Excerpt from Running Mom’s blog:-

“Blogger Raden Galoh, a breast cancer survivor and fighter, died this morning after losing a battle with breast cancer metastasis. Not every woman, not especially in this country, has the courage and empowerment to document every detail about a terminal illness such as breast cancer. She did, and educated many a soul with her written words. She was a fighter till the end.”

I never knew Raden Galoh personally. I just happened to stumble upon her blog one day while looking for articles on breast cancer on the internet. Despite not knowing her, her battle was very close to my heart, given that my own mother is a breast cancer survivor.

Her final blog entry, written exactly a month before she passed away, still brings tears to my eyes every time I re-read it. Despite her pain, she was still able to remain thankful (!) to God for her family, for a good night’s sleep, for friends who took the time to visit her, for the peace and calm that she felt despite her ordeal.

May her soul rest in peace. Inna lillah wa inna ilayhirajiun. From God we came and to Him we shall all return.

(Text in the photo is a translation from a Malay quotation that I found from the late Raden Galoh’s blog. The original Malay text read:
Bila Tuhan segera makbulkan do’amu, itu tanda Dia kasihkan dirimu…
Bila Tuhan lambat makbulkan do’amu, itu tanda Dia mengujimu…
Bila Tuhan tidak makbulkan do’amu, Dia ada perancangan lain buatmu.)

Dieter’s Prayer

Give me strength, O Lord I pray.

Help me make it through this day.

Deliver me from snacks and sweets.

Keep my mind off high-cal treats.

Tempt me not with French cuisines.

Bid me flee soft drink machines.

Turn my eyes from ice-cream bars.

Stay my hand from cookie jars.

Till I’m back in shape again, hang in there with me!

Amen.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

Rezeki (English: blessing). Rejeki in Indonesian. From the Arabic rizq (which is also, curiously, where the word ‘risk’ comes from). That’s what this phone is. Pure, unexpected rezeki. I am grateful. And humbled. And thankful.

But between you and me, the real winners are the twins. Because they get to continue playing with Kids Connect The Dots and Zebra Paint on the HTC Desire :)

For those of you who are curious, here’s how the Maxis10 review system worked:-

Maxis tweeted an announcement that they were looking for ten people to review the HTC Desire. They provided a link to an online survey that you had to fill up. The questions were pretty simple: stuff like ‘What social networks are you on?‘, ‘How many followers do you have?‘, ‘Do you have a blog? What is its URL?‘.

Prior to the official announcement of the winners, I already received an email from a Maxis rep, telling me that I’m one of the lucky ten reviewers. We then exchanged several emails and text messages on the terms and conditions of the review because I was in Jakarta at that time and discussing it over the phone would have cost an arm and leg. I can only assume that it was a simple pre-screening process before they announced the winners officially on Twitter and Facebook.

The terms and conditions were simple: we only had to tweet and blog about our impressions of and our experiences in using the HTC Desire. The only specific thing that they required of us was an unboxing video. Everything else was very general — there were no guidelines whatsoever. We were given complete freedom with our review — nothing was said on when we were supposed to do it (other than the deadline: 20th of June), how to do it, or whether to highlight its good points or bad points.

Originally, testing the HTC Desire itself for two whole weeks for free was the reward in itself. That and being one of the ten chosen ones, naturally.

Then Maxis upped the ante and announced that the top five reviewers would get to keep the units for free, waking up the competitive streak in all ten of us, resulting in more reviews posted online. But again, take note that there was no mention of any specific criteria on what constitutes a ‘good’ review.

The announcement Monday morning that all ten reviewers get to keep the phone came as a total surprise to all of us. I had to re-read the tweet several times then double-check Maxis’ Facebook page to make sure I didn’t misunderstand the announcement.

Some bloggers claim that the whole setup was rigged, that Maxis bribed us with the units to get ‘good’ reviews. That is so untrue. As I mentioned several times in this post, Maxis gave us a free hand on what to write, when to write and how to write it. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how they’d take my ‘Ten Things I Hate About You’ post; at some point, I was worried it would affect my chances of being one of the top five reviewers.

