Been a very hectic weekend that almost re-wired my biological clock. I didn’t have enough sleep and kept thinking of the error that caused a 15Amp fuse in my car to trip. After 3days of tracing and disassembling the wires in my fuse box, I finally managed to find the fault.

First, it was caused by a shorted wire that has hidden in the boot compartment. The wires had been eaten by wear and tear over the years, its a 1981 Honda Civic. The load wire that connected my tail light  along with the neutral and other wires had melted together, most probably caused by a minor short circuit and spreaded to a major short circuit.

I had thought that was the end, so I had inserted another fuse in the fuse box but it blew on me again. Then I traced the wiring to the front of the car, where the headlight was. Since it is an old car, I had to scrub off all the grime and dirt on every wire to make sure that the same error didn’t apply to the wires.

Sure enough, the front headlight wires were shorted. Even though the cut was small and couldn’t be seen unless all the grime had been taken off, the impact it made on my fuse box could very well cause another major short circuit.

To solve the minor bare cut on the wire, I had to make sure that the bared wire still had a strong continuity to itself before I taped it off with an electrical insulating tape that could withstand high temperatures.

Once that was done, I once again inserted the fuse and voila! My 3 days headache was solved. Too bad for me, the faulty circuit is not claimable by insurance company else I would have been enjoying my weekends. Perhaps I should re-read the auto insurance quote brochures which I had taken a while back from my visit to the insurance company.

Unfortunately now my Air Con relay is fried. Not sure what happened since I had changed the relay to a newer one so now I need to head back to the drawing board.

As usual, this post is influenced by the madness of the papers that had been flagging down blogs that have been trying to promote racist and inciting of hate towards religions. The media sure make it looks like there are no rules on blogging at all whereas there are plenty. I do not support racist or any manner/form of hate towards anyone or anything or any organisation whatsoever. Therefore I’m creating an all out awareness to bloggers who simply sits on their bum and think that it’s a free world out there on the internet with freedom of speech.

Firstly and most importantly, there are no such thing as freedom of speech on the internet. Don’t think that whatever you type/express/rant about cannot be traced down by the authorities should you ever piqued their attention. No parties would ever want to mess with the men in blue especially when they start coming out with warrants and court orders. Take note that every web hosters, blog hosters, domain owners and anything that corresponds to them would do everything in their power to comply with the men in blue.

Next, let’s take a deeper look at some Terms of Service or Blogging Etiquette of some well known web publishing blogging services. In Blogger.com, it is clearly stated that they do not tolerate Pornography & Obscenity, Hateful Content, Violent Content, Copyright, Private & Confidential Information, Impersonation, Unlawful Use of Service, Spam-Malicious-Codes & Virus. Taking a copy and paste action, the meanings of the above are as follows:-

”

PORNOGRAPHY AND OBSCENITY:

• Pornography and Obscenity: Image and video content that contains nudity, sexually graphic material, or material that is otherwise deemed explicit by Google should be made private. Otherwise, we may put such content behind an interstitial.
• Pedophilia, Incest and Bestiality: Users may not publish written, image or video content that promotes pedophilia, incest and bestiality.
• Commercial Pornography: We do not allow content that exists for the primary purpose of monetizing porn content or driving traffic to a monetized pornography site.
• Child Pornography: Google has a zero-tolerance policy against child pornography, and we will terminate and report to the appropriate authorities any user who publishes or distributes child pornography.

HATEFUL CONTENT: Users may not publish material that promotes hate toward groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity.

VIOLENT CONTENT: Users may not publish direct threats of violence against any person or group of people.

COPYRIGHT: It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. More information about our copyright procedures can be found here.

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: We do not allow the unauthorized publishing of people’s private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, Social Security Numbers, and driver’s and other license numbers.

IMPERSONATION: We do not allow impersonation of others through our services in a manner that is intended to or does mislead or confuse others.

UNLAWFUL USE OF SERVICES: Our products and services should not be used for unlawful purposes or for promotion of dangerous and illegal activities. Your account may be terminated and you may be reported to the appropriate authorities.

SPAM, MALICIOUS CODES AND VIRUSES: We do not allow spamming or transmitting malware and viruses.

”

Blogger.com is not the only one that has the Blogging Etiquette in their Terms of Service. In fact WordPress.com, Livejournal.com and many others have that rules in their service. They will not hesitate to terminate your service should the blogger insist of doing otherwise.

Furthermore, if your content should attract the wrong attention of any government authorities from whichever countries, then you’d find yourself being hauled up in not the most friendly way. Even though as a blogger, we have the so called ‘power’ to express our discontentment with whatsoever party, we do not have the ‘power’ at all. We are still governed by rules and regulations. So don’t start blabbering your anger away should any parties decide that they had enough of your nonsense and pull you out into court.

So bloggers, do your part in being wiser, read the Terms of Service before you start your writings and end up on the wrong side of the law.

Shaking.. I am having an aftershock of a bad troubleshooting episode that went wrong. I’m not sure why, but this is the third time I had a bad experience in repairing cutting saw machine. The previous blue metal cutting machine nearly saw my arm off two years ago when the cutting disc flew off from its machine due to a technical fault.

