Thursday, September 29, 2005

Busy, busy, busy...

Balls. Still no internet in the house. On campus now. Serious first week kecoh - so much shit to settle. Can't wait to just cruise down to London and enjoy some shopping. Blergh.

Anyhoo, 157 Broomfield Road is up and running. Dapur dah hangat, bilik dah terabor. Just gotta settle the utility payments, wait for ntl broadband and get a freakin washing machine. Our power bill sure giler bangat, what with 5 computers in a house of 3, and all the shit in the kitchen. First week pun dah super koyak - buying stuff for the house, bas pass, sports fed & gym reg, etc. Pokaiii!!!

Oh yeah - we rented a car Monday to pick up our stuff from campus storage. I can't drive manual for shit anymore - well, it HAs been 5 years...but still....i think i might just enrol for driving school here to brush up...and get a brit license while i'm at it. But sure tak sempat one. Balls.

This very moment? its 11.25 , i'm in the computer lab, and wondering whether to stay here and write a piece or go home and do some housework before my next lect at 2pm. Body in absolute pain - pegi gym yest, where i almost threw up halfway after trying to resume my 1000 calorie workout, and fencing that night - mati mati lawan dengan the new veterans and had drinks with the team afterwards.

Verdict? Lapar. Nak balik. Don't worry you'll still get that piece. Probably gonna be a ramble piece on ego and hypocrisy. Still looking for something to rant about though. Toodles!

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Packin's a bitch, ain't it?

Its early Weds morn, and i managed to get a seat on the 2345 flight back down. Well on one hand, i'll arrive in the morning, and can go straight to the uni, get my keys for our crib for the next 9 months and move in straight away. On the other hand, thats gonna be some bitching travelling after a 13 hour flight - not made any easier lugging my bloody desktop around. The next week or so is going to be utter chaos, so dont think there'll be any updates for a while, unless a gorgeous sunrise, a muse or just a combination of insomnia + dead ipod + bad inflight movies inspires me enough to whip out my laptop and write a profound, reflective piece about the last summer. Right now? naaah - still takin my sweeet sweet time to friggin pack.

Also suddenly strangely obsessed with the iPod Nano. Strange, cos when the Mini came out i hardly felt a quibble. Fiddling with a working model at a local apple retailer didn't help tone down my zeal to obtain one either. Do you believe its more expensive here than in UK?

Anyhoo, managed to catch Lionel and charl last Thurs nite for supper at Murni. Area-wide blackout halfway tho - didn't have much confidence in mamak food made in the dark, so we just had drinks before parkin in front of charlotte's house for like...15 mins figuring out what to do. In the end never do anything also.Cheeeebye!

On Friday managed to get out Tai Uei, Aaron, Sze, poco and the kuah out on another alcoholic oddyssey - this time it was at Soda Club at Hartamas. Picked that spot only cos there was no cover charge, and we(okay they) werent really down for clubbing.

Verdict? Price biasa only larr....but all the waitresses are rather hot super ah lians. Goes downhill from there though - the entertainment alternated from a smarmy band that did lotsa pop and even jiwang chinese songs, and a DJ who can't mix to save his life. We all got seats on the balcony/upper flor/whatever, and the view was damn condemn lor....there WERE hot girls, but they just sat quietly with their creepy 'uncle'ish escorts while all the fuckin bengs were on the floor , doing what's best described as the dance scenes in Honey....meets William Hung....meets an epilectic fit. Brr....

Sze and choong got juust a little smashed afterwards, which was even better entertainment. Man if you werent there you wouldn't believe some of the things those two fuggers said....havent reviewed the videos myself hohoho. Aaron 'formerly known as fatty' Choong even poured beer and teh tarik into my wantan mee. Balls , balls indeed.

Topped off Saturday with the official-really-no-kidding final dota sesh of this summer. A bit sad also right? 10 guys on saturday night chalking up a 20$ bill at a cybercafe. As usual i got raped. Probably almost gave bobby and sing 'hamchat' tat a stroke everytime i died. Sorryla horrr i only play this 3 months a year hahahaa.