In retrospect now, for me, the point of the whole exercise was for Maxis to get publicity from bloggers who cover a huge spectrum of readers. Even if our reviews covered the HTC Desire’s shortcomings, in the marketing world, bad publicity is still publicity. And having been launched via Twitter, with updates via Maxis’ fan page on Facebook (which only has, oh…50,000-something followers!), it was a social media experiment unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

The result: reviews that ranged from ‘normal’ blog posts, tweets on its features, ‘proper’ technical reviews accompanied by tonnes of photos and videos. It got people talking and tweeting and commenting. And convinced many a consumer that the HTC Desire is a good alternative to the leading smartphone in the market today. Because studies have shown that the best advertising is word-of-mouth advertising. And this is word-of-mouth advertising, except that it’s now on a different platform — the world wide web.

Now that you know how simple the process is, now is your chance to be a Maxis10 reviewer for yet another Android offering: the Samsung Galaxy S (only if you live in Malaysia). Click here for the details. But hurry! Video submission deadline is 25th June.

The first smartphone I ever owned was a Palm Treo. I loved its fast startup, its stability, its ability to switch from one program to another with ease. But then the screen got damaged and I couldn’t get a replacement for it. So I bid goodbye to my Palm Treo.

Then I had a Dopod 838Pro. It was big and heavy like a small brick but it had WiFi, bluetooth, and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a combination of features that no other smartphone had at that time. It had a great dialing feature — I’d dial the first few numbers or letters of a person’s name and the Dopod 838Pro would give me suggestions that matched those criteria, either by number or by letters. Unfortunately, it ran on Windows Mobile, which meant extremely slow startup and constant unexplained freezing.

You can imagine my excitement when the iPhone was first unveiled. Long before it reached Malaysian shores, DH somehow managed to secure one unit. So if you look closely at my unboxing video at the portion where I was putting in the SIM card, you’ll notice that there’s a small cut-out on the SIM. That was to accommodate a wafer-thin SIM-like device that I had to put in together with my SIM just so I could use the iPhone with my local number.

How I loved the iPhone’s slim profile, its crystal-clear screen, and the almost magical way with which one can pinch and swipe to zoom in and out and browse images and documents. But I hated the absence of an onscreen keyboard, made worse by the iPhone’s pathetic predictive text feature. And its 3-megapixel camera is such a disappointment with its grainy images.

Hence, despite the introduction of the iPhone 3Gs, I stood my ground and resisted the temptation to join the iPhone bandwagon. That’s because the camera is still crappy. And so is its built-in predictive text app.

Then came the unexpected opportunity to try the HTC Desire. I deliberately avoided reading any review so as not to taint my perception of the phone. Nor did I read the manual — it’s my litmus test for user-friendliness. And you know what? I was blown away by the phone’s features. By its speed. And its stability. And its user-friendliness. I only opened the manual once and that was merely to double-check the method of opening the cover because it felt kinda stuck and I didn’t want to risk breaking it.

The HTC Desire is not perfect, as I wrote in a previous post. But there are so many things about it that I love.

1. I love its intuitive text input system, which is a thousand times better than the iPhone’s. I send text messages in English, Malay, Indonesian, Cebuano, Tagalog, French or a mixture thereof and it remembers the new words that I use. It even remembers which words I use most often. Somehow, it almost always gives the most logical word choices even as I type just the first few letters of the word. And even though I misspell my words, it’s uncanny how it can suggest the word that I actually intended to type in the first place.

2. I love its uber-cool People program that allows me to link my contact’s details from Facebook, from Gmail, from everywhere…then lists in separate tabs all my emails, calls and text messages for and from that same person. Perfect for refreshing my memory about someone just before a business meeting…and for stalker-type folks ;)

3. I love its gorgeous screen that elicits gasps and wonder for its crystal-clear images and for its wondrous but battery-draining live wallpaper feature.

4. I love its intelligent dialing capabalities, a carryover from its Dopod 838Pro days. All I must do is type in the first few numbers or the first few letters of the name of the person whom I want to call, then it gives me a list of possible contacts who match such criteria.

5. I love its 5-megapixel camera, which can switch from still camera to video camera almost effortlessly; whose settings I can tweak to my heart’s desire — contrast, brightness, saturation, sharpness, white balance, ISO, metering mode, self-timer, focus mode; for giving me the options to have my photograph in grayscale, sepia, negative, solarize, posterize. The camera’s not as good as the one in my Nokia N82…but very, very close.

6. I love its removable battery, which means I should be able to buy a spare one somewhere.

7. I love the fact that it comes with a MicroSD card, from which I can get the contents via USB card reader. External memory is always good, just in case something happens to the phone *knock on wood*.

8. I love its smooth integration with Google — emails, contacts, calendar.

9. I love its amazing visible pattern security system in lieu of a password. And I love even more its backup plan: when I forgot my visible pattern, it gave me the chance to unlock it by logging on to my Gmail account.

