RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

Dear 2009, Hey there, I believe we haven't met just yet, though we most probably will in a few hours. To be honest, this is the very first time I'm writing a letter to a year. I suppose you should know that I along with a few others have not made any resolutions to celebrate your arrival, but that's beside the point. The thing is, I was kind of hoping to catch you before you descended upon us. It's just hours away where people will be ushering you in with fireworks, countdowns and laughter induced by champagne bubbles... So before anything happens, I'd like to request just one thing. Be nice. Just that. I'm not hoping for anything spectacular, but it would be nice if 2009 (that is you, if you've forgotten) could leave out unnecessary pain from your list of things to do. So many people have a lot of hopes on you, you know. I'm sure that at the end, you don't want to be rated the same as 2008 - unpredictable and only getting a five out of ten.....

For 2008, that is. This is an attempt at an annual review of the year that was. I just checked back my older stuff and was reading through years 2006 and 2007 . It came, it saw it conquered. That was 2008. And now, it's almost over, a bit like a bad movie that you're forced to watch because your eyes have been taped open. On the personal front I'd say that 2008 was the year of the unexpected . You'd be moving along one path (not so comfortably, mind you) and the next thing you know, there's a sharp corner which you have to take, and one small wrong step will leave you, well... you know. There were so many changes that were thrown my way, that I can't even remember what changed, and when. Everything is just a blur as though I had been blindfolded and put in the middle of a non stop carousel which kept spinning and spinning and taking me along with it. When there are no resolutions to speak of there are none to break, so I took the easy move and did not mak...

In the past 80 hours or so, I have clocked a cumulative of only 10 hours of sleep. The rest were spent awake (either working, walking, sitting, being on the net, and lying on the bed worrying about nothing in particular) Although I feel fine now, I was sleepy by 10 pm last night. No doubt I slept only to be suddenly wide awake at 2:30 right until I had to wake up at 6:30 am. Will this never ever end, I wonder.... I do hope that I don't end up like the machinist . That would be just sad.

First of all, Hugh Jackman has got to be one of the most gorgeous people on this planet. Now that we have set that straight, life can go on as it normally does. With themes we are all familiar with, such as love, the search for an answer to life's mysteries, and death, this movie captures you from the very beginning with it's amazing cinematography. A tree, mostly almost dead stands alone, and a bald (but still good looking) Hugh Jackman sits crossed legged, and then there's all these memories flashing back and forth as the story moves from the inter-related lives of the characters that had spanned over centuries, from the days when Spain had a Queen, to the modern world we live in , right up to the futuristic view of life. What's captivating about the movie is the fact that it incorporates Mayan folklore, and discusses the existence of the tree of life and how it is death that creates life (a suggestion by Rachel Weisz character, Izzi) Despite the movie being ...

Yeah, so here you have a person who envisioned pushing down her form two art teacher down the steps taking a quiz on (drum rolls please) art. It's all HelloQuizzy's fault. They have so many quizzes and they're all fun, and especially good when you have nothing profound to say but want to blog anyway (Well, there usually isn't anything profound that I would say but... ) And besides, the blog needed some colour. Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test... Extroverted, Progressive, and Intelligent 5 Cubist, -5 Islamic, -5 Ukiyo-e, 3 Impressionist, 2 Abstract and -19 Renaissance! Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque . It revolutionized European art and inspired changes in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as Analytic Cubism. It was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between 1908 and 1911 mainly in France. In its second p...

No... I'm not talking about spam in the tin. I got this in my mobile phone message inbox the other day, and figured why not have some fun with it. And just to make it clear on why I'm calling it spam... it's because this is the second message I received from the same number. "Em quen roi! the ah gap luc nao ah noi cho em mot vai thi du de em de nho ra hon co dc kg ah?" The strangest part of all is that it was sent via a local number, and it actually got me thinking if there are any foreign workers of Vietnamese origin hereabouts. Or could it be a distressed Vietnamese bride seeking help? I mean what are the odds of you receiving a message from a foreigner (whom I'm assuming to be Vietnamese but I could be wrong!) And yeah, sympathies to the sender, a question was asked but there was no reply. Translations, anyone?

It's funny. I used to use blogging as a form of distraction from the idiocity of daily life, and suddenly I find myself being distracted from blogging by the idiocity of daily life. Oh well.

Between the hours spent being awake, either forced or voluntarily and a very skewed definition of the word "rest" in the last few years or so, I have managed to make myself very, very tired. And somehow, during those lost hours, something I used to rely on very heavily to make things better seemed to have disappeared from my vocabulary: The afternoon nap. I remember hating those afternoon naps as a child. I'd always want to run around, play, or just do something, but I had to succumb to the pressure in the end. In recent times however, as soon as I attempted taking a nap, I'd be wide awake, just like that. Even the most boring, long winded 18 th century literature could never put Terra back to sleep again. What's worse is the condition seems to have detriorated as time goes by. Earlier this week, I had an extended weekend, which instead of leaving me refreshed, made me even more tired than usual, although I did try my best to sleep well. Anyway, yesterday was...

