Goldilocks and the 3 bears, or "How to catch a movie for only RM3.33"

One fine day, there were 3 tall guys, all at least 6 ft. in height. They were like the 3 bears in the Goldilocks story - you know, Large, Medium, and Small- One weighed close to 100 kgs(The large one, we'll call him "Slim Baby"), one was 72 kgs (medium, let's call him "Medium"), and the last was a piffling 60 kgs despite being the tallest among the three (let's call him "skinny auditor boy").

So the three bears decided to catch a long anticipated movie that just opened that day, one inspired by a Frank Miller graphic novel about Spartans and some bullying Persians. As was with all plans that came to fruition with Slim Baby(the large one) and Medium around, it was a spur of the moment decision, made after basketball, like this:

"Eh wanna watch XXX movie ah?"
"Ok ok."
"Eh you leh? Wanna watch XXX movie ah?"
"Ok ok."
"Ok later I go buy ticket."

Turns out that the movie about some fucking Spartans was so bloody popular that we... I mean the 3 bears....... went to their regular empty cinema where it was practically assured that we could just waltz in and buy a movie ticket.... only to see the sign "sold out for *Spartan movie*"

Fuck.

So the 3 bears marched their ass down to another movie theatre, fairly confident that tickets were available since the next showtime was at midnight and it was a weeknight. To their disappointment and disbelief, the only seats available were on the second row.

So as bears do, they decided to forage for food before returning half an hour before midnight in the hope that they could buy the unclaimed reserved tickets. Slim Baby and Medium were constantly trying to make each other fat, with Medium being much more succesful than the 100kg Slim Baby. Conversation went like this:

SlimBaby: Wanna eat what? (Come let's go eat you bastard. I don't believe I won't make you fat)
Medium: Anything lah (Bastard. Trying to make me fat while you slim down? You don't know I'm on a secret diet)
SlimBaby: (in a sly I-dare-you-to tone) KFC lah!
Medium: Come lah! You think I scared ah? I'll match however many pieces you eat? So we order bucket lah ok? You eat 5 I eat 4.
SlimBaby: Tiiuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu..... now what time already? KFC!?!??!?!
Medium: Scared ah? You are the one that say one!!!
Slim Baby: Come lah!
Medium: Come lah!

All the while Skinny Auditor Bear was just shaking his head and laughing in amusement at the psychological games the other two were playing just to get each other fat.

(Oh, and they really went to get KFC at 11pm at night. Burp. Medium actually tapau-ed KFC next door to the mamak and ordered a mi goreng and an oily omelette just to irritate the overweight Slim Baby)

After a BMI- and cholesterol-boosting supper at the mamak, they marched back to the cinema, where Slim Baby and Skinny Auditor Boy proceeded to harass the management of the theatre to release the unclaimed tickets early (it was more than half an hour before the movie started). After alternately charming, teasing, cajoling, and harassing the ticket seller, who was so flustered he called his manager, the 2 bears managed to get a WONDERFUL spot while the crowds that were waiting for the half-hour mark gave them all dirty looks.

And this is what happened next: Slim Baby went to the toilet inside the cinema. And in order to do that, the ushers would hold your ticket while you used the loo, to make sure you came back out. When he came out, however, the ushers gave him back another 2 extra tickets in addition to the 3 that he had bought, so he now had 5.

Not comprehending what was really happening, he just said "huh?" and walked back to the other 2 bears with an uncomprehending, confused look on his face.

"Ei see see. They give me another 2 tickets woh."
"What two tickets?"
"For the same movie lah!"
"hah? So we got 5 tickets? Same showtime ah?"
"yaya same cinema everything."

So what do you do if you got 2 extra tickets? Sell it right? So Medium took it back to the box office and told the ticket guy that Slim Baby had harassed earlier to sell the tickets for him.

When Medium walked back to Slim Baby and Skinny Auditor Boy, he saw the two of them leaning against the wall, staring intently at the ushers at the entrance to the theatres, who were deep in argument with a guy who was turning beet in the face, gesturing animatedly and by the looks of it, very angrily while the ushers avoided eye contact while giving nervous smiles and I-don't-know shrugs.

"Oh diu loh diu loh.... Got ppl asking back for the ticket already sure," Slim Baby muttered under his breath while sweating profusely. Skinny Auditor Boy was still laughing. Just then, the guy's lady friend joined him(probably from the loo too) and proceeded to harangue the ushers together. The couple had really really black faces and the guy looked like he was ready to slap someone.

"Oh diu loh diu loh diu loh diu loh......" Slim baby chanted repeatedly under his breath.
"Aiyah I go take back the ticket lah." Medium said.

So Medium went back to the box office to take back the tickets so he could return them to the couple, but before he could say anything, the ticket guy put 2 RM10 notes into his hand..... the tickets had been sold. Diu loh!

Medium walked back to the other two bears with a tragicomic expression on his face, and the worried Slim Baby asked,"So how?"

In reply, Medium opened Slim Baby's palm and slapped 2 red paper notes into his hand.

"HUH?!?!?!?!? Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuuuuuuuuuuuu loh!!!!! Sell already ah?!?!" Slim Baby shouted as a panicked expression appeared and the veins on his head started to swell. Medium and Skinny Auditor Boy burst out into laughter. People around the 3 bears were starting to give them weird looks.

Meanwhile the couple were close to hysterics. The 2 tickets were excellent seats, in the last row of the cinema in a corner, where they could make out to their hearts' content without disturbance. The guy was baring his teeth at the usher, while the woman was close to tears. It wouldn't have been hard to guess that he bought the ticket days in advance to get such good seats, waiting patiently day by day until the movie opened. For all we know she was a new target that he was operating on.

Tough luck Johnny boy. Medium and Skinny were in stitches, alternately laughing at poor Slim Baby( and his prickly conscience and watching him think aloud how to avoid the usher later since the 3 bears were all tall, and he was also "not slim", making him doubly recognisable when we went in), and then at the tragic couple who were almost jumping up and down now in abject frustration. We could only imagine the threats of lawsuits that were being hurled at the ushers.

Slim Baby was sweating bullets now. Literally. Skinny helped him sweat more.