Funny thing happened over tennis with dead ol' dad on Sunday. Not only did i fuckin thwack myself in the face when my grip slipped on the racket, but i managed to kill a bird with my serve. Hahaha those sparrow swarms are probably kinda used to the grass courts being quite quiet. Until i managed to practice some serves on my farler. Whacked one spot on, but it just crashed, hobbled off and flew off again. Kinda glanced another one, but this poor bastard got bounced off straight into the tennis pavillion wall. PHOKkkk!

Pretty much got nothing else now but a rant on Dell, but dont think you wanna hear that wouldja? Long story short, i told them i was flying Monday and emailed 'em like mad. That got me the laptop Tuesday evening. eeeeeficient no? Like to meet the industry 'expert' who supported Dell's 99% customer satisfaction claim and spit on him until i die of dehydration. Ptuih!

Here's a blog some of you might just find hilarious - Talk Rock - a pretty popular singaporean blog done in the literary style of Beng. I'd bet my last nickel on him being able to actually speak better english than most of us...

Toodles dahlings!
GHOR-geouss. Amazing engineering too. One apparently worked fine after being ran over with a car.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Managed to drag along Charl and Lionel to Janji Joni, along with Daim & Sze for the 6.50 show on Thurs. It wAs rather good wasn't it? Managed to pick up even more jokes and visual subtleties this time as i needn't bother with the subs anymore. Not kidding - seriously go catch it.

Joined ze happy couple and family for dinner later at Chez Pinky. Crabs, crabs, crabs and their Spanish holiday pictures - some real arty shots there, dude! Sempat main congkak also hahaha.

Sohai idiots at Dell. 5-7 working days my ass. Tracked my order made on last friday and it was still at the processing stage- still pre-prod, kitting, building and testing to go. The Dell rep said that there was some problems with the Amex payment, but then i checked with Amex and there was no attempt at such transactions. I reverified the payment details with Dell and they all checked out. Probably some asswipe in Finance forgot to put my payment through because he was busy thinking about his WoW character. Seriously gotta sound those bitches again tomorrow.

Met up with Naz, Puts & Su, then went off to have dinner at Muhibbah ( yummy! ) followed by lin chee kang, satay and shisha at rhasta. As usual, slowly wobbled into deep discussions on courting and relationships after the compulsory bitching about some random guy that i'm just hella glad isnt me. That and the fact Su likes stabbing onions when she has to tahan going to the ladies'..hor hor hor.

Conventions of Complexity

The Game, The Chase, The Project or whatever you call it, has obviously evolved over the ages - and just gotten more fucked up. Lets go with an example of a discussion on said topic.

Disclaimer: following discussion and related rant is a purely mentally generated simulation based on the tenets of most common arguments/discussions based on input data from many , many past conversations. Suffice to say, this is more for entertainment rather than serious thought , and in no way biographical - im sure many of you can relate.

1. Women say chivalry is dead , along with romance in a double homicide.
2. The men's rebuttal is that its hard to be all that, with women becoming 'empowered' and all and just taking what they want as a result of feminism and equality using their feminine wiles. Basically they're just saying women aren't really that innocent & ladylike anymore, thus not being deserving of over-the-top gentlemanliness.
3. The women come back with the fact that they have to use what they have to even the playing field in terms of career potential in what is still a male dominated business world, and more importantly, get back at the men who play for sport, thusly throwing the blame back at the men.
4. Suddenly the men pull a vunerablity card, saying that women also cause their fair, if not more, share of heartbreak and lovelorn men who go on to do stupid things like commit suicide, or god forbid, pen awful songs of undying dedication and love.

Repeat various permutations and variations of 1-4, until we have a stalemate and everyone shuts up, all grumpy and shit. The next day, boyfriends buy flowers, and husbands buy jewelry. Which makes no sense, as usually only single people engage in such discussions. Couples in the company or vicinity of such exchanges usually slink away or form that impenetrable bubble of couplyness.

Still on a related note, our generation's a helluva lot more connected than our parents - handphones enable a lot more private conversations, email and MSN combine with SMS to enable gossip to spread around the world at ridiculous speeds. Gossip, bitching, and stories that are bound to evolve at every point of transfer, possibly turning from an impressive story to an incriminating one.