10. I love its seemingly magical way of auto-adjusting the width of the text when I zoom in and out as I browse the internet.

All in all, the HTC Desire is a great device for someone who values practicality over branding, for someone whose job can benefit from the HTC Desire’s Calendar, calculator, Quickoffice and numerous productivity apps, for someone who wants his/her online life simplified — Twitter, Facebook, email, browsing the Net, sharing photos online. The HTC Desire is beauty and functionality in the same package. Yes, there are some compromises — that’s why I call it ‘great’ instead of ‘perfect’.

And so my two-week test drive of the HTC Desire comes to an end. Thank you, Maxis, for giving me the opportunity to take part in this amazing social media marketing experiment. It’s been a real blast. Should you need my services again, you know how to find me ;)

As for all of you who have been following my blog from the beginning, thank you for putting up with my HTC posts. I realise they’re not the usual topics usually covered here but gadgets ARE close to my heart and, just like any other gadget geek, whenever I get a new toy, I just can’t help but talk about it for weeks on end. That’s how I ended up writing mostly about the HTC Desire during the entire review period instead of writing such articles in between my usual posts. My apologies for that.

For whatever reason you are reading my blog right now, I hope you’ll find yourself entertained with this short feature film that I worked on during our usual two-hour lunch break last Friday, which I edited Friday night and most of Saturday morning under the watchful eyes of my most unforgiving critics — my children. (‘Feature film’ sounds so much more exotic than ’short movie’ right?) Enjoy! :)

Ahh, my Desire… how can I possibly live without you now, after having known what life is like when you’re with me?

After an objective assessment of the features and after having used the HTC Desire for almost two weeks now, I can look you in the eye and tell you that I’d pick the HTC Desire over the iPhone 3Gs anytime. And not just because I got to play with it for free ;)

My next post about the HTC Desire: How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways… Watch for it!

Oh how I hate you, Desire. I hate how you’ve possessed me, despite knowing that you’ll only be in my life for two short weeks. Yes, HATE. It’s a strong word, I know, but there’s just no other way to explain how I feel about these ten idiosyncracies of yours:-

1. Out Of Sync. You. CANNOT. Sync. To. My. MacBook. Pro. Unbelievable! I mean, come on! You’re no Windoze device. You’re an Android! How could you possibly give Mac users this ultimate snobbery?! Good grief! Good thing fellow geeks out there have worked out some kind of workaround for people like me: they advised that I export my Address Book contacts into my GMail account, then sync it with your People program. (Why’d you have to call it ‘People’ anyway? What’s wrong with ‘Contacts’? :P) That saved me hundreds of hours of inputting my contacts again into your memory. Now if only I can get iCal to export properly (I still keep getting that annoying ‘Failed to import events: Unable to process your iCal/CSV file..’ message)… But the point of the matter is — this is not syncing per se; it’s just a geeky workaround. Can somebody at HTC do something about this very important issue pronto? Because of this little glitch, I totally forgot about an important meeting last week just because I had it in my laptop but not in that beautiful memory of yours.

[Update: 15-June-2010 15:19 hrs: There's a software called Missing Sync for syncing an Android with a Mac. If I get to keep the HTC Desire after this 2-week assignment, I'll buy it! In the meantime, I'm downloading a trial version here.]

2. Low Battery Life. What was I thinking? With your dazzling screen, your amusing animations, and all the clever things that you can do, of course something’s got to give at some point. And that’s your battery. *Sigh* It doesn’t even last a day. Good thing I can charge you via USB. And miracle of miracles, I can use the Nokia N97 Mini’s charger on you! It’s about time these darn mobile phone manufacturers decide on a common charger. But that’s another story altogether.

3. Music To My Ears…NOT! The sound from your built-in speakers is so tinny, it gives me an earache in less time than it takes for someone to pronounce supercallifragilisticexpealidocious. And those earphones that came with you in that beautiful white box of yours? They’re a joke. The sound quality is awful and they don’t work properly as the antenna for your FM Radio program to work as it should.

4. No Video Calls. Desire, Desire, oh my dear Desire…with those looks of yours, why didn’t your creators equip you with a secondary camera so that I can make video calls with you? I mean, video calls aren’t exactly cutting edge technology — Nokia’s been producing mobile phones that are suitably equipped for video calls for the past couple of years now. I travel a lot and I go home quite late on evenings so those short video calls to my children mean a lot to me — they help me keep my precarious career/motherhood balance. And I can’t make any such calls with you! Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! (Or as Upin and Ipin would say, ‘Ish! Ish! Ish!’)