Skinny: Eh you want my cap ah? In case they stop you and ask for their tickets back."
SlimBaby: Noneed noneed. Aiyoh........ sien ah!! Why like that wan!!!!"
Skinny + Medium: *burst out into uncontrolled laughter*

In the end, the 3 bears managed to avoid the usher by squeezing past with the crowd, but as they walked through to the cinema, a bitter aftertaste prompted Medium to say,"Damn that was fucked up. He probably bought those tickets a long time ago man. Fuck. Destroy his evening wei. Dirty money man. I don't wanna have anything to do with it."

The evil slim baby replied laconically, since he had already avoided the feared confrontation with the usher,"Haiya go back home pok yeh(fuck) lah. Early evening loh...."

Damn..... Slim Baby, you better give that 20 bucks to some orphanage. I'm just waiting for karma to strike.

Phew.... but still a little disappointed

Farty

I'm so fucking flatulent tonight that I probably contributed to global warming. I'm so flatulent that Shell tried to gain the rights to my "natural gas" fields. I'm so flatulent that my ass-cheeks are now permanently blown apart. I'm so flatulent that when I sit down, my friends think I'm a yogi because I float on a cushion of stinky acrid garlic-tinged air every few seconds. I'm so flatulent tonight that I could probably use the shorts I'm wearing tonight in place of chloroform to kidnap people. I'm so flatulent that the makan-place I visited tonight probably lost all it's customers. I'm so flatulent that the doors of my apartment are bulging outwards. I'm so flatulent that my blanket is now brown-coloured, I'm so flatulent that flies have gathered around me and then died in the thousands from the stench. I'm so flatulent that my neighbours are probably coughing in their sleep, dreaming of garlic. I'm so flatulent that they should hire me to fill balloons.

Mahai. What the fuck is happening to me?!?!?!

Espresso? Cappucino? Affogato? No Problemo....

Oooh.... It's thick and long and black!

yay!! Our very own, very cool-looking....... espresso machine!! Woohoo! For those of you who don't know me personally, my family lives in an oil palm plantation.

Notice how the last sentence conjures up images of impoverishment, hard labour, lack of access to basic healthcare, agriculture and its attendant connotations, 3rd-world country, filth, no running water etc. etc?

Au contraire!

Despite what you might imagine, we have all the basic accoutrements of a modern 21st-century family. There's electricity, cleeeeaaaaaannnn piped water(as opposed to Kuala Lumpur, which should really be renamed Air Lumpur), and the kitchen has 2 fridges, an industrial-sized deep freezer, a top-of-the-range fruit juicer(can masuk whole apples wan!!!), hi-fi (yes in the kitchen), electric non-stick griddle, sandwich maker, dish dryer, a monster-sized microwave, electric water boiler, blenders, mixers, toaster oven..... and finally, a sleek, chic, fantastic espresso machine!!

Here are another two cock-looking pictures for your delectation:




















I won't show you a picture of this wonderful machine in it's entirety, but trust me, it's fucking cool. After admiring it's sleek lines over and over and over, I managed to divert some energy from my eyes to my limbs and make some awesome coffee.

At the risk of sounding like an asshole, here's a secret that I'm going to tell you: NO LOCAL COFFEE can even dream of touching espresso in terms of quality. NONE. The secret is pressure, heat, and the quality of the coffee beans. Your local coffee dude could never do that with a muslin filter, inferior robusta beans, and condensed milk.

Another secret: I make better espresso than your local Starbucks. No small statement, considering the fact that the baristas at Starbucks do this for a living, while all I do is fuck around and pretend that I'm an expert in coffea arabica and bandy about sexy-sounding Italian words. Hehe:)..................... NOT! Actually it's because I have all the time in the world to make sure everything's perfect, while they have to shout "2 venti mo...kuh LAH-TEHHHH"in some weird sing-song accent and crash about making coffee and steaming milk for a million people at once. Mostly it's because I have good coffee beans, and a very very good machine. How do I know I make better coffee? Because I went to Starbucks with my dad, and my dad later went with my mom, and we all agreed that the coffee we made at home was much more flavorful and aromatic.

In the beginning my mom jammed up the poor machine with a too-finely-ground Ugandan coffee that a friend gave her, and we had to clean it out properly before using the espresso blend that my dad and I got. Long before this I was geeking out big time on the forums and message boards, finding out all about espresso: The beans, coffee geography, the ideal temperature and pressure for different blends, roasting, grinding, storing, tamping, cleaning, extracting, plus the meanings of all the lansi-sounding Italian words: espresso, affogato, cappucino, latte, doppio, americano, ristretto, crema, niama........ so I had something of a headstart when it was time to "pull my first shot". To my absolute bloody surprise, the first double shot I pulled turned out to be so rich in crema(the froth on top that denotes "solid", "bagus punya" espresso) that my dad and I were grinning from ear-to-ear. It was so good that I downed it straight like my dad did, without diluting it with any milk or water, amazed and finally understanding what the essence of coffee was. Before this, every experience with espresso was a confused rebellion by my taste-buds at the attack of concentrated bitterness.

After that I spent every chance I could to make coffee for my folks. "Pa, want coffee?" "Mummy want coffee?" and went through with the elaborate rituals that were at times even more pleasurable and tactile than the actual drinking. Heating up the machine, running the beautiful steel cups with hot water, opening the aluminium bag to whiff the intense coffee aroma, measuring out a perfect dose of coffee beans, tamping it into an organised pancake, feeling the thud as I locked the heavy portable filter solidly into its gasket, and only then turning the knob to hear the pump buzz in a low frequency hum, tense with expectation as the first few drops of chocolate gold dripped into the cups, slowly increasing into a thick, syrupy stream of concentrated coffee essence that flowed for exactly 20 seconds before I switched it off.

It was so technical! So fucking fun! Anyway see the pictures below as I make affogato(coffee with ice cream)

---------->

A double scoop of coffee into the filter........................... becomes a gorgeous cup of crema-topped espresso

(above)

Meanwhile...........

------>

The giant ice cream tub is broken out and a single scoop of rich vanilla is plopped into a giant mug
(above)

pour coffee into giant mug and..........

........Affogato!!!

The 10 Best Smells in the World!!