How that hooks up to the previous subject? While knowledge is power, too much of it just fucks things up. Anyone spends too much time with anybody else of the opposite sex, rumours start flying all over the fuckin world which screws things up either way : if they're seriously just friends, one or both might get paranoid and defensive, and if one is seriously going after the other, a bit faktap jugak kan?

Is all this super gossip sabotageness bitchifying thing an inherently Malaysian thing? Human nature should logically dictate not, but you just can't help but feel outta your own observation or some subconcious prejudice that it has to vary between racial or class groups( or certain schools/colleges for that matter) . Maybe its just the particular groups of people. Whatever. At the end of the day, hypocrites and haters are just everywhere, and the most dangerous ones are the ones that are actually nice to you to your face. People who are so fucked up and bitter that they have to find someone's parade to rain on just to feel better about their miserable, repressed lives. Well you might say this doesn't apply when the subject of bitching is himself or herself a primo grando bitch/bastard , but then again, being completely subjective, they're always two sides to every story innit?

Wouldn't it be nice to go back to the way things were. Nope, i'm not talking about the sepia-toned innocence of our grandparents generation. I'm not talking about medieval tales of knights and damsels either. I'm talking mammoth hunts and stone spears. Societal and gender roles couldn't be simpler back then. No nightmarish web of social status and interactions, no technology so that people expect things there and then. No bitching behing each others back - you have problem with Ugg, take club, deck Ugg. If Trogg can!(or better yet, grunt urg grungt Ugg- growwlll...cant have much gossip when your vocab is just 10 different grunts, and gestures kan?). Just homo sapiens sapiens living off the earth by his instincts. Where men are happy to hunt and women take care of the young without complain, just as we were physiologically and psychologically tailored for by the big guy( or girl, or omnipotent genderless creator being, whatever)up there. I'm sure no one can argue with that.

Monday, September 12, 2005

Listening to : Chupa Chupa - El Medico
Feelin : full of sugar. Stupid Abu Syed watermelon juice

Yeayy! Just finally decided to reinstall Picasa to splatter some photos on my blog again, only to find to my delight that you dont even need to go through picasa anymore! Expect a lot more pictures to come. At least now i dont have to color my text like a bloody kolam at deepavali to keep yer focus. Again - yay photos!

Anyway, just got back from yumcha-ing at Abu Syed with Charl, Lionel and Chris. Man guys can't believe its been that long - had so much to catch up to - met up earlier at 1 U at the new Kopi Tiam place where Salem Power Station used to be ( c'mon , you seriously tried to go toe to toe with tower records? Pfah!). Felt a little weird tho eating at Abu Syed and not talking about Dota at all. Pelik kan? hee hee hee

I'm sure i'm not really up to speed yet on IC goss. 6 hours is not nearly enough. Till we pick up again, have fun shopping for curtains, Lionel! buwahahah hope your DS battery lasts the course. Now enjoy the photos. No rants this time. Other than the fact that long lashes are not all they're cracked up to be - the smart like hell when they fall into your eye, and you'd have to wet wash the inside of your specs more than the outside.


My new custom rig. In plain black and grey finish. Not my fault the PSU had a blue glow...and the only PCI fans Robyncom had were those glowy blue ones. Check out that 'sink!

I just like this shot. Its the Sunday Bazaar at The Curve.
What a bored engineer does at Sushi King. Or maybe its just me. Well i'm sure the KFC battle fortress back in '98 wasnt just me hmmn?

The last 5 course meal i made, sans the pasta dish. Pumpkin & prawn soup, tuna salad nicoise with a miso vinagrette dressing, beef carpaccio with pineapple and coriander chutney and bruschetta. Amazingly, the two plonkers who couldn't make it were the ones with food poisoning later.


Sri Cempaka...Megah berdiriii....lalalala BALLS. More like an AA and a GA meet. Everytime. haha this summer rocked!
umm...Petronas had a song didn't they? Cant remember a word or a single tune from it. Potluck at le maison Alessandra.

