RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

It's March! Time for another story about the jing bang! Twas many years ago, in March when 3 people were out to celebrate their 19th birthday together, marking the end of their teens and all other things, and the beginning of some things for some people.... hehehehe. Anyway, to make things easier (not only for the reader but also for me), I shall refer to the people involved based on initials... Amongst the girls were D, M, C and me, and the jim bang consisted MS, N, V and R. Birthday people were D, MS and me. It was a cloudy afternoon on the day we planned the 'birthday party'. D, M and I got at the meeting point on time, with our cute lady like umbrellas in tow.... C and R was supposed to meet us at the location, whereas MS, N and V were supossed to meet us at the meeting point but were nowhere in sight at the stipulated time... The cloudy day begin to show it's true colours by showering us with an unwelcomed drizzle followed by rain... not a storm, but just s...

People's taste in music is subjective, or should be. You could be a fan of gangsta rap as well as golden oldies at the same time. Many people don't even go for music genres... they listen to anything that is available and enjoy all kinds of music. Some people have an eclectic taste. I say cool :) But then again, why do some people look at rock music as though it is the worst thing that was ever created? Take for instance the recent banning of black metal music here. OK, I admit that I'm not a fan of black metal, heck i don't even know what it sounds like and, nor can I name anyone else who might be a fan of this particular type of music. I'm just assuming that this music is placed under the category "ROCK". How does anyone expect anyone to 'grow' if they are not exposed to everything in this world? I feel it is up to the individual if they want to listen to a particular type of music or not. Another thing that has been bugging me is why do peop...

People always say that things change for the better. I beg to differ. Advanced technology is fine, but at the rate new technology emerges from the depth of some super genius' brain, it is getting to be quite a pain. I recently read the Hitchiker's guide to the Galaxy. It was a pretty enjoyable book. Oh well, that's an understatement... i enjoyed the book immensely, but since that is not what this post is about, I shall leave it at that. What caught my attention was a sentence from the book which more or less stated that humans (or earthman) were fascinated by digital watches. Digital watches! That was ages ago... It was quite alright for the author to mention digital watches at that time, because the digital watches remained pretty much unique for some time which eventually enabled the book to become famous and remain so till today. But what if someone decided to write a book today concerning the latest technology, say 3G phones... sooner or later they'd get dated, an...

Today reminds me of the time when my friends and I made a CD for a friend on her 21st birthday. Honestly, the CD was something we put together, but the whole process of “the making of the CD” provided me, if not all of us a sense of something to look back and remember and have a good laugh about. Birthday presents were always a hard topic. Budget, the person involved’s likes and dislikes, time factor, and who was going to do the purchasing….oh yeah, and keeping the whole thing a secret from the person involved (the worst part of the whole experience but it was worth every effort when you see the genuine look of surprise on the person’s face – either the secret was really well kept, or the whole gang, 12 in all are deserving nominees for best actresses) Collecting bits and pieces of songs we sang from the time we met, not to mention singing it to the microphone to be recorded was not an easy process, as I found myself choking with laughter; and at the same time trying to block out t...

This song has been on my playlist the past few days. All I can say is that it is one of the most heartwrenching songs I've ever heard, right from the lyrics to the music accompaniment and down to the melancholic voice of the singer. It is such a sad, sad song, but a really good one although it can make you utterly and hopelessly depressed. Now that I've stated the obvious, I rest my case. The Humpty Dumpty Love Song all of the king's horses and all of the king's men couldn't pull my heart back together again all of the physicians and mathematicians too failed to stop my heart from breaking in two cos all i need is you i just need you yeah you got the glue so i'm gonna give my heart to you i had a premonition a movie in my hand confirming my suspicions of what i would find it followed me to l a down to mexico came in through the back door at the start of the show still all i need you i just need you yeah you got the glue so i'm gonna ...

The Americans call em Astronauts, the Russians call em Cosmonauts. So we should join the bandwagon and call our future space bound person something so we'd sound original. My suggestion is Masnaut. Why not? Although Mas does not necessarily signify space: note astro and cosmo... I unfortunately couldn't come up with anything better. Angkasanaut?