1. Pine. Otherwise known as the Ikea smell. The smell of Scandinavia. That strong, heady wood smell reminds me of snow and peace and warmth and adventure and good friends and coziness.
2. Burnt rubber (Caused by "enthusiastic" driving). Nothing sums up the elation of slipping/sliding through the Paloh-Yong Peng road or hitting apex after apex at the track than the smell of burnt rubber and motor oil when you stop at the gas station afterwards, accompanied by the ticking sound of your radiator cooling down.
3. New clothes. You wanna keep that smell forever, until you have....
4. Fresh laundry! The hot, just-in-from-the-sun smell of Breeze, Fab, Dynamo....
5. New leather furniture. Leather couch, leather car seats, it doesn't matter. It just reeks opulence if it's new. Only applies to furniture though, in case you wanna go sniffing shoes or jackets (or my vomit-inducing, sweaty boxing gloves).
6. Stir-fried prawns. That smell of umami forces you to drool against your will.
7. Mummy's stewed pork ribs. Slurrrrrrrrrrp. Gulp.....
8. Freshly ground Coffee. You know that Starbucks smell? Imagine stuffing your head into a bag containing freshly ground coffee, taking a huge whiff, and getting that smell a hundred times over. It's so fragrant, so aromatic, so heady that every cell in your brain feels like its bursting to form a cloud of pure coffee mist. I wonder why drug addicts don't sniff coffee... (oh they do actually, they're called coffee addicts)
9. That sweet citrus mist that appears when you open a mandarin orange.
10. Freshly mown grass. My sense of love and security and family comes from that familiar childhood scent.


That's my list. What's yours? :)

Are you a food bully?

Yes you are. Most of us are. The signs are especially prevalent if:

1. You're from Kepong/Ipoh/Penang. All places with incredibly good food.
2. You call yourself a 食家 chinese: shi2 jia1, meaning gourmet or epicure.
3. You teach home science(Ekonomi Rumah Tangga) in secondary school, which involves a lot of food science and cooking, making you a naturally good cook.
4. You are a control freak.

Have you ever felt like tearing your hair out when you see your children happily stuffing their pieholes with Big Macs, but turn up their noses at the burger you made with fresh ground chuck, polenta, real cheddar, romaine lettuce, capers, and freshly baked rye bread?

Do you know that almost uncontrollable urge to scream when your boyfriend drowns your beautifully made filet mignon/braised cod fillet in tomato ketchup? What about that time when you brought your girlfriend to the Lemon Garden Cafe at Shangri-La for high tea, where you suddenly caught sight of her gagging and making a disgusted face when you slurped down the gorgeous, fresh, ice-cold Foveaux Strait Oysters, telling you that she'd rather die than eat raw shellfish?

I think I'm a food bully, albeit a mellow one who doesn't push too hard when someone I know commits a culinary faux pas. I couldn't understand my sister when she decided out of the blue to stop eating pork: that tender, heavenly pink meat that gives you cholesterol even as it delights your tastebuds. I was having dinner with my groupie at Pho Hoa, The Curve yesterday. FYI, Pho Hoa is a place that serves Vietnamese beef noodles in a broth that's flavourful beyond description. It didn't bother me that April is a carnivore(I'm not joking, I actually think she might cry or assault you if you tried to make her put something green in her mouth), I just thought that it was quirky and kinda funny, especially when she told stories about her ex- boyfriend's mother making blended veggie soup and wheatgrass WUAHAHHAAHHAHA. Anyway, when April made her choice of having "meatballs and steak" with her noodles, I succeeded in not shooting my brains out in frustration, but failed miserably in gently trying to steer her towards the more adventurous choices of flank, brisket and tripe. Luckily my social instincts kicked in when she said with a cheeky expression that she would just try mine. I let it drop at that, instead of giving her a flying kick across the table, then clambering on top while she was dazed and punching her pretty face, all the while repeating "Meatball........ *punch*...... is...*punch*..... *PANT PANT*........ NOT MEAT...*roundhouse punch*... now order the brisket dammit!!!!!"

It's a protracted dilemma that makes you feel both guilty (at being such a control freak, cause it's none of your god-damned business) and angry(What the fuck? Putting ice in the wine?!??! ARRRRRGHHHH!!!!). Intellectually, you know it's just a matter of taste, but emotionally, you feel that food is one of the great hedonistic pleasures in life, ostensibly interchangeable with sex, as has been documented in so much literature and the hentai practice of eating sushi off a naked girl.

It feels like sacrilege when you see someone throwing out all the siham(cockles) in char kuay teow, or when someone drowns their shark's fin soup with vinegar until it's all black-coloured, or when the Japanese eat EVERYTHING - including steak and fish-and-chips - with rice. When I visited Takamatsu - the Udon capital of Japan - as a teenager, everyone I ate with told me that it was rude when I didn't slurp my noodles (Something about not enjoying the food or disrespecting the table). They would mime slurping the udon when I ate, with raised eyebrows and rapid-fire Japanese. The language was alien, but the tone was not: Hey boy! Suck your udon and make noise or else! So of course I had enormous fun slurping loudly like a garrulous vacuum-powered monster while getting approving smiles and nods, where all I would have received at home was a backhanded slap for such atrocious table manners. Or my personal favourite, when someone eats a dish of crab not by fiddling and coaxing out the succulent white flesh, but by putting the entire body into their mouth and chewing confusedly for a while, then spitting out the entire uneaten mangled mess of shell and flesh into a wasted pile onto the red chinese-shop tablecloth.

Sometimes, you even get fucked-up food bullies. They're something like the "religious scholars" of the corrupted backwater 3rd-world country located between Singapore and Thailand, implacably arrogant and self righteous when they label people jahil(ignorant) and biadab(uncouth) when they're the ones unenlightened. For example, meet the Singaporean who sneers at you because you don't mix tomato sauce with your konlow mee. LOL. Or how about the moron who says that espresso - that perfectly calibrated shot of coffee essence made mostly with the superior Arabica bean - is "nonsense", refusing even to try it, insisting instead that "NOTHING, AND I MEAN NOTHING, BOY...." will ever compare to the local (robusta) coffee he sips at the Hainanese coffeeshop around the corner. Jahil, indeed.

