Have you looked at your keyboard lately?

I mean like really looked, as in by popping off the key caps and looking at the debris accumulated from years of no cleaning?

No?

Well these are some pictures that I took of my colleagues' keyboards. This is Ruslina's keyboard





This is Meena's keyboard





Suzanna's keyboard



Suzanna's again



Yet another view of Suzanna's keyboard.




I felt like a CSI when I was taking those pictures.

What was I doing looking at people's keyboard? I had actually been practising cleaning keyboard, timing myself to see how fast I could do the job. I have learnt that it takes roughly half an hour for me to pop off all the key caps and clean the 'naked' keyboard.

The key caps are then brought home, where I put them in a pillow case, tie it and throw it into the washing machine together with the rest of my laundry.

When the key caps come out, somehow they become clean. There's no need to clean them individually.

After the key caps are dry, it takes another 15 minutes for me to put them back on again.

I'm thinking maybe I can start a business cleaning people's keyboard. Any takers?

My homework

These are my homework nowadays: children's storybooks in Swedish.

Can you guess what Sagan om en katt mean? The story of a cat. Can you guess what Sagan om en val mean? Exactly - the story of a whale. See? You're getting the hang of Swedish already.

The whale story is quite funny. This whale goes around eating fish at first, but one day for no apparent reason he decides to catch en haj (a shark) using - of all things - a fishing net. The shark becomes angry, bites the whale and swims away. The whale is sad. Then a mermaid comes up to him and says "Whales cannot eat sharks. Whales eat small fish". So the whale eats small fish and becomes happy.

Recent pictures of the kids

These pix were taken earlier this year.



My eldest, Ahmad Syakir. Notice the Monalisa smile.



My second one, Ahmad Zuhayr.



And this little bugger is my daughter, Alhan Farhanah. But her brothers call her Baby Luigi. Ntah papa tah.

I'm back

Quite a number of things have happened since my last post:

1. I've taken up French in addition to Swedish. Oh-la-la. French is offered by NST as part of our in-house training this year. It's free, so I figured why not?
2. I'm no longer doing those damn Tempo pages (thank you God, thank you Joan).
3. My iMac finally died a natural death after serving me for six years.
4. On a brighter note, Agnetha came into my life.





As you can see, Agnetha is not some Swedish girl with luscious blonde hair and long legs. Not a white block of tofu either. Agnetha is a laptop: a white Apple MacBook that I had been eyeing for a long time. My iMac's demise was somewhat expected; it had already developed a number of problems months earlier, namely the screen had turned greenish on the right side, the slot-loading drive refused to eject discs and a difficulty to boot up every time it was shut down.

So, rather than fix those problems, I figured it was time to invest in a new Mac. Besides, it was getting increasingly important to get a Mac with at least a CD-burner for backing up purposes (my iMac only had a DVD drive. Combo drives were unheard of back in 2001).

Also, I wanted a Mac that is portable in case I need to move to Sweden one of these days.

Hence Agnetha. It's pronounced "a-nyieh-ta". How did the name come about? It was named after my favourite ABBA member, Agnetha Faltskog.

Some people say Frida was the prettier of the two ABBA singers but I don't care. Agnetha had the nicer backside.

As for my iMac (which will forever hold a special place in my heart because it was my first Mac and becos it was almost the same age as my eldest son), I gave it a thorough clean-up and will soon give it a proper burial. I have no intention to sell it even if anyone is interested. It's a classic in my eyes. Remember that it was the last Mac built by Apple to feature a fan-less design, so it was as quiet as a whisper.




Rest in peace, my friend.