5. Limited Apps. In this digital day and age, it’s the tiniest details that matter, Desire honey. When I browse your market, I see an impressive enough amount of apps (including awesome free stuff like games for my twins) but the selection’s not quite as extensive as those of Apple’s App Store. It’s all about choices, my dear. People. Want. Choices. You also get to make a lot of money that way, i.e. by making people feel they have a false sense of control over what goes into their smartphones.

6. SD = So Difficult. Sure, you’re sleek and slim. But why do you have to hide your microSD card inside the back cover AND require me to remove the battery first before I can access it? Please take some pointers from my oldie but goldie Nokia N82, whose microSD card can be removed easily from a tiny slot on its side. *Shaking head*

7. Music, Schmusic. Your built-in Music program needs a lot of work. I especially hate the way you sort my songs. Helllllo?? HTC people, are you reading this? :P

8. Screen Scream. I did mention how much of a fingerprint magnet your smooth screen is, right? Yes, right up there — the second sentence of this heartfelt missive of mine. Your screen is beautiful, true, but only indoors. It’s completely unusable once I’m outdoors.

Okay, okay…so I can only come up with 8 things that I hate about you. But I’m keeping the title anyway just because “Ten Things I Hate About You” sounds way catchier than “Eight Things I Hate About You”. (It doesn’t hurt that I loved that 1999 movie. Heh!)

So there. I feel cleansed. Purged. Relieved to have done this confession of sorts about how much I hate you. But I do love you, you know. And in fairness to you, I will also be telling you very soon all about the things that I love about you. And why my life has changed because of you. And how I can’t imagine living without you when I have to return you to Maxis on the 20th of June. *Sniffle*

Now please excuse me while I go look for a tissue to wipe away my tears and blow my nose. All this talk about parting ways with you in less than a week is just making me so sad… Waaaaahhhhh!!!! :((

Does that sound familiar? Yup, yup. Because I’ve been one of them, too — you know, those people who’d whine about never winning anything.

HTC Desire Android smartphone (click photo for bigger view)

Until last week, that is. Because last week, I received an email that seemed too good to be true. But it was true! I made it as one of The Chosen Ten to review the new HTC Desire Smartphone, thanks to Maxis, my mobile phone service provider. The ten of us have been given the chance to test-drive the HTC Desire until 20th June, 2010 and post our thoughts about and experiences with the latest Android smartphone to hit KL’s shores.

Hence, from now until the 20th of June, in addition to the regular programming here in my little corner of the bloggerverse, I shall be writing about the HTC Desire every once in a while.

Technically, I haven’t won anything tangible just yet  — the phone is just a test unit, which I have to return after 2 weeks — but I’m already ecstatic about the chance to try a brand-spanking-new, drop-dead gorgeous gadget for free…in addition to the fact that I made it to the Top 10 Reviewers list and — get this! — I’m one of the only two (!) women who made the cut.

And did I mention just how jaw-dropping gorgeous the 3.7-inch AMOLED screen is? The colour, the clarity, the animated home screen are so exquisite, they’d put the iPhone 3Gs’s display to shame.

Comparing the HTC Desire to the iPhone is inevitable, given that you scroll up and down the screen by swiping down a finger on the screen as you would on an iPhone, zoom in and out of a pic using pinching motions just as you would on an iPhone, scroll through pics by swiping across the screen with two fingers just as you would on an iPhone… You get the drift.

Anyhow, to kick things off and to whet your appetite a bit, here’s a short movie on the beginning of my mission: my quest for the HTC Desire.

Watch it on Vimeo…

Mission (Possible): Mi2’s Quest For The HTC Desire from SleeplessInKL on Vimeo.

….or on YouTube.

When people started commenting about what an unforgettable experience it must have been for me, only then did I realise the implications of the photo. I was in Terengganu, afterall, where turtles are known to lay eggs and where baby turtles do hatch from those eggs and head back out to sea. Only that wasn’t exactly the circumstance under which I took that particular pic.

Now look again closely. See what happens when I zoom in on the ‘turtles’ (click on the pic below to see a larger version):-

The turtles weren’t real! I made them out of sand :P

My apologies if you found my photo misleading. I never had any intention of misleading anybody. It was just a sand sculpture of sorts that I did using a plastic mould that came with my children’s beach play set. I made it while my children were building their sandcastles a few feet away from me.