My brother Erlend is a contender for Champion Food Bully. When he visited me, char koay teow, fishball noodles, radish cake(loh bak kou), all the Malay kuihs, roti canai, curry mee, prawn mee - practically all the food that we were proud of - was dismissed summarily with the verdict,"It's all filler! It doesn't make me full! Noodles noodles noodles! It's all 'empty'! Give me some proper food! I'm a viking! I need meat!" He eventually came around to enjoying bak kut teh and some, if not all, our national dishes where he almost made me cry before. Of course, we could put it down to his having superior Scandinavian tastebuds (being the angmoh-loving morons that we are), but his was a country that had as national foods: rice porridge(hot tasteless lumpy curds served with butter, sugar and cinnamon *faint*), lamb and cabbage stew, potato dumplings, and giant fishballs. Plus, they eat roast meat with JAM. I kid you not.


*Please don't post any disparaging comments about the vikings. I happen to know an incredibly hot, drop-dead super-gorgeous Norwegian girl who reads this blog(and probably shouldn't *wink wink*) and whom I'm trying to convince to visit. Also, my brother has been working out a lot, and he might choose to take out his frustration on me for your comments :D

So the next time you feel the urge to tell your brother to lay off the soya sauce, or tell your dad that his porridge doesn't need an entire handful of preserved veggies, or sneer at your friend who eats banana leaf rice with cutlery instead of his hands, or laugh at the feller who hates runny egg yolks..... Pause, take a deep breath, and remember that in Japan, you get scolded for not slurping your noodles like a turbo-powered vacuum cleaner, neh?

Balm for My Bored Pirate Soul

What's with the dearth of good programming over the New Year season? What the fuck is all that about? For some unfathomable reason (whoever knows please explain), great TV shows have this break over the holiday period, anywhere from Oct/Nov/Dec to January.

And it includes ALL my favourite shows: Prison Break, Nip/Tuck, Top Gear, Fifth Gear, Entourage, Smallville, South Park, Weeds (motherfucker! I AM a TV addict, albeit one without a TV *wink wink*)......

...... until I discovered this gem: Heroes.

If you want details, it's about people with powers. But their lives are all complex and human, and the human dramas take precedence over their superpowers, which are shown only rarely, and are breathtakingly believable, unlike the OTHER superhero-themed TV series, which is going from implausible to downright hilarious in its undisciplined depictions of Clark Kent huffing and puffing away storm clouds and story arcs which have me screaming"DEUS EX MACHINA" everytime they switch the semi-incestous relationship between Clark, Lex and Lana on and off.

Heroes is aired in comic book style too, with a few mini story-arcs linked together to form an overarching plot. It's a very realistic story, and because of the tight writing, it's comparable to Prison Break in it's tension and realism.

So if you've run out of good shows to watch, find one of your geeky friends who download bucketfuls of TV series and ask them to get it for you. Watch the pilot episode and decide for yourself. I bet that you'll kick yourself later, because it's only until episode 11, and you have to wait till the next week for the following episode.

BTW, watch out for Hiro Nakamura. He's my favourite character. He's incorrigibly irritating in the beginning, but becomes more and more adorable as the episodes go by... maybe he reminds me of how nice it was to be an all-out nerd.

"Beastie, more like."

Girls, please don't do the following, because it makes you look like absolute morons:

1. "and i'm like..... and she's like.......... and then they're like....."
Please look up the meaning of "like" in any available dictionary. The use of a pronoun followed by "like" is NOT proscribed as proper usage of the word in ANY context. You would think a gender that blabbers non-stop would be proficient in basic grammar.

2. "Bestie"
What the fuck! This awful word word has been popping up all over the place recently. If you're a moron girl, you go,"This girl is my BESTIE!" (Beastie, more like, unless "bestie" stands for "best in show", cause she sure is a real dog). Tiu....... Just because you affectionately call your dog "doggy", your best friend is now "bestie"? Once, I was so bored I picked up one of my sister's pink feminazi magazines - I dunno, cleo or seventeen or something - and I caught sight of the word used in the publication! You think it's cute? Just because she used to suck your mum's other breast when you were kids doesn't give you the right to annoy the whole world. Please realise the fact that the creative and situationally proper use of English(read bigoted, racist, bullying, discriminatory) - like calling a dark-skinned friend Blackie, or a flatulent friend Farty - is good, while adding on a "-ey" or "-ie" suffix to a word just to make it "cute" is not. It just exhibits how much empty space there is between your skull.

3. Posing like porn stars everytime you and your "bestie" take a picture....
......which is every single moment you're together: At the mall, eating lunch, in the restroom, at the club(ESPECIALLY at the club). If someone challenged me to name one disadvantage of camera phones and the easy proliferation of digicams, this would be it. When girls began to pout, arch their backs and squeeze their boobs together back in 2004, men everywhere secretly rejoiced, believing that the next sexual revolution was here, that Malaysian girls had finally begun to shed their (honestly self-limiting) prudish skins in favour of a more open and happy disposition. Little did we dumb males realise that this behaviour was merely an evolution of the traditional "chinese girl ADD" mode, because the sex-kitten persona almost never extended beyond the reach of the lens, serving only to shamelessly attract as much attention as possible(in clubs) and to fuel the angst-ridden fantasies of undersexed teenage boys everywhere(on Friendster), who will then proceed to send them a message saying "hi. You lookd sexy. Mind friends?" The girls will then complain to me, saying that nerdy boys are harassing them, earning a huge kick in the ass from me. You don't want them to message you then why you post the picture? Wear a burqa lah. Moron.

Riddle me this.......

I get myself into situations. Effortlessly.

It's Christmas Day.

I'm in a Taiwanese cafe in Subang.

With my groupie and her friend.

Riddle me this - an excerpt from the conversation at our table-:

"..... what's wrong with making black vaginas?!?........"

The truth is out there.

Yeah yeah... when pigs climb trees......

Recently I had the dubious pleasure of meeting a dyed-in-the-wool feminazi with fairy-tale-princess fantasies. Without delving too deeply into details, let's just say that previously, I had ample reason to look forward to meeting her(as I had reason to believe that she was someone who had an Intellect), and expected much more than have my hopes rudely and bluntly dashed.

