Gesamtkunstwerk

still here?

2011-05-24T01:04:00.001+08:00

thank u muchas for visiting.
i mean, it's been 11 months.
i appreciate it more than u know.

head on over to thejook.com/blog now.

the june report

2010-06-25T17:27:00.004+08:00

series completed:
- how i met your mother, s3 and s4
- fringe, s2
- fullmetal alchemist + the movie too
- oruchuban ebichu
- avatar: the last airbender, book1, 2, 3

i have never consumed so much, never in such a long stretch. counting hours in 20- and 40-minute episodes, counting seasons in days. is it me or does what u watch tend to blend together...? i found fringe shares similar otherworld themes with fullmetal, which in turn has similar elements to avatar. like shield-out-of-the-ground earthbending. avatar is an intelligent and creative high fantasy, heartwarming, mindblowing, mature and... epic. u forget it's a cartoon at times. highly recommended. i should've gone for justine's picks sooner hahah.

books completed:
- wicked
- a concise chinese-english dictionary for lovers
- get smashed

wicked was - wicked. i have never loved a character as deeply as elphaba. i relate to failure and tragedy, double-edged luck and double-edged family. i don't relate to sparkly shoes, but i do know about acquiescence and the irrational, selfish, self-righteous (and self-destructive) urge when u've had enough with the world.

a concise chinese-english dictionary is a predictable east meets west tale, written in broken english, a delicious study in clear communication. get smashed is a book about the growth and decadence of olden adland. i'm also on midnight's children, squeezing in bout a chapter every weekend. or so. or not. and newly borrowed: artemis fowl.

picked up bass:
at 2 strings short of a regular guitar, a bass is both simpler and more complex. simpler doesn't mean easier. in some ways it's like a beginner's guitar, limited, yet the constraints allow for (or in fact, encourage) more playful expression. which is where it gets complex. u do a lot with a little. u play a combination of chord, rhythm and counter tune. u get your own line. very interesting instrument.

meanwhile, my savings are running low.

cameron [jan10]

2010-01-27T20:31:00.006+08:00

hello, blog.

- hello, 2010.

10 days into january, at 5 in the morning, i found myself perched atop gunung brinchang, cloaked in a chill, greeting the dawn. with me were a gang of fellow weirdos, sharing what was probably our first epic scene of the year.

thanks are in order for hamyu, who discovered the place while lepakdriving on his own. i told u we were weird. manoeuvring the treacherous road in the inky fog, finding the comms tower at the peak, and the watchtower beside it, are now new images of cameron to me - cameron, that timeless highland retreat that calls to mind classic sights of tea, strawberries, flowers, cacti, strawberries, cacti, flowers, tea. i'll save u time. here's a little collage of textures.

to explain the metal bits - sm's brakes protested after the awesome sunrise, so off we went and found a quaint cottage garage to fix em. not one to waste time, ch whipped out his canggihfied camera and took probably another hundred portraits - which got me shooting too. a great teacher inspires, like they say. i don't take good portraits myself, so i tried using people differently. and on the whole i also tried more vertically-oriented shots.

and here's a picture of all of the fun bunch (disregarding the irrelevant uncle...)

more at: flickr | ch's pt1, pt2 | justine's | yippie's | dawn's | bri's

diving manado [sep09]

2009-10-16T18:48:00.001+08:00

the other day i was paying my credit card bill, and saw my diving gear in it. it's funny how technically i haven't paid for them, yet they've already been used, cleaned, dried out for a week, and stowed away. so without further ado:

- bunaken

4 hours from lcct is manado, and 1 hour from sam ratulangi airport is tasik ria resort. being in the east, the sun sets earlier, the skies are clear, and the night is deep. nothing to shoot outside, so here's what it looks like inside.

- spacious foyer for all your gear
- toilet, cupboard and dresser in a connecting corridor
- swanky bedroom

day1: 11sep09
tested out my newly bought casing for leaks. it may seem like 100 bucks for a canggihfied ziploc bag, but within 1 dive, it was all worth it. 4gbs of underwater shots with nooby wb, and it was still worth it.

day2: 12sep09
didn't have the patience to hunt for macro stuff.

- me and bro with siang, trip organizer, who bought the same wetsuit
- pressure makes the gladwrapped lx3 inoperable beyond a certain depth
- spot the crab!

- artsy attempt
- turtle having lunch... should've video'd this!
- beaut lobster

day3: 13sep09
had a little more patience to hunt for macro stuff.

- this sea cucumber raised its head to greet me, but i couldn't catch it
- the colours are less distorted when < 10m
- seahorse(s)!

- anemone families in the middle of nowhere
- that's a lionfish
- that's not a jellyfish

day4: 14sep09
took a van to another part of sulawesi. at a port, amidst huge commercial, fishing and police ships, we pushed off on 2 sampans to see lembeh, critter heaven. had the lunch of my life on the boat roof, replete with scenic view and straits winds.

- setting off
- with tanks on deck
- and gear on roof

- mimic octopus
- hairy frogfish
- some eel which went right under me as i was lying prone

- mantis shrimp
- boxer shrimp
- flamboyant cuttlefish

day5: 15sep09
lepaked half the day around tasik ria, and finally had time to see the quirks of the whole place. headed out to town for a late lunch, a place called city extra, that had its own jetty. here’s the inherent drama of manado - there’re jetties everywhere!

- there's a whole set of these little carvings around tasik ria, they form a band
- monkeys by the lily pond
- sulawesian spa magicks

- the dive centre
- city extra’s jetty - spot the crabs again...
- 1 more fish to learn: barramundi

- farewell to the motley crew

my beginner's dive logbook is finally out of pages.

SHIP, says seth

2009-10-02T20:09:00.007+08:00

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain from 99% on Vimeo.

ship: finish, deliver, go live. whatever u call it - finish.
it's important to start. it's more important to finish.
pull through the resistance.

ho ho ho ho

2009-09-07T19:45:00.001+08:00

manado in 3 days.

not a moonbow

2009-09-07T05:07:00.004+08:00

looked up at 2.30am to see an odd giant ring around the moon. it morphed very slowly, becoming more pronounced, and at 1 point there was even a (relatively) bright arc of rainbow colours very near the moon itself. i suddenly recalled reading about moonbows...

well, this wasn't it. moonbows:
- occur when the moon is low/near the horizon
- are always in the opposite part of the sky
- require rain falling opposite the moon (or a waterfall)
- happen in seemingly exclusive locations on earth

this was something else instead, a 22° halo. they are:
- much, much, much more common - cheh!
- beyond my cacat grasp of physics to explain the 22°
- caused by light refracted through the hexagonal prisms
- of ice particles in the sky

ice in the sky! more rainy days to come?

perspective and concept

2009-08-19T23:55:00.010+08:00

popped by the mamak for a quick dinner yesterday, an inconspicuous joint called al-esfan. u can count this a quirk of the waiters there: they never get your order right. until u wonder, by default, just what and how they'll fuck up this time. just like the last time. and the next.

so it was yesterday when exasperation gave way to interest, when second-guessing the blue-shirted vacant-eyed drones with a stoic refusal to write things down became a game, that i finally figured it out - that that's it! that's the whole idea. u never know what u're gonna get. it's a freakin usp. an esp even, given that it's a 360 experience between bemusement and amusement.

a change of perspective - voila - a concept mamak.

as with all things u, or is it just i, never notice in passing. like the counter, for instance. only noticed it last week, when i took a photo. dynamic film mode with outdoor wb at iso400, and suddenly it's beaut visual merchandising. through new eyes, it's a pleasing riot of colours, sweets chocolate gum lozenges cigarettes. and yet, it still took me between last friday and yesterday to take a closer look.

i saw tubes of bold, deep red. fresh cola mentos. wtf? i rotated it, and some thai copy stared back at me. #1, how exotic. i bought one. of course subconsciously, it was #2, the irony of cola mentos, becoz who could forget the viral proliferation of dietcoke/mentos fountains? a wiki check brought up many other flavours: cinnamon, wintergreen, raisin, peach, plum, strawberry/lemon yoghurt, 2 variations of licorice. i'm suddenly astounded, after being turned off by boring mintmintmint so long ago. so it was also #3, the myriad ways of flogging a dead horse until it lives again.

what's next, tequila mentos?

yogya through my lens [jul09]

2009-08-12T04:18:00.010+08:00

actually started a lenghty verbose report. then rewrote with a new approach. it Was my lx3's virgin expedition after all.

- and there was much company!

day1: 04jul09
we landed at adisucipto to an abrupt sundown, way past dinnertime. our first dinner was also my first encounter with words like tempe and sapi and bebek. first thing u notice about indonesian meals, is u can always go overboard on spiciness. and first thing u notice about yogya, is the cramped roads and narrow roadside stalls on narrow pavements. the good thing about this is i guess, a healthy tolerance and respect for others' personal space.

- 3 beautiful pots of different chili
- signage of our quaint guesthouse
- DIY yumcha with sosro teh celup

what i didn't shoot: toyota territory - 9 out of 10 vehicles are toyotas.

day2: 05jul09
woke insanely early, crossed into jawa tengah for borobudur, and ironically witnessed the dawn at a petrol station. borobudur is a Massive structure. everywhere u point your lens, it's stone. playing out my noobiness, i shot many bland angles and static compositions - stone & sky, stone & trees, stone & mountains - and tampered with the various settings until my battery started blinking. it was barely 8am. fuck. it gave out after 4 shots at prambanan, a visual counterpoint to borobudur. 1 is a vast horizontal expanse of a single structure, and the other is a cluster of narrow temples with tall roofs, amidst earthquake ruins.

- borobudur: dominating the landscape
- stairs, sunlight, and fresh morning air
- the mighty stupas at the top tier

- ancient comic strips (slabs?)
- zen moment with a stone buddy
- prambanan: stabbing into the sky

what i didn't shoot: a graffititown we passed called magelang(?). shops with tree trunks protruding through the roof. breakfast in the land of indo mi. macro of old grimy fingers crafting an intricate silver brooch. homemade cooler: a pail and a garbage bag. sculptures in a museum courtyard, in equidistant rows like tombstones. dramatic sunburst above a war museum's conical roof. guns, lots of guns. a flagpole indoors, reaching up to a circular skylight. crone barbecueing satay on makeshift mini grill, at said war museum's gates.

day3: 06jul09
traipsed off to ngasem bird market. apparently birds used to be a status symbol, third after a horse and a keris, but the place has evolved to include fish, turtles, geckos etc. - making it kind of a giant pet shop plaza. the market spills into a sprawling complex called tamansari, which covers a fucking dense neighbourhood surrounding a hill and the water castle ruins - which feels kinda like malacca's a famosa, just on very high ground. everywhere u'll see ornate doorways to underground tunnels, which lead to... we didn't explore all that, sad to say. lunch at a charming cafe, then my battery died. again.

- taste the rainbow?
- crateful of crawly crickets
- cd sleeve/wallpaper/poster: take your pick

- life in an unlikely place
- tunnel vision
- music, intrinsic to yogya life

what i didn't shoot: a tank of sucker catfish all in a row like floating angels. a shirtless, seasoned batik painter. view of slow, patient traffic from a horsecart. malioboro, shopping precinct. a stall owner resting his kretek cigg on a stool and staking a private niche on the crowded walkway. an entire street of bakpia pathok bakeries, each brand differentiated by Only its number.

day4: 07jul09
with a flight in the afternoon, we had no time to go gallivanting. lepaked around our guesthouse, a rustic suburb(?) called sleman that's totally devoid of streetlamps. we'd only been back in the evening, so we finally had the chance to see its open fields in daylight. found gastronomic heaven I SAID GODDAMN in a nondescript warung. and as we left, the trip was completed with an apt souvenir - the band vierra playing in the background. i'm still listening to it now.

- rumah palagan by day
- intrepid shooters unfazed by the sun
- warung kepiting dogen, in the middle of nowhere

- shyng-spotted: a flower in a flower
- paddy... or lalang?
- abstract shadow play

what i didn't shoot: my gang. i finally realized i've an impressive knack for not shooting people (which drives mom nuts sometimes). so here's an obligatory group shot...

to end: windows
found an interest in this theme a while ago. windows and doors make interesting subject matter - and i think it's simply becoz it's natural to wonder "what's on the other side?" we all gotta start somewhere, so here's a collection of yogyan windows.

- under the eaves of rumah palagan's neighbour
- unfinished brick, recycled curtains
- blue and black, prob the same wood

- tamansari tunnels echoing behind wooden grilles
- i imagine it's real menacing in the nighttime
- verdant

more at: flickr | shyng's | cheeheng's pt1, pt2, pt3 | yenc's | sm's facebook.

yogyakarta: a preview

2009-08-07T01:21:00.004+08:00

u can't capture too many details in the periphery.

feeding habits

2009-08-04T02:06:00.002+08:00

i notice every time i eat,
i look at the clock.

instead of looking at the time
to see if it was lunch.

even in the middle of the night,
i look at the clock.

before having my suppersnack
with maybe a sudoku.

stuff on my desk [wednesday, 22/7/2009]

2009-07-22T05:42:00.008+08:00

laptop

ie6, shoot me

phone

glasses

airasia stubs, rupiah table, adisucipto health form, h1n1 leaflet

post-its under that stack (yes finally found it!)

sosro teh botol bottlecap

sketchbook

half-baked ideas

kneadable eraser

pencils: 4H, H, HB

sign pen given from syam

ball pen stolen from some hotel

credit card bill, unopened

a lot of envelopes, empty

sony card reader

old sony camera

coaster with pic of houses of parliament

coaster with crappy ad for medical research volunteers

notepad made from unfinishd exercise books, most prob sejarah

a glass globe (wtf?) that says "birkart globistics" (wtf?)

a speaker in the corner

cacat woofer

street directory

big black file

canson bleedproof pad + bank pad (DAMN, long time no see...)

khaled hosseini - a thousand splendid suns

insurance stuff i don't wanna read

alanit namecards

copics: marine green, pale green, chartreuse, willow,
garnet, cadmium red, canary yellow, honey,
cream, neutral gray 5, prussian blue, salmon red

pencil case, sharpener, sharpie, fineliner, and 1 more black copic

the celestial zone vol 9

news clippings: sg lembing article, lexus is250 ad

half-arsed collection of postcards

prisonbreak s2

dead headlamp bulb

watchover voodoo doll: monkey king

a speaker in the corner

behind laptop - dust

in front of me - scrap paper, written: "scuba gear?!"

link dump: a twitribute

2009-06-23T18:40:00.006+08:00

i've had my trusty digg screensaver for about a year now. but increasingly, i don't wait for the 10 minutes of inactivity to trigger it. now news is one of the first things when i start up. it's 1 click to open firefox, and another 1 click for 20 of the latest tweets. as my email is loading i'm also loading a queue of new tabs. then it's an eclectic mix of delicious (no, not that delicious) reading through the morning.

like today - essex girl saved from lightning by ipod. solar eclipse of the century (6mins 39secs, 22july). uber workstation, making of. evolution of a photographer. a voxel short film. it's a freaking flow of knowledge, even with out-of-my-league bits like mimicking the osx dock with jquery. and it's just a dip in the stream, as they say. so here's the link dump - courtesy of twitter, bit.ly, ow.ly, is.gd, tischen, and other whatnots.

speaking of which, d'u know if those shortened links have an expiry date?

funniest msn status messages - messquoted

art student stereotypes - blankanvas

bk MAKES me read their copy - cpbftw

skinny soho/apartment - archinect

#lyttlelytton, in vein of the bulwer-lytton contest - twherelse?

deaf violinist for a shampoo ad - grey thailand

and on twitter forming link currency - techcrunch

may in conclusion

2009-06-18T03:28:00.005+08:00

2 months on, here i am picking up from the [tobecontinued].

forgotten stash: is a stale story by now, but the short of it is, i'd been sitting on 3 years of angpow cash. god knows what i'd been saving for. the lx3 was already there - in cny booty, in sgd's, in disparate drawers in my room. yeah, sitting on money, what a fucking sin. u know what's a bigger sin? sitting on time.

this is gonna be a long rambling recap. the kind when on a sleepless night u wonder what u've done with your life, and wtf happened to may?

rafting: early fail - didn't make it at 7.15am. the bus was late anyway, although that's not an excuse. trouped out to kkb with 4 hongkie tourists and "enter the dragon" on dvd. sg selangor here we come! but the fates didn't give us whitewater - sg selangor had the idyllic flow of a freakin longkang. so we breakfasted, dumped the loud bitching hongkies at the ktm, and then sg slim here we come! i must say it was my first time taking a detour into perak. then... between bus and river was another ass-thumping 4wd ride into the jungle. it was nearly midday before we touched actual whitewater. many thanks to the people who stayed cheerful.

how d'u sum up something like this? it's your first time, it's over too soon, and afterwards it's a mash of scenes. that's how i remember it: overboards, collisions, capsizes, pushing your collective weight, left right back front diagonal, leaning faaar out, foam and rocks, an inch from your face, a 7ft cascade, into the infamous jeram kotak, paddleup!/salute/smack's, and flinging apple cores into the trees. 7kms later, we're heroes on a high. who else is up for it again?

books: there was the bigbadwolf, but before that... i'd borrowed a joan aiken from shyng. "a small pinch of weather" is a collection of children's stories - light, whimsical, entertaining, creative. i felt like a kid again. so much so i didn't wanna give it back. she called me bookrobbajook. sigh could i not love her? =) i think it's that much harder to write children's fiction. don't look down on it, but think instead, are u good enough to write children's fiction? and then there was "wellversed", a collection of malaysian poetry, loaned by justine. that one's going back to its owner. and there was "glue", colloquial scottish, companion to transpotting - loaned by tony, started, bookmarked, now forgotten.

and now we come to the bigbadwolf sale. besides others, there's "midnight in the garden of good and evil" (from my college reading list) and "brave new world" (in the vein of "1984" - which i've not read), however the first i'd devoured was "tale of desperaux". yes, more children's fiction. and for the first time, i think the movie's better than the book. as i type, the little stack sits behind my chair. why's it on the floor? my shelves are nearly full. i feel like a karenwong. i'm a collector more than a reader. fuck.

games: in the weekends in between, i discovered an exciting version of lexulous. it's called scrabble and it's played on a board. no dictionary, no shuffle function, instant turnaround. it's fun! and it's physical, which makes a lot of other things possible. imagine a drinking game, like... in-between. can u play it online? where's the fun? or imagine strip poker, and strip texas hold'em on facebook. totally no vibe, man. the spreadouters explored monopoly deal. that's monopoly on cards, at a much faster pace. syok. then there's the sporadic bouts of conquer, which prompted me to think of go, or weiqi, the original black-&-white-stones coolness. i'm sure as hell gonna get a set soon.

slack: totally unprecedented, i had 2 weeks of slack. yes, 2 weeks so memorable it merits a blog mention. gone to utter waste. surfed digg and deviantart and lexulous'd until people got suspicious, until i myself got suspicious. yes, i seriously asked the pm, out of curiosity, why i had no jobs. Never aGain, muthaFuck. next time u're free, just shut up, go home early and get on with life. the torrent has continued until now.

and that concludes may... and half of june.

sign pen

2009-06-11T03:04:00.001+08:00

what
a nice story
my boring life would make;
i have no hobbies

when
i remembered,
i was randomly given
a sign pen from syam

who
knew mine was dry.
i looked again and saw: the
sketchbook on my desk

where
i had left it
facedown bookmarked forgotten,
and i understood

why
the world works so.
a nice story after all;
drawing's my hobby

stop motion

2009-05-29T06:20:00.001+08:00

so the other day, i had some time to kill. and i felt the call of creation.

looking around i saw: 1 sony camera, 1 panasonic camera, 1 fireworks mx, 1 gorillapod. my fireworks was an obsolete version from 2003. the gorillapod is a flexibendable ultraposeable tripod, which looks like a 3-pronged hentai tentacle. it's not mine, it belongs to hamyu.

so like a gun salute, i gave my sony an epic 300-shot farewell.
which resulted in the 2.7mbs of animated gif below. patience!

good shit msn spam

2009-05-11T20:04:00.000+08:00

the swingers go outdoors!

