RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

This is a story from long ago. A year full of geekiness. In fact, my whole class was filled with bespectacled teenagers, had an aura of awkwardness around them, who enjoyed maths immensely and was well known for it's noisiness. The class was known as 1K, whereby K stood for Kenanga. I have no idea what the name is in English, the dictionary that was lying here on my desk only defines 'kena' as hit and 'kenangan' as memories. Just my luck! Those were the years when lifelessness ruled. You'd wake up, have a bit of the morning to yourself, and get ready for school at about 11, have a quick lunch, and wait for the school bus around 12 to reach school before 12:50 pm Monday to Friday. School starts a little later on Fridays, but the school bus comes the same time anyway. Then you'd spend the whole afternoon/evening in school right up till 6:30 p.m and by the time you got home around 7:30 pm, you'd have enough time to have a shower, eat some dinner and do...

It is eerily quiet in the house on this Sunday evening. The sister has just left the house to get back to the ups and downs of studying life after an uneventful 10 days at home. It wasn't too long ago that she came back to the house for an extended weekend, to get some rest before her final exams... due to the fact that we hardly ever see each other or talk to each other or even sms each other unless there is something totally important, like a great new song or some information about something or other, her coming home is something I always look quite forward to, but she chose a particularly wrong moment to drop by. I was having long nights and long days at work including working through the weekends. Even moments spent in the house was filled with moping around the house with a worried countenance, wondering if the long days and nights will ever end... or wil the commitment pay off (definately not monetarily, the scumbags, but at least the mental anguish will finally be exinguis...

Note: I actually put this up yesterday, accidently... it was supposed to be a draft, but through mere carelessness, it appeared on my page for 3 hours. And then I accidently deleted it. I was supposed to only make it invisible so that I could edit it in my free time. Maybe it's not meant to be seen... lets just wait and see I thought that it's weird that the company is having the annual safety week when the safety officer herself is on maternity leave. Then I remembered... the fire of August 2004 (I wasn't there then!) Tanks caught fire, someone fainted... Ha! August is the anniversary of the fire. No wonder. The company is observing safety week this week. Not that they don't on other weeks, it's just that there are no fun activities then. Take the fire fighting competition for instance. They announced it on Tuesday morning. The announcement ended with a message to women who intend to compete to please wear trousers. As if! Most of the women here wear trousers...

Your Italian Name Is... Enrica Romano What's" Your Italian Name? Your 1950s Name is: Penny Thelma What's" your 1950s Name? Your Hawaiian Name is: Palila Keilana What's" your Hawaiian Name? Your Russian Name Is... Jelena Lyudmila Solovyov What's" Your Russian Name? Your Old Fashioned Name Is... Gillian Joulon What's" Your Old Fashioned Name? Your Superhero Profile Your Superhero Name is The Terra ShieldYour Superpower is FlyingYour Weakness is MeatYour Weapon is Your Particle PitchforkYour Mode of Transportation is Phone Booth What's" your Superhero Name? As you can see, my relentless pursuit to get a pseudonym, a nom de blog or whatever else you may refer it as, has led me to total insanity... I therefore introduce you to: Terra Shield :) (add insane laughter here)

Gasp! I need a pseudonym, pronto! In the calm of a Friday evening, I was looking through some statistical data pertaining to this blog. I check it from time to time, but never really paid any attention to the details. And then I stopped short. Closed my eyes, and opened them again in horror. It seems that someone had googled 'my real name' malaysia and ended up landing on this blog. Now, there's nothing wrong with googling for 'my name'' in Malaysia, fact is I personally knew a few other people who went around by the name. There was a primary school mate (a year or 2 older, I think), there was the daughter of my family doctor when I was a small kid, and there was another friend in the same faculty as me albeit one year my junior... so the search that was made could have been made for any other of these people. Just for the record, though I must inform you that I'm a rather low profiled person, especially from the last 10 years or so... Anyway, back t...

