RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

Of all the fashion fads of the past that came tumbling into the current era (about 10 years ago till now), nothing was embraced with more love from me than the boot cut jeans and pants. Besides giving the illusion of longer gems, the boot cut balanced certain proportion issues faced by certain women. It was loved by everyone, except perhaps some of the young people of the 70's who remembered the bell bottomed pants from their past with a certain degree of horror as it came in psychedelic colours. For reasons that will be explained in a few days time, I went shopping yesterday. A dreary chore if I may say so myself. It took me about 5 hours to get a few necessary things after scouring practically every other tenant in the mall. Among the stuff I was looking for was a new pair of Levi's seeing that my current pair seems to be hanging at an awkward angle on my hip bone due to all the stretching after almost 3 years of usage and washing. It is still a nice pair, but a new pair wo...

Growing up, I spent about two thirds of the first 12 years of my life in a somewhat quiet coastal town called Port Dickson, then famous for it's pretty much undeveloped but still rather dirty stretch of beaches. It was so close to the sea that according to an old student the primary school that I had studied in was once under attack by a school of swordfish during high tide one day, long before they had reclaimed the land behind the school. Over the past two weeks, my sister and I had discussed the options on going for short one day road trips locally because we have never had the opportunity to travel much in our own country, or anywhere else for that matter when younger (long story), and now with a gps unit at our disposal, getting lost will be a non-issue. Taking advantage of the extended weekend the public holiday in conjunction with Eid provided us, we decided to head over to Tanjung Tuan, a seaside point of interest near the place we once called home on Monday. The journe...

As we speak, a video slightly less than 5 minutes long has taken a mind boggling 10 minutes to buffer up to somewhere a little more than 1 minute of the video. What's really odd is that my connection boasts a whopping 7.3 Mbps, one of the best local speeds, presumably, and also one of the more costly ones, (Bloody one year contracts!!) and now it even seems so much more slower than my dial up connection of 56kbps which I had used faithfully until somewhere in 2006. Of course today it is being slightly slower than usual, which is equally as odd because I happen to be using it while the rest of Malaysia is either probably dreaming about eating delicious food  tomorrow at the various open houses (in conjuction with Eid), or are probably at some happening club somewhere or travelling to their hometowns, etc. In fact, my Yahoo! Messenger list justifies that as there happens to be only 1 person online now on my list of 38 people and she lives far away in the heart of the United States o...

No, we're not talking about your super-heroesque blogger friend's grandmother. I'm sure at her current age, she'll prefer to be left to her own devices - which usually consists of cooking scrumptious food or having long conversations with her children and/or grandchildren. See, the thing is, I had spent the past few days doing what I can only presume to be what old(er) people do, that is going to sleep early. My parents for instance, both nearing their late fifties have the tendency to sleep by 10 or 11 pm and also tend to wake up at unearthly hours to do strange things like to mop the house. As for me, by early I mean I end up getting knocked off by 10 pm and end up having a deep, sound and undisturbed slumber which should leave me feeling refreshed by the time I need to get up at 6:30 am, but that is hardly the case. All I want is to just curl up like a snail and sleep even more. Probably the weather we've been having isn't helping much either. I know that t...

There comes a time in life where communication between friends dwindle to the once a year wishes of Happy Birthday, or one of those festive greetings via text message. About half of my friends over the ages have fallen into that category, and as terrible as it sounds, we all live with it and are somehow comfortable enough to think that it is sufficient in maintaining what was once known as friendship. So, it was incredibly surprising for me to receive a text message from one of those friends yesterday... the last I heard from her was when she changed her number somewhere earlier this year. She told me that she had been accepted to continue with her postgrad (in Safety, Health and Environment) in UTM , the place where we did our degree, suffering in the process by having to climb to the second highest point in campus (the highest point was of course the place known as Balai Cerap - an observatory of sorts which also served as a place people used to go jogging/dating/break rules, e...