2009-05-08T19:10:00.001+08:00

it started long before this. sacrificed a lazy saturday to recce quadbikes. shall i rephrase that, how bout "took the initiative"? it was a no-go, too few bikes for us. but if anyone's interested, let's see if we can make it on our own. kinda exp though. we fell back on our backup.

then: call for entries, follow-up call for entries, reminders, calling for meeting, recapping meeting, list of names, list of numbers, list of things to bring, timetable. tomorrow i shall perform roll call, after tackling the arduous challenge of 7.15am.

we're going whitewater rafting!

secret doors at midnight

2009-05-05T17:23:00.014+08:00

some elevators have an undo function. just double-click (or -tap, or whatever floats u) the button for your selected floor. if your lift is canggih enough, the light goes off, the command is cancelled, and it'll either stop or revert to default at the ground floor... if that's the default lah.

it's like a nifty party trick. try it!
our lift stopped at the 5th floor - where it's not supposed to.
and the doors slid open - when they're not supposed to.

there's something about the concept of doors, when u think about it. the threshold is a transition between 2 places, when u're momentarily neither here nor there. a door effectively defines 2 places: "here" and "there". put 2 doors together and bam! what a mindfuck, man.

old-skool otherworld portal - fidella's phone capture.

2 here's and 2 there's and suddenly we're lost and asking where the fuck am i?
the locked doorknob and unfinished mortar completed the surrealism. really made my day =D

playing for change

2009-04-29T16:45:00.004+08:00

have u heard the joke, why'd the beggar vote obama?
same concept here. awesomazing.

plus, that Tal Ben Ari ("Tula") is molten hotness.

desenrascano & other stories

2009-04-23T19:45:00.007+08:00

remember gemutlichkeit? here's a new one: desenrascano.
(defined by cracked.com as "to pull a mcgyver").
it's been a frickin hectic stretch at work.
bookmarking these links here, but they're just as much for sharing.
tweeting links seems to be a bit overkill sometimes.

10 ~~words~~ concepts foreign to english - cracked

13 practices to making ideas happen - behance

designing for humans - infodesign

designing for stupid users - ditto

the dark side of design - designsojourn

drafting with twitter - ia.jp

tldr? but enjoy.

april so far

2009-04-16T15:49:00.001+08:00

picking up from earth hour in the last post, quite a bit has happened. well we went for the capsquare do, skimmed over the kldw exhibits, then stood around in the dark listening to crappy music over a crappy pa. uneventful, except for 1. the awesomazing url i thought up for ch over coffee (lookat.my/blog), 2. the methodical, decisive shutting down of klcc's glitter (i swear it's a moment for national pride), and 3. teochew porridge + a new nickname (jook = porridge, geddit?).

april came. colleagues left. 6 in total, irreplaceable characters all. hy the nearly-permanent office fixture, flash god kw, flash protege cl, the inimitable rh, the quiet oh, and my constantly caffeinated and dearly missed kaijie. the headcount dropped like dominoes, the office vibes dimmed drastically, and the 7th colleague is also on her way out...

the happenings didn't let up. last saturday, along with aivee, yenc and justine, i became a fucking guest tutor. what's doubly weird about this is, last time i was at toa, i was an aspiring student, haha. so - kw the flash/AS3 lecturer, and us friends as guest tutors. kw marks the tech part, we critique on the creative part: idea, messaging, flow, design, optimization etc.

having opinions on these things we do everyday was easy enough - what's hard was actually saying it, yet not spilling into commercial dogma. i mean, most things can't be learnt in a classroom anyway, only by soul-crushing experience. then followed a free q&a session, where i finally saw myself being on the other side, answering innocent questions. this part made me re-examine myself, in a condensed mental review of my short career, where i realized i had amassed deep wells of unexpressed cynicism. i left the ugly things unsaid...

although i'm not sure u approve, karen. but thank u for the opportunity!

yeah. me, tutor? giving guidance? stranger things have happened.
like how the night before that, i found some huge and forgotten wads of cash...
(to be continued.)

what concern have u for the doomed?

2009-03-26T16:49:00.006+08:00

since i've had no life lately, here's a poem to keep u entertained. found it last night in a notepad file buried in the craploads of... crap, in my laptop. "hangman" - as befitting the spirit of earth hour this week.

Hangman, by Maurice Ogden

1
Into our town the Hangman came
Smelling of gold and blood and flame
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air
And built his frame on the courthouse square.

The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.

And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime,
The Hangman judged with the yellow twist
Of knotted hemp in his busy fist.

And innocent though we were, with dread
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead;
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raise the gallows-tree?"

Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."

And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land,
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief;

And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.

2
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air,
The gallows-tree on the courthouse square.

And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and businesslike.

And we cried: "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday with the alien one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed;
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised..."

He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"...Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch the rope when the rope is new."

Then one cried "Murderer!" One cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"With him that was meat for the gallows-tree?"

And he laid his hand on that one's arm,
And we shrank back in quick alarm,
And we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.

That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size:
Fed by the blood beneath the chute
The gallows-tree had taken root;

Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
And tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.

3
The third he took, we had all heard tell,
Was a usurer and infidel;
And "What," said the Hangman, "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"

And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
To try the strength of the gallows-beam."

The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
And "What concern," he gave us back,
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"

The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said, "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."

And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score;
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.

The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.

4
Then through the town the Hangman came
And called in the empty streets my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall
And thought, "There is no one left at all

For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
And I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.

He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town,
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.

And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap;
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.

"You tricked me, Hangman!" I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman, foully lied!"

Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye:
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true:
The scaffold was raised for none but you.

For who has served me more faithfully
Than you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others that might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"

"Dead," I whispered, and amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the alien, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."

Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None stood so alone as I;
And the Hangman strapped me, and no voice there
Cried "Stay!" for me in the empty square.

gaps in the glass

2009-03-18T22:19:00.005+08:00

twice daily, i walk to the water dispenser at the other corner of the floor to fill up. i've never liked bending from the waist, so i'm usually on one knee when refilling. for some reason the dispenser is cramped inconveniently close to a discussion table. no one's ever thought of moving it even slightly, wonder why.

now this corner is the junction of a floor-to-ceiling window and the outer wall of ds's room (gm's office). this wall has a funky alternating pillar/glass design, with the glass sections being mostly frosted, punctuated with clear horizontal bars. and sometime last week, i noticed something in this peculiar setup.

it was midnight as i placed my tumbler under the nozzle and depressed the tap. with nothing to watch outside, i examined the wall instead. and kneeling in that narrow gap between dispenser and table, i found myself in a sneaky vantage point. the water gurgled into my bottle, as my gaze wandered through a clear bar of glass, into ds's office, out the open door, under a desk, and settled on... a colleague's legs. the legs shook leisurely, the owner's face perfectly obscured by the doorway.

it's lucky wh's not a girl.

drawn together: a review

2009-03-07T15:25:00.015+08:00

i'm not a seasoned marathoner, so it took over 4 days to finish drawn together. a cartoon reality show - what a premise! a nice setup that ran itself aground too soon. becoz really, elimination can't be applied when the show is built upon the antics of the full motley cast. which then strips it down to simply: 8 distinct genre characters in 1 screen. still WOW.

i.e. nicely done are: musical princess clara, who summons woodland pets by song, to be butchered for lunch. arcade swordsman xandir, who is manipulated with a special combo cheat. flash webtoon spanky, who pixelates when he kena virus. japanese midget monster lingling, who speaks via engrish subtitles and whose mating dance is a fireball battle. yet... they could've been so much more.

e.g. what i mean is: spanky - could be downloaded/linked/embedded, made viral, loading bars, buffering digits, "install flash player to continue", being dragged around by an arbitrary cursor, etc. xandir - could level up, pick up potions, items, upgrade weapons and armour, do boss stages, have signature sfx, continue?-10-9-8-insert-coins, etc. toot - b&w and obsolete, she could be a makeover star (isn't this a reality tv theme?), appear in colour for once, with more 1920's speech, old-fart references...

speaking of references, there are simply too many for me, pop culture noob that i am. it'd be way funnier if i knew more tv lore. what this really means, is that the show is a fiesta of shallow parody. imagine! hanna-barbera, disney, dc, atari, nickelodeon, trading cards... are each rich in its own culture. that's the word. more than a clash of genre, it's a clash of culture - that is never fully realized. instead, it's a torrential onslaught of gay/fat/christian/racist/abuse jokes. it's crass and disturbing just for its own sake. it could've been so much more.

and yet. it's still mindlessly fucking funny. watch!!!

the finale wraps with some semblance of a framing device: an acoustic version of "la-la-la-la-labia", that debuted in s1e02. very nice. as nice as a song called "la-la-la-la-labia" gets. another nice song is the vincent-van-gogh sapfest called "i wanted u to know". the vincent-van-gogh lyrics are damn wtf out of place but hey. sample below...

the pavilion joke

2009-02-16T02:27:00.011+08:00

grandma had a nasty fall, and i went to look in on her - a week late. she took 10 stitches on the crown of the head last saturday, had them removed yesterday, and i show up today. i'll admit it does look suspicious, when she's apparently planned her post-trauma-survival will.

depending on whose account it was, the number of stitches varied, but one fact stayed true. she was unfazed by any pain - after the fall, after seeing the blood, at both sessions with the stitches. i'm proud of the tough old bird. sis said maybe nothing's a big deal anymore after bearing 10 children. and i'm suddenly doing the math now to get NINETY months of HOLYFUCK that's SEVENANDAHALF years of pregnancy HOLYFUCK.

we had a simple dinner and a gambling session, late cny spirit and all. i was on a winning streak when sis pointed to my pile of rm1 blues, complained of her steady decline, and diverted the ladies' screeching banter (with my cousin and 2 aunts, 6 in all) to who had the most money. a look round the table found the 'richest'. mom's gambling dough was stashed in a slim case originally for a discount voucher booklet, nonetheless bearing the name "pavilion", of the high-end shopping mall. more lame jokes followed, the gals were on the roll, when someone asked... "what does pavilion mean ar?"

"it's a... small house kinda thing," sis volunteered.
"small house only ahh?! i thought it meant something like a big mansion!" mom objected.
"actually it's more of a shelter," i butted in.
"what? shelter?" mom's look turned ugly.

"nolah it's that small house thing by the paddy fields," sis argued.
"huh? no it's a shelter... like in the mountains, when people get tired from walking, there's that place to sit, that thing," i invoked a scenic chinese painting: an arbour, travellers and wine, pine and cherry and rock.
"from big house to small house to shelter!" mom lamented her pathetic fortune.

grandma served the punchline, "ahh, but u own a mountain as well."

such wit!

i'm pretty damn sure her head is just fine.

camaraderie

2009-02-11T12:10:00.003+08:00

...means what ah?

valuing my colleague more than u value your employee.
one who toughed it out through a clear and cold crisis.

stick it to the man who says farewells shouldn't be celebrated. fuck that!

the cow is upon us!

2009-02-04T02:03:00.003+08:00

in this season of small talk and cookie varieties, of excess and insincere smiles, i found i'd suddenly lost my appetite. and realized i'd actually lost it way before. days had become weeks. somewhere along the line eating had become a routine, devoid of meaning or joy. this is a good time to either indulge in some seriously exorbitant gourmet... or turn vegetarian. no kidding.

during the reunion with my folks across the causeway, i'd failed to appreciate any of the food, where some were lauded signature dishes of my late grandma. just kept my eyes glued to the ip man dvd (which i watched aGain last week at sm's), as the old ones waxed lyrical. when the movie ended, to avoid patronising my dear relatives and yet escape boredom, i made some surreal landscape art on my styrofoam cup. it's a meld of intaglio sculpture and chinese brushstrokes, and it's so good it warrants some bragging, really...

speaking of surreal, i read "blind willow, sleeping woman" on the way there and back. classic murakami. when a story takes off, all the fantastical becomes believeable. when a story goes nowhere, and this is the part i love - it's just like your life. u draw parallels, and become the characters. u reflect incessantly, round and round. from this irony of parallels and roundabouts is a trap of deep poignancy, that ultimately came from nothing. murakami is the master of nothing. i wonder if i can be the same.

over the weekend i tallied my angpows, and of aaaaall the ones to lose... i'd misplaced my mother's. i know i know, tsk tsk tsk tsk, but it's sooooomewhere in my room. otherwise, an uneventful start to the cow year. which makes u wonder: how the tandem beginnings of the new year and the chinese new year seem to create an illusory second chance.

el presidente

2009-01-24T04:20:00.002+08:00

it wasn't the first time.

in 2001, i went from nobody to president in a matter of minutes. nominated, kicked out of the classroom, votes, went back in. fate sealed. i'd forever be able to claim i was an Editor. the club was a new startup, specially formed to run our school newsletter, thus president = editor. we produced a meagre 8 pages quarterly, played truant to play reporter, and outside of reporting our weekly sessions consisted of sitting around doing jack. i'd say with some confidence it was a popular club.

although popularity is one of the last things on my mind... genuine wtf here...

in 2009, i own the swingers. this dubious name describes a little committee dedicated to the company's recreational welfare. ok, in less suggestive terms: this sexy name belongs to 3 people for a year, suffering the unsexy task of arranging fun events for their traitorous colleagues. now i don't organize. i'm a management critic, but i don't do management. i don't do planning. scheduling. budgeting. pleasing the majority. diplomacy. waking early. scouting and recce. what's good for lunch. halal concerns. entertainment. empathy. phone calls. roll calls. name lists. first-aid kit. seasick pills, even. i never get seasick, and if u know me, u know i pack light for aaaaany trip - only the barest necessities, only for myself.

the selfish called upon to serve.
it's gonna be an interesting challenge.

an rhcp analysis

2009-01-19T19:24:00.008+08:00

in my email yesterday: "your one sentence story has been approved!" this trivial validation is a great bolster to my confidence. yes we writers are an insecure bunch. go here and click on the thumbs-up. then do it on a different ip. repeat everyday.

anyway last week i'd been reaping juice from rhcp. upbeat tunes for the spirit, always good shit. after a few long and raucous medleys, i finally realized the pepper appeal in a slow number: "under the bridge", 1992.

if u know this song, u'll hear it playing in your head right now. it's a signature peppers' tune. simple riff, simple voice lead, and then - an interplay of the guitar and vocals. like 2 complementing personalities. this is what i think makes the appeal. guitar, vocals, drums, bass - each instrument and each player has his distinct personality. attitude, character, flavour, whatever. and in different songs, these different components shine at their own places.

i reckon if u think about it, u'll realize appeal comes in certain parts of certain songs. and more often than not it's when one instrument takes the spotlight. whether it's the guitar weaving melody and rhythm, or the playful amble of the stout bass, or the drums going loco. these showcases of individual strengths are tautly balanced and never overdone as a whole, which is what makes the dynamism of the red hot chili peppers.

on top of it all are the lyrics that bypass rationale thought, nonsensical yet perfectly intuitive...

friends from the north and east

2009-01-13T18:08:00.002+08:00

sunday, early evening. i awoke to mom rapping on my door, saying david's on the line.

there's a phone in my room, with the wire unplugged. see, calls to the house number are next to never for me, and i only use my phone when i need it, so otherwise it's disconnected. i never know when it's ringing. that's also how bro methodically ignores house calls. his phone stays connected, but that's just becoz it has a volume control.

like threading a needle, i squinted groggily to clip the wire into the handset. david was in town just for the day, in transit back to penang. i dragged myself out of bed, and went out for dinner with him.

last i saw him in kl was (after much debate) 4 years ago. i'd been using my mom's mobile then, and he was unable to reach me on that number. that's becoz incidentally, my parents use their mobiles with the same disregard i show with my room phone. they make calls, they seldom answer them. it runs in the family - we're all similarly disconnected that way.

david's an old housemate, one of the first people i befriended in melbourne. we talked about old times, recent times, melbourne life. david's also an economics/finance kinda guy. so we also talked about job vs career, car prices, recession, taxes. once in a while he'd give me random statistics, percentages, the big 4 trivia, those kinda things. same old david, same old animated gestures and sudden kangtao's and northern hokkien. and i guess same old me, with my careful sentences in mandarin and being hopeless as a kl tour guide.

monday morning. got another facebook message from elaine. she was in town too, for some meetings. i gladly fled work at 8pm for dinner.

elaine also ranks as one of my first friends in melbourne, having a beautiful jawline and a sweet sabah-an smile. a multimedia design grad working in the dept of environment (yes the freakin government of malaysia!). we talked about her ongoing conservation projects, my current online eco game/site, workworkwork... which then gravitated to life goals, lofty dreams, traveling. elaine's also an enigma, very much the intrepid explorer... with an entrepreneurial spirit... who wants to go back to studying. wtf? then again even back then, she'd always had her own private agenda.

cameras! - i fooled around with her lumix fx50 and kinda got a feel for the panasonic ui (nothing u can't get used to, unlike switching from nokia to sony ericsson). i feel like an lx3. she feels like a dslr.

in reflection, i could be thinking of college friends and college housemates. or the strange way life gives u strange connections in faraway cities. or the stranger way how graduating points everyone's thoughts to financial security. i could be thinking how i ever learnt to hold conversations on such vastly different topics. or the paradox of these social efforts of mine: me, who (over)sleep in on weekends with the phone unplugged.

but i just suddenly feel damn happening.