My hopes of matching wits and engaging in intelligent discourse with a calm, supremely intelligent person were dashed the moment I met her (Just goes to show that nothing counts until you really know someone). This woman was the typical feminazi archetype: She was "not pretty" *cough-cough*, rude and standoffish, had loud, aggresive opinions about anyone and anything, and defended her views with the typical feminazi "all-men-are-sexist" injurious tone, all the while expounding her frankly ludicrous opinions with "I don't about you lah, but I do it like this...."No, moron. You are not the world's foremost expert on life. In fact, you need a huge helping of slap-you-silly, if not thousands of hours of therapy.

I'll refrain from explaining the details of how she scarfed her food and indulged in a gratuitous facial tic that turned me off the moment i met her.But I shall enlighten you on the contradictory, hypocritical views that she held on life and love.

You see, I don't expect much of people I meet for the first time. I don't care if you're ugly, fat, have warts, have AIDS, are shy... I don't even mind if you make jokes or prank me, as long as I know it's in good fun. So when I tell you how off-putting this woman was, trust me, ugh...

While she interspersed her meal with random bigoted anecdotes about how all men are pigs, how they deserved to be punished and "you have to keep them in line" and "i'm a strong woman i don't understand how girls can be submissive" etc etc(remember I was meeting her for the first time), it became patently obvious that she was projecting her insecurities and inherent sexism onto the entire male population, laying blame on the Y-chromosome as the root of all evil.

And then came the kicker, the moron feminazi announced that she was itching for her boyfriend to propose. I tell you, bitches like this reinforce the myth that girls are stupid.

And once again, she was fugly. F....AHHHHH.......GLY! Ugh!

To all you Beemer Coupes, CRVs, Wiralutions and Wajalutions

.....(and situationally unaware Satria GTi's who flash me indignantly after i punish you for riding two lanes)......

....... 21 minutes..........

........from the time I start my engine at Kepong Baru...

..... to the time I open my front door(after parking my car outside the guardhouse, walking in, waiting for elevator) at Court 9, USJ.

..... in an unmodified, 4-year-old Perodua Kancil 660EX.

'nuff said.

Want to Learn something New? :)

Hardly a day passes by when I do not learn something new. However esoteric, irrelevant, or mundane a piece of information might be, I have this clinical obsession to learn and know. It's not the obvious pay-off of being seen as smart that motivates me (of course I thoroughly enjoy it when it happens, although I see it as more fortuitious and "hey-why-the-fuck-do-i-know-this" rather than an obvious result of being educated previously)..... it's just the pure damn joy of learning something new. This isn't the moralistic, judgemental "knowledge makes you happy" that faintly reeks of kim jong-il-style education. Don't you remember? the teachers in school somehow tried to force this idea down the throats of pepsi-cola and chi-ku-pang obsessed kids; I just believe that I'm genetically wired to get a dose of endorphins whenever there's new information written into the fatty cells in my skull (Something New no.1. Of the solid (non-water) matter in the brain, 60% is fat, or lipid). It's weird. I can't explain it to those of you who have the ability to just enjoy the physical, hedonistic pleasures of life without worrying. It's like an obsession - an addiction - that I need to satiate, this single-minded and relentless pursuit of knowledge. I don't consciously realise it, but as I analyse it now while I'm typing this post, each small datum and each small piece of information is merely one in a train of many that builds knowledge and inexorably, inexhaustibly drive me towards even more. It's a bit scary, actually.

You can ask my mum about my obsession with knowledge. I was addicted to Sesame Street and The Electric Company as a toddler, DEVOURED encyclopedias and messed around with so much Lego and Lasy when I was a pre-schooler, read and re-read dinosaur and fish books, rambled on and on to my dad about astronauts and Rube Goldberg machines when I was four, reprimanded him when he mixed up stegosaurus and tyrannosaurus, huddled in corners all my childhood with any piece of reading material(Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Reader's Digest, The Arabian Nights, cereal boxes, fighter jet clippings, Aesop's Fables, Classic fairy tales etc) and spoke using chapelang english and intentionally wrong grammar to fit in with how everyone spoke while hoarding an inordinate, weirdly Calvin-esque vocabulary. This is the one piece of societal pressure that I will forever capitulate to, crappy conversational English... until this very day. I silently laugh whenever my dad severely informs us that the use of "one"(as in "that one whose book?" "My one") is an absolutely abhorrent practice. He gave me the impression that it ranked right up there with farting during a formal dinner as things that shouldn't be done. Mum says I spoke tamil as a kid, because my nursemaid when young was 'akak Rani, an Indian lady who could speak only Tamil and broken malay.

So anyway, wanna know what I learnt today? Sit back and enjoy, for I have compiled the weird funny things that have entered my brain today, for my amusement and for your enjoyment(remember I hold no responsiblity for the veracity or verifiability of statements below. Don't blame me for anything that happens as a result of reading what I post below):

Something new no.2: The candiru(from wikipedia): "Tiny freshwater fish found in the Amazon River and has a reputation among the natives as the most feared fish in its waters, even over the piranha. known to grow to a size of 6 inches in length and is eel shaped and translucent, making it almost impossible to see in the water. The candiru is a parasite. It swims into the gill cavities of other fish, erects a spine to hold itself in place, and feeds on the blood in the gills, earning it a nickname as the "vampire fish of Brazil". It is feared by the natives because it is attracted to urine or blood, and if the bather is nude it will swim into an orifice (the anus or vagina, or even in the case of smaller specimens the penis—and deep into the urethra). It then erects its spine and begins to feed on the blood and body tissue just as it would from the gills of a fish. As the fish locates its host by following the water flow from the gills to its source, urinating while bathing increases the chance of a candiru honing in on a human urethra. There has been a confirmed removal of a Candiru from a man that survived an attack by the fish. Upon removal the fish was measured to be 134mm (5 1/2 in) in length. The fish jumped out of the water to enter his urethra following the trail of urine(!!!!!!!!) "
Oh yeah. Fun. Are you enjoying the goose-pimples yet?