It hits you in waves. Sort of. I hardly realised how much the knowledge that the long anticipated adventure laden vacation in Cambodia being unceremoniously cancelled due to a series of unfortunate events would effect me until somewhere last week when a reply to the group e-mail reached me and confirmed my greatest fears. Of course I saw this coming earlier, but when things are not in print you kind of have the tendency to ignore the inevitable and hope for the best, because deep down inside you feel that there is a still an iota of hope. The thing is, this Cambodia plan had been in the works since 2007 until we decided to take the proverbial bull by it's horns to make it happen this year. The planning was long, involved tonnes of e-mails and lots of research but we managed to squeeze in everything every one of us wanted to see in the 6 day itinerary including a brief visit to Tonle Sap lake, a place we learned about in geography in school! And somehow as planning went underwa...

Yeah, I know it's cheating of some sort because this is a scheduled post, but I did want to document the passing of the moment 09/09/09 at 09:09. Because you'll never get it again in this lifetime unless you can find the Philosopher's Stone and live until 3009. ;)

It was a little after 7pm when I noticed that the office had become awfully quite, where mere minutes had passed since Jeremy walked out of the office door. In the silence that followed, the light on the walkie-talkie that was standing still at the corner of my table flashed red and a sound popped out. I started, knowing very well that there was no one else around.. so who had made the sound? I was pretty sure it wasn't any of the guys at work because the sound was rather soft, and high pitched at the same time, and as far as I knew they had all gone back to break fast for Ramadan with their respective families. This I ascertained when I saw the almost deserted carpark (and working where I do, I know which car belongs to whom, and none of the cars left were walkie-talkie owners) And it couldn't have been static either... that has a different sound. I was too unnerved to stay on further, all plans to work late flung out of the window. I knew it would only be moments before stuff...

For some reason, some types of news keep popping up everywhere that you just can't ignore it although deep down inside you know that it probably will not have any effect on your life as you know it. This time around, the news is about Disney buying over Marvel. Yes, undoubtedly the news is shocking, and sounds terribly preposterous the first time you hear it. But hey, lets face it, buying over happens, changes occur and within a few months, we will not even remember that a certain thing/place was bought over or not. Now, I'm not so much against the fact that Disney is buying over Marvel, and I shall admit that it is probably a biased viewpoint on my part because I was never one of those kids who saved her pocket money every week to buy the latest edition of superhero comics from the local newstand, but what puzzles me completely is the reaction I happen to see over the news. It seems like the fans of Marvel Comics have developed this insanely wild imagination that Disney will...

Note: I'm sorry, I didn't realise this earlier (in my defense, this post was posted at almost 1 am) but there may be spoilers ahead. And the title of the movie (especially if you don't like to see the picture attached is called Children of Men) It could have been Clive Owen's soulful eyes staring out of the DVD cover, or maybe the title of the movie, or even the description that sounded futuristic enough for me to pick it up. I don't know, but pick it up I sure did. It all begins with the curious scene of people all over the world crying over the death of Diego, apparently the youngest human being then. I have a bone to pick with the depiction of people in Kuala Lumpur in the movie's news report... we do NOT go around in black burqas , trust me... I live near enough. Clive Owen (or Theo as we will find out slightly later) walks out of a cafe, and there's a bomb blast. The coffee in his take away coffee cup spills on the sidewalk as the smoke and nois...

It's a wee bit past midnight and sleep seems a little hard to come by as the mind races through thoughts like those 4 x 400 metres relay racers passing the baton as they finish their turn. So here I am, trying to dispel those thoughts through the safest medium I know, blogging... Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to, putting those thoughts to words and sentences that make sense seem to be getting tougher for no apparent reason, although when I was attempting to sleep awhile ago, they seemed so eloquently put that I was forced to get up and put them here. After three attempts at putting those thoughts and stuff to words (which involved typing, reading, re-reading and deleting), I sit here, slightly pissed off and with nothing to make into a post I would gladly post. Maybe I'm just losing my blogging mojo. Sigh... I have now given up and so please excuse me while I go and listen to some happy songs... Note: Title of the post is also the title of a song by Queen - no co...