09 resolutions

2009-01-08T17:21:00.001+08:00

1) do a backflip

out with the old, in with the new

2008-12-31T15:55:00.002+08:00

on the grander scale of things, renewal and replacement are seamless. don't u think? the old makes way for the new, and we never really bid farewell or welcome, we're just swept along in the ebbs. i wrote this haiku a couple weeks back, took a while crafting it... and it seems apt to put it up now, an ode to today's juncture of renewal in the passage of time.

watching the dawn sun:
a scene of cosmic balance,
as i sat shitting.

happy new year, all!

hello, my little world

2008-12-19T12:07:00.006+08:00

i needed to fill up on petrol, and being that shell was on the left after the toll, i took a coin lane instead of the tag lane on the extreme right. buzzed my window down, 50 cents ready. the briefest glance, the lightest brush. my first human contact of the day.

in place of the toll collector's hand was a misshapen paw, fingerless but for a stub of flesh for an index. fire? mutilation? born with it? the shilling fit perfectly into the little indent of her palm, and i was already on my way. poor girl. and i never even saw her face, nor acknowledged the human behind the mechanical tedium of her job. so many things rushed through my mind, so rapidly, that i reached shell still wondering which thought to pursue. soon enough, though, i'd decided...

that the successive drops in petrol price were an elaborate political strategy. with the anwar threat safely postponed, wonder why/how, it's now a matter of coaxing the nation's hostility back to apathy. bn's still in power, but with cheaper petrol in place, do people really mind as much now, compared to march? i don't read the news, someone fill me in.

and on the way after, i'd concocted TWO one-liner stories, to be submitted on onesentence, a site i chanced upon yesterday. i'd felt so gung-ho about it through the mid-friday-morning-freakin-schoolholiday-so-what-wtf-jam into midvalley, but strangely i can't be arsed to recall it right now.

my writing is rusty. my coffee is cold.

nanowrimo

2008-11-07T02:18:00.003+08:00

sounds like fun!

however i'm headed for tioman... another 3 days gone.
so how about a tandem story, now?
go halves on the 50k, alternate chapters as it goes along.

24 and chasing dreams

2008-11-05T05:08:00.006+08:00

q: what d'u do when u can't sleep?
a: chase your dreams.

i meant literally, in the figurative sense. geddit? not sure if i do myself. (kw - cryptic is not poetic. rawr.) napping just before midnight is an evil temptation, which is why i've been restlessly awake for god knows how long, which is why i'm here now blogging, becoz part of my dreams is to write more. which brings to mind my new year's resolutions, which i'd rather not be reminded of, but this is a start, so let us not falter in the wake of proactive progress!

24 came and went. i love to think it was an occasion of little thoughts and simple things, although it just looks Sad when u appear to measure celebration with a list of the things u got, such as i'm doing, but such also is the sordid material world.
- 1x ice cream tradition
- 1x green tea cake
- 1x brazilian semi-buffet
- 1x homecooked dinner
- 1x sudoku book
- 1x sennheiser hd212 pro

to all of u, i have to say, i appreciate the thought more than the thing. subject over object. all this totally made my day, and month, and year. as i replied when ch wished me "have a good year ahead" - the year is looking good already.

look at the time! i'm off.
have u seen soakrepublic?

the purpose of writing

2008-10-30T13:45:00.002+08:00

beware the Vibe™

2008-10-23T04:29:00.007+08:00

some time ago i discovered the Fuckoff Vibe™. it throws people off, keeps them at bay. and it's more than being just cool or cold. an adept performer of the Vibe™ is one capable of commanding its entire spectrum, ranging from Distant, Antisocial, Studieddistractedness, Chancedistractedness, Opaquegaze, Notnow, Coldshoulder, Donotdisturb, Fuckoff, all the way to Stayyourdistancemuthafuck.

the Vibe™ can be used to great effect against pesky ae's and brochure distributors at the mall alike. it's all in the look (or non-look), the expression, the impression, body language, and keeping your poker mask - after the ae hangs around like an idiot for a while and says, "i come back later, k?"

the Vibe™ is an indispensable skill, a dark jedi art. telling people to back off with just your eyes... hey, it's a power. i should know, although i'm not an adept performer. i'm practically the dark jedi grand guru. my honed Vibe™ goes beyond dodging unwanted people for a morning. evening, overnight, i can stretch it, prolong it, at different hostility variants, over days, weeks.

so much so i find one day, that i've been estranged for months.

u feed the Vibe™ your negativity, and it harnesses the depraved cuts of your soul. a sinister glee takes over, in which u'll live and revel, even as it constantly consumes. it's the one surefire shortcut to losing friends and influencing no one, which u'll realize on the day u whisper around the armour... and nobody's listening.

except maybe one, who says, "is everything ok?"
such a small sound, such a wealth of meaning.
redemption is rare.

a snapshot of death

2008-10-10T00:36:00.009+08:00

sm sent me this today: http://www.icreateangel.com/idestroyangel/mess.html

photographer's brief: to shoot a photo that shows/explains how/why a photographer has died during a shoot.

reading that out loud, it sounds a little like an anagram hehe. what a cool idea, very ironic, which i love. novel? to me, yes. u'd have to read the brief a couple times, which slows u down... and when u get it, it stops u completely. it's that kinda idea.

it seems apt here to introduce cl, rapid flash genius. he's... not really a quiet type - he's just silent. the one-chirp-shock-people type, if u know what i mean, and the actual shock comes from the fact that he speaks! or more like low, monotonous mutter. anyway from this silent, reserved character it became a company joke that he's a psycho, one who'll come in one day and shoot u, give your head to your mother, and murder your family, so u better be not messing with him.

and as little bits of his life and interests surfaced, it became a little disturbing how much he was really into dark stuff. like blood and gore and dismembered demons, and an overall outlook that life is a bleak sunless hell, to be ended in a bleaker, blacker hell - all masked behind a blank gaze, an enigmatic smirk, a trademark mute coolness.

i showed the site to him. he looked, read, took it in.
"ehhhh send to meee!"
a low, demonic growl, like an ember from calm ashes, flaming into sudden unholy desire.
death clearly excites him.

naaah, all that was just an abridged summary of his time with us. he's not a bad sort really. incidentally, i've been toying with the thought of trying out dslr... a procrastinated interest, stagnant from apathy. still just a thought, stashed away in the back recesses of my mind. send me some money, will u?

digital stories

2008-09-30T04:56:00.005+08:00

with 500gb of a mybook to fill, i'm suddenly burdened with backing up. my laptop's been on a couple hundred mbs for months, so that i can't do shit, on top of the fact it's already sluggish from nearly 7 years of service. oh and the hinge broke too, so the screen is always kept up now. very dusty.

first things first, the school stuff - amateur designs, amateur writings. historical artefacts, things from a different age. then, a complete library of photos, compiled from my laptop, thumbdrive and small hdd. now my laptop has this ~~idiosyncrasy~~ idiocy of having 1 usb port - which is not usb2.0. so... i have a card of 4 x usb2.0 ports, that... has not enough power to run the small hdd... which means it has to go to the laptop's cacat port. stuff transferring from the hdd to the mybook was running at the old usb speed.

it was a long night.

not to mention that i've been going thru a lot of old photos at the same time. fleeting moments, frozen laughter, bad angles, hairstyles that came and went, dinners and bbqs, trips and farewells, poseurs, artsy attempts, remembered stories unfolding when viewed in sequence. aaaaaaaaaaaand... the blue-tinged ghetto of 701 arachnid, where i mistook the darkness for coziness (until meng told me of wild mushrooms growing from the carpet somewhere - good thing i never found them). we came back from bintan to apple-green walls and wooden flooring, and even now that is going to be history.

it's funny how the multitude of little items i've packed, each has its tales to tell. scribbles on post-it notes, doodled namecards, limited edition ashtrays, a handmade and painted clay tag, an expired candy cane. u'd take one look, and write the whole pile off as trash, but if these things could talk.

it's funny how the inherited stuff, stuff that's been shared around, add on more history as they change hands. a lego set, 3 mini takraw balls, a purple cushion with a forgotten scent. (still in circulation are the moose, ever-available for abuse - and a very very very significant, yet deceivingly nondescript, packet of envelopes.)

it's funnier still how these memories are so easily... backed up. everything's so digital nowadays. i've photo folders named with just a word, besides the date, which should be easy to navigate by any nerd - single words loaded with meaning and mutual memories, like the debauched madness behind "broadwalk".

and what is really funny, is that this brings to mind a picture... of a seance with a hdd... and a tech-y engineer as the medium's assistant.

on writing and zen

2008-09-20T23:30:00.002+08:00

sometime this week, i clicked on a banner ad. now this is a great rarity, outside of course clicking the banners we recognize as our own, but it led to redroom, the site "where the writers are". it specifically led to this author's excerpt from a long-unpublished novel, from which i surfed on to erickalutz, that is deliciously littered with quotes: 2 or 3 morsels of bite-sized wisdom on every page.

"Talent is not talent until it is shared." -- Fortune cookie wisdom
(i do agree. if no one knows, who can say u are? it's not an adjective u give yourself.)

"There is no perfect time to write. There's only now." -- Barbara Kingsolver
(kingsolver! what a name! i'm writing now!)

"Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living." -- Gustave Flaubert
(thanks, gustave. that really puts things in perspective.)

"The one who tells the stories rules the world." -- Hopi proverb
(speaking of which, i wanna write stories. and rule the world too, might as well.)

"When in doubt, tell the truth." -- Mark Twain
(typically twainesque irony, when juxtaposed with the quote above. i suppose it follows that when lying, u shouldn't doubt yourself... it's the liars who own the world anyway. i'd like to add one here: "truth well told" - mccann-erickson's motto.)

"Like the eye that sees but cannot see itself; Like the sword that cuts but cannot cut itself." -- Zen koan
(wtf? but. yea. i mean. yea! erm. it's true, right? wait is this like, advice? i think it's true. i mean. erm. d'u get it? i get it. i think. d'u? really?)

"Sometimes you just have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down." -- Kobi Yamada
(always believed in this, yep.)

"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." -- Colette
(rightonbingo! and may i add, some mistakes are too good to make just once.)

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." -- Rudyard Kipling
(so subtle. so lethal. so inspiring. i shall rule like shere khan 1 day.)

those are the few gems. soooo... what's a zen koan, i hear u ask. well from more surfing, what i've surmised is, koan is simply an archaic term for faiwa, as zen is to the more modern equivalent of wtf. my take on it, anyway.

what distinguishes these are, as all things, the dilution of its discipline over time. observe: how we have to specify kurang manis for teh ais where before, they perfected ritual ceremonies in order to brew the perfect cuppa tea. we lepak at the raucous mamak for hours, they settled at silent temples for years. we encourage faiwa with more faiwa, while they spoke less but of higher quality. we indulge in faiwa in between banter, they meditated at length and spoke nothing but. we wtf ourselves in humour, while they elevated their zen into a high art.

u've been warned, but do check out some real quality wtf's...
like "what is buddha?" - 3 pounds of flax.

lessons

2008-09-02T06:42:00.001+08:00

days and weekends whip by like arrows. like a recurring theme in a story, life is still short.

as i learnt a while ago, even my dad is a mortal. dad was always, consistently, the one thing u can be sure of. the one soul antithesis to mine, the one voice of wisdom i begrudge, the one constant in my life of variables. and one day he wound up in the hospital from a heart problem. i still remember mom's voice dull over the phone, while i sat in the heart of a great void, soles of my feet tingling, trusting the floor to give way. we stand on the shoulders of giants: when the giant falls, nothing else is solid enough. i looked blankly at the treacherous parquet, and in my mind's eye i looked into his eyes, him peering over his glasses, over the evening papers in the kitchen. and i finally realized that vision had also become a variable, he was immortal no longer.

but dad still lives and is since better. life's unknowns aside, here're some remembered lessons for the future me.

i've learnt the gravity of words. ironically i was just appreciating the permanence of pen on paper, favouring written word over type. but words are more permanent than just that. even in email, they are black on white. and especially when digital, it's all the more dangerous, prone to becoming recorded copies, volatile. a careless email has more consequences than i'd care to elucidate. copywriters: black and white is a serious business, so read Everything from Line One.

i've also learnt it's nice to be relied on. couple weeks back we had a slipknot steamboat night, and the rainy friday evening held everyone up. out of the blue i got a call from eunice, stuck at jam-locked bangsar with no cab in sight: "jooks what do i do? i can't go anywhere. there's no one around. that's not very helpful." while there was really nothing helpful i could do, i called chokyan and smsed yenc (both of which she could've done well enough) and in 10 minutes i was something of a logistics co-ordinator. out of nothing i'd concocted a plan - and as it turned out she had boarded an lrt for just-as-jam-locked kelana jaya.

irony. oh well. and Then a week later, another out of the blue call: "kaling's not feeling very confident for her exam, could u give her some pointers for aurals?" so i did, although at the end of it i probably did more harm than good... it's still nice to be relied on. that u can be expected to deliver. i'm usually not like that, out of no other reason than sheer laziness, but i kinda like it.

i suppose i'm growing up, real quickly.

work hard, play hard

2008-08-05T04:11:00.014+08:00

go to redang. go hunting for fabled rocks and baby sharks. swim in choppy seas. take on the evening tide. snorkel, for what it's worth. jump around. get cut. take chances. take photos. screw sunblock. the sunburn aches and peels. u're roasted lobster then rotted mushroom, red and black and residual tissue. 2 weeks later they're just a memory. show your cuts to friends. laugh about being young. scars don't last. laughter does.

go see the selangor dam. see how small u are. forget work. forget the 13 unwritten pages. go to sg chiling. step in mud. climb the ledge at the waterfall. don't miss the chance, like i did. fight the rapids, like i didn't. get wet. grapple with soapy-smooth stones. u're There - if not now, when? what's dry clothes to unadulterated fun? what's wet underwear to submerging in liquid ice? life is short. play hard. the cold dissipates. the photos won't.

doze with a sweet girl. hold her close. tell stories. write secrets. smell shampoo. whisper names. breathe her breath. bite her lips. kiss and linger long and deep. kiss like there's no tomorrow. tomorrow comes anyway.

the cycle inevitably restarts. and i'm back to working hard. like a dog. a robot dog. 1/2 day mc doesn't count for fucks. i end up staying later than everyone else. hunger since missed lunch. sustenance by 3 cuppa milo's through the day. what a perversion of my milo memories.

the rant before the break

2008-07-23T22:32:00.008+08:00

it's funny how we're supposed to be 2.0, and how sorely lacking we are. and how ironic that being locked in this perpetual paradox is strangely fulfilling. or maybe i'm just used to it. used to the cycles and drills, and somehow proud of being able to do what i couldn't last year. yep, i'm an accomplished robot. this the career advancement from your ICE spiel, wk?

the stuff we propose... are always pulled back. the little things that make life easier, stop short on the drawing board. we're back to 1.0... or ok, 1.10. that's crypticspeak for mediocre. it always boils down to budget. what follows are the parkitasides, the k-i-v's, the phase II's, the slow, painstaking, minute and negligible enhancements that still never match our initial visions, and never enable us to practise what we preach.

but that's the way it works. u go all all all out there, and the boss will hold u in check for rational reasons, and the client will follow suit with monetary restrictions. like my tutor told me when i left college, aim for the stars, so that when u fall u'll still touch the treetops. or sooooomething like that. it just didn't sound so dogmatic then.

anyway my latest gripe is about time. which, in rapid and lateral mental workings, just spilled over into the other projects i'm on (hey, this is how u bitch). 1 of which is robotwork - cms. becoz while cms budgets are non-existent, we Are the cms. which eats into the time i should be spending on thinking. so this other thinking project of mine... not enough time. not even to begin with. not happy? i'm not gonna stress over what's not my fault.

being the most challenging place of its kind... it's probably right and true, depending on your rank, but without stepping out of the robot cycle i'll never know.

what a pointless rant. just forget u ever read this. lemme tell u about a rock. at redang bay there's a huge rock, or a little peninsula, depending on how u see it, that u can swim around. distance of about 4-500m. took me over 1/2 hour the last time even with scuba fins. let's see if i can do it again... or if we even find that spot again.

