Welcome to TimYang.com.

I've had my weblog since the end of 2000 when Alex Schaeffer of nosuch.org (whom I was acquainted with during the early days of Clanlord.com gaming) introduced me to it. A bit of trivia: I was the first Malaysian blogger. (Yay, gimme a prize.)

This weblog has undergone several changes over the years.

First it was filled with my fascination with things I learned or read about during the university years. I spent hours in the uni library poring over academic articles, soaking all the ideas and theories in.

Then, when I was bitten by the travel bug, it recounted all the people I'd met and all the things I did on the road. I've since been to about 20 countries, from Scandinavia, Western Europe, South East Asia and the subcontinents of Australia and India. I do occasionally post pieces of this nature, but rarely these days -- I have even less money now to travel.

I earn my living as a brand consultant for new media. I used to be a copywriter and I liked that job, except when I don't. I've worked at various international advertising agencies based in Malaysia and previously in Singapore. It was a bit tiresome. And people at work also found me tiresome: I have very little patience with stupidity and cynicism. I've been fired more times than Evil Knievel.

I rather prefer working in new media. I now get more job satisfaction with the small business clients that I work with. I'm taking my training in brand management and consumer behaviour analysis and my experience in advertising and planning the brands of multimillion Ringgit accounts and apply them to the online environment.

I'm always scanning news aggregators for new software ideas and dreaming up new ways how they can be applied to niche groups of consumers; or combined with another software to make something far more useful. I've also taught myself XHTML and CSS web design to the expert level as well as javascript and PHP through hours and hours of practice.

Hence this website: it's my notebook of things I find interesting on the internet. Occasionally, I search it and locate things I noted in the past.

Some factoids about myself:

  1. I am 6 feet tall.
  2. I always look like I'm 22, even though I'm well over 30. It's a family trait. I have aunts who look like they're 35 when they're closer to 60.
  3. My birthday is 26 February. A girl I liked made me look up my birth signs and she said I am a Pisces and my rising sign is Gemini.
  4. I read loads. I loved literature in secondary school. I still do. I've read books by Solzhenitsyn, Orwell, Dinesen, Hemingway, Asimov, Byron, Yeats, Beckett, Kipling, Burroughs, Capote, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Golding, Heller, London, Melville, Twain, Poe, Salinger, Shakespeare, Thoreau, Steinbeck. I'll grab a bag of books and head out to the beach and I won't come back till I've finished reading them all.
  5. I have a small build, but it's all muscle thanks to my own gym regime. I love the gym.
  6. Women: absolute zero. I'm extremely difficult to get to know and no one has that kind of patience. Then again, I also hate the obligations that relationships bring.
  7. I currently reside in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. It's a nice enough place, if you don't mind that two-thirds of the population are uneducated slackers.
  8. I want to retire to either a country cottage in Finland or my own beach resort on a Malaysian island.
  9. I use a Mac, have since 1993 when I was introduced to them in journalism class at my Singapore college. I now have an iBook.
  10. I love romance movies. I've always felt that the best writing is in romance movies. But I watch all kinds of movies, especially foreign language ones. They always offer me a fresh perspective.
  11. I listen to classic jazz. Anything by Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. This came about because I'd noticed the soundtrack of all my favourite romance movies always had some classic jazz. Thanks to my archaic music tastes, I have not bought a CD since 1997.
  12. I memorised loads of lyrics by the Gershwins and Cole Porter because I thought it would impress girls. It does actually work.
  13. I also love shopping. New consumer goods always interest me.
  14. I have a server which I taught myself to manage from scratch. I host websites and sell domains as a small income generator. Let me know if you need something.
  15. I only went to university when I was 28. I worked for several years before as a copywriter, so I managed to get an exemption of the first year. I have an undergraduate degree in Advertising from the University of Bournemouth.
  16. I'm not ambitious. But I am driven (aggressive, even) when some idea strikes my fancy.
  17. Aggressiveness should not be confused with a tendency for violence, which I do have. Usually I downplay it as dirty looks and sarcasm. But I have been known to fly off the handle and yell at people -- bad people, cowardly people, bullies. My favourite method (and I do enjoy it) is mocking people and goading them to physically attack me. But most people don't have the fight instinct in them and I've never succeeded.
  18. I dance salsa (when no one is looking).
  19. I invented a guaranteed technique of killing cockroaches. I use spray glue on them then they turn into glue statues... and starve. Ok ok, that sounds despicable, but it does work.
  20. I am an asshole: I never ask for help; I have a short temper; I take my anger out on my friends; I never talk about my problems; I am rude to the ignorant; I never apologise; I scheme against authority figures; I am self-centred; I use semi-colons.

In the past I have used htaccess to ban all Malaysian IP addresses because of the immaturity of Malaysian visitors. I will not hesitate to do so again if you leave dumbass comments. I have zero patience for stupidity.