RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

What I'm about to share is creepy enough that I'm only brave to type this out in the broad daylight. This story was told by a friend of my sister's, and apparently happened in a location not too far away from where I live (and the sister was under the impression that I used that route to work and told this story so I'd be careful - but how, I don't know) The place in question was once an oil-palm estate. Today, oil palm trees still sway in the wind in a patch of land which goes almost as far as your eyes can see, but most of the area is now littered with medium sized industries, a road leading to/from the highway, the local Road Transport Department building and some small stalls, a mechanic's repair area and trees. It looks like the most normal area there ever was. At night, the family members of my sister's friend set up a stall in that area, and one day (in the early am) which was as normal as any other day, one of the family members saw something fro...

She can't say why. Her sister thinks it's so unlike her. And after about an hour and a half of copying, saving and deleting and republishing, she still asks herself why. Pink is good, she thinks, and the yellow/orange/white combo has served her well. Maybe for a tad bit too long, she thinks. Besides, we can't live without shoes, and ahem! nice legs... Her only regret is she can't change the font to Arial unless she goes back to each and every post (about 298 or so) and republish them one by one. Not a very appealing idea she thinks. She's a bit crazy but not that crazy. And then there's the time factor as well. Hehehe... And then there's the issue of not having the dashboard at her disposal... Nevertheless it's not such a big problem, she says to herself... Nothing she can't solve, anyway. A bit of tweaking needs to be done, she admits, and if she doesn't like it in a few days/weeks/months/years (ha! ha!), she can always revert to the old on...

It must have all begun with the strange weather we've been having lately. Rain, either in the form of sheets so thick you can hardly see 10 meters in front of you, or in droplets that somehow manage to wet you even if you're exposed to it just a bit, extra cold temperatures from the air conditioning units, as well as too much talking led to a scratchy throat, and perhaps an overdose of Fisherman's Friends, and eventually the infamous influenza, which sort of hovered for only a day or so. I was supposed to get back to work today after a short break earlier in the week, but I was a bit weakened from the fact that I had not eaten any solid food from the night before due to a situation whereby eating/drinking anything would have led to worse consequences. A visit to the doctor confirmed one particular suspicion of food poisoning (I beg to differ, though), but how, where and why remains unanswered. Others who have been eating the same meals as me seem to be in the pink of heal...

Quiz borrowed from Aunty and Lizza Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz... You Are a Jackie! You are a Jackie. "I do everything the right way." Jackies are realistic, conscientious, and principled. They strive to live up to their high ideals. How to Get Along with Me * Take your share of the responsibility so I don't end up with all the work. * Acknowledge my achievements. * I'm hard on myself. Reassure me that I'm fine the way I am. * Tell me that you value my advice. * Be fair and considerate, as I am. * Apologize if you have been unthoughtful. It will help me to forgive. * Gently encourage me to lighten up and to laugh at myself when I get uptight, but hear my worries first. What I Like About Being a Jackie * Being self-disciplined and able to accomplish a great deal * Working hard to make the world a better place * Having high standards and ethics;...

Ah, what a wonderfully festive October we have here. Barely two weeks after one major festival ( Eid ), we are once again greeted by another (Diwali/ Deepavali ) which will arrive without much aplomb, I'm afraid on the 27 th , which is totally awesome because festivals transl ate to public holidays, which I always look forward to every time. Just checked the calendar and regrettably there are no public holidays listed for November. For the uninitiated, Diwali is the festival of lights, about the forces of good winning over the evil and mankind rejoicing because of that win, though seeing the world as it is today, I think the good never won at all. They were just in denial over their losing the battle and the evil forces for once left it at that and chose to remain silent. And it is almost always commemorated with the lighting of oil lamps all around the front porch at night, and visits to family and friends houses, as well as eating (yes, even people who claim that they are on ...