I've been thinking a lot about things that happened a few years ago, especially friends' birthday celebrations. I remember the secrets, the drama and the lies that went with the surprise... hahahaha, weren't those some good times. This story goes back as far as October 1999. It was on a Friday night, the eve of a friend's birthday and we, (3 of her pretty close friends decided to surprise her with a banner). If I'm not mistaken, she kinda requested for a banner, in one of our previous conversations. Understandably, we had many of those conversations, and remembering the exact details can be a bit difficult. Yeah, on Thursday and Friday afternoon, the 3 of us set to work. Don't exactly know what excuse her roomate gave her for her absence from the room, but 3 of us huddled in my room with the doors locked equipped with lots of paper, colour pencils, markers and tape and pretended to be the Van Gogh's of the new millenia (near enough - although our art wa...

It's been awhile since I had my last dose of nasi lemak, which shall be referred to as NL from now henceforth. It has been that long that I can't remember when I last had a plate of the favourite breakfast. Anyway, as I was saying... the absence of nl from the breakfast menu is not by choice. Firstly, the lady who sells NL at the entrance of my neighbourhood has gone AWOL eversince the fasting month in October last year. Has her sale of NL the past few years elevated her finances to levels that render her sale of NL to be not necessary anymore? Or has she moved to another neighbourhood? And then of course there's another choice where I could get my NL cravings fixed - that is at the tuck shop at work. However, since the original lady had returned from confinement and took the shop back from some pretty useless assistants, the NL sells like hot cakes (extra hot - not like before she left), but I'm always too late. Ah, this is madness... here I am on a Sunday morning ...

My body is here but my mind has drifted away. It has been away for a long time, now. I am slouched on a chair typing this post because I want to, but the mind refuses to work properly. See, this is what happened:I'm currently quite sleepy but I know for a fact that when I actually go to bed and try sleeping, I will not be able to do so. That has been a common occurence for the past few months. In the sleepiness, I think of this song which i quite like... aptly titled I need some Sleep by The Eels. It's a simple song with simple verses but i just wanted to check out the lyrics so that I can post it here. Copy and paste, you may say... ha ha ha. Guess what? Thought that it was quite a strange occurence though that I could not find the lyrics to that song (the artist may not be popular... [here anyways], but it was part of the soundtrack for a movie that was) And then, I notice that I typed the artist as the ells and didn't even notice it. (at the bold underline area whic...

So, there is this person I know who has a certain tendency to theorise, categorise and stereotype others based on their ethnicity, choice of career, etc. Not exactly a bad attribute, instead I find it to be quite interesting. A snippet of our conversation went somethng like this: Friend: Terra, does your dad work for the government, or is he a teacher? Me: Huh? Well, not exactly... The place he works in has already been privatised. Why do you ask?Friend: Ha! I guessed almost correctly... Well most (ethnic group) girls I know who did science or engineering had fathers who were either teachers or worked in the government sector. And their mothers are mostly housewives... yours? Me: Aren't you stereotyping people? Friend: Yeah, but it's correct most of the time. So, is your mom a housewife? Me: Yup. The same person also attempted to 'guess' the occupations of another friend's (No.2) parents... but hit a snag when it came to her mother's occupation. Appare...

My own observation on the different types of bloggers on the WWW 1.The daily blogger - This blogger tends to have a post posted on every day, regardless if there are issues to write about or not. These blogs usually can be interpreted as an online diary where the said blogger pours out his or her heart for all to see. Some may consist of what they did in day to day life such as what happened at work/school/home, what they had for lunch and how they feel about the said lunch, or even an apology to readers if they cannot post something long enough to be classified as a post. 2. The random blogger - The random blog has posts that cover any topic under the sun, be it about themselves, their friends, trials and tribulations, stories from the past and present, and maybe future too, observations, etc. They may not be posting posts every single day, but then some of them might. The blog usually has no particular direction, and if I assume correctly, the reason these blogs come into being m...