32 hours, counting down.

dreaming sounds

2008-07-15T11:57:00.005+08:00

"tolak! kotak api dua puluh!" everyone laughed. i didn't get it, but somewhere, far away, the radio was playing... matchbox 20, push. my radio alarm, sometime between 8.15 and 9.15. horrible joke, but i had to crack a smile. we were in some boarding school, cliquey as cliquey goes. he was the new kid, who fit in and took over. he was the born ringleader. he was risk and wit and charisma.

he murdered them all. my bunkmates dropped one by one, and i disappeared to save my own skin and spy from a distance. i watched in morbid fascination as the last victim fell. and he turned. and i turned. i fled the bloodlust, down silent sunlit corridors, playing by ear, hiding in hallway cupboards, sneaking roundabouts via back and front doors and fire-escape stunts.

and we returned, he inside, me on the outside. i listened at the office window as he brandished the severed head, announced to the warden he was walking out, and calmly gave up 30,000 bucks: his forfeited boarding deposit for the semester. i was in a school for bloody princes.

now comes the funny part. he never made it out, becoz he planned his getaway in the wrong car - mine. the last thing i heard was the familiar prolonged wheezing, him trying to start my fucked up car.

which was when i woke up. to the sound of dad trying to start my fucked up car.

overcoming the secret mechanics of hate

2008-07-13T21:30:00.007+08:00

while being plagued by insomnia this week, i've had the unexpected leisure to meditate on stuff and develop my own little self-help programme. which i'm gonna share with u now, for free! u too, can change your life just by following my simple steps.

what u need: the personal message function on msn. and hate. i was talking to someone about self-pity the other day. i've never believed in self-pity. it's passive and corrosive and gets u nowhere except deeper self-pity. hate... is different. it's an active and destructive power that opens u to the dark side. picture: self-pity - yoda in the swamps, olive, beige, shitty green. hate - darth maul, red and black, buzzing and beheading. note the distinct difference in power.

now proceed to input your hate verbally into your message bar. something like I WISH SEAN KINGSTON GETS SODOMIZED WITH HIS OWN VOCAL CHORDS works very well.

here's my personal example in action. u may have noticed my message over the last few days. our threadless tees incurred some customs tax in transit, which now involves authorizing pos msia to claim it for us so that we can pick it up from the post. i have faith in a lot of things in the world - and pos msia is Not one of them. so: "i hate tax".

then from an impromptu brainstorm... account director says, let's make it a blog. i look her in the eye and say, flog. i never say It, becoz u know just as well as i do the shameless riposte if u dare say It: copywriter's job to make it convincing, innit? but being as tacit as she was, i was ~~convinced~~ duped for a while, but deep in my gut, i've always condemned it. flogs don't fly. "i hate tax and flogs".

the third item needs no explanation. i dunno if it's the client or the servicing team, but i'll take the client just in case the servicing team is somehow reading this. if u are, it's not u, it's just me. yeah, really. but fuck u anyway. "i hate tax and flogs and celcom".

now u observe what's going on? u have more hate than u imagine. anytime something irks u, single it out and announce it to the world. be subtle: i hate the green-eyed monster, for example, where green-eyed monster may refer to an actual person, i'm not naming any names. when u've accumulated enough hate, say, 30 words at least - it's fun, isn't it? - u've come to the end. it's time to get serious: u're found your latent negative power, now to release it.

order now! for your exclusive copy of "overcoming the secret mechanics of hate", to learn the ultimate final chapter of this self-cleansing programme. order within the next 30 minutes, and receive a bokken, wooden training sword of the ancient samurai, absolutely free! smash it into the green-eyed monster's face! instant gratification guaranteed!

couldn't resist. the ultimate final chapter is as follows. place your cursor at the end of the line. press shift+home-delete. there's your release. there are 2 ways to approach this: 1. before deleting, try and recall the whole line from memory. if u can't, u've already forgotten what u've been hating, so well done! clear the line and start over. 2. look at your line and recall every episode. see how childish and trivial and futile it has all been. erase your pathetic ranting and go get a life.

do tell me if this works. if u insist on the bokken method, go get your own.

arachbots

2008-07-03T20:03:00.011+08:00

Karen Wong says:
     erygcekeurcgueuguwgk.wux.gu.
Karen Wong says:
     oi
Karen Wong says:
     -.-
Karen Wong says:
     aivee hand itchy
Karen Wong says:
     faster go tie her up
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     where got
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     u sot
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     i've always been at my place
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     naughty vee vee bot
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     wtf?
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     vee vee bot?
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     u wanna die liao isit
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     mr j
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     ai vee = vee vee bot
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     hohohoho
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     jookbot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     miu bot
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     hamyu is jobot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     wat?
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     hambot also can
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     ham bot
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     karen = kabot
Karen Wong says:
     ewww
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     kaput better
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     tay = hiongbot
Karen Wong says:
     chee heng is hengbot?
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     yaya
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     hengbot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     cheebot
Karen Wong says:
     remi is mibot
six : thirtyfour says:
     cheebot
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     tiffany = tibot
six : thirtyfour says:
     haHAHAHAHAHA
six : thirtyfour says:
     wongbot
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     nono
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     karen is kabot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     tibotty
six : thirtyfour says:
     kw = pinkbot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     tiff = tibotty
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     all siao

six : thirtyfour says:
     hahahahah
six : thirtyfour says:
     roboham
Karen Wong says:
     karen koay leh
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     karen koay = koaybot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     syam = botsiah
six : thirtyfour says:
     koaybot
Syam...I got Magic Beans says:
     wat the
six : thirtyfour says:
     she speaks!!
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     syam = whatdabot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     botsiah speaks!!!
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     mine was spinobot lah
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     urs is tibot lar
six : thirtyfour says:
     tibot la, nicer
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     ur name got spino meh
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     not nice ok
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     tibotty
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     robotiff
six : thirtyfour says:
     HAHA
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     good one!!!
Karen Wong says:
     bingo
six : thirtyfour says:
     robovee
Karen Wong says:
     jackpot
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     what so funny
Karen Wong says:
     roboham
Syam...I got Magic Beans says:
     ahahahaha
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     robocop
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     karen = roboka
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     robomi
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     robokoay
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     nice loh roboka
Karen Wong says:
     robojook
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     so jap
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     robojook
Karen Wong says:
     robochee
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     ehhhh
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     robohiong
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     copyright ah
Karen Wong says:
     roboza
six : thirtyfour says:
     zabot
Karen Wong says:
     roboling
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     roboheer better
Karen Wong says:
     robomeng
six : thirtyfour says:
     robodee
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     mengabot
Karen Wong says:
     robokeong
six : thirtyfour says:
     wengbot!
Karen Wong says:
     robosoo
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     wengbotkeong
Karen Wong says:
     soobot
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     roboboss
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     i like wengbotkeong
six : thirtyfour says:
     bossbot
Karen Wong says:
     ilike roboboss
six : thirtyfour says:
     HAHAHA
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     hohoho
Karen Wong says:
     bossbot

Karen Wong says:
     roboben
Karen Wong says:
     robohoong
Karen Wong says:
     wairobo
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     rotbot
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     rotiby
Karen Wong says:
     roborot
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     rotiboy
six : thirtyfour says:
     robosan
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     wah
Karen Wong says:
     oh
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     like jap neh
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     robo-san
Karen Wong says:
     robosan <-- tay robosan
six : thirtyfour says:
     taybot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     bottay~~~
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     allsiao
six : thirtyfour says:
     hamyu = sienbot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     siaobot
Karen Wong says:
     hahah
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     eeekkk jegek jegek jegek...... siiieeennnnnzzzzz
six : thirtyfour says:
     tiffabotz
Karen Wong says:
     jegek jegek jegek
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     robodawn
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     robothong
six : thirtyfour says:
     thong??
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     yeah
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     wtf?
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     watdafuckbot
six : thirtyfour says:
     robowtf
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     veebot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     wiibot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     vbot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     aibot
Karen Wong says:
     d.i.u.bot
six : thirtyfour says:
     kwkwkwkwkw
six : thirtyfour says:
     u can be
six : thirtyfour says:
     RAWRbot
Karen Wong says:
     yay
Karen Wong says:
     GRAWRBOT
Karen Wong says:
     moosebot
Karen Wong says:
     robomoose
six : thirtyfour says:
     rawrbot wong
six : thirtyfour says:
     rawrbowong?

Karen Wong says:
     rawrbovee
six : thirtyfour says:
     rawrboka?
Karen Wong says:
     rawrboham
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     coool!!!
six : thirtyfour says:
     joanne = jobot
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy rotiboy
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     rawrbotiff
Karen Wong says:
     hahahahahaha
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     rawrbovee
Karen Wong says:
     rawrbojook
Karen Wong says:
     rawrbokoay
six : thirtyfour says:
     rawrbomiu
Karen Wong says:
     rawrbosan
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     rawrbosiah
Karen Wong says:
     robosiah, rawrbosiah
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     bosiah!!!
six : thirtyfour says:
     this is a good brainstorm
Syam...I got Magic Beans says:
     roboham
six : thirtyfour says:
     syam speaks again!
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     no no
Syam...I got Magic Beans says:
     bosiah is so...
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     is rawrboham
Syam...I got Magic Beans says:
     so... not me
Karen Wong says:
     rawrbostorm

little^bit has been added to the conversation.

||Salted^Fish|| says:
     jooko'bot
six : thirtyfour says:
     robit!
six : thirtyfour says:
     haHAHAHAHAH
six : thirtyfour says:
     bitbot
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     bitbot is here!
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     chocobo
little^bit says:
     er
little^bit says:
     wassup
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     botbit
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     bitbot
Karen Wong says:
     robobit
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     or robobit
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     bitbotbit
Karen Wong says:
     rawrbobit
six : thirtyfour says:
     bitbot nicer
Karen Wong says:
     8bitbot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     botbitbot
six : thirtyfour says:
     robomei
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     siewbot
Karen Wong says:
     i'm a robot, botbitbot botbitbot
Karen Wong says:
     siewbot!!!!
little^bit says:
     i'm bitbit
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     botbit botbit
six : thirtyfour says:
     we go jegekjegek, she goes botbitbotbit
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     bitbot bitbot
Karen Wong says:
     siewbit
Karen Wong says:
     siewbitbot
six : thirtyfour says:
     little^bot
Karen Wong says:
     siewbotbit
Karen Wong says:
     robo^bit
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     all siao
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     we are siaobot gang
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     robochick flick time~~~
little^bit says:
     siaobot

six : thirtyfour says:
     meibot... come wathc chick flick
little^bit says:
     where?
six : thirtyfour says:
     farabot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     zabot
Karen Wong says:
     mosinbot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     zabot on leave today
Karen Wong says:
     happybot
six : thirtyfour says:
     robomosin
Karen Wong says:
     rawrbosin
little^bit says:
     haha
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     nanabot
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     screambot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     nehnehbot
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     pervert
little^bit says:
     pervert
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     ya i pervertbot
six : thirtyfour says:
     vertbot
Karen Wong says:
     pervbot
six : thirtyfour says:
     roboperv
Karen Wong says:
     rawrboperv
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     i stare at ppl botbies when i tok to them
little^bit says:
     lobot
little^bit says:
     WAH
six : thirtyfour says:
     botbiessssss... mmmmmmmmm...
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     mmmmm ...eekkkkkk ekkkk
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     peek-a-bot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     robochick!!
six : thirtyfour says:
     chickbawts
six : thirtyfour says:
     chocobots
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     jook-o-bot
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     ooi
six : thirtyfour says:
     who's ooi?
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     robobrain nead a chickbot storm...
six : thirtyfour says:
     chokyan ooi
six : thirtyfour says:
     chokybot
six : thirtyfour says:
     u said 7 lah...
Bosan - nonsense stupid ppl really make me wanna go now ! says:
     7
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     ??
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     y suddenly 7?
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     robo7 ?
Bosan - nonsense stupid ppl really make me wanna go now ! says:
     six : thirtyfour says:
     u said 7 lah...
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     idin say 7
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     now lah
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     630 roud up is 7
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     same
little^bit says:
     why 7?
Bosan - nonsense stupid ppl really make me wanna go now ! says:
     i wanna bomb Slikpknot !!!!!!!!!!
little^bit says:
     go ahead..
six : thirtyfour says:
     bomb'em slipbots
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     i supply bomb
six : thirtyfour says:
     knot become bot... we can have arachbots
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     facebook
Syam...I got Magic Beans says:
     hamyu u mean ur human bomb?
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     group
Syam...I got Magic Beans says:
     the gaseous one
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     arachbot
six : thirtyfour says:
     yaya alongside the dinobots and autobots
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     the bomb i release everyday
Karen Wong says:
     supabomb
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     nak makan malam
six : thirtyfour says:
     bakutehbot?
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     mohsinbot

||Salted^Fish|| says:
     group name: arachbots
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     description?
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     copywriter
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     writerbot
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     u guys wanna go yoga class ?
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     robojoints are not flexi enough
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     YOGA anyone ?
||Salted^Fish|| says:
     i want to... but....
six : thirtyfour says:
     tif = fitbot
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     swingers go yoga ok ?
six : thirtyfour says:
     regular arachbots = not
six : thirtyfour says:
     arachbots:
     an assmebly of obedient robots, forever bent to the whims of servicingbots to jegekly serve the sentient clientgods
i am a robot. jekeeeeeeeek jekeeeeeeeek eeeeek peeeep says:
     ok no one likes me where
Karen Wong says:
     hahaha
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     wtf?
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     u guys are kukubots
six : thirtyfour says:
     ciaobots
six : thirtyfour says:
     arachbots are split into kukubots and robociaos
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     haha
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     i wan kukubots
i am a robot...jegek jegek jegek says:
     i belong to kukubot

and in julyyyy

2008-07-02T22:25:00.010+08:00

a lemonade

hello, blog pt3 - sketchbooks revisited

2008-06-08T22:16:00.004+08:00

i was thinking how back in school, i used to draw at random, with some obsessive-compulsive patterns. a4 sheets or a5 exercise book pages, any scrap paper that fell prey to me would soon be covered in repetitions of little objects. most notably, swords and knives and daggers. opening my current sketchbook (current for the only reason that it's unfinished since oh, 3 years ago)... i see the same thing. except they're cut&pasted. i still draw at random, and the trouble with sketchbooks is that they're not. so my favoured random doodles ended up cut&pasted into the book. swords and blades and rapiers and scimitars and halberds, swordsmen and sword styles and fancy names.

escapism pure and simple. i'm drawing again. joy.

hello, blog pt2 - poverty

2008-06-08T21:01:00.001+08:00

there are few of us who, when left to our own devices... get nothing done. enter mich: planner, scheduler, roll-taker, budgeter, organizer, project manager! whose impressive credentials include class monitor, treasurer (i think) and photostat lady! figures were bounced around by email. then came outlined plans. followed by scans of letters. and receipts. and then a pay-me-back-by-this-date. lastly, a full intinerary from candy.

in one fell swoop - redang here we come!

in other news, that dreaded day came to pass. june crept up on us, and the phileo parking rates shot 21 bucks through the roof. my banknotes grew fluffy angel wings. meanwhile, in between all these came a sneakily ill-timed bombshell: threadless sale! and seeing that 1. i can't shop for my life and 2. they're Very Good t-shirts... i couldn't pass up the chance to splurge. syam and aivee tumpanging. i suddenly had 30 items in the cart. now to shortlist.

then. the bigger bombshell bluebolts. petrol is 2.70 as of midnight. ch teleports from paultan.org to the shell across the highway. the tension is thick and tangible, as a nation screams WHATDAMUTHAFUCK. even my winged banknotes vanish in the face of bleak and sober truth.

in one fell shock - i was poor.
oh, and i'm gonna watch beauty and the beast too.

hello, blog pt1 - dead fire

2008-06-08T19:35:00.004+08:00

my engine gave up on me in the middle of federal highway. we were on the way to skytrex, and i'd missed the turnoff toward shah alam. ben in the rearview was showing me some wtf hand signs. so he and syam swung round to overtake: follow. ok so i followed. so we were headed the opposite direction. midway down the curving slope. i was still on the phone with syam. when my steering locks, the all-too-familiar lock. i look down: red light. midway down a slope ok, in daylight traffic.

as u'd say in chinese, dead fire. in all senses, on all levels. but thanks to my honed on-the-fly restarts, i managed to coax the car to reach bukit cahaya. timing too low, it's an old problem, but never this drastic. this time round it does not sputter and die - this time the needle drops straight and the engine is cut abruptly, no leeway time to rev. on that first slope i had my foot completely off the pedal, which was how i was still cruising down at 60 and never felt the engine die.

long story short, i made myself forget it in the skytrex course, becoz i was there for fun, damnit, everyone was. and after we came out, it was a couple calls to AAM and my virgin towtruck ride and in all, 3+1/2 hours before my (un)faithful 405 finally settled at peugeot, chan sow lin.

the art of stalking

2008-05-20T04:15:00.012+08:00

it's in the anticipation. u have to be poised, pre-emptive, 4, 5, 6 steps ahead, before your quarry even suspects. it's in the offensive. u have to wrap your mind around the whole scene, omniscient to the obstacles, getaways, shortcuts. it's in the careful calculations. u have to be adaptive and open to whichever possible way the subject may move. and u can never be 1 step too early in a carpark, becoz round and round and round, it's a rigid 1-way route.

from my vantage, i saw her. through the drab grey concrete and numbered pillars, through the glass of the enclosure, she appeared from the lifts and stopped at the autopay. i saw the long fingers dipping for coins. the curtain of hair as she bent for change. the casual toss as she stood again. "beeeaauutiful," i whispered, "my lucky day?"

now the game begins. she stepped out. the barriers fell away, and she was just 300 metres away from my murky windscreen, a living target. i trained my hungry eyes on her delectable, tightly-jeaned legs, and knocked the gearshift down. N flipped off, D lighted up. i rolled. left? right? and after, which way? while probability is a science, intuition is a fine-tuned skill. i trundled along patiently while the distance lengthened.

distance was not the crucial factor here, it was the path. do i turn here? no, she was still following the carpark's main grid-lines. keys appeared in her tantalizing fingers. that was just bait, hang on there, hold up, wait it out. do i turn here then? no. the mind of the pedestrian has no room for the mind of the driver. she angled herself and slid sideways, cutting a path between the rows of cars. see? never be 1 step too early.

we leveled on the next turn, my gaze still following her gait like a hound. she had no idea. i stayed the 300 metres. she flicked her wrist with the fob, an arrogant flourish, a pretence at nonchalance. a slick red coupe beeped, headlights flashing in answer. it felt like a triumphant checkmate. "mine!" i crowed through gritted teeth as i surged forward, exhilarated, to grab her parking spot.