Something new no. 3: Facts about HIV and AIDS. I read about, but won't bore you with proteases, integrases, macrophages, reverse transcriptase, T-cells, CDT count etc etc. However, here are a few intersting facts about the disease that you might not know:

• 15% of all Africans have AIDS(that's 1 in 7!)
• Official numbers say 1 in every 400, but my friends and I think it's closer to 1 in every 100(because of unreported cases) Malaysians have HIV/AIDS.
  
• In the US, almost half of all new infections were attributed to gay men and black men(in other words, it sucks to be gay and black in America)
• Babies can get HIV through breastfeeding from their infected mothers.
• Even though 9000 out of every 10000(9 out of 10) transfusions of HIV-infected blood resulted in new infections, only 67 out of 10000 cases of sharing infected needles(drug use) resulted in the same.
• There is something called nPEP(Post-Exposure Prophylaxis). If someone were exposed to an HIV source(usually needle-stick injuries in medical personnel), they give them anti-retroviral drugs as soon as possible(up to 24 hours but ideally within 1 hour) for 28 days and in many cases the injured medical personnel isn't infected.
  
• Yes, you CAN get AIDS by giving or receiving oral sex, although the infection rate is 1 in 10,000(assuming no condom use, which I don't think anyone does)
• The infection rate for penile-vaginal intercourse is 10 in 10000 exposures, assuming no condom use. This reduces to 1.5 per 10,000 exposures with proper latex condom use. So all you fuckers out there(pun not intended), please for fucking godsakes put your prudishness, self-consciousness and organised-religion-induced restrictions aside and use a fucking rubber. If you want to die while "believing" and "obeying" your God, go ahead, as long as it's just you. But some of you are fucking hypocrites who will have sex with many people while protesting to your partners that your religion does not allow you to use birth-control. which brings me to....

Something new no.3: Facts about condoms.

• There's a place in France called Condom. Gives new meaning to the phrase "French Cap". Poor Condom-ites. They'll be laughed at anywhere else in the world... or in France for that matter.
• Condoms ARE NOT FOOLPROOF. Method failure(proper and consistent use but still pregnancy happening) is 2%. All you couples that have fucked 49 times and aren't pregnant.... better stop fucking :) Seriously though, get this fact and swallow that big lump in your throat, all you players and player-ettes, actual effectiveness(condom intended as sole form of birth control, but includes couples that use wrongly or sometimes not at all) is only 85%. That means a 15% failure rate in actual use! My humble advice is please please please please learn how to use a condom correctly and consistently. Stop blushing, morons! I'd rather be embarrassed than pregnant, if you get what I mean.
• There is a thing called a collection condom, a special rubber for collecting sperm in infertility treatments and something else called a femidom, a female condom.
• The Filipino(largely Roman Catholic) government refuses to promote condom usage or pay for their distribution. In some places, health workers are even banned from discussing them; Sales of condoms outside pharmacies was only legalised in Ireland in '93; Condom usage and sales is banned in almost all Somalia.
• The British SAS carry condoms as a method for carrying water in emergency survival situations.
• Navy SEALS have used doubled condoms, sealed with neoprene cement, to protect non-electric firing assemblies for underwater demolitions - leading to the term "Dual Waterproof Firing Assemblies."

Something new no.4. Facts about eyes, contacts and intra-ocular lenses:

• Contact lens users, before you insert the lenses, you not only need to wash your hands with soap, but more importantly(and I read this with great concern), soap that does not contain fragrances or moisturisers.
• KERATITIS is a rare disease where amoebae(Acanthamoeba) invade the cornea of the eye. Can cause blindness. Almost always associated with contact lens use. That's why you should never let your contact lenses touch tap water. EVER.
  
• They make contact lenses for your Old Man. Far-sighted ones. Hehe. Oh and even better, they make bifocal and multifocal ones too. *stifles laughter*
• Intraocular lens insertion is the most common eye surgical procedure. It's mostly to correct cataracts, but also(very interestingly) to correct extreme myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism in cases where LASIK cannot be performed.
• They use a rolled up lens made of acrylic or silicone that unfolds after inserted through a small incision in the eye. This lens cannot change it's curvature, and so distance vision is good while reading glasses are needed for close vision. There is however a new lens whose position can be changed by the ciliary muscles of the eye, allowing natural focusing.
• There are 3 sorts of tears, believe it or not. Not all of them lubricate the eye.
• There are contact lenses used to deliver drugs to the eye.
• saline solutions do not cleanse contact lenses, and are only used for rinsing.

Something new no.5(non-geeks please skip this section)........... Oh never mind, you would all be bored to death by my enthusiastic descriptions about the Large Hadron Collider and how it will hopefully bring about another renaisssance. Here are some interesting facts(put simply) for the MTV-instant-gratification generation:

• It costs more than US$8 billion.
• One detector, the Compact Muon Solenoid weighs 12,500 tons, and is used to detect particles(PARTICLES!! That's a few 10's of something that's smaller than an atom!)
• More than half the world's particle physics scientists are involved in some way or the other.
• The most beautiful sentence I've read today:"Some researchers dub these particle accelerators the cathedrals of modern science: complicated, beautiful and an expensive testament to faith in a reality that transcends our everyday experience."
• Here's something to make you go "You're a nerd and I'm bored already. I shall now deride your superior intelligence with a raised eyebrow and make fun of you when in fact I lack the brain cells to understand what you are talking about": You know what's a quark? How about an electron? Or W and Z particles that make up the weak nuclear force(we're not talking about Pakistan and India)? How about supersymmetry? No? Well, the particles have a cosmic partner called respectively a squark, a selectron, a wino and a zino. Yay.

Other things new: hugo chavez, hypoxia, swedish bikini team, final destination books, el laberinto del fauno. Search for them on wikipedia if you're interested. It's late and I need my sleep. Hope you had as much fun as I did. Cheers!

When Love(knee cartilage) and Hate(pelvic bone) Collide

Andrew, the 19-year old chimpanzee-genius of a basketball player recently returned from Australia. I hadn't seen him in almost a year now so we were understandably happy when we got to play together yesterday.

Unfortunately, while he was marking me, his knee bashed into the small of my back, right on my pelvic bone. Usually it would have been a rolling-on-the-floor-in-agony experience, but the rush of adrenaline from getting the layup probably deadened the pain then(Even though right now it hurts like a fucking bitch, like somebody whacked my back with a hammer). But when I turned around, I saw Andrew hobbling around grabbing his knee, and I couldn't resist jibing him.

