RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

The computer and I shook hands politely for the very first time circa 1989, when I was about 9 years old. Our friendship led us through several complicated sounding activities, like creating designs with Logo, some programming with BASIC, and a few others which seem to escape my memory at present. But above all, the friendship introduced me to the wonderful world of games. An interesting point to note in the games we played is that you usually have some sort of control over what goes on. Take for instance this game we used to play back then called " Adventures in Math " where you'd go around solving math puzzles in a castle like place and collect money and diamonds in the process. Of course once you've solved a certain number of questions, you will be led out to the exit and your game ends, but if you're there to win (the school actually turned it into a competition - the highest scoring team gets a spiffy looking trophy and may be mistaken for an athlete, but he...

A little bit of spring cleaning was required on the blog, what with the categories list expanding uncontrollably, and there were some dead blogs as well, killed none other than by their respective owners. Now, while I've managed to clip the list to a sensible length and rearrange it by number of posts instead of the usual alphabetical order, I couldn't help noticing that the most number of posts I have happen to fall into a category I named 'travel' which stands at a mind boggling 34 posts! Funny, really... because I have only been to 3 other countries outside of Malaysia, and even then only one of it was for a proper vacation. Of course local trips were also categorised as 'travel', but the very thought of travel leading my activities tickles my funny bone so. People might begin to think of me as some airspace happy globetrotter!

While it was with incredible ease I told my late grandfather that the empty house at the corner had a family of donkeys living in it, or informed my parents matter-of-factly that my friend lived in a certain house along the two hour journey from Port Dickson to KL when I was around four years old, doing it these days is not as fulfilling, and nearly impossible. I suppose despite how much of a loner you are or think you are, after you've had real friends, imaginary ones just don't make the cut anymore. A couple of weeks ago, imaginary friends became a topic of conversation between the sister and I, as we watched a movie where the existence of imaginary friends was significant enough, but not in the true sense of course, because these imaginary friends were of a more sinister nature.  She opined that  if kids (hers or mine, in the future, if and when they exist) started talking about imaginary friends, we had better pay attention. It reminded me of another story another frien...

A long time ago, I convinced myself that I loved trees by writing (I was actually coerced to take part in a district level competition by our English teacher) an essay titled "Why I love trees", inspired by the trees swaying in the wind as I sat by the window, looking out at them whilst chewing the end of my pen. It was a huge surprise when I found out some time later that I had actually won the first prize in the category I took part in, and as a result received  a gorgeous book called Tomorrow's Earth by David Bellamy. Being me, I read the book cover to cover many times over, and the trees won me over. I was 12 then. But enough about the brief history of the shady origins of my love for trees. The fact is, I just found out today from Nick at Anything Goes that you can actually name a tree after your blog, through a tree planting program called "My blog is Carbon Neutral"   and the best part is, the trees are real ones, breathing, transpiring, chlorophyll...

They got it right when they named it Script Frenzy. Nearing the halfway mark period wise, yet still quite far away from the target halfway mark (only 34 out of the 50 pages required by the 15th!), procrastination beckons in all sorts of ways. Worse still, I'm sleepy and nodding off on the keyboard! Frenzy indeed! Though not much of a towel thrower, all I feel like doing right now is to find a nice little comfortable corner to hide in until the end of the month.

Note: This post was written in snatched moments over a week. Finally got to publishing it today.  The voice in my head is dictating this post out in whispers. I don't know why. If I could only use one word to describe the previous week and some more, I'd use eventful, because it was. For my standards, anyway, where minutes flit by into hours and then become days that you never knew existed. It may seem a bit odd to want to blog about a week that has passed, but that's the way it is. When I'm free, nothing happens, and when I'm supposed to be doing something else, things I think would be worth blogging about start mushrooming like mushrooms after a thunderstorm. To be totally honest, though... it's been years since I last saw a mushroom after a thunderstorm (probably somewhere in 1996, I think) 1. In momentary madness, I agreed to join the women's netball team at work. The last time I played netball was 18 years ago, and even then I was the keeper, wher...

Tattletale Tivenka. Idiot. If I were a boy, I'd box his face till his mouth bled and at least one tooth fell out