It's been awhile since I last had a dream. Ok, maybe I did dream, but it most probably happened while I was in a deep slumber that i had no recollection of it at all (Read somewhere that if the dream occurs in mid sleep and if you don't wake up within 10 minutes after the dream is over, then you will never realise that you had a dream in the first place) Well, last night I had a dream, totally unanticipated, but nevertheless inspiring (me to write this!) Characters: Friends from all the different stages of life, childhood up to university (sorry colleagues!) But they were all mainly in the background... Location: A cross between my old house in Taman Raja Zainal (albeit much larger), and some ancient architecture (most probably from one of the ancient history documentaries I've been recently watching but not paying much attention to) Objects: 1)My car - it was parked in one of the lots in the building but disappeared the second time around. 2) Lots of noise - somethin...

Drink 8 glasses of water I tell you daily! But you act as if it doesn't matter Like fitting a hole with it's key This is a signal, a sign or whatever It's a warning from your kidney A tortured 'soul' I am T hrough lack of H2O From pm right up till am I ask for a favour, you say "No, no, no!" I'll keep you out of harm If what I ask, you do! February 16

Have you ever walked into a store, wanting to search for something when you're rather in a hurry, so you try to get some help from the sales assistants and your request gets a blank stare or a huh? followed by a blank stare....? Not too long ago, I had to search for something at a music store, and naturally I turned to the sales assistant after looking through the alphabetically arranged display and being unable to find what I was looking for. The sales assistance gave 'the look'. I thought he couldn't hear me through the loud music at the store, so I tried speaking up a bit louder. Apparentlly. he could not understand what I was asking for, My question was: 'can you help me find (artist)'s cd (title)? Yes? (I'm positively sure it was a question as the guy made no attempt to get to the rack to look for the cd) Rephrased as 'can you help me find (artist's) latest cd? ''Oh... (comprehension finally dawning on him) we don't have...

I used to think that I was a great matchmaker, and some friends were victims of my evil deeds. I just randomly picked 2 people (mostly friends, but friends of friends have not been really spared, either) and matched them up. Most of the time, I informed at least one of them that they've been matched. One of my victims was this particular girl, X, whom I automatically paired off with guy Y. The thing is, they had NOTHING in common with the exception that they were aware of each other's existence and I knew them too. Of course the rest of my friends caught on with this mad idea and chipped in insane quips like how they were made for each other! Somehow, somewhere along that time, the both of them had their names referred to as Jack and Jill - and just to annoy her (X, or Jill) the friends used to sing the nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill going up the hill and so on... (The name giving was prompted by the evening of the lantern festival, but that's another story!) By the w...

Hmm.. many might mistake this as the movie made back in 1996. Personally, I’ve never seen it myself, but the ghost and the darkness here refers to a certain basic math lecturer I had in first year.The funny thing was, math being quite an interesting subject managed to put even the most alert of students to sleep with this woman droning on and on about the subject. This is however, NOT a character assassination of the said lecturer but my own thoughts on the happenings in her classes. Firstly, her classes were mostly at 11:00 am, time for brunch, so of course a bunch of hungry 18 year olds would need a bite before going for class, therefore, there were obviously lots of late comers to the class, and plenty of disturbances…Secondly, she loved hovering near the bright lights of the projector, thus hiding part of the slide she was teaching from and casting a hilarious looking shadow on the wall. It curiously looked like a rocket, or shuttle cock or something conical… hehehe… And, it wa...

This incident happened way back in 1998. This was a time when the ghost and the darkness had completely lost me, and I had completely lost her… but somehow things around her were always bound to be weird. In the true spirit of upholding the morality of female students (yeah right…) my residential college decided to hold a talk for all female students living there, and attendance was compulsory. There were rumours that the room would be checked during the talk to avoid truancy. The problem was, the next day we were supposed to have a math exam and last minute work is what most of us are famous for. It was like living in a nightmare. Anyways, we duly attended the talk and were bored to death, even with the math text book. Sitting pretty near one of the exits, we hatched a plan where at certain intervals, one by one of us would get out and go back to the room to study. And it happened. Sitting in the room and doing math questions as if life depended on it, my roomies and I heard the...