'flying gives u wings

2008-05-06T02:24:00.003+08:00

and the word of the day is: latissimus dorsi.
go figure.

tagged, cont'd

2008-04-27T05:10:00.004+08:00

fact #4.
failed miserably at my smokes-and-staircases last week. will try harder. btw the first flight of stairs on the ground floor is a different length, but still, 60 steps = no problemo. i had another brainwave the other day: to Hop all 60 steps. right now i can't even clear 1 floor, so this will of course have to wait.

fact #5.
also at phileo, is a fountain/waterfall thingy, up which i wanna climb for a photo. it's a ziggurat-y granite structure, and the water cascades down all these triangular outcroppings at the side. which i'm thinking should hold my weight, although the little voice in my head says i'm nuts, becoz besides risking impalement i'm also putting my literal nuts on the line. for now i just jump whatever i can jump. see also "parkour".

fact #6.
i drove myself into rawang for the first time this week. for some horrible assignment that made me leave the house at 7. after only half a night's sleep, that was visited by all manner of work-dreams. still, all in all it was a nice change from the monotony, via a scenic green route thru jln duta.

fact #7.
decided a while ago that i had a favourite film after all: "the spanish apartment". seen it 5 times. and not accidental tv reruns either, but actively seeking it out and watching it from start to finish - once in the cinema (alone), twice on rented dvd (from the same shop), twice on downloaded torrent with crappy subtitles (but what the heck).

fact #8.
here are those nerdy blogs i haunt and have never linked:

shyng is a redheaded weirdo with a lush ~~ass~~ voice and a penchant for decapitated bunneighs. i shall say no more becoz well, she takes my breath away.
siewmei is the notorious rabbifier. fixated with rabbits, that are distinctly different to bunneighs. the senior daikarjie... until she left, that is.
that'd make yenc the daikarjie of slipknot. until she left, too. a diligent worker and candid talker, she's the one to call when u're hungry.
tiffany is my spidertwin who joined the same day i did. bookish and quiet but given to random frank exclamations. doesn't yumcha with me, doesn't talk much to me either =(
mei has a vocabulary that is in inverse proportions to her petite frame, matched with a vulgar tongue u'd just love to hate. perpetually horny. licks. beware.
aivee is a born hokkien rapper. has a really canggih camera. favourite phrase alternates between "i rock" and "u rock". drives a 206 nicknamed puggy, so yes she really rocks.
lastly, a guy! where've all the guy bloggers gone? remi is HOT - head of tech. experienced, resourceful and unfazed by troubles, with a killer dress sense to boot. and an adorable chemistry with aivee.

who i tag: all 7 of u. when u see this.

shoeny's shocker

2008-04-24T09:49:00.009+08:00

Hi all,

Just wanted to let you guys know (although some of you already know!) that Danny and I are officially engaged! We had our 2 year anniversary last night, and he proposed after dinner while were having a stroll along the promenade by the Yarra river! Am very excited and happy atm (Georgie, I now know how you felt when you found out your close mate was engaged, and you're the maid of honour!) and am buzzing! Hope you all have a lovely weekend, and I'm sure we'll catch up with you all at some point (for those in cold, cold England, we'll see you sometime late this year/early next year I think; same goes for those in Malaysia!)

Hugs,
Carol =)

--------------------

and all i hear in my mind is
holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy... [reverb]
for the undecided expletive
.

tagged

2008-04-14T04:40:00.009+08:00

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List eight (8) random facts about yourself.
3. tag eight people at the end of this post and list their names.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs.

fact #1.
short of going "tagged? nononoooooo curse u km! damn u cruel world!", i'm answering this becoz i'm secretly an attention whore and very extremely flattered that someone bothered, even if technically km isn't playing by the rules as she didn't link her tagger and leave me a comment, but u know, it's that little high u enjoy when seeing yourself mentioned or quoted.

or even screencapped, which reminds me of something i been needing to do a long time: (re-)introduce the (ex-)nerds/knots. complicated? 1+ year being a nerd and i've never gotten round to linking this bunch of wonderful people, some of which have since moved on, some of which have switched initial blog providers. that will constitute 1 of these 8 facts. such is the serious sloth in me.

other reasons include more procrastination, in that i've amassed a little fortune of topics to blog about, and without knowing which to start with first, a tag is just as good as any to get the ball rolling. as before and as always, this train of thought brings us back to the rhetorical question on the whole purpose of blogging. everyone blogs for their own reasons. what are mine?

observations, musings, inside jokes, a journal of what-i-did-today's, a journal of what-i-did-this-month's, trying to nail my fleeting youth in place basically. inspirations in prose, random patterns of life, the occasional doodle. here i would like to add: prolifism. (invented word, noun form of prolific, is there such a word? anyone?)

i find a lot of things interesting, that're somehow hard to express to others. i kinda get stunted in wonderment. maybe a research career suits me better? nah, what i need is practice, in making things that seem interesting to me, interesting to others as well. how's that for a writing challenge And an amalgam of all my previous reasons.

are u getting me here? didn't think so. my amassed blog topics shall remain... amassed.
phew, what an essay.

fact #2.
i went swimming on saturday and i felt healthy. i did not smoke on sunday, and felt healthy and sanctimonious. and if that's not enough, last week i'd kept back to my old strict 3-hour-rule regime... that is, 1 ciggie only every 3 hours, thus limiting my daily intake to 5. this week, i'm gonna try 3 per day.

fact #3.
i'm surrounded by health freaks - protein-dieters, wannabe-swimmers and stair-climbers. this is a good kick up the arse for my own ideals. just found out i can clear a flight of phileo stairs in 3 jumps. add 2 steps for each landing and pivot, and that makes 10 steps per floor. i have petty competitive tendencies, and if She can run up 18 floors, i can reach arachnid from the ground floor in 60 steps. no more elevators if i can help it. i'm with the health freaks!

fact #4 is to be continued.

oral therapy

2008-03-24T04:45:00.008+08:00

there's this little thai restaurant tucked away in a nook of section 17, called my elephant. but the stupid name was the last thing on my mind last week. i was dead tired but hey, u still need to eat, and it being a rare occasion when we venture out to dinner (with sue-ann too, ey?!), who am i to decline? so i found myself there, mostly lifeless and silent, leafing through the menu like i'd never seen one, and gawking at the chic decor like the proverbial deer in a village.

i dunno if the food was really good, or just a nice change. but when u compare freshly-cooked green curry chicken, papaya salad, tempura vegs and warm fragrant rice... to our regular diet of maggi, roti, ramly burger, the try-your-luck tandoori and stale bain marie fare... thaaat's oral therapy, if anything. i sipped the 5000-degree tomyam and it trailed down my gut like liquid sunshine.

good food can heal your soul.

it's like good sleep. i remember once lying in mine own bed, fully flat on the futon, with pillow and blanket and consciously thinking, i am happy (2 seconds later i was dead to the world, and another 2 seconds later it was daylight and the daily grind over again, but that's beside the point).

shit i fucking feel happy for these small things. am i becoming goddamn emo or what.

but back to my elephant. it was drizzling when we came out, though i came out feeling much much much better. went back to the office, call it a day? it was more than a day already. wh and hy got to wow-ing. ch and sm went through photos. i switched off my pc, heated up my herbal med, and sat alone at the pantry. thinking of oral therapy. the wet and secret kind. the deep and breathy kind. the nibbly kind and the lingual kind. the musicofthenight kind.

they thought i went home after that.

unsent letter

2008-03-06T03:26:00.004+08:00

(machinegun fellatio!)

sometime this week, after a superlong day at work, i was lying wide awake at 5am+. thinking, thinking, thinking, of that email i never wrote. this was in my first arachnid days, after i'd been introduced to all the 7th floor - and 3a too, over lunch. that first, initial, mass email when u proclaim your presence and say hello. so i said hello.

i had nothing else to write. green freshie after all. but i did have stuff to write about the others. while still strangers, i'd had lunch and 'storms and fags with some... but announcing your quick first impressions can be a risky gamble. what i had for a sure bet though, were the names of all 20-odd people on the floor. and what my unsent letter was, was basically that complete list:

hi there, i'm new here, and i'm liking the good vibes already, nice to have met u all, and i mean all of u, here goes, in order of your desks... [nerdsx22 + knotsx4]... apologies if i'd gotten anyone wrong, pls do come and tell me so i can buy u a teh ais and get to know u better, and help me out here fellas, does so-and-so have a boyfriend?

what first impression would that have made? if it was crafted copy, not just a simple hello? would the perceptions of me, the friendships, the whole scheme of things, have turned out any different? the turnover is high and fast, but ex-colleagues remain acquaintances in the very least. and the world is small - that makes the industry frikkin tiny. for a fact, i came across as the cold lansi type to some people, like syam for instance... who's since become my kaijie.

i fell asleep on that funny thought. the very next day/night, syam said to me, jook. (yes, jook with a fullstop, it was that serious.) jook. why're u still here? what is it that's keeping u from leaving? i see u frustrated a lot lately. u've even shouted at me a few times. (i never meant to, swear to all the gods!)

so we had a little heart-to-heart and bottom line is... i'm still learning. i've not done all there is to do. though i Have come a way since last year. i take the new stuff as challenges, i solve, learn, move, forget the early frustrations, i take the repetitive drivel as practice, and i don't stress over it - and as it appears i've also picked up shouting. hey c'mooon, i don't shout. but let's face it, raising your voice sometimes is an affirmation and safeguard of your sanity. don't take shit. let it out, it's healthy. like i do with dawn.

dawn and i have a practice of trading curses. her email came in one day, minor changes to be made, and those minor changes were longer than the actual job brief. i flipped open msn and went, siendouhai! to which she replied, fandoulan! then came the matchats, mahais, makais, dius, du-9-lans, cibais, pokais, u get the idea. we keep this going, though at times i'm really swearing for real. i'm sure she is too. then we go smoke in the stairwell and laugh about it, and suddenly we're no more copywriter and ae, but... human. it's like being unplugged from the matrix.

yes work can be dehumanizing. some jobs i get i'm through with in 10 mins, while some jobs take months of changes/editing, which make me question what i'm worth. sometimes i feel like just another cog in the machine, u try to be brilliant, and at most u'll end up just a shinier cog. but ask me at the end of the day, and i'll say: i'm still learning, and i do like my job.

point is, copy as i've come to know it is calculated, soulless and designed to sell. but it's just the job, the little gear in the great engine of churning dollars. looking back at that unwritten email, i know if i did, it'd have been sincere writing, not copywriting. and right now, for whatever my copy's worth, i still love writing.

this rambling monologue may be meaningless shite to u, dear reader, but it does tell me i still love writing. and that is good to know.

random reports

2008-02-27T01:11:00.003+08:00

paganini is overkill.
nod nod nod.
marsvenusmercuryjupitersaturnuranusneptune.
is bliss.

work comes like diarrhoea.
night and sleep lose meaning.
siendouhai or fandoulan?
bothla, diu.

u have specs fetish ar??
i have big ass fetish.
the world goes round.
faster than it should.

no money no dragon

2008-02-12T06:01:00.000+08:00

so earlier this evening, fine yesterday evening, my sense of time is pretty damn warped now. yesterday evening, after my lunch, yes my lunch, i had a nice big cuppa tea. it was too hot, so i left it in the kitchen to cool for a bit, while i fooled around with the piano a bit, then i came back to take it to my room. halfway through the cuppa i noticed... a winged ant. swimming in my tea.

was my room too dark, too ghetto, to see the ant? pretty sure there're no ants in my room, let alone their bigger brethren with wings. so most probably it had been ferried upstairs from the kitchen. in which case i must've been pretty blind. no matter. bugs in my drink, it's happened before. this i can swallow, no, i mean figuratively. no matter.

but just just just now, i was having my midnight snack. with a cuppa milo. again too hot, so i left it in the kitchen to cool while i killed some time with the tv. came back. and i saw. now this, i cannot stomach. i saw. brown leather. on white china. perched on the elegant porcelain ear, torso dipped into the well of the cup. a lizard.

SIPPING.

MY.

MILO.

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatdamuthaffffffffffffffffFFFFFFFFFFFuck!

it's a ridiculous scene straight out of a cartoon! but i'm not fuckin kidding! good thing the bitch didn't fuckin drown in it, hah?! and i end up pouring warm corpse and cold milo together into my mouth?! whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatdamuthafuck.

but happy cny, anyways.

suddenly strikes me that in teochew, the lizard is a "money dragon". is this supposed to be an auspicious sign?

twice i've gambled this season, and it's been a straight downhill streak. my very first round of gin this year, i get the Commandments. never made up for it. then came the tuition fees to meng when he taught us mahjongg gin. it's interesting, different-interesting. i mean, essentially it's still about losing your points fast, but it's also a bloody drag race. as in the opposite sense, to see who can drag it out the longest.

so both sessions cost about the same, except with mahjongg gin it was over a longer timeframe. less chi kek, more slow entertainment. damn i'm a bad gambler. and that shit about the conflict with duke jupiter? it's hard to Not believe, innit. moneydragons can be damned anyway.

gemutlichkeit!

2008-01-15T02:26:00.000+08:00

first, a random thought i had earlier: there is a thesaurus in all of us.

second, new vocabulary! from the bavarian bierhaus: gemutlichkeit. now what's interesting about this, is that there is no english equivalent to define it. i love these words. it's always good to know the most mainstream, pervasive and plagiarized language in the modern world cannot transpose Everything after all. like the economic poetry of chinese, or even some colloquial malay (that is ironically, being so stupidly anglicized). another reason i love this word is that it connotes... cosiness, social cheer and the absence of anything hectic. in 1 word, how beaut is that?

this reminds me of how it's been said the inuit have dozens, hundreds of words to describe snow. apparently it's a myth, but... check this out. it's bullshit, but very good bullshit: http://www.mendosa.com/snow.html.

it's interesting to see how every culture has its own definitions of specific concepts, more often than not, in specific contexts too. but beyond definitions, i think the true meaning of things falls to the individual. when u simply explain things your way, u're really combining a few ideas together to convey a concept, much like how the germans have given us gemutlichkeit.

when u explain yourself most simply, u find the specific, appropriate words - to suggest, not to define. i mean, humans are not dictionaries. we do not store dry definitions: we store memories, experiences, ideas, stuff with personal meaning. so u find these ideas and juxtapose them. u create a fresh viewpoint, injected with personality. and in doing so u deliver something with much bigger meaning.

there is a thesaurus in all of us. believe it.

diem carped

2008-01-12T06:36:00.000+08:00

friday night. we had a sumptious porkbellyandcowtongue! daorae dinner. seems like The place to go to when u're unexpectedly loaded, and this time around, the 2nd occasion of karen's treat. which is getting really unfair.

i finished early i.e. before midnight. lagged behind to email and facebook a little and leech a couple of movies. andrew wants a short melbourne holiday, any recommendations? jackie d was proud for the dmam and happy with her research life. and someone posted my baby pics online, wtf. i packed my bag and got ready to leave... but remembered i'd left the lego. see, wh got this lego set from his secret santa and he'd never bothered with it, so it kinda got kuasa-ed to us underlings. it's a real boon to your creative side. i sat down to build a missile battery. karen left. 1 hour later...

"yumcha mou?"

it was all perfect, a true carpe diem moment. the chance would never come again, we reflected. the timing, the mood, the day, when huge work was looming in the coming weeks and we were just then cbf-ed, what with the weekend chill settling in, and the impending Departure. this girl. is a fucking artist. she turned us all into rabbits a few months back, and i'm missing her already. this pic is even my wallpaper at work.

l-r: hy showing off his socks - sm awaiting the arrival of the fates - ch defined by his mic - wh looking horny with diablo - karen and her new toys - and me doing what i do best.

over neslo and teh-o and limau ais, the 5 of us laughed half the night away.

previous post removed

2008-01-06T04:57:00.000+08:00

dear jooks,

losing yourself?

i hope it's fun.

white xmas?

2007-12-24T17:38:00.000+08:00

rainy day... in More Ways Than One.

the toilet sink is busted. the window's seals are crap. the office floods. outside we have a liquid blizzard. a white malaysian christmas, cold, wet and gloomy. the perfect mood. as if on cue km directs me to coldplay.com, to "mince spies", which is this sublime rendition of "have yourself a merry little christmas". i send hy scorehunting. the piano is rubato with liberal 7's and m7's and dim7's. the rain hammers on against the panes. perfect mood.

...damn lax today.

some album art trivia

2007-12-12T19:02:00.000+08:00

i was at my aunt's place last night, looking at this beautiful painting. ok ok, it's a miniature picture of a painting, that my cousin had stuck up on his door a long, long, long, long, long time ago. it's one those things that u've become so used to, u don't even see it anymore.

("dangerous" album art, mark ryden, 1991)

i definitely remember more than once, getting an eerie deja vu looking at it. it's one of those evasive things that's been well, evading, me for years. but last night, something clicked. isn't... that... from... bosch?

("the garden of earthly delights", hieronymus bosch, 1504)

so it is, so it is... don't rightly remember which of these pictures i encountered first, but either way, it's a puzzle solved. an unplaceable uneasiness finally laid to rest. and a very ironic realization: there's a homage to bosch on display in that very house i grew up in!

do u see? d'u see it?