"Oi Andrew! Fucker! Knee my ass for what? Damned pain! I know lah all you damned virgins not getting any action...."

The funniest thing is he went,"WHAT?!?!??! You ass-ed my knee lah!!!!" *hobble hobble*

Penniless and Broke

For reasons I shall not bore you with, events conspired this weekend to leave me with only RM35 to spend, for the entire weekend(that's Friday night until Monday morning), and with no way to access my funds in the bank. John from Klang whose pictures I look at while wanking (GOTCHA JOHN!!!!!!!!!! NO WAY TO RUN FROM THE GAY-NESS NOW!!!!!!!!!!!) - sorry about that. My friend John is slightly homophobic and I take every chance I get to make him feel as nauseous as possible - offered to buy me dinner... but I want to see if I can get through the entire 3 days without having to take cash from anyone, as an experiment in frugality and discipline. I had 52 ringgit late on Friday night..... but I couldn't resist cajoling the Black Ghost and Bryan to go to Kepong for Bak kut teh. So that's 17 ringgit gone. Discipline...... yeah right.

But then, I haven't spent a sen all day now, and it's 5.41 PM on Saturday. I've skipped breakfast on account of eating a huge portion of pork ribs in herbal soup until 3.30AM in the morning, lunch(cause I'm being a cheapskate), and I've only been munching on the muesli in my kitchen cupboard. And by munching I mean shaking the jar violently until the almonds and raisins rise to the top, and then picking them off one by one while watching Prison Break, ignoring the inevitable day when I'll have to eat plain muesli(yuck) and milk when I've finished all the nuts and raisins and all the good stuff.

As I laze in bed with the air-conditioning on full-blast and my laptop on my lap, I'm wondering if I have the discipline to not blow all my cash(wow, ALL your RM35!!! So much!!) and take up my friends' offer of ready cash. I think I'm suffering from withdrawal symptoms from not partying yesterday night. All the scratching, twitching, and general irritability will probably be exarcebated by the fact that I'm not going to be partying tonight too. I've had no less than 4 phone calls by 9 this morning by people waking me up and wondering what I have planned for them tonight, and why haven't I called them yet since it's already Saturday morning.

The first sms this morning: "Yo. Any pussy plans tonight? :)"
The first msn msg today: "Yo apa buat? Got what plans for later?"
The first phone call today:"Oi! Where are you? Tonight party where? Why never call me?"
The last phone call I got: "hallo? Ei go out lar tonight!............. Go where??!?! How the fuck I know! You tell me lah!"

They've generally reacted with long pauses followed by hurt and confusion when I tell them I plan to do absolutely nothing. I imagine them standing around in a crowd, like the 4400, looking confusedly around wondering where they are and what they're doing...

...... and I think it's absolutely hilarious. The best part is when I act stupid and say,"Dun have ah. Call me if you got anything lah. Bye."

But you see, I really do need more than RM35. What for?

1. Haircut. My botak head just grew out, and although it's all nice and fuzzy like a rambutan, I want to look less like a fruit and more like a well-groomed gay dude.
2. Phone. I'm left with less than 80 sen worth of prepaid credit, and I had no idea until midnight yesterday when I got hit by the warning msg.
3. Dinner, supper, breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper again.
4. Gotta reload my touch 'n' go card. I like to put RM200 in everytime, saves me the trouble of reloading so often.

I hate being poor. I will work hard to make money to feed my family and provide them with a comfortable life! (cue corny "inspirational" japanese tv-series music)


.........Hey I just thought of something! People still owe me for the last few rounds of partying and I'll be seeing them tonight! MUAHAHAHA I guess this weekend will work out after all. Bye guys! I'm off to dinner!


XOXOXOXOXOXO
Khai Tzer

This crazy crazy life

Life is good. No. Life is great. I'm enjoying myself more than I have in a long long LONG LOOONNNNNG TIME!

Athletes talk about being in "the zone", that physical and mental place when everything falls into place for you to perform at your peak, in perfect peace and with perfect confidence. I've felt that before, that rare feeling of controlled euphoria when you can do no wrong, when every shot whooshes, every lay-up is indefensible, and you see the game like Jordan does......

I'm living life very close to The Zone now, and I can only see it getting better from here.

• -At the age of 24, when most people don't make many close friends anymore, I have inexplicably, very fortunately met a few new friends - Great friends - people that I would trust my life with and die for to protect. Previously I accepted that out of the hundreds of new people I socialise and meet with in a year, one true friend was a great achievement. In '99 it was Chun Fee, in 2000 it was Hooi Koon, in 2001 it was Sheng Wai. In 2002 it was Erlend and Liv-Mari, in 2003 it was Benny, in 2004 it was Hang, and miraculously this year, I met the few fuckers who play basketball with me.

• -I've grown up so much recently, without becoming too cynical about life. Unlike the frustration and anger I felt when I first lost my innocence and idealism, this time the lessons about life only served to open my eyes about the intricacies of being a social animal, and allowed me to bask and revel in the sheer bliss that is life.

• The wild, crazy, impossible, virtually surreal nights at the un-likeliest of locations that is Beach Club earlier this year with my brothers. Incredible things happened, things that still leave me wide-eyed and slack-jawed with incredulity whenever I reflect on them. More crazy than what happened is the realisation that what happened was so important because they were great lessons about life. I haven't internalised yet what I did, and was capable of doing, and I relish the moment when it all sinks in.

• My social life just exploded, and after all those years of suppressing myself in my teenage years (a combination of parental restrictions, dumb belief in the sanctity of certain social expectations, financial inability, and a shy inner self), I can finally enjoy myself, truly. No need to pretend to be "cool"(WUAHAHAHHAHA), and ironically, now when I can more than afford it, I've learnt that there's no need for lots of money too.

• I have a place that I can really call home. A place that I love and enjoy and come back to whenever I need peace and alone-time. It's a warm, cozy place that makes me happy.
  

• Long-standing personal milestones achieved. I'm also on my way to seeing my sex... uh, six-pack again(operative word "again" woohooooo) ;)
  

• People who don't have to love me, do. I'm touched beyond comprehension.