A few of us had a distressing few weeks when we realised with horror that the charger we use to recharge the batteries of the video camera which is practically the lifeline of the 10 year project had disappeared without a trace. All accusing eyes turned to B, the last person believed to have used the video camera. A thorough search in all possible locations proved to be a futile effort. It seemed as though the charger might have developed a few legs and ran off in the middle of the night. The owner of the video camera (Our sales department) wasn't very happy with the knowledge, and it was finally decided that all the members involved in the using of the said camera would pool in some money to get a new charger. So, last week B went to the shops with the video camera to get a replacement charger. And much to his dismay (and ours later), none of the shops had the type of charger we needed. In fact, they had no replacement units at all, but gave B an unconvincing promise of atte...

It is a known fact that a certain number of babies are born every minute somewhere in this world, and there are also a certain number of people who kick the bucket every other minute, so there is supposed to be a certain balance, right? However, it feels as though the world is suddenly very very crowded for no apparent reason. I have a question to ask... if someone (a friend for instance) asks you how you are after a long time of not meeting each other, and your meeting is a brief one, an encounter at the bank or something. What do you say? Do you assume the question to be a rhetorical one, give a smile and say you're fine and ask them how they are, although deep down inside you feel like wielding a sword on a high speed horse and take the heads off ever person that gets in your way? I can't say why, but when I get this question, I automatically say everything's allright although a part of me wants to say, "No, I'm not allright. Can I cry on your shoulder, pleas...

You'd think that people would learn good lessons from tragedies past and attempt to prevent them from recurring and causing pain and injury all over again. Based on what's going on though, that seems to be not the case at all. About two days ago, a landslide happened near a commercial area near Damansara Heights, where the roads were closed and the buildings evacuated. And even before the shock of that incident had blown over, another landslide happened in the hillside residential area of Bukit Antarabangsa near Ulu Klang in the middle of the night, killing four, injuring several others and destroying houses in the process. So far, about 3000 to 4000 people have been asked to evacuate the area. Back in 1993, a tower block of this place called Highland Towers, another hillside residential area around the same area of Ulu Klang collapsed leading to the deaths of 48 people, and the formation of SMART (Special Malaysia Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team), because we never had ...

Of all the things that I could have inherited from my dad, I inherited his eyebrows. Now because there is a policy of these pages here being under strict rules of semi-anonymity, I cannot provide any pictorial evidence, nevertheless, suffice to say that they look almost similar to Bert's eyebrows. You know, Bert, the yellow dude from Sesame Street (Fine, it's not uni-browed like Bert's but still) It would have been much nicer if I did inherit some of the tall genes. I could do well with at least two extra inches, mostly for getting stuff off the higher places without looking for a stool each time. If I had been born a boy, this will be a non-issue. In fact, I wouldn't even be mentioning it here (or even have a blog in the first place for that matter. I don't know why, but I always think that if I were a guy, I'd be a very different person from what I am now) Being a girl though, it is a big issue, because eyebrows (on a girl) should be neat, and thin and shap...

It might have started somewhere in June if my memory of things like this can be trusted to any extent. Vehicle owners were requested to fix seatbelts at the rear seats by August and could be fined if the belts weren't there in case any law enforcement personnel decided to take a peek at your backseat. The ruling to actually use the seatbelt at the back seats is supposed to begin come January 1st 2009, which is much nearer to us than anybody may think it is. Hearing all this, I'm beginning to wonder if this new ruling will ever see people at back seat sitting straight and properly instead of placing themselves in the middle. Even now with the front seat rule fully enforced (since eons ago), there are still people who pointedly refuse to use their belt until they see a cop and then panic and start frantically looking for the belt while hoping the cop didn't notice! Anyway, I heard the news this morning, and this topic was discussed... most normal cars are 5 seaters, meani...

Seen from the outside stairs that led to the almost deserted carpark, the crescent of the moon looked like a small mouth smiling in the distance. Upon a closer look, two brightly shining objects, looking like stars stared out from above the moon like a pair of eyes twinkling on a face. I read on Saturday about the phenomenon that was supposed to occur on Monday night , where the moon, Venus and Jupiter could be seen in a cluster and thought to myself how none of these things can be seen from the Malaysian sky (like a countless number of eclipses) or how it could be another hoax that even haunted my dreams a few years ago and with everything that happens on a daily basis I completely forgot about it... that is until I saw it, thanks to a largely cloudless sky. It was so simple, yet so cool. Being enthusiastic about phenomena like this, I went for my camera as soon as doing so was possible. Nevertheless, clouds had begun to gather and the twinkling planets were slightly unclear, and...

November ended with a local blackout. Really... I had just finished ironing my clothes for the work week and sat down with the laptop on the floor, a cushion on my lap and was contemplating on putting up yet another complaint post, throw a couple of comments here and there but even before anything could happen, the lights went off with a bang. It was about 7:15 pm and it was already dark. Using the light from my laptop which was running on battery, I looked for my mobile phone as a temporary torchlight until I found a real one (by the way, mobile phone lights are lousy for situations like this) The first torchlight that I picked did not work and neither did the second one... so I traipsed into the kitchen and found matches, but no candles. A few phone calls later, I found a torchlight after rummaging in the dark, and also found some candles. I took a tin, the candles and the matches to the hall and lit it. Then I turned off the laptop. Since there was nothing else to do, I decide...