" I think he's submissive AND oily.." - Quote of the day, courtesy of Charlotte. To think i almost forgot it - man my memory's really goin to shit.

Oh and here's a hilarious comic from RippedTicket.com . Might offend Christians a lil' bit.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Brotha's back in the effin' hizzouse!

Last two weeks? Bukan sibuk brader...more like marlasss.... anyhoo going straight into a rant -
p.s. haha edwin i'm gonna copy ya and go mental with the colours too! Kan kena cari pastime lain...


Doesn't anybody else feel this little tinge of annoyance whenever you hear some local politician or smarmy Filem Negara ad going on and on about the k-economy , pintar IT, MSC, and anything else along those lines? The thing that personally ticks me off the most, most of the numbnut politicians who go around repeating those select buzzwords and pose with schoolkids on computers probably wont know what a browser is even if one manifested in corporeal form and bit 'em on the ass. Seriously. I'm sure a fair amount of them don't know anything much beyond pressing a single button on a laptop at a stage to officialize some launch or program or whatever. I personally know of a few such people. Mahai why dontcha pick up Computers for Dummies or sumtin instead of picking out a new grotesque wall clock from Da Vinci or a hideous settee and armoire combo from Imperial Furniture. Imbeciles.

On a similar note, technologically retarded parents can be both a blessing AND a curse at times. Saaay you're at Low Yat choosing bits for a new comp - just bury 'em in jargon about why you need that hideously expensive video card (and pray that the salesman will also join in and throw even more greek at 'em , and not downplay your specs before you give him the "lumphaar i'm giving you fucking business here, you want or not?" look ) until they just zone out and nod. Or when they're compulsive gadget-philes who get crap they dont know how to use and occasionally consign something you can actually put to good use to the "yeah take it if you want " cupboard.

Well actually thats the only blessing i can think of right now - the ease at which you can blag new kit. The curse? Well say your mother cusses yo' ass out for her radio presets dissapearing and blaming it on your ipod FM broadcaster, while in reality it was because she pressed the 'radio' button one more time and landed in the AM band. Or when you have to give step by step instructions for them to check their webmail( amazingly difficult for parents weaned on office mail setups like Lotus notes and the like) .

And now, on to our local film industry - well, film AND music industry. The Malaysian film industry, especially when it comes to Malay films, is pure and utter putrid rubbish. Just look at the state of it - every other movie is either a formulaic romantic comedy, by-the-book action movie, or slapstick comedy that takes down the average IQ of the audience a few notches. And you see the same wankers all the time in the movies. Erra fucking Fazira. Saiful sodding Apek( who is just as funny as Jack Black. Incidentally, I think Jack Black is as funny as a dead rat that's been run over to the point of its innards doing a Pollock on the street.) . The odd ex-Akedemi Fantasia fucktard and the other idiots from Senario ( well when they're outta rehab once in a while..shh!). Lord knows what will happen to the 'Industry' should Yusuff Haslam and Aziz M Osman should suddenly keel over and die.

We actually get a half-decent movie in the guise of Sepet, and not only does it get crapped on by critics and local ' industry literati' for winning so many awards, Yasmin Ahmad's dirty laundry got hung up by 'em typically bitchy chatty aunty cocks to the point that she withdrew Sepet from the consideration of another award just to stop the bitching and personal threats. Well i guess the 'industry' just has to endure KL Menjerit 2: Rempit Rampage and Senario Super Reunion till she finishes her next, earnest indie flick. Gabra or sumthin like that.

For a supposedly liberal and model Islamic country, the media censors are surprisingly snippy. They put together a bunch of bigoted, narrow minded conservative prudes who havent even finished their secondary education, and expect them to represent the 'rakyat' on what we should or shouldn't see. They're another reason local film makers fear to make films that portray society as it really is. The censors enforce political correctedness to the point that they assume everyone takes offence at the littlest thing. Sepet was actually banned here at first. Take Indonesia for example - they're the most populous Muslim nation, but their film and music industry are more liberal in many ways.