(incidentally, this was the same cousin who told me gnr's "use your illusion" cover was lifted from a raphael painting.)

a couple of things

2007-12-03T14:40:00.000+08:00

1. a dmam bronze - where they misspelt my name!!
2. "u're ok".

o.O

24hcd - downloadable

2007-11-04T19:18:00.000+08:00

here's a much better, user-friendly option!
why didn't i do this earlier?

rightclick, save as.

24 hour comics day

2007-10-31T08:05:00.000+08:00

the impulse.

my answer.

it was thursday by the time i read that in wednesday's paper - and said, i am THERE, damnit! it was thursday night when i called. and being me, it was the last minute on friday before i finally paid up. i mean i knew i was THERE from the start but it took a bit of introspective yes/no's and some external coaxing (thank You, yes u), and saturday noon i was... THERE. a solo noob with a half-baked idea, blinking at the ungodly saturday hour.

2 months back, i interviewed 50 strangers in a day. wasn't easy, but wasn't all that hard, u put on a social mask, make small talk, get your answers, move on. but faced with 50 strangers with a shared interest....... it's different. these are people u want to know, and remember, and be remembered by. not that u get much time to talk to them at such an event. u see, everyone's always drawing.

the hour struck. nurie beside me started whipping pencil frames onto his a3 sheets (a3!!). the energy was contagious. every time i looked around from drawing was a wonder - i was THERE, with 50 other idiots, smack at cineleisure's entrance, cloaked in silent doodling passion. passion is the word. even cedric and wong, the organizers, did it as a side project.

so, about my half-baked idea - i had a beginning and ending. 6 hours later, i had a beginning and ending in pencils. and fleshing out the middle pages was proving to be a bitch. some people can do it on the fly, finished page by finished page. should i do that? maybe next time. monologuing like this in my head, at 10 hours i had 23 pages... in pencils. at 12 hours, full inked dialogue in 23 pages of pencils. midnight! out came the inks and... kilometricos. it was pure work from there. i inked by eye and instinct, brain completely turned off, not even knowing where in the story or what page i was at. i lifted the pen at 4am and cramped my little finger.

stuck to my workday standard of a ciggie every 3 hours (this way, i keep a limit of 5 per day), but while being used to caffeine and nicotine sustenance, the added adrenaline after midnight really threw me off. i started walking like jack sparrow. and then a dawn smoke with katon led to swapping sketchbooks - from where i gleaned some technique i tried out straightaway. heh.

the variety of people and styles was amazing. there were marvel muscles, flat manga, bold kiddy lines, beasts and heroes and mecha, most of those which're pure illustrations - their attention to detail is exhausting just to look at. a girl had a style similar to bone's, while another guy had real dali-inspired stuff. but the eye-opener among the people were these 2 genial, songkok-clad uncles who're probably in their 40's. respect!

and there was last-minute edwin, who kindly shared his lamp with me (it's customary to bring your own table lamp, didjaknow), and the very nice and self-confessed emo, farhana. edwin's comic is a superhero tale with an interesting twist right from the first page (plus the slap-forehead-cartoon-sweatdrop last page). farhana's one deals with fuzzy matters of the heart, featuring corn and cheese And more importantly, honest stuff that make u feel less alone and... uh, saves suicidals. also present was nst man ridzwan, whose punktual punk is hilarious. it's simple and superfai, but it keeps u laughing and turning the pages and wanting more, that is after all, the essence of a good strip.

so if u love drawing, u should really do this at least once in your life.

anyhow, 22 hours and 160 chickens later... i was done. slacking off toward the end seems to be a bad habit of mine, and the morning sun didn't help. could've been more finishing touches and background detail, but... what d'YOU think? framing, perspective, story, plot, technique, improper use of splash pages, negligent use of rulers, horrible handwriting, hens' combs too big...?

clickclickclick

information is free!

2007-10-03T03:39:00.000+08:00

we came back from dinner, and a while later hy was watching a rachmaninoff clip. o.O? said he had the scores too, just to gawk at. o.O?? gave me this site to download classical scores. holyfuck! so off the top of my head i went for moonlight sonata, which given my near-2 decades on the piano, i am ashamed to say i've never gotten hold of. hooray. quite a collection on that site. searched for another one off the top of my head, a faure nocturne, a 7-pager i think u can get at woh fatt for 90+ ringgit. pdf, right-click-save-as! this is the information age, people!

oh u probably want this too, he says. scores from anime soundtracks, transcribed by fans. without further thinking, i searched cowboy bebop, piano bar I. nada, oh well. jazzy piece that i suppose is kinda hard to transcribe, been meaning to find it since i first heard it. wouldn't hurt for another google, so i keyed that in again for the 394th time, and no immediate results. there was this link to a youtube wannabe though, wouldn't hurt, and right there in that description box... was a link... to the pdf. this is the information age, people!

there's another clip of yoko kanno herself playing solo live, a compendium of CB tunes... and there's another pdf of that exact rendition. that makes 3!

i must've been there grinning at my inner geek for 2 hours. smoked my plans to come home early and watch afro samurai. meng mentioned it last night, i remembered i had it, and distributed it to ch and tay. tay finished it last night, ch this afternoon, and it'd also made its way to hy and wh, who've probably finished it too by now. granted i got it from lay, but seeing how it came from my hd and i still haven't started on it, the irony's a bit too much. but it's all good. sharing is caring, hey? this is the free media age!

tomorrow looks kinda busy, then again that's what they said yesterday. these 2 days been kinda slack, so i wonder why i still come home after midnight - And forgot to remove my contacts too, yesterday. gonna sleep off my vampire-red eyes now.

happy equinox!

2007-09-25T22:56:00.000+08:00

from the goddamn office.

so while everyone was home with their warm families - and some servicing people off to a client's buka puasa dinner, doubleuteeeff - me, wh, hy and karen hit our local tandoori joint. alfresco, no less.

this is the first i've blogged from the office.

earlier, in the midst of the manic 5pm rush, i was suddenly transported back to caffeine. Caffeine, is the name of my favourite half-basement cafe. it is plastered with posters and flyers of gigs and plays, with stacks of postcards and those quintessential coupons for the cheapskate student in all of us. near the entrance are staggered platforms for seating as u see fit, and the requisite high and narrow bar counter below the impressionist painting of tony the proprietor. beyond the bar to the right are dim little enclaves with low sink-worthy armchairs and antiquated lamps. to the left are the more proper tables and chairs, against a stretch of brothel-red sofa.

stepping in effectively splits u from the buzz outside: the footfalls of sneaker, boot, heel and flipflop, the trams' rumble and chime and hydraulic puff of its doors, after which follows the staccato rattle of the traffic light. 3 downward steps into this dark bohemian den, and swanston street is a world away. the sun reflects off the unfinished cement floor, and u can squint through the chiaroscuro and watch, remote and detached, at life and reality passing by in the bright theatre of the doorway.

escapism. is a sign my brain has shut down and refuses to think.

i was suddenly back in the present, aware again of my stagnant hands on the keyboard, black text on white, and a silent blinking cursor.

the hunt for the mandarinfish

2007-09-13T03:14:00.000+08:00

(what a nice fantasy title.)

a little introduction. seaventures is an ex-oil rig, with 4 floors of very utilitarian bunks, steep steel staircases and a sun-deck that used to be a helipad. its machinery and drill bits have been removed so it's essentially a platform in the sea... with loads of trash on its bed. there's shelter but not much in the way of walls, so while u're cleaning gear and showering off the salt, u're exposed in every each direction to the constant, fucking cold ocean wind. seaventures sits 5 minutes away from the island of mabul.

mabul is a trove of minute, hidden life. the small fish necessitates patient waiting, watching and if necessary, poking. given my initial impatience for bigger fish... i wasn't that interested, just skimming by, looking but not seeing. that changed with the black-pitted snake eel. a group of us had gathered round something interesting, and having to avoid sudden erratic kicking that results in annoying sandclouds, i was going for a neat sharp rock as an 'anchor' when i realized that thaaaat was what they were looking at - i'd very nearly planted 2 fingers right on its snout. this little shock gave me a sudden appreciation for the unseen and the overlooked, and each subsequent mabul dive would be more rewarding that the last.

like the mandarinfish mission. mandarinfish are tiny, intensely colourful, evasive and also airheadedly romantic enough to appear only at sunset. a meticulous, micro hunt on a sunset dive. 30+ minutes of trawling corals and poking little rock caves yielded only brief glimpses and a couple of blurred photos. still, very much worth it. a detour to mabul's fishing village after that led to my first napoleon wrasse, which we um... had for dinner.

the small fish can be really really interesting, as i saw again in a symbiosis of 3 organisms: a featherstar, a crinoid shrimp hidden in its fuzz, and a featherstar clingfish, a nudibranchy slug that lives under it. how freakin cool?! going slow pays: i caught a cuttlefish camouflaging itself, changing colours and texture... in real-time. and there was the very cute solo performance of a juvenile sweetlips, doing the twist and tango and the funky chicken too, all alone. while unrecognizable from adult sweetlips, we all remember it as one crazy dancer. no kidding, youtube-grade stuff.

night dives everyday, seaventures' house reef. again, all about keeping your eyes peeled. visibility is limited to your torch beam, so u gotta focus hard enough while still sweeping it around. like when we saw a frogfish, an ugly shapeless mass... after the novelty i turned slightly and was suddenly face to face with a huge-ass crocodilefish. crocfish are the exact opposite, having a real distinct shape. both were new sights. the house reef is largely artificial, made of sunken boats/crates/structures, although there's no telling which are the "reefs" and which are trash. u can unearth real gems here, the not too small and not too big: sweetlips, groupers, hidden morays, camouflaged scorpionfish and flying gurnards (also distinctly-shaped... like batman). and on our last night was a Rare occasion: a party of 7 lionfish. poisonous, beautiful, in eerie twilight. Seven.

sipadan is a whole different playground. the land drops abruptly to a couple thousand feet, so that from the boat u see a marked difference in the water, a clear line between shallow cerulean and deep lapis. diving here is simply following/circling the "wall" of coral reef - and it's one awesome wall. a mountainous tapestry of life. there're flowery and spiky corals, with gently billowing ferns, fingers and fronds. there're mashups of stippled rocks with ivory flowers that simply vanish when u come near, retracting into its pores so fast u wonder if u'd imagined it. and teeming under, over and between, are the millions of fishy locals: from goggle-eyed to pucker-lipped, fat to flat, from mottled vermilion to black/white polka to electric blue and yellow fins... too many to remember and research. that's the coral wall: always a fantasy of colour, on one side.

but take a break and look the other side... and u'll see the stark contrast of the desolate wild, an empty and infinite blue. from time to time, turtles appear and cruise by, and lurking deeper below will be the sinister silhouettes of sharks. that's the beauty of this place, u get a balance of the small and the pelagic. and the turtles of course... sitting in corals, chilling in a cave, swimming out there so close yet so far. we've had lucky stretches of lepaking with a few, and i've managed Twice to swim head-to-head-straight at a turtle, both veering away at the last minute. every sighting gives me a tangible calm and a feeling of peace and love for the world. turtlesturtlesturtles... are magical, i tell u.

kapalai - was where we finally relented to go on the last morning. just 1 dive there, but it was a visual feast. right off the boat, we were swarmed by trevally and goatfish, and a whole host of other fish i can't name. with both natural corals and artificial reefs it seemed to be a catalogue of all the things i've seen, including a moray again in hiding, 2 massive groupers, nudibranchia, some seahorse relatives, a pair of lionfish, crocodilefish, scorpionfish... i start wondering who came up with these ciplak names, referenced to land animals. "-fish" being a generic suffix (generic being a very vulgar word), i suppose they're easier on the layman's memory. and while these practical, enlightening field trips are integral to the diving experience, the true joy is in those rare and few mindfuck moments.

...as i realized in the last sipadan dive. to me, the core pleasure of being underwater is the zero-g freedom, and the core thrill of sipadan is that it's virtually bottomless. at 20m, i saw my friend ahead dip recklessly down and caution be damned, i followed suit. at the extreme of 25m... my mind blanked out all danger as my life changed forever. another wall, a sweeping, pulsing, predatory wall: a barracuda pack in the beginnings of formation tornado. like keen blades in uniform black stripes, like a fusillade of lethal arrows. the dude was snapping away, while i could only watch and watch and watch. his photos are very good, but photos are Never like the real thing. the tornado never happened. the divemaster was furiously sounding her call. we went back up like sheepish schoolboys.

but those. few. minutes.
totally.
made my whole trip.

fuck the time

2007-08-27T06:59:00.000+08:00

went downstairs for a midnight drink. found a cursed book outside my door.
a very thick volume. an equally thick bar of unholy black on its jacket design.
from which 2 words taunted... deathly hallows.

no doubt to the credit of my Dear and Thoughtful cousin?

i came back, i opened it, next i looked up, i was 4 chapters in. chapter 5 simply looked too interesting, "the seven potters", so i continued. very deceptive title if any, belying the breakneck pace and murderous action. so... i've had this initial insane thought of queueing my reads and savouring this incentive (hell, still got 1/2 a mockingbird to go, as well as 1 black swan green) but nonononono. it's overtaken me: the book, the plot, and that fickle reading urge. gotta jump it while it's there, gotta love the curse.

so fuck it! look at the bloody time on this monday morning! so what i'm reading fuckitall!

a Weird exchange

2007-08-25T04:10:00.000+08:00

i'm not in the habit of doing this chat-log thing, but i'm not in the habit of getting a real O.o at 4am either.
i mean, if u knew this fella back in high school...

3 fridays

2007-08-12T11:45:00.000+08:00

every time i'm told of a new inductee into the growing camp of hp7-finishers, i feel a very personal jab at my capacity for reading. fuckers. i simply do not have the drive anymore, to finish a book in one sitting, or even keep the eagerness from bookstore to home to start an interesting book. which Has to change pronto, becoz seriously, no input how to have output?? and i really need that output becoz

...i've been confirmed!

just written a ponderous thesis on my creative lacklustre, on how i shun reading, on how i think i should draw more, as well as on juggling, but rather than bore u with that crap the point of it all, is that i just Have to read. or first, rediscover my reading passion. will find a way, will get there, somehow.

meanwhile some of the funner things in life. i'm learning a couple of beyond songs. hopefully by rote while it's on repeat. but of course in due time i'll be looking at all of them in chinese with a tutor becoz really... i don't like not knowing what i'm singing.

so. after trying to see if i could be normal and failing, i'd vowed at least a normal friday. totally smoked my normal friday pledge. was still getting briefed at 8pm. missed eun's 2nd farewell (okla wasn't a farewell as much as a those-were-the-days purnama session, but the girl came back for a part-time week! that's dedication! salutes!). got turned off by unproductivity, watched robot chicken with hamyu, napped, got home dunno what time. normal totally down the drain.

next friday Will be different. i've a 7am saturday flight to tawau. yeaaaaa it's sipadan, baybeh! ok not exactly sipadan, we're staying in seaventures which is a bloody oil rig in the middle of the blue, meaning no beach, not that i care anyway, and it's more like a landing hub for such places as mabul and kapalai besides sipadan. so... 5 days of blue bliss and turtles, and sharks and rays and spikes and fins and reefs and cyclones of barracuda. and turtles. remember the barge incident last year? fuckers. along with this scare i've also learnt from my 5-year interval between 2 redang trips... nature is dying year by year. u can go, just GO. it's half of my savings - and my first self-financed holiday, weeeeeeee! - and i'm GOing.

leaving u this time, with a pic from last friday. the random weird, absurd and surreal moments in life...

and also take note of the url below and "a year's supply of mcnuggets"! maaaan i can pop nuggets like m&ms, what with new sauces. always wondered how they define "a year's supply" but ahh... u learn something everyday... it's actually 365 vouchers x 6pcs nuggets. and the game looks real interesting too: www.trackdipjack.com.

there are TEN.

2007-08-02T03:37:00.000+08:00

it looks like part of a notoriously-planned traffic campaign, but it's not like we've ever suffered major accidents in my area. not that i remember anyway. they've added a couple more on the main road. which is a couple too many, really, so out of indignant curiosity i counted them out loud yesterday. TWO on midah 16. SIX on midah besar. and another TWO sharp unpainted ones on midah 1, that give us a real doubleuteeeff grand total.

TEN speed bumps from my house to the friendly neighbourhood bank.
to and fro, twenty.

what a way to start august.

retro-ing: of disney, facebook and conquer

2007-07-22T23:08:00.000+08:00

this week in retrospect:

3 internals in a day. i'm still surviving.

gay disney singalongs. my fave remains "under the sea" for pure playfulness. and "arabian nights" for simplistic lyrics in setting the scene/imagery/mood and painting the secrets/danger/exotic backdrop for a whole saga - in all of 1:21 minutes.

facebooking frenzy and first-hand encounters with ajax. yep, the greek warrior... nop, the floor detergent... actually, asynchronous javascript and xml. which is u could say, a coding mashup to bring u increased functionality. not that i'm learning those scripts, but it's just cool to know.

juggling brainstorms. mentally frustrating, spiritually taxing, but ironically physically health(ier), for the collective i'm-here-so-don't-u-dare-walk-away vibe from the whole team, that negates your cigarette urges.

the unprecedented revival of conquer! or as some people call it by the chickenshitty name, dot-dot. need more be said? except for the exorbitant 80 sen for an exercise book.

live signoff. finally.
been a long, interesting... exhausting week.
which brings us to saturday:

my voicebox shrinks and i forget how to eat ice cream.
(!!)

on the morning of the 13th

2007-07-14T17:55:00.000+08:00

me and my friend were msning.
in frikkin' bloody BM.
just a couple of lines.

i read those couple of lines again.
don't remember what was said, just the gist of it.
and the weirdness of the elasticity between amusement and shock.

and my body jerked itself upright, stiff wooden trigonometrically 90 degree straight vertical springboard slingshot catapult jack in the box nightmare before christmas toy luba shumeyko erection midnight chinese vampire style, abruptly ending the dream as my wide bleary eye settled on the clock.