• Developed the ability to say no. It feels so fucking great. I feel like a two-year old who just learnt how to say "no" again. It's so fucking fun you can't imagine. You go "no" and then things that you don't want to happen........ don't happen. Magic!!
  

• Also honed the ability to not give a flying fuck. Previously it was controlled by my emotions, but now, I just don't give a flying fuck. It's verrrrrrrry liberating. You should all try it. Girls, it gives you character(character = sexy to smart guys), and guys, it gives you lots of hot women. Yes, hot women are crazy... but I still love them.
  

• Helping someone in need really does make you happier. Effecting change in a situation where you can assist someone immensely by doing something that requires little effort gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside. It could be something as simple as hooking up two shy friends who like one another *coughcoughhobbitcoughcough*

• Saying no to the wrong sort of women, no matter how hot they are, gives you a sense of self-belief and discipline beyond the usual male posturing and braggadocio. Guys(and girls), remember, it's not worth it when it's wrong. Instant gratification belongs to animals...... and should only be indulged in when there are no long-term consequences that might shorten your life and your sanity(i.e. psycho bf/gf, STDs and unwanted pregnancies,
  parang-wielding over-protective family members, or a potential mate's sibling that's obsessed over you)

I could go on some more, but it's late, and I bet you're bored reading about this amazing life, But watch this space. This crazy crazy life is only going to get even crazier and more beautiful. I love you all.

Opulent Minimalist!

Guess who has a new couch, a new shaggy rug, and a new apartment? :)

Pranked!

For anyone interested in my mundane(snicker snicker), run-of-the-mill(mmmpgh!!), boring, normal(WUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAH) life, I've been moving house the past 2 weeks. I shall not excite you with how I converted a fluorescent lamp-infested apartment into an avantgarde, stylish bachelor pad(pictures will be up soon if you're not invited to the housewarming) when I can bore you with stories about how paint dries.

No, I am being serious. I am going to tell you a story about how paint dries....

....... specifically, spray paint.

You see, there exists in my life these two fellows that I happen to love very much. Even though I've known them for less than a year, they're like brothers to me. One goes by the innocent moniker of Bryan, and the other by the vaguely AhBeng name of Botak.

Now, my apartment is painted in a very soothing light blue. It's different from the typical whitewashed wall, and I like it that way. Somehow, Bryan got it into his mind that I was in love with light blue. So he got a fucking can of spray paint, called Botak along, and decided to spray my grille light blue. It's like a switch got thrown in his head and he suddenly thought,"Hey I have a can of light blue spray paint. Khai Tzer likes light blue. Therefore, I shall spray his grille light blue. It will look absolutely horrendous I know, but Khai Tzer will love it. I think it's a good idea. In fact, let's just spray the side of the grille facing outside, and....... Oh fuck it, let's just have fun and just see what happens when we spray....."

So the blissful duo(Bryan and Botak) come to my house one fine day when I'm not home and spray half of my grille blue. They ran out of paint because it was too fun just aerosol-ing the paint around. I came back surprised and quite amused at the effect it caused. I wanted the outside of the apartment to look run-down(so as to not attract attention), and a touch of blue paint on the enamel-cream looked the part.

But today, the blissful duo again came hand-in-hand with a can of blue paint - again while I was not home - and aerosoled pieces of the grille again. "Wah got effect like clouds like that.... some white some blue...", Botak coo-ed in love and enjoyment while we were out yum cha.

"WHAT THE FUCK!!?!??" I thought to myself. Don't tell me they came to spray the fucking thing again......

I drove home dreading how my grille would look like. My heart sank in despair at seeing the horrible shade of milky blue that engulfed a previously normal-looking grille. And it DID have a cloud effect(oh dear god its horrible).... The best part came as I was alternately cursing them and admiring their genius at pranking me like this while sweeping the floor of all the excess spray paint that had dried and turned my marble floor a horrible shade of blue. Bryan called me.

"OI leng zhai or not your grille? Lengzhai(cantonese for "handsome") or not?!? Lengzhai or not?!?!?*giggle giggle giggle*"

"Of FUCKING COURSE NOT LA!!! BRYAN YOU BASSSSSSSTARD!!! #*@&#!!!-ING BETTER BRING A FUCKING CAN OF WHITE PAINT FOR ME I HAVE TO PAINT THE @#$-ING GRILLE AND THE WALLS. cccciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-BAI!!"

"WUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAH!! ok ok I get you your paint *giggle giggle*"

But it was a good prank. Check out the hilarious results:by the way, the fuckers just sprayed it from the outside with no regard for how it would look as a whole. It ended up looking like some loan shark had come to deliver a warning for late payment.

How can anyone not love it if someone left patches of splotchy blue paint on your wall as they sprayed (only) the outside of your grille. I love my brothers. *muaks*

Here's two thousand words......

Beauty is rare and fleeting, but when it's there, it's THERE. For a single stitch in time, every single one of your senses is left tingling, and you can almost hear the angels sing. I caught two such moments.

Dawn, at home in Kekayaan.



Noontime, Kekayaan.

Who are you?

Alright, who's the person secretly topping up my handphone credit? Come on now, it's starting to freak me out, because 10 bucks a day is 300 bucks a month.

If you're a friend who means well, I thank you, but there's no need. I already love you and I have plenty of my own money.

If you're a girl that's interested in me, please stop. My affection cannot be bought. Try asking me out. I'll almost always say yes.

If you're a guy that's interested in me. Please stop. And tell me who you are, so I can give you back your money.

If you're trying to get back in my good books, then by all means continue doing it. You'll never get back in my good books once you're off. But on the upside, I have 300 bucks extra a month. Better one person happy than none.

If you're one of my brothers and this is a prank designed to drive me nuts..... you bastards, when I catch you, you're gonna have my foot so high in your ass you'll be coughing up my shoelaces.

Worth a thousand words

Another bored and hot(but beautiful) evening at home in the estate. What to do? Go out walk walk take pitcher loh. This time I decided to take a walk down to our huge nursery and see what I could find.Look closely. Check out the two strands of spider silk attached to the flower.

Sundance Festival, Bukit Tupai

Coconut Tree