It's been 6 days since I last blogged, and it feels like I'm starting blogging from scratch all over again. In fact, my very first post over 3 years ago seemed to have come off much more easily. Otherwise, I would have never stuck to it for this long. Anyway, it has been a long week. Longer than usual, and longer than I expected. A combined total of about 9 hours of talking about an important topic in two days has left me with a scratchy throat, which I believe may leave me voiceless over the next few days. Scratchy throats aside, I have a story to share. It seemed funny at that time, and hopefully by the time I'm done, it will still be funny. This story relates to one of the three day sessions with our foreign advisers on the unavoidable 10 year project the other day. Bearing in mind the need to be punctual when dealing with these foreign people who shake their heads (contemptuously - if I may say so myself) at our so called "Malaysian time", I practically r...

Markets everywhere are tumbling just like sandcastles crumbling after a rogue wave. And yet, the finance portfolio holder says everything is just fine and dandy, and we shall all be happy and continue with what we've doing all this while. Oh, what a pretty picture! Admittedly, my knowledge on economics is almost non-existent thanks to the education system I grew up in. If you're a science stream person, you stick with chemistry, physics, Biology and Additional Mathematics, and put your nose far away from the Social Sciences, arts and economics classes. No school (except maybe private schools, but I'm not sure) gave the option for you to take up a selection of subjects that you dig. I guess, inadvertently, it may have been some evil ploy to keep us only knowledgeable in certain areas so that we don't end up being too smart and start asking dangerous questions... hehehe. And due to that, most of the stuff I 'learned' about the economy is from a fellow blogger Z...

I have a thing for: a) Numbers (Not the tv show although I think the main character is kinda cute!) And it's pretty cool to have hit post number 100 for the year... especially after the slump in blogging for 2007 b) A lot of other things which I can't seem to remember because I thought of this post before sleeping last night and I've forgotten everything right now. I sure will most probably win an award for most forgetful blogger if there ever was such a thing! c) Music, which brings forth this meme I pilfered off Woozie's blog because I think it's awesome, and yes, I have a thing for memes :D 1. Put your iTunes on shuffle. 2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer. 3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS! 4. Tag your friends who might enjoy doing the game as well as the person you got the meme from. IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY? Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd WHAT WOULD BEST D...

To get to work, I have to cross the same river in two places using an old motorboat that lost it's motor a couple of years ago. Ok, that was a joke, a bit bad in taste perhaps seeing that some people still need to cross rivers that way... Naturally, with rivers, the water occasionally decides to seek higher ground especially when their friends from the sky visit, and then there's also the fact that my glaring at people who indiscriminately throw rubbish on the roads, floor or everywhere else but the bin (and only god knows what monstrosities are thrown into the rivers... so sad!) seems to not have any effect whatsoever, which most probably leads to this crazy flooding after a few hours of rain which seems to happen oh so frequently these days. The road that I usually take was partly submerged in water in one small stretch and a double lane was reduced to a single lane. Even last Friday, I ended up staying back in work until almost 9pm because I heard about the road conditions...

Firstly, I should make it clear that in the actual process of conducting the activities listed below, no one's hair stood on ends, no one suffered from static electricity shock per se, and the best part of all, it was not necessary to get any firemen involved (although I personally am of the opinion that they have one hell of a cool job despite the heat they have to face) Now that all wild ideas have been put aside, we shall continue. A couple of days ago, I found myself in front of an audience of about twenty per session (we had to split it into three sessions) which makes it about 60 guys where I attempted to make them understand the shaky concepts behind static electricity, why we give such a damn about it and what we can all do to reduce the effects of static electricity even though I was completely unprepared for it (mentally, that is... because we're supposed to kick off these marathon training sessions, and this topic was selected to be the first and so there I was - d...

Stupid blogger's block You are nothing but a pain And a great big joke There's nothing like a haiku to save the day, and then there's only this... (although there is no connection, whatsoever)

It's cold. It's been cold for the past few days and it's an odd feeling saying how cold it is seeing that I'm here, in a country that is 'hot and humid' according to geography lessons from the yesteryears. Nevertheless it is still cold, and my fingers really, really don't like it. Anyway, it was last Friday I think when I noticed an increased occurence of goose bumps caused by involuntary shivering. And it takes a few minutes of heating my hands together so that they're warm enough to put the bumps back where they belong. I was in an air-conditioned place when it first started, so I thought it was because it was cold, but it didn't stop there. Throughout the week, I'd be doing something I normally do, and the next thing I know I'm all in shivers even when everyone else is not. My mom thought I might be having some sort of internal fever and told me to see a doctor. But then again, how do you tell a doctor that you think you might be havin...