10:30 - on the dot.
fuck i'm late!
laughed my way to the toilet.

in somni veritas?

linkage - or lack of

2007-07-08T07:43:00.000+08:00

typing in malay makes my left hand tired. or weak. it's more like a hollowed feeling in the centre of the wrist, leading to unfounded carpal tunnel suspicions. i thought it was psychological, becoz typing is typing, but hamyu assured me otherwise. it's physiological - malay typing places more strain on your left hand becoz... there're a hell lotta more "a"s. try it!

there's roach marketing, and there's also the web 2.0 version called seeding. which when it falls to one person and given the faceless personae one can adopt online, becomes a multiple-personality task. which leads me to recall this nice line from a good passage from a chun movie: "choose diy and wondering who the fuck u are on a sunday morning". i have this exact poster that i've been meaning to put up (again) for a long time. i also have this book that's sitting uselessly somewhere on the shelf.

cy went to berlin. truth be told, his photos're not that exciting becoz poor fella's been sick. lune went to dusseldorf. and cologne. and amsterdam. truth is plain, she took nicer pics, and has accompanying deep writeups. and just now out of random curiosity i clicked on alvin's msnspaces for the first time and hey. he's been to: salzburg istanbul porto (wheretf's porto?) marseilles rome czech croatia belgium london amsterdam. ... ... the bitch. ...! my own cousin, from a distance, silently stealing my daydreams wtfffff

so, what to do?
we make do with what we have.
kl has... brickfields.

16 words: A secret wardrobe door is nice but what i'd like is to open an airplane door.

optimus prime

2007-06-27T03:20:00.000+08:00

goddamn itfeelsgoodtobedrawingagain!

draw until high. blame the pose on too much dragonball.

my singular de-stress outlet - now for your wallpapering pleasure:
800x600? 1024x768? 1600x1200?

"life is what happens

2007-06-18T06:07:00.000+08:00

...while u're busy making other plans." - john lennon.

i actually have this inherent tendency to rewrite. i do not blog into the blogger window. i write it in notepad, reword, rephrase, rewrite, cut&paste. the funny thing is, i used to be able to write pretty good essays in a single shot, back in schooldays. is it simply growing up that makes our thoughts more convoluted? that we've to take a few tries to say exactly what we wanna say? i wanna be that schoolboy writer again. and i think this begs the conclusion that... copywriting is the bane of the spontaneous blogger. or sooomething like that.

so while i was busy planning how to blog, this was what happened:

2 weekends ago, i was in club med bintan - hardcore playing, nothing else. (and before that, the evil prelude of a microsite going live - hardcore work, nothing else.) i've been feeling obliged to keep the travelog going, but time does not permit. last 2 times i did were that shanghai/jiangnan and taman negara thingy, day by day account too. i remember writing something about turtles too... which reminds me: sipadan, turtle haven! tentatively, mid-august, insyaallah.

anyway due to my crippled time management, the time for these just slipped by. just the weekend past, we had our post-trip party on the 8th floor, with guest appearances by shah alam char siew, chivas and absolut. ended up in some horrendous tandem-karaoke with the rest, waving machinegun and watergun and pool cue around. then i wilted on the couch, cup of water on my chest, trying to juggle hydration and consciousness. went back to 7th floor, did some emailing and k-o'ed. just for a while though. happy times. much better than the previous.

that was the friday/saturday night. for the saturday/sunday night, we had this bbq planned at shyng's place, which heaven itself forbade. (i was late becoz of a detour to visit daiyee, who had this operation at her uhh, feminine regions. seeing that i wasn't told very much anyway, suffice to say she is doing very well now, thanks for asking.) so. after 4 hours of consistent drizzle we took the hint and moved to yenc's, who had a porch. got the fire started by 9.30 or so...

which was when this funny affair got funnier. i think we finished cooking the first chicken wing somewhere around midnight. in between which we had the meatballs and sausages and cockles and latseileicilipadisauce! with one among us munching nonstop on salad leaves. hands cleaned, photos resumed, cake-time! yenc's belated birthday cake. happy times. i'm feeling more and more like i belong.

and life is moving along pretty quickly too.

i'm in love.

2007-05-23T23:17:00.000+08:00

with the voice of a veritable vahine.
crooning "yoo-ou-uu" into my ear.
only to me, to me, and me, on repeat for 2-hour stretches.
as we're sealed together intimately within my earphones.

yoo-ou-uu, soft and only
yoo-ou-uu, lost and lonely
yoo-ou-uuuu, strange as angels

yoo-ou-uu, soft and only
yoo-ou-uu, lost and lonely
yoo-ou-uuuu, just like heaven

a pain in the arse

2007-05-15T14:59:00.000+08:00

20 cents-deep.

that is to say, as a 20 cent coin is thick.

a little bit of everything

2007-05-06T07:12:00.000+08:00

some time ago 2 years back, i figured the purpose of this blog had evolved into gauging the little stops of life. time was never on my side for me to properly write all the stuff i wanted to write. so here i am again, with too many things to say, but unlike the previous times i'll keep it short. little snippets of memories for me to look back on, little glimpses of my life for u to catch:

the thrill of banging ff7's battle theme on the piano (the soundtrack for tifa's church fight in advent children, so by some weird, far-shot association u could say i'm banging tifa on the piano) - 3 pages so far.
the stoned amazement when i thought i could hold 5 jd+cokes.
the series of 8 toilet excursions when i realized i actually couldn't.
the vacuum of midnight, at 120 on the empty highway, with roxette on the radio.
on a separate occasion, running full-tilt into a speed block and having the bastard policeman REACH FOR MY WALLET - AFTER - the obligatory bribe. i told him very gently to fuck off.
this was on the night of the king's coronation so daulat my balls, tuanku!
zaheer takes time out to decipher my nick YKISCB1L.
slipknot tries their hands at the YKISCB1L riddle. i think it's time for a change.
eunice, i think, comments on how Gesamtkunstwerk looks a lot like "Getbacktowork".
a sunday night, well-spent in the land of nod.
asking what's "progeny"? and being told to look it up: offspring/issue/outcome.
joy of piet hein's grooks:
"naive you are
if you believe
life favours those
who aren't naive."
trivia for the day: the longest graffiti was over 4000 words. and why u shouldn't mess with graffiti writers.
on the same site, a war journal entry laced with twisted, disturbing, morbid irony. i like.
sharing opinions and general cocktalk on some seriously. good. photography. link credits go to shyng.
been mahjongging quite a bit: the elation of a previously la za wu turned round into a bao wu anyway. the shaky disbelief of a tin wu. the zi-mo full-words wu. blocking a potential dai sam yun.
and the geramness of the countless other losses.
thinking i've grasped at least soooome aspect of this copywriting cal. and then falling totally flat.
whoop-de-doo for spidey3 free ticket. and the venom killjoy. not enough venom jaws, fangs, slime-dripping tongue and overall screentime. yes venom fans... u Will be displeased.

there - each condensed line a potential blogpost in itself. all becoz of lack of time. and to end, very aptly... we had a party for daiyee's bday and we were gin-ning like the true house-of-chew members we were, when i suddenly saw this photo. km, kl, kw, younger, smaller, on a white swing, grinning like the world was still young. and i could only pick it up with both hands, and hold it 1 foot from my face. and just stare. where has the time gone?

12 > 10

2007-04-10T22:04:00.000+08:00

this is my friend terrence.

when u first meet him, terrence seems like a pretty laidback, anything-goes kinda guy. not saying that he isn't but when it comes to games, he is anything but. i don't think it's a competitive streak as such, but more like an insane, innate, indomitable lust to defeat the system, pre-programmed into his psyche. when it comes to games, he will dominate u and devastate u and send u crying to your mama.

meet his obsessive-compulsive gamer side. i think it's personified very well by this lil bunny here.

his last boast to me was 122bil, which was so beyond me that it took quite a while to figure out. 1bil = 9 zeroes, which made 122bil = 12 digits. and he didn't bother with a screenshot becoz he'd not only defeated the game, he pwned it so much that its very design could not contain him. literally.

see, the 122bil score had 2 digits truncated. the scoreboard has space enough for only 10 digits. for what it's worth, this little bit of trivia is something we mere mortals could never hope to know. it's a tall tale i know, but i'd never dream of questioning terrence's word. i'm no gamer at all.

however i'm still waiting for a worthy daytona opponent.

santa nails jesus

2007-03-27T16:04:00.000+08:00

ss2 pelita, wee hours of saturday morning. we were talking about t-shirts. my t-shirt, actually, bought from the curve on recommendation from shyng!. and my cousin foo told us of this t-shirt, which apparently ran into 3-digit US dollars, which he would've bought, simply becoz of the picture. what exactly prompts this irrational urge, when all there is is just an image, when hey, an idea is just an idea, and in this case, can be readily appropriated and plagiarized?

got me thinking about t-shirts. i don't suppose it's just the influence of the industry i work in, where "trend" and "dated" are bad words, where we're constantly looking for timeless designs and longevity and legs, but really, look around. the trends these days are downright ugly.

u know what i'm talking about. the tattered hems, distressed sleeve-ends. u see these on early-20's people, or those later teens whose tastes are starting to dip toward misinformed "sophistication". prints of rampant lions on heraldic crests. spatters and splotches like a half-hearted pollock impersonation. worst of all - on polos with green and pink stripes, or shit-themed variations of those hues. they're downright ugly and yet... getting cliched. this is just wrong.

there is another trend. that of younger teens, gravitating toward a misinterpreted notion of contemporary design. messy, graffiti-influenced graphics. of doodles with vague semblances and wild lines, banked on extreme asymmetry. done nicely, these are usually ok to my eyes, they look nice. that's 1 part of Design achieved, at least - they look nice. but. some of these like to incorporate cryptic (read: stupid) slogans. just for the sake of the presence of some typography, and bad typography at that. stupid words simply outbalance whatever visual appeal there is.

to illustrate, let me tell u of a giordano t-shirt i would've bought - the picture was a low-battery symbol which i would've loved to wear to work on a friday. but as i picked it up, it unfolded itself to reveal some no-brainer words (and in gaudy reflective silver too, i think) underneath, which was an instant turn-off, making me drop it and walk, never looking back. total waste of a beaut visual.

now there is a third "trend". i put this one in quotes becoz i do not think it's a trend at all. it has longevity and timelessness. t-shirts with a clean uncluttered design. with strong graphics, a visual that makes sense, witty words that make sense. that function pretty much like an ad, effectively saying one thing and saying it well - a pun, a parody, a joke, something provocative, that makes u smile, think, wonder, reminisce. with 2 parts Design achieved - it looks good, with a purpose. a social statement.

i remember dangerfield's "put your fucking collar down", and another with a classic children's-book-print of a loving mother patting her boy's head: "now remember johnny, only retards wear their collars up!" - this was, i'm sure u can guess, in response to the trend of polo collars increasingly being seen turned up. wtf's with that anyway, huh? anyone?

so back to foo's much-lauded overpriced american t-shirt. it was a christmas-themed cartoon-rendered design, simply executed, a very apt social statement, saying so much in so little.

santa nails jesus to the cross. i like it.

the weekend is short

2007-03-19T06:55:00.000+08:00

it took 2 months. to get off "early" for once. to be able to say for the first time, "i went to meet my friends after work". doesn't matter that we just sat around for half an hour, closeted in second-hand smoke. and then played an unfulfilling hour of pool, still cloeseted in second-hand smoke. doesn't matter - it was a new sensation and therefore a new definition of a Friday Night. how sad is this? am i a workaholic - becoz i like work, or becoz i've nothing else to devote myself to, or becoz i feel lazy to divide time between my devotions? and did u realize those are all very sad options, in descending order?

saturday - not that i'm proud to say this, but i now believe in alcohol.

sunday - 2 movies, on the suggestion of smartka (in return, she is going to review food outlets at the curve d'sara, so that we may yet avoid her wrath at those culinary travesties she is so keen to shoot). tired like a dog, i fell asleep at 9pm.

monday - woke up at 5am after horrible dreams of unsatisfactory performance at work. this phenomenon was once cited by pickers, who sits next to me, but i did not expect it to hit me so soon. even my unconscious mind does not let me forget. the workaholic's weekend is short.

anyway, after "the beat my heart skipped", which is about the piano and the Dark Side, i am bloghopping when i find this. snatched from travelune, a song apparently called "defying gravity".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqWWJJ_96yY

heroes: 12 and counting

2007-03-12T20:30:00.000+08:00

ok a bit slow on the uptake, but they killed eden mccain
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

plain trippin'

2007-03-05T18:51:00.000+08:00

there's been a couple of things in the past 1 week. or from another perspective, 1 long saga. or 1 short saga, it's all very subjective. but all in all, it was a trip, a mindfuck worthy of truly potent drugs, except i was completely sober and sane throughout.

i'd been slungshot through a whole spectrum of colourful feelings, while enduring a workday ending at 6am in between. from awkwardness to feeling unfamiliar ground to numbed gnawing, to a totally unprecedented blackhole-stage depression, to liberation and relief (and now, a new sensation of guilt). 1 week.

very new stuff - and the key to new is just to do it. sometimes u never know until u've gone. very confusing stuff - and the key to confusing: is plain.

self-delusion is pretty plain.

the spell to break self-delusion is pretty plain truth. half-truths, unconfirmed truths and vague truths too, are sometimes still lies. sweet lies. if it's hard to stomach, there's no point dressing it up. scrape the sugar coating away. swallow it raw and bitter as it is. plunge into the deep wells of depression, talk to your shrink, and bounce back better than before.

it's a necessary trip which is best done sooner than later. u have to unload a heavy heart for it to be light again. u have to break it completely to mend it again. and u have to lose it completely too, before u find it again.

and that's the plain truth.

"Only those who go too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T.S Eliot

lemmings

2007-02-13T03:20:00.000+08:00

i was at king's confectionary in the carrefour beside queen's park, buying portugeuse egg tarts. and since it's the weekend before chinese new year there was also the queen mother of all jams - humans and shopping carts queued halfway into the aisles. it's more sien than a traffic jam, becoz u have to stand - doing nothing between inching your feet forward and listening to the banal bullshit from everybody around u. 2 people manned each checkout, 1 cashier and 1 packer, and the sonofagun put the box of my portuguese egg tarts in UPSIDE-DOWN.

i gave him an evil stare, turned my palms upward, and openly, mutely gestured "WHAT THE FUCK" to him, becoz words completely failed me. he noted my disbelief with dull lemming eyes, and went on methodically packing and ignoring me.

much, much worse than the other time when i opened a red/yellow maxim's box, releasing the enticing aroma, and found my chicken pie on top of my egg tart's crumbs. (makes u think of the irony if that was the same chicken's egg... poor chicken got minced up, her egg got beaten into a tart, and even in death she's destined to crush it again. haha.)

it's these kinda scenarios that i like to imagine. and today i heard a novel idea from a girl, who says i supposedly think like that - i.e. this novel idea came forth as she was trying to think like me. either i'm getting old, or she's a latent psychopath. i mean, u wouldn't dream of it, she looks so sweet. she said, rave party on a landmine site. which is, if u think of it, genius. morbid genius. melbourne-shuffling lemmings.

i think it helps to watch a lot of simpsons for this. the premises are ludicrous and lucid, the storytelling simple and succinct, and everything is dedicated to advancing the plot. by the end of a half-hour u'd have had a story - exposition, development, brilliant resolution - with a heaping helping of nonsense, and also a dash of morals.

for the record i've been at arachnid for 4 weeks now, and since been relocated to another desk. this one is smack in front of the functional tv, which makes it hard to work at times. we still watch a lot of american idol, like lemmings around the showcase of "self-delusions". mid-afternoon, the bold & beautiful will prompt a switch to the discovery channel, which also makes it hard to work at times. later at night, the stretch of sit-coms make it harder still.

today i remembered late. 6pm - simpsons. i will not forget again.

when life hands u fire...

2007-02-04T19:55:00.000+08:00

he stood in a long corridor. lining the left wall was a row of regal statues. to the right, a file of hideous gargoyles. and having nothing else to do, he walked. and walked. and walked.

the two opposing factions were sizing the other up, and he felt like a lone intruder venturing into the crossfire of a hundred blind gazes. a very real, tangible tension hung over the frozen faces, as if an invisible battle was at the moment, being waged. the cold unblinking eyes peeled him and stripped him and long before the gauntlet ended, he was depleted. and he knew who had won.

he came to two doors. a thought crossed his head and he knew it to be true and the right door opened in automatic motion. his advertising executive passed through, looking smart-casual and suave, still with his impeccably funky hair, shutting the door quickly behind.

"sorta expected to see u here, hahaha!"
"alex...! yeah... yeah, told u we were doomed."
"u said it buddy, u - me, same boat."
"god i feel fuckin, fuckin, terrible."

"yea the Walk does that to u. cigarette?"
"that's the best suggestion u've had in ages."
"yea? be nice. i'm the one taking u through."
"ok, alex. i'll say this one thing nice. i'm glad u're the one here ushering me in. familiar face makes it that much better. and u were always the one saving our asses, making the shit jobs look good."
"now thaaat's what i'm talking about. makes me feel warm inside, me making shit look good, hahah! now looky here."

he angled his cigarette box outward, and it was hollow, but for a single stick turned filter-up. the lucky one, the lucky last.

