how long a group of students can last before they lose their patience and move out of the room. Some move out quietly, some curse. We will feel bad for a while and then back to making noise again. Personally I would say the second year was the best year in Monash.

The 'Original' July 05 mechanical bunch + 2 extras frm Electrical
Back, frm left: Wei Lun, Suren (electrical), Jason Ng, TPK, Tommy, Sara, Vj, Carol, Su Ann (electrical), Kuo Haw, Brandon, Jason Lai, Jason Kok.
Front, frm left, Ling Tu, Zhou.

The bunch that I hang out with
Standing frm left: Ling Tu, Sophie, Caroline, Brandon
Sitting frm left: Sara, Wei Lun, Zhou, Tommy
Missing from pic: Jason Ng, TPK, Vj

During the third year, most of them went over to Australia, leaving the already small batch into even smaller group. But new friends were made in the shape of juniors: Alex and Aqel to name a few. This two smart ass introduced gung ho studying style. Stay all day long in uni to study during exams. I kinda liked it given that I can't really study with the distractions of internet at home. Aqel even went one level ahead and slept in uni in the name of 'studying'.

And finally the forth year. I guess I don't really need to explain much about this year as I started blogging during this year. So if you want to know, feel free to browse through all my posts.

Fusion between July 05 and Feb 06 batch in Genting (Actually only 2 sesat fellas from Feb 06)
Back row frm left: Vj, Alex, Jason Kok, Sara
Front row frm left: Kuo Haw, TPK, Wei Lun, Aqel , Jason Ng

Fusion Part 2 during my birthday

After all the knowledge, laughter, misunderstanding, compromise and 'stuff' shared and exchanged, it has come down to the part where we all venture into different paths in life. It has been an unforgettable experience. I would like to thank everyone who made me who I am today and hope we will never lose contact and will still find time to keep touch or meet up for yum cha session every now and then.

Good luck and I will miss you guys.

PS-If you realise, the topic states that it is version 1.0. That means there'll be another version on something that happened to my friends and I recently. I'll update when I have enought materials to write about..which I think shouldn't take long..

Randoms V1.0

A lot of things have come and passed through this time (the period where I didn't update my blog). Just that it was quite hard for me to find time to update as the workload was just unbearable. Now that some have been done and dusted, I've got some time to spare on my blog. I'll try to highlight some of them which is worth mentioning.

No Sun No Fun
This is my solar water distiller. No...not the top picture but the one a the bottom. Well it is not purely mine. Both TPK and I worked together on this. If I don't give proper credit to TPK, he will send me a message that will sound something like this, "Slutty la!! YOUR solar water distiller all!!".
Well after a few modifications, it is capable of harnessing about 400ml of clean water a day. Not bad considering most materials used was of standard household stuffs. During this times, the Sun is our best friend as without him shining upon us, there won't be any result to show.

Two final year students wearing slippers in the lab. Shh..don't tell the lab technician

During the early stages of the testing, it always rained whenever we put up the rig which made us dub our design as the solar rain maker. But after some modifications, the maximum we have reached is about 600ml.

All Talk and No Substance
The 3rd and final presentation of the semester, which also happened to be the most important of them all. The presentation on my FYP. I'd have to say it went well. Except that our supposedly 25minutes long presentation was somehow cut short to 13minutes. And also for some reason, all the lecturers were gobsmacked by our presentation that no one asked any question.

The highlight of the presentation was again Tommy and Vj. Tommy being his usual self, while explaining something about his preheating method, used the word Penunu Bunsen instead of Bunsen Burner and the whole theater erupted into laughter prompting TPK to name them as the engine dream team: machodian (referring to Vj the macho and cool factor) and a comedian (referring to none other than Tommy).

I guess Carol does not need introduction in my blog. She as usual swept all the lecturers with her commanding presentation.

Work Overload
All the workload *insert reports, assignments, case study and laboratory work here* were given wave after wave that it seemed to be no ending to it. It was way too many submissions during the week that I nearly lost control and did this to my beloved computer.

Thanks to the crash course from Vj, I managed to compose and maintain my coolness under extreme circumstances. Now that some of the works have been submitted, there's more time to sit down and slack a bit. Just a bit as I've my research paper and thesis paper need to be done as well. Exams starts in3weeks time and have to buck up and find time to squeeze in studying as well.

B'day
Well over the month or so, two birthdays came and passed. One was Vj's and the other was TPK's.

TPK's Cake

Vj's Cake

Vj opted for a barbecue at his house while TPK treated us to Shabu Shabu in Puchong. Although it's a bit late, better late than never. Happy belated birthday wishes guys.

At Shabu Shabu

At Vj's house

At Monash Project Lab. If only Carol knew, Jason wouldn't be smiling

United We Stand
I just realized I've never really blogged about the football team that I support in my blog. For the uninformed, I support the Red Devils. UEFA Champions League Final in Rome against Barcelona need no introduction is looming around the corner. Hope Man Utd can retain the title. And for the first time in my life I'm going to watch Man Utd performing live thanks to their pre-season Asia Tour. Really looking forward to that occasion.

I think that is all I have for now. Back to work and racing against time to meet the datelines. Although presentation has passed, More experiments need to be carried out to obtain consistency.


Till then chiao!!

Presentation

"Thank you Vj. Good morning everyone." It was supposed to be like this. But I ended up saying "Good morning everyone. Thank you VJ." Haha..but I think most didn't notice it.

I think my whole group did very well. Jon was good, TPK was trying to explain some things the class were totally clueless at, Tommy although memorized a few lines, he's getting better at it and Vj as usual, was calm and collected (wanna cover macho only). As for myself, I did pretty well, making funny faces and cracking jokes when other group member of mine were busy or shall I say trying to convey the message through to the rest of the class. I even went on to give Jason Ng a mini version of my laughter between my presentation coz he decided to laugh at me just coz I look dead serious while presenting (which he claims so not me). I can be serious at times my friend (wahh...scary le). Managed to crack some jokes as well in between my lines which was not practiced earlier. Tommy was quite upset with me though as I addressed him as Tummy instead. But it is all solely for fun and laughter, no hard feelings man.

I think all those presenting for bout 4years or so really is a good practice. A friend of mine once told me Monash is very good in terms of nurturing their students to do presentation so that when work comes knocking, you won't have trouble in expressing yourself. Well, I've got to agree on that.

The rain is really getting to my nerves nowadays. Making my FYP to not progress and making me to keep on postponing my running plan. And I think I'm getting fatter again..call me vain.

Edit
Today is a very sad day for me. My only hope of living my life is slowly fading. The very same word "One day, it'll come" I've been uttering to myself, seems all so wasted. I am so speechless, powerless, my motivation to study has gone. My hands are trembling, I can't type properly..all this because..MEGAN FOX IS A MAN!!!! I wanna cry. Source

Hopefully it is just a propaganda to hype up the upcoming Transformers movie..*fingers crossed*