Condoms for thumb drives

I'm wondering if I should rename my blog "My Amazing Adventures at Sime Darby" or something like that. All this traveling is enjoyable, but also pretty darn tiring. Especially when I have to wake up at 4.30am in the morning to catch a 7.15am flight to Sandakan...which I'm supposed to do tomorrow, so I really should be asleep right now... but since I'm already suffering from lack of sleep, I figure another 15 minutes won't hurt. I just came back from Tawau last Thursday, where I spent one week almost everyday waking up at the estate guest-house with an amazing view of a lake and rainforest, which all the pics I took will do absolutely no justice to.

I also got quite up close and personal to one of Sabah's famous residents, the hornbill, while I was at one of the estate offices waiting for someone to finish off some stuff. This particular fella was sitting at the bottom of a little cliff, so I couldn't see it til I crept close enough to the edge. And at first it was so still, I almost thought it was a statue of a hornbill... until, of course, it moved, and I was like "Coooooool!".

Ah yes, getting to enjoy great views and taking shots like these make the lack of sleep and rather long working hours quite worth it. What made me almost wish I hadn't joined Sime was when my laptop got hit by a trojan... or rather, a whole bunch of trojans, when I had to transfer some documents to some people's thumb drives. Fortunately, my antivirus program could detect and delete most of them. Unfortunately, it failed to get rid of one... and it caused my laptop to suddenly restart every now and then, and then go into a black screen with the words "Operating System not found". I was so totally freaking out, worrying that everything on my laptop would be wiped out. And it REALLY didn't help when I plugged in my camera to transfer some pics in for work, and it found another undeletable virus in my camera! I think it was from when I plugged my memory card into someone else's laptop to transfer some pics, so it picked up a virus from that comp. Bugs on my laptop is already bad enough... if all my pics were wiped too, I'd be pretty ticked off. Eventually I did calm down and told myself that it's just data and stuff that really not all THAT important after all. But the thought of possibly having to reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything over my weekend did not do wonders for my mood. I'd done it once before... it took up a whole day, and considering I have only a few days back to enjoy myself, I did NOT want to spend it trying to fix my laptop.

Fortunately, the viruses didn't wipe out anything on my comp OR camera. When I got back to office, I got an IT guy to help me clean out that trojan, so now my comp doesn't restart itself for no reason and display funny messages. And after transferring all my pics, I reformatted my cam's memory card and it's fine now too. Thank GOD. At least now I've learned something very important... scan every thumb drive I stick into my comp before opening the files. And avoid sticking my camera into strange computers if I can help it. Really, someone should invent condoms for thumb drives or something, to prevent transfer of strange viruses. I'm sure that would be a big seller. :P Now if only Sime would get those new laptops they ordered QUICK so I can use a company laptop and I don't have to worry about funny things happening to my laptop anymore...

Oh yeah, I also just bought myself a new pair of romping-around-in-the-jungle steel-toed boots. Do you know how hard it is to find a good pair of non-fashion boots that fits a girl? All the boots I saw were for guys with super huge feet. But on Thursday after I got back, I managed to find a good looking pair that fit me perfectly and is reasonably priced at RM125 after discount. Not exactly the most comfortable thing to walk around it, but after sludging around in the mud wearing my sneakers, I figure investing in a good pair of boots is worth it. Maybe I could make a fashion statement out of it too. Hyuk hyuk. Ok, time for bed.