"it's bad luck, taking someone's last fag."
"awww c'mon, not if i offer it. besides, what more bad luck could u have? and u and me, we go way back. this one ciggy here, is blessed. trust me. it's the Neverending Cigarette."
"Neverending Cigarette..."
"u heard it right, i swear. when life hands u lemons..."
"make lemonade."
"at's right. when life hands u fire, light a fag. tell me u've ever heard of a better door gift to hell."

with a dramatic flourish, he pulled the door wide. fire and brimstone, heat and stench. transparent clouds of cloying petrol, blurring and distorting everything in view. and with not a word more, advertising alex booted him in the rear and he dived.

the door shut. a demon popped up.
"alex, u sick fuck."
"what i do??"
"i thought i was good, making the Neverlit Cigarette. but i gotta hand it to u, that's a better name."
"hey i make shit look good, didn't u hear?"

first impressions

2007-01-22T05:59:00.000+08:00

my first thought on the first day i walked into arachnid, was "ohhhh yeaaaah, this is someplace i would like to work." u know why?
the pool table.

it being my first job and all, i set off last monday with the theme from "the a-team" in my ears. within minutes of signing up, i got told a nice joke. there were 2 newcomers before me, one of which was suresh singh, but when i shook his hand he introduced himself as sam. here's one cool guy not afraid to laugh. later as waihoong rocked in, his first instruction was "watch tv." no kidding. soon i protested, which was when i got sicced onto a job with winnie. now winnie, is cute enough but what i slowly realized was that her features remind me of 4 or 5 people all at once. no kidding. so i spent monday working on the one job, feeling kinda dislocated and finding my way around.

tuesday was a jump into the deep end. the only word i had of the meeting was a fwd'ed email to my hotmail, nothing official. i didn't know half the people on that job and some haven't even met me. 10 minutes before, in a lapse of foresight, i answered the call of "tschk tschk!" which is kinda like an open invitation to another slightly-clandestine kind of meeting, held in the stairwell. came back to my icq and winnie missing: uh-oh. wasted no time shitting myself, picked up my notebook and just went. into a meeting room half-full of half-strangers, i walked in feeling like a gatecrasher... fresh with the smell of dead smoke.

first impressions. it will not happen again. the deep end. becoz i was simply the youngest and greenest with only a vague grasp of what was happening, and trying to catch on as i went. joanne and yuetmee laughed a lot and loudly, which at least put me at ease.

btw icq - is what we use for internal IM. it's like a cult following, and the stretch of 25 mirabilis lit up green was a long-forgotten sight. i still get a petty kick out of comparing icq numbers, becoz i have the oldest icq number. but if their info is anything to go by... i'm the youngest in the whole damn company.

the next days sort of blur together. new jobs, new people. i'm finally able to recite every name on the floor, roughly in order of their desks. nearly everyday i joined irwin and his "brainstorms", down at the mamak. the programmers are also a fine bunch, but a lot of the time i'm on a different wavelength to their jokes. yensie: knows her shit. she's very clear about things from start to finish, the big whole complete picture, from design to tone to backend programming. i feel safe working with her, however i got a mild diao-ing for being hijacked by... weiyee and cliff: brainstorming with these guys made me think about things i never thought about. together they're like a pretty deep well of experience, and i'm like the noob drowning inside.

ben: is the voice of the party. u can't miss him - he's the loudest. john: a towering swede with a refreshing accent, who says "no laaah" and "got what?" with quintessential malaysian conviction. lay: taught me to say "d'u know where cow's milk comes from?" in hainanese. don't ask. cheeheng: being one of the longer-serving 'nerds, he wields his undisputable status as resident dj, this side of the floor. shyng!: is friendly and pleasantly accommodating. desmond: is of the opinion that a triple-sevens blackjack gets u a hardcore sevenfold payment. meng: has an obsession with dwarves. mohan: will supply him with the number to persatuan org-org kerdil msia. and waihoong: still on bloody warcraft at midnight friday.

oh, in my spare time, i watch american idol. there u go. my first week gone... it was challenging and altogether a field of new experiences, and i am learning, and i am happy. but... i've still not touched the pool table.

anyone?!!?!

rooku

2007-01-07T21:51:00.000+08:00

scalpel in hand
the surgeon pauses - to sneeze.

i saw this on a poster in the train. really like it.

it was part of Moving Galleries, which has been on for a while. but it was still in the trains. apparently, connex had 20 trains carrying posters of art and poetry by victorians. and according to the website i saw, rooku is "...an Australian variant of the short Japanese form called haiku. Rooku poetry was chosen for Moving Galleries because it successfully captures a moment or and idea and lends itself easily to humour, without the usual rules of haiku."

interesting.

riddle me this

2007-01-07T20:19:00.000+08:00

a salute to Art! and visual double entendres.

everyone i've showed this to does not get it, or it's hovering just outside grasp.

this, on the other hand, is dedicated to the girl who changed my life.

lala.

how i spent my new year's

2007-01-06T19:40:00.000+08:00

what is a year? it is an anniversary of our surviving one revolution of the earth around the sun. and it is an uncontested milestone which we use to look back and review, and to look forward and resolve, in an attempt to measure our puny human progress. but otherwise, it's just a day like any other.

like any other sunday. we convened for afternoon pool, and adjourned to terry's. ty immediately ensconced himself at the laptop, and terry zoned out on his pillows on the dual screens of his nintendo ds... both in time-honoured tradition. like wtf? it's the eve of the new year damnit! and being thus ostracized, i hopped onto the ps2 and played freezepop's "less talk more rokk" at least 5 times, and "sweet child of mine" at least 8 times. hey, when u can't beat them...

taipan for dinner. fine, a big dinner this time, which left us kinda full. in the car i said i felt like walking, so terry drove to a parking lot a little further, and we got out and lepaked our way to the dvd shop. the stretch of empty parking was all the clue that that was a different sunday to all sundays in the year. otherwise, everything was going according to the time-honoured traditional plan. the mould of monotony was sealing us in... so in a moment of rebellion, we ambushed terry and hijacked the car keys and did an impromptu drive up to genting. woooot!

nah, it didn't happen like that.

back at terry's they both latched onto their respective computer screens again, and i took a nap - time-honoured tradition, didn't i say? - and woke up to the sg wang fireworks on 8tv. we went to the attic balcony to watch the glow in the sky around terry's neighbour's new floor. u see, the 2-storey house was renovated into a 3-storey, an obnoxious obstruction in our panorama of usj and at least 3 firework venues. what a bitch. but now, an event of strangest portent unfolded.

we sat down to play 5 hours of gin rummy

.

where ty won $213 and i won $33, making terry the grand loser of $123. in plastic chips, of course. then we redivided the chips into their packing cases, resplit the double decks of cards, and turned the sleepy, sombre mood around by going to a mamak breakfast. and after that, another impromptu drive to subang airport to watch the sunrise. i mean, what's the significance of a midnight countdown compared to morning light? it's the bloody dawn of a new year!

nah, it didn't happen like that.

even the mamak breakfast didn't happen. i simply drove home at 6+ am (and it was cloudy anyway, didn't see any sun till about 10).

thus it comes to pass, nearly a week later, that i find i have subconsicously formed my new year's resolution. which is simply that, next year it will be different. i will give in, whenever the tension of potential change arises. i will break the boring. and i will actively follow through with all machinations of my moulieu mind.

**************

in other news, LDP tolls have escalated 60% in one sitting! visit malaysia year, what? gotta milk those tourists... also, check out this link... for whatever it's worth.

thinking outside the box

2006-12-23T08:43:00.000+08:00

Not!

a rubik's cube is great stress relief. if u have a good cube, u can just close your eyes and mangle it to the sound of its smooth clicks. and if u can solve it, well all the better. it beats those stress balls which i've never found useful squeezing, just for bouncing off walls and double-bounces off corners.

i was a kid when i quickly gave up on my rubik. it was an antique hand-me-down belonging to my bro/sis, and i unwittingly got showered in black dust every time i played with it. i dunno how it made it to our new house, taking up residence in a cabinet under the tv.

a month or so ago, i got bored one day at my aunt's. there was an unsolved cube on the table, and i solved one side quickly enough. it was feel good moment, cut short as i suddenly saw it was useless. so i progressed to solving 1 layer, which is the 1 side with the 12 corresponding colours on the 4 adjacent sides correctly in place. that ended up pretty stifling, becoz whatever else u did after simply breaks up your hard work.

so i jumped on the net. fine, i "cheated". wonder of wonders, doing it layer by layer is actually the widely accepted method. but i found this theory that... if u solve a small 2x2x2 corner first, that leaves u 3 sides still to play with and more twisting freedom. i went back to kamun's cube and laboriously practised making 2x2x2's until i broke it.

my fingers itched at home too, so i resurrected that decades-old cube and sat with scrap newspaper to collect the dust. that thing sheds plastic flakes at every twist, it's a bloody health hazard. i guess it's too stiff to break, but the cubelets are coming apart. i scoured all the major malls to little avail... only cheapo trinket cubes, not at all conducive to fun. man, malaysia sucks.

i sent word to australia for some quality cubes. and one day on our routine invasions of terry's home, he says "i got something for u"... how thoughtful! much appreciated my friend! the new stiffness went away after a quick couple hundred twists. i went nuts while waiting for mich's delivery and now even That cube is slowly coming apart. and shedding dust.

now i'm a proud owner of an original, 25-year-anniversary edition Rubik! thanks to wl, who suffered a solo summer outing for it and still insists it's a present. i have a cheaper taiwanmade cube for kamun becoz, well, it's a present whaaaaaat. actually i wanted 2 taiwanmades for us both but that was apparently the last 1 in mindgames, so it had to be the original. even listening to it makes u feel like a pro.

i've been a master for a bit now... at solving 2 layers. the last layer still has me thinking until i get lost, and when i make the moves it jumbles up and i start over. either repairing back to the 2-layer or if it's too much of a hassle, all over. and when i finally solve it, i'm gonna put it on my resume. serious.

a sense of humour

2006-11-28T02:13:00.000+08:00

last week, i gatecrashed a party, what some people called a monkey show. it's what small monkeys do when they wanna join big monkeys, and it worked. finally got my interview.

also last week, this theage article was forwarded to me by dollar, my student-compatriot who's now earning big AUDs in the IT field. day by day, i unearthed more flak and entries bloghopping, backtracking to the original thestar and bernama article. this is serious. i'm not reading the papers enough!

(crosses on cookies an issue? should we redesign our roads to reduce crossroads, to better look like flowing quranic calligraphy? wait, must explain why our roads are already that loopy. oh dear, maths is a heretic practice! to the bookpiles!)

batu seremban, teh tarik: i can just see this in all the flavours of a bizarro panel. heck maybe i'd even draw it myself, if it just wasn't someone else's idea. that is with no doubt one of the more humourous, insightful, close-to-home comments ever uttered in parliament... and all of a sudden we're slamming them for not being serious?

it's funny, ok, hypocrites? we go on and on about how narrow our political bigots are, and once in an azure moon they make a joke, and the tables are turned. we are suddenly the serious ones, the bland, the inflexible, the uptight anal conservatives. we all like to shoot our mps, but don't shoot them with whatever's convenient just for its own sake. don't be like them.

they have a sense of humour, to which i say good for them. and they can be serious too, have u forgotten? months ago, they were already debating the predicament of praying to mecca, systematically marginalizing with incredible foresight, the religious rituals of their one indian space brethren - who as we all know did not make it. of course, it was the will of allah.

anyway. this theage michael backman has responded to the responses, or it could be just a pre-emptive move. and this is the same article, lambasted with true malay finesse. read the first comment. just watch how this fella swings his arguments straight into islam territory. he will rise far, mark my words, he will rise far in his biro agama, and then move into politics, and be promptly fired for the same reason pak lah fired that other fella for verbal diarrhea.

on a totally unrelated note, here's a wired article i got from lune a while back... which i've bookmarked and read back quite a few times. i think it's a jolt of a reminder to look at ourselves, and laugh. it's an absurd country, which is why i love it. we are one big monkey show.

back with a vengeance

2006-11-23T04:32:00.000+08:00

kamun's blog has moved. and that has given me a kick up the ass. sure, it doesn't make sense to be complacent just becoz other people are not blogging. that has nothing to do with me, right? ann spam too. promises, especially those to yourself, are made to be broken. reminds me of a festival somewhere where townsfolk smash plates (must be a good season for soliciting insurance). damn these 2 are my most active links now. new additions: travelune (lune in uk) and grace (grace, who shares my birthday). and damn... there's only 1 solitary guy left in my sidebar.

where was i? ohyea. there should be a fesitval for broken promises, to celebrate their shattering to smithereens. where they're crushed and split and splintered, or snapped cleanly in twos or threes. hurled against walls to disintegrate, crinkling, tinkling, into shrapnel and shards and fine glassdust. ripped and torn with rending whines, jagged edges lethal to the touch. crumpled and chopped and mightily cracked, from which will flower the fragile spider's web. a celebration of crazy-paving ephemera!

ok, enough destruction. i was chatting just earlier and reselfconfronted with my comicblog. not that one, that other one. the nonexistent one. it would be a really good folio piece, but for my inherent apathy. u know, i take notes of little quirks or ideas (and as we were taught in uni, in a little sketchbook), but falling prey to overtech, it's in a little notepad instead. notepad, as in .txt. when it gets to overflowing i put them into multiple .txts, waiting to turn them into probably little stories with mindblowing insight.

but hey, me's me. it's probably never gonna happen, so i might as well just write the ideas here. howbout that? mmm... maybe not, but anyway, here's a few thoughts from these few days. as my title suggests, i'm going overboard.

"when the bamboo flowers, famine, death and destruction will follow". this came from astro's november guide, but having no discovery channel, i had to resort to the web. bamboo dies when it flowers (in 30, 48, 60-year cycles, depending on species and regions), which is that much more tragic becoz it happens across whole regions. the dead flowers are an increase in rat food, which is an increase in rats, which raze crops and granaries and destroy the land, which turns up the thermostat for a long dry spell, which reallly fucks things up. "ecological havoc", and economic coma. interesting. next.

do parrots have accents? do girl parrots go for the guy parrots with sexy british accents, and the guys for the husky italian voice? if an english parrot talks to a engrand-berry-powderful parrot, will there be class discrimination? how do parrots talk to parrots anyway? do they simply imitate or really communicate? either way, can a parrot teach a foreign language to a human? we'd need one powerful parrot with mimicry worthy of russell peters. ok next.

two guys are in a car. traffic jam, same old same old. a pizza delivery bike stops next to them. passenger winds down the window, unzips the pizza bag and deftly nicks a box. they feast while the pizza boy enacts violent drama outside. this could end with something like "irresistible pizzas". that's a bloody good ad! orrrrr...

"the new paolini petrucci durian pizza, when u just can't resist the smell!"

the universe behind me

2006-11-02T22:37:00.000+08:00

i was wandering in sydney in 2004 when i stumbled, literally, on an epiphany. in the catacombs of my hard disk sits this poem on the floor of circular quay. it became a doctrine i gradually lived and breathed. my 21st year became one big, long, sweetbitter-sad holiday.

sometimes u look back, and see that some things have really changed.
sometimes u look back, and see that some things do not really change.
and once in a while comes a time to close a past chapter of life, to begin writing a new one, to actively invoke Change. this 22nd year starts with some unusual, portentous gifts:

1 interview with a volcano
1 interview with a spider
1 miscued sms to the wrong person, rerouted
1 girl's phone number, voluntary
1 hour's chat with an old adman
2 hours' chat with a young adman
1 job offer in hand, gambling against
1 more interview with bigger prospects

this would be a good time to quote paulo coelho: "when u want something, all the universe conspires to helping u achieve it".

noodles, canoodles

2006-10-27T18:58:00.000+08:00

u know what just hit me?

italian shares common ground with teochew, believe it or not. it's in the very fundamental word "si" - for "yes". yes. all along, right before my ears. i don't suppose marco polo had anything to do with it. and here i was thinking it was only noodles and spaghetti. there's a theory that spaghetti was one of mr polo's homecoming gifts from the east... and i suppose fettuccine is kueyteow... and linguine just came about when he decided to be a smartarse.

(my mom tells me kueyteow is the least healthy choice when i tapau zhu yuk fun, becoz it has the most surface area among all noodles therefore requiring more oil to keep them loose.)

noodles aside, i watched malena yesterday and suddenly have this mad craving to marry an italian but since she beat me to it, i'll just settle for another italian. just to illustrate how our cultures gel, these women have done "the apartment" and "manual of love" respectively - films which reflect the chinese love for even numbers. these films deviate from the overdone triangles and trilogies to be each about a love quadrangle and a love quadlogy. seems they do a lot of love. they're very liberal with their affections.

ok, just remembered l'appartement is french, but that's beside the point. i can just see how well i'm getting along with my italian girl, from these tenuous cultural links and given understanding of each other's carnal affirmations. can u picture it?

siiii, oh si, si! siiiiii, siiiiiiiiii...
mm-hmmmmm.

Richandvictorious Kuah

2006-10-20T10:33:00.000+08:00

i have finished cloud atlas!

wonderful wonderful read. i must admit this was the first i've heard of david mitchell. and, he's good. this book is good, at least. a lawyer and a composer and a physicist and a reporter and an editor and a clone and a tribal boy. physicist is both composer and reporter's friend, yet composer is also reporter, whose mother's hometown is named after lawyer. reporter becomes clone, and clone becomes tribal boy's god. both editor and composer's stories start similarly, by fleeing from debt collectors.

the clone story reminds me of the island. u know, where ewan mcgregor escapes to meet um, his maker. the tribal boy story reminds me of a clockwork orange. the composer's suicide note rings like kurt cobain's, while the comets bring to mind ff7. hahah.

anyway! finishing such a saga of epic convolutions, i am suddenly stoked for more reading. and i actually have too many to choose from.

nothing else worthwhile to write, so here's something from about... oh, 8 months ago.

my name is Richandvictorious Kuah. my bro is Proudandvictorious Kuah, and my sis is Firstamongbeauties Kuah. we owe this to our eminently literate father, Landofthestrong Kuah. mom is Clearlotus Chew, and her sisters are Stonelotus Chew, Jadelotus Chew, Pearlscholar Chew and Fragrantscholar Chew. (suddenly i'm unsure of these names, so i'll just stop.) oh btw, we live in Horsecomewestya...