Actually the Indonesian film and music industry it just plainly BETTEr than its Malaysian counterparts. Lets have a little example - they have Janji Joni, a simple story anyone can relate to but done with enough wit, style and charm to please someone who'd initially laugh at the idea of watching an Indo movie, while here, we haaaave....Gila Gila Pengantin Popular. KL Menjerit 1 (the first ever m'sian fuckin prequel...yayyy!).

Music - they have bands like Dewa, Sheila on 7, Peter Pan , Cokelat and the like who are actually distinguishable among each other, write lyrics that are actually meaningful and poetic and just make lovely songs. Here? We have Pop Shuvit, Prana, One Buck Short, Red Dragon and various other college droput bands who are either:

a. carbon copies of Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park or a similar Nu Metal act, except with horrendously bad monkeys on the turntable and ridiculous fake american-ghetto wannabe accents.

b. singers who shouldnt sing, writers who can't write, drummers who...well you get the picture.
c. Typical malay rock band, i.e. endless screaming over endless recycled guitar riffs.


But then again, with MY playlist *koff*Anuar Zain*koff*, who am i to criticize?

okay i'm gonna stop with the colors. eyes pain

Ahhh baru puas. And now for an update on my oh-so-interesting life.

1st week since last entry -

Had some more cousins staying over. Autistic cousin, cousin who takes care of autistic cousin, and annoying jackass of a cousin who instead of saying a word of thanks for my bed for 5 days, but screwed up/hogged my comp, bragged endlessly about knowing minister's kids from some polytechnic he's from , and left behind a smell that took 2 days of airing out and various aerosol products to kill.

Oh yeah don't even bother eating at the revolving restaurant at KL tower anymore. The prices keep on going up, but the food and service's gone to absolute shit. Anyhoo, the day i went with my cousins, a huge group of Taiwanese tourists came in, true to their stereotype - notoriously loud, and super camera happy (seriously, imagine 10 of em snapping shots and going oooh and aaah at a buffet table like tak pernah makan buffet before). They were followed by a smaller, but by no means less loud group of indonesian tourists. Rrrgh.

Also lepaked at Midvalley with Naz, Ariff, and Puteri - A day of babiness - Yee mee, lobak and ice kacang at one place, then wantan mee at the food court ( where Ariff and I traumatised Puteri with some gutter talk - well she started by referring to cantonese kuey teow as 'sperm mee')followed by bubble tea, then Lecka Lecka, then an apple cheese slice at Secret Recipe, and later sommore mamak with you cempakan crazies at 1 am.

The last week -

Started on a high note, with both parents buggering off - one to penang, and one to Manila till last Friday. Lepaked with Su and Puteri on Weds at Pyramid, after an interesting oddyssey of sesatness. Anybody else ever ended up in Gombak while going from Asia Jaya to Kelana Jaya? I think not. I blame it on my conavigator who never gave me directions. But then again my sense of direction memang le suck and i kinda zoned out knowing i had someone to (supposedly) give out directions. Also thanked my lucky stars that i found sOmEoNE's blusher powder thingy yang tercicir before my dad took the car back and interrogated me.

Had Ariff's sendoff thingy at Midvalley the next day. Chilli's and a movie, followed by a mamak session and an alcohol-free drunken singalong session in my car with a very loud naz, her cuz & puteri. Ariff, i'm sure you agree that the way from Midvalley to Kelana Jaya has never felt so long. What was it, telinga bernanah?

Managed to ditch my laptop for cold hard cash at a secondhand place - the money went towards a new ultraportable on offer from dell. Cant wait for my new 700m. Had a Cempakan soiree at Steven's Corner later , with the brand new skinny Choong! Had fried sotong, naan and tandoori comin outta our freakin noses.

By now i'm sure you noticed the sharp drop of grammar and flow towards the end. Dun care. Sleepy. Should really have more frequent short snippets rather than these bi-weekly epics. I'm still gonna try my darndest to end with something profound tho:

Men. No matter how complicated and deep we seem, we're really simple creatures. Women - no matter how straightforward or strong they make themselves to be, they are inherently and eternally complicated.