So there. The truth is out. Sorry to disappoint you, Lola! ;)

Click here to find out more about turtle-watching in Terengganu.

Nowhere is this more evident than in today’s youth: children start schooling at a much earlier age; learn about the facts of life way before puberty; get more technologically adept than the average adult; dream bigger dreams than we dared dream when we were their age.

To illustrate the last point, just take a look at my children’s ambitions:

- MyEldest: astronaut-scientist-engineer
- OnlyGirl: teacher
- RoundBoy: marine biologist
- Twin1: fighter plane pilot
- Twin2: mechanical engineer

What a contrast from my ambition way back when I was about 7 years old and tasked with a writing assignment that started with the line “When I grow up, I want to be a…”

Me, playing the lead role of St. Catherine in a school play. It was an all-girls school, so the 'priest' beside me was a girl, as well.

Believe it or not, I actually wanted to become a nun! The idea of devoting my entire life to God just appealed to me somehow. That, plus the fact that I’ve spent my early years surrounded by Catholic sisters.

It did not take me long, however, to figure out that I couldn’t be a nun if I wanted to have children. Because I may not have always known what I wanted to do in life, but I’ve always known that I wanted to be a mother.

So I decided to change my ambition from being a nun to being a teacher. Afterall, both of my parents were teachers. [NB: My mum is still teaching at 67 years old, mind you!] I loved the idea of molding young minds and making an impact on people’s lives.

Then as I was growing up, I found myself increasingly drawn to the medical profession and found myself longing to become a doctor — an obstetrician-gynaecologist, to be exact. I was so ambitious that I didn’t want to be just any doctor working in a hospital or private clinic somewhere; I wanted to join Medecins San Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders).

I was very close to achieving that dream when I qualified for the INTARMED program of the University of the Philippines in its Manila campus. INTARMED is an accelerated comprehensive medical program that shortens the path to a medical degree by 2 years, i.e. 7 years instead of 9 years. Normally, a student in the Philippines who aspires to take up Medicine must take a four-year pre-Med course initially (such as BS Biology, Medical Technology, and other medical-related fields) before taking Medicine proper, which takes another five years. INTARMED covers both the pre-med and Med proper courses with its intensive 7-year program.

During my time, only 26 students — 13 boys and 13 girls — from all over the Philippines were admitted into INTARMED, so you can just imagine how enthralled I was to have qualified for the programme.

Unfortunately, it was also during that time that UP decided to implement a new tuition fee scheme that made it impossible for me to pursue Medicine. As I said, both my parents were teachers and teachers in the Philippines do not earn much. On top of the tuition fees, there were so many other things to think of, such as pricey medical textbooks and my room and board in Manila. So to make a long story short, I had to turn down INTARMED and opted to go to Ateneo de Manila University, where I was granted me a full scholarship plus a loan to cover dorm fees. [NB: Dorm = hostel]

Fast forward to some 20-odd years later, I now find myself in the manufacturing sector. My interest in Medicine never waned though — I devour novels with medical themes; I savour all movies and TV shows that have anything to do with medicine, such as ER, Grey’s Anatomy, House, even CSI; I relish articles on the human body, diseases, medical discoveries, and all things scientific. Heck, I’ve even learned enough medical jargon to make doctors think I’m working in the medical sector.

And by interesting coincidence, many of my friends are also doctors, including Z, my best friend since we were 7 years old. Z is one of those few people who have always known what they wanted to do and ended up doing it, unlike people like me who ended up doing something entirely different from what I’ve dreamed of doing.

I’m not bitter or sad by any means. My job has fulfilled my childhood dream of seeing the world; it has gotten me to places that used to be just names on the map. My job has also allowed me to give my children the opportunity to do things that I have not been able to do when I was young and for that, I am very grateful.

I guess the bottom line is that no one really knows how our lives turn out in the end. We chase our dreams, give it our best, but in the end, it’s God who determines where we end up.

Image by Lotharkort

On some days my mind is just totally devoid of blog ideas. And when I force myself to write, the words that come out have an empty ring to them. Flat. Stale. Unworthy of being read by other human eyes. I hit ‘Delete’ without regrets nor hesitation.

Some 26 draft blog posts await completion.

Hundreds — nay, thousands! — of photographs in my hard drive are begging to be sifted through to be written about.

I hope this drought season passes soon. For my soul longs to tell its tales once more.