Now, I had the same experience with the other cutting machine, wood cutting machine. It nearly saw my foot off due to an eletrical wiring in the switch went haywire.  The machine which was initially on the work bench vibrated off the table with such a force that it landed on the floor, centermeters away from my feet and a meter from my younger sister.

Shaking.. I am still shaking. After scrambling to turn off the mains, I had to no choice but check for its problems. The crash had broken its handle, shocked the armature and whacked the wiring. After spending 2 hours of re-wiring the circuit; making sure it has an SOS power off button, sanding the armature and changing the carbon brush, its finally completed. The badly damaged holding frame was easily remedied with a thick roll of 3M high insulation stretchable black tape which is usually used for RF cables.

The stupid machine tripped the moment I on it. Turns out my 0.2mm wire wasn’t enough to cope with the 13Amp. I had used a 0.2 mm wire as an alternative for the 13Amp fuse. Usually it works and its small enough to trip and split the wire once there’s a trip in the circuit. USUALLY!!!

Drat.. In the end, I changed the fuse and rechecked the earth grounding (PNGD or GND) connection. Turns out the earthing connection was lose at the same time. At this point I was cursing and swearing loud enough for the monks in the monastery to cringe.

Only after all that process did the machine finally works properly. This time, viced to the bench with no one around but just me. Me and the machine.

Machine docile, Syikin smiles..

I can’t help but to post this recipe up online since my darling good friend is having trouble to cook such a simple dish by herself. Told you to learn cooking before you got married my dear… hehehe.. now see the mess you are in? Who’s next?

Anyway for the person who personally requested this, I hope you know what and how the ingredients look like. If you do not know, don’t be shy and just call your mom up or heck, me. Or you can always google it up or go to the market and act really blur while you ask the Apek to serve you.

Pay attention to what I’m saying ok…

Too cook Sambal Tumis, you need to have:-

• 250gm -500gm chili boh. If you do not know what it is, I suggest you (a) follow this step by step.
• 100gm-150gm blended onions (4 bawang besar/ red onions and 3 bawang putih/ garlic)
• 2inch by 1inch belacan (baked it first for 10mins!)
• 5 – 6 tablespoon sugar
• A pinch of salt
• 4 tablespoon cooking oil

(a) Chili Boh: -

Buy 1kg of dried chili. I prefer chili from India as they are really hot and have a beautiful smell when you saute them. Anyway wash them and soak them in water for half a day and then drain the water out. Ready a pot of boiling water and dunk the chili in for 3mins or so.

Dried Chili

Then you drain them again for 30mins. After that, you can blend all of them in your blender. Remember do not put a lot of water when you blend or it will make your cooking hell as it will turn very watery.

Or you can always take the easy way out and get the ready made and prepared in the market.

(b) Steps to make the SAMBAL TUMIS:-

Mix the belacan and the onions together. Make sure that the belacan is dissolved and make it to a brownish paste.

Heat up the wok and pour the oil in. Once the oil is heated, add in the blended onions paste and chili boh. Stir and saute (tumis) them continually until the chili turns light brownish orange. It will usually take 3-5mins depending on the condition of your environment and the water content of the ingredients.

Then add in the sugar and salt and stir it again. Do not add any water whatsoever. Stir gradually for another 5-10mins. Do not panic if the Sambal thickens and bubbles out, spraying onto you and outside the wok. It happens, just continue stirring.

Before you turn off the heat, remember to taste it. You may want to add more sugar if its not sweet enough. Anyway before I forget, the longer your cooking time, the longer your Sambal can last outside the fridge without turning bad. Mine usually last for a month.

Once you are satisfied with the result, you can off the fire and serve it.

Note: You can add, dried prawns or (dried salted fish) ikan pari kering or udang kering if you prefer having something in the sambal other than just plain sambal. But remember to soak the dried food in water overnight before you add them or you’ll risk having a very salty sambal.

Unfortunately, I do not have my Sambal Tumis Udang Kering with me at the moment. So you guys just have to use your imagination in how it turns out.

I did a few weird and non-profitable things during the weekend. Some of them includes in getting a huge fish and barbecuing it and also entertaining Fishy-Ayu on dough nut making. And all of this will be shown in a step by step Syikin version on DIY boredom.

How to make your own charcoal or fuel if you are stuck without any charcoal. This is for the city dwellers out there.

First, you must have a piece of wood. Make sure its dried wood and not just a pick over the hedges. And also make sure you don’t use Gaharu wood. If you do find one and don’t know what to do with it, pass it to me. I’ll split the profits with you 50/50..

Then you need a Bench saw or a cutting machine. Make sure that you are using the blade for cutting wood and not for metal. Also please take note to keep children away from the machine and you when you cut the wood. Ensure safety at all times and use a pair of goggles if you don’t like having saw dust in your eyes.

After all the cutting and the mountains of saw dust, you can be proud of your DIY firewood. Don’t throw the saw dust away as you may use it as a fire starter. See! Everything is economical and very eco-friendly.