People say the third time's a charm, but I'm fervently crossing my fingers and hoping that the second time can be a charm as well, because I don't know if I could attempt it the third time (not that I'm giving up so easily even before the attempt, but just because you never know what may happen) So, I've gone and signed up to torture myself for 1 whole month with the yearly writing frenzy that is best known as NaNoWriMo after not doing so last year because I knew beforehand that I was to be away for about a week in November, unlike the previous year where I went on with it despite having a major exam, but gave up somewhere in the final week of November when I realised that I had to pass the exam by hook or by crook. That sucked big time, and till today that old story still remains at 34,000+ words and unfinished. Enough with the old stuff... So far, I don't see anything impeding my progress in getting those 50,000 words this year besides myself, sudden bout...

It has been quite awhile since I ever acknowledged to having a best friend. Growing up, I had a small belief in best friends, those you share your deepest darkest secrets with, from silly crushes to favourite tv shows and books and secret desires to push annoying people down the stairs because I had read about such things and lived mostly in the world of make belief due to lack of entertainment. I've always been surrounded by people, so called kindred spirits but rarely had anyone particularly close whom I could call my best friend. The closest friend I ever had was when I was in my early teens, where we rode the school bus together, joined the band in school (although only for 1 year) and spoke in F language about everything under the sun (much to the annoyance of some others who didn't know the 'language'). And then one day, without any warning, we just drifted apart (where she got chummy with some other kid whom I thought was the most boring person ever) none of u...

There has been an argument since the time people ceased having to hunt down game bigger than them, club it to death or spear it (to death as well) and drag it home to their caves so that the whole group could sit down to a decent meal of uncooked meat torn off with crude cutlery, or worry about when they themselves would be food for someone else or some other creature. The argument is, do we live to eat, or do we eat to live? I was watching the local news this morning, something which I don't usually do due to the holier than thou approach they use in addressing issues and their reporting which quite a lot of people agree is slightly biased. So much for clear and transparent reporting. Nevertheless, once the local news segment was over and done with, they ventured to the world news, one of it being an International Hamburger eating competition in which the contestants are required to wolf down as many hamburgers they can in 8 minutes. Now, no offense against the competitors ...

The other day, when I blogged about what I've been doing with my life for the past 4 years, Aunty Helpful Dictator's mind went straight to Sherlock Holmes. And another evidence about how everything is interconnected, my sister happened to mention Sherlock Holmes in one of our many conversations about a few weeks before that. The thing is, for the past few weeks, I have also been reading Sherlock Holmes and his adventures in solving crimes. I first got to know the amazing detective (yes, I know he is fictional, but...) at the age of 13 during Literature class (my teacher at that time seemed to be a big fan!) have become a fan myself ever since. At that time, however, our books were abridged versions with a controlled vocabulary of (I can't remember how many) words, which the English Language Department thought was the appropriate number of words any 13 year old should know... (after all, English is only thought as a second language here) I've always been fascinated ...

They say there are unseen being lurking around us, trapped in a place where no one wants them to be and yet, when they show their existence even for a mere second, people run helter-skelter, sometimes swearing to never return to that place. There are rumours going around that the place where we work has it's own group of unwanted guests. One of our guards had seen a headless creature after midnight once and was sick for a week. Some have seen a short 'person' with brush like hair, and there's also one tall one with long flowing hair. There are some unseen ones who choose to make noise when you're all alone. Right above the office building, there's an utility room where the compressors and pumps are, and as far as we are aware, people don't work there at night, but sometimes, when you're sitting all alone, unaware that you're the last one sitting there finishing a stubborn report, you hear sounds of things being moved around in the utility room. S...