This has been going around for the last couple of days. Shamelessly I tagged myself, because... (nobody tagged me) well, there's no reason, but I did it anyway. 1) One book that changed your life? Anne of Green Gables (and the series) in a way that I could see myself starting to (attempt to) write stories, and matchmake people ;) 2. One book you have read more than once? To kill a Mockingbird. Love the book to bits. I've read it again and again and again....(And all the Harry Potters- up till the Half blood Prince) 3. One book you would want on a desert island? The catcher in the Rye. If I'm alone (quite normal on a desert(ed) island, I'll need a conversation partner, and I'm pretty sure that Holden Caulfield will rise to the occasion) 4. One book that made you laugh? God Knows by Joseph Heller - I still think about it (and laugh) :) 5. One book that made you cry? Cry... as in buckets upon buckets of tears - no.(not that i'm an insensitive git, b...

A friend casually referred to the other blog as my complaint channel. So is this one actually, only difference is no one's mentioned it. It wasn't meant to be so. I recall smiling with glee as I typed out my initial posts (circa April 05) where stories of the long but not so forgotten past was relived and revealed to all who cared to read. I realised with a twinge of sadness that the said friend had a point... recent posts have been nothing but complaints or near complaints... from the month of July, to the bashing up of annoying workmates, the hopelessness of the Japanese language to the extinction of turtles. In defence, I vehemently stressed that past posts had rather funny stories (most which happened during the confusing years of teenhood turning unseen pages to adulthood) Anyway, the friend wanted to know if there were any stories where he was featured. There weren't any, and even as I tried to recall, the only thing that came to mind were games of Bluff and black j...

It's kind of funny how a day starts out seemingly bright and okay, and slowly turns into a dull mush (whatever that means) and then ends up being nice, warm and fuzzy all over again. Funny thing is whatever I just said has nothing to do with this particular post. Anyway, this song - Snow Patrol's You Could be happy was ringing in my head the whole day through. Sometimes I enjoy having songs playing in my head, but sometimes I don't. This unfortunately belonged to the latter group. Despite the fact that I like the song, having it play in the head can be rather depressing. I don't know the reason, but will soon find out (I hope!) But I digress.... See, yesterday, I was reading through my "care for the environment" styled post, and the comments that followed, and in my rather depressed state, I ended up smiling as I was reading through the comments two likeminded souls had decided to share. Just because, the whole scene got pictured in my head. Here we hav...

Picture from Yahoo! News Yesterday's news. Or was it the day before? I recall H mentioning in random to the room about the leatherback being extinct in Malaysia. He's the only person in the crowd who reads the papers on a daily basis. It gauged no response even from the people who deep down in their hearts cared for the environment, yet never made a big difference to save it... (just using recycled paper instead of shredding it, throwing rubbish into the designated bins whenever possible, but never demostrating -peacefully or otherwise, nor climbing a tree and living on it just to prove a point) I was one of them... Firstly, I was silent because I've been having sleep deprivation for the last few days, was also deprived of my weekend which I treasure so much and thirdly, because I could not believe it. I've heard that the turtle numbers have been dwindling since forever (which in my terms most probably means since the 80's), and hated those torchlight wiel...

Dear people who read this.... I've never done this before, as in asking your opinion about something. Well, of course this does not include the occasional questions that I pop in the posts every now and then, but this time... it's different. As some of you'll might or might not know, I've been learning Japanese the last few months. It hasn't been easy, but it's allright (the class is kinda fun because of the funny conversations that happen in the class). Back to the point of this post now. At the end of this year, there will be an exam consisting of a listening test, as well as a written test. Unfortunately for me (and most probably everyone else too) the final date of submitting the names for the test is on 15 August. As you can see, I'm running out of time and I can't decide if I should take the test or not. To make it easier (as to why I'm making SUCH a big deal of this) I shall list down the Why I shoulds and Why I shouldn'ts of the te...

I have survived 20+ Julys all my life, but none of it ever came close to this July... the worst ever month in the history of my life... (save for September 2005 - I need to analyse which is worse, cause they were yukky for highly different reasons!) Anyway, I thought that July would bow out gracefully but it somehow got into August's way and informed it to torture unsuspecting victims - like me.... (by the way, I'm not the only person who hated July, someone else whose blog I stalk has written quite a number of posts dissing July) I just don't know what to say anymore... I don't even have the mood to justify why life sucks so much, except that maybe 2006 should be booted out. A.S.A.P. Maybe the whole year is just yukky ( as predicted by astrologers earlier this year)