Email Mistakes and Solutions

My organization allows us to access our mail through our online portal from anywhere in the world. However the problem is that the online email interface is not very user friendly. It also lacks a “sent folder”, so I don’t have a record of emails I send out. Another negative is the limited e-mail space quota – only 29 MB. And with all attachments we receive everyday, it doesn’t take long before we receive the dreaded “Over quota” message and emails sent to us won’t reach us.

In my office, I use the fabulous Mozilla Thunderbird email client.



In order to save valuable space, I had set the “server settings” (Tools> Account Settings> Server settings) to delete the mail in our server once I have downloaded them to my computer.

Big mistake!

During the recent holidays, I was in Kuala Lumpur and needed to access some of my old email and logged into our online email server. To my horror, I found that apart from the latest email; all the older ones had been deleted from the server.

I realized that this could have been disastrous. For example, what if my computer had suffered an unrecoverable crash because of a virus or something. All my email communication would have been lost.

As soon as I got back to my office, I changed the settings to “Leave messages on server” (Just tick the box).

I was also thinking that it would be cool if I could save all the mail onto my Flash drive so that I could access it anytime. Then I suddenly remembered a post on Cheeaun’s blog about portable applications, which you could carry around on your flash drive. Well he did mention John Haller's Portable Firefox but there was nothing about a portable email client. No problem!

Googling ‘portable Thunderbird’ took me to John Haller’s Portable Thunderbird page. Thanks a lot John. You are the MAN.

I downloaded the application into one of my unused Flash drives (128 MB) and gave it a trial run. It’s amazing. Now I can access my mail from any computer. All I have to do is just plug in the flash drive, and load Thunderbird directly from it.

WARNING: Remember to set the setting on the ‘portable Thunderbird’ to “Leave messages on server” or you might face the same problem of missing mails from the server.

I now have Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird (with 102 email messages) running on my Flash drive. And you won’t believe it - takes up only 23MB space.

The Message

One of the victims of the Jordan blast was Hollywood producer and director Moustapha Akkad. He died on Friday from the injuries sustained in the attack while attending his daughter's wedding.

An American national living in Lebanon, Akkad was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1935.

He was the executive producer of the horror movie Halloween (1978) and its seven sequels.



He directed a movie about Prophet Muhammad and the early spread of Islam, Mohammad, Messenger of God (retitled The Message in the US)(1976) starring Anthony Quinn as the Prophet's uncle Hamza.

I first saw this movie just before I converted to Islam and had quite an impact on me.

Another famous movie which he also directed was the Lion of the Desert (1981) again starring Anthony Quinn in the lead role as Omar Mukhtar, the Bedouin Hero of Libya.

Akkad was in the process of producing a movie about Saladin and the Crusades.

A sad loss.

a cacophony of sounds

I was minding my own business
waiting for the bus
watching the world go by
drifting in my own universe
No! Nobody disturbed me.

I suddenly realised how noisy it was
a cacophony of sounds
and the smell of automobile fumes
No! It was not sweet.

It was kind of strange
It was kind of funny
Why hadn't I realised that before?

(came to me yesterday)

And miles to go before I sleep

A lot of friends and other regular visitors to my blog have been asking me why I stopped blogging and when I would be back again. Well! I am finally back.

If you are wondering what happened, read on………..

These past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity and emotions. Words can’t describe the feeling that I have now – it is as if I am floating on top of a cloud.



I am really and truly happy. Maybe it is due to the fact that my wife and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary recently. Or maybe it was because my daughter Rahil turned 2 in October, followed by my wife’s birthday 3 days later. Plus my parents were able to come down from Kota Bharu to celebrate with us.

If you thought that I was enjoying myself all this while, then it cannot be further from the truth. There were times I went into the blogging mode, like the time I read about the abandoned smiling baby in a bag. But I had to focus…..

I finally sent off my revised PhD proposal to my potential supervisor in UK. The next task was less taxing - revise and redo a paper for a journal, which I have since resubmitted. And just three days ago, we finally completed a chapter (co-written with my wife) for a book, a joint project with some lecturers in the Faculty of Business and Accountancy, University of Malaya. The book is due to come out somewhere near of the end this year.

However, the biggest update.

People close to me know that I have running around Government offices for quite sometime now.

Only my wife knows the frustration, the tension, and the uncertainty we went through. I almost gave up

I FINALLY GOT IT!

That’s the biggest reason that I am happy. Happy may not the right word. Delighted or ecstatic would be the better expression.

I kept telling people, “I see some light at the end of the tunnel”. Now, I am out of that tunnel and into the sunlight.

My mind went numb when I heard the good news and I didn’t know how to react. In fact I was not ready to believe it until I got the letter in black and white. Then it finally sunk in – “Yes! You finally got it”.

I will tell you guys (those who don't know yet) what I am talking about when all the formalities are complete.

Tags: milestone

I am back

Finally back. Will be blogging more soon.

Lot of things to write about but this is all for now.

Wishing all visitors to my site a very

Happy Halloween, Deepavali & Selemat Hari Raya Aidilfitri

Bye For Now

Dear visitors,
I will be on indefinite hiatus.
I love blogging but decided that I needed to take a break from the blogging world.
No special reason, just felt like it.

Endon Passes Away

While I was on the way to service my wife's car, I heard a shocking news on the radio - Datin Paduka Seri Endon Mahmood, the wife of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had passed away at the age of 64 after her prolonged battle with cancer.

It was reported that she passed away at 7:55am this morning at the PM's official residence.

Members of the public can pay their last respects at Seri Perdana, Putrajaya between 11am and 4pm.

The Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had been married to Endon since September 4, 1965. They have a son, a daughter and four grandchildren.

She had been fighting against the disease since she first discovered that she had breast cancer in 2002 and had recently come back after undergoing months of intensive chemotherapy in Los Angeles,

She is best remembered for her efforts to popularise and rejuvenate the Malaysian batik industry and more recently the Songket industry.

Less known is her involvement in various charity programmes. She spearheaded efforts to assist children in North Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo and was deeply involved in breast cancer awareness programmes.

My deepest condolences to the PM and the rest of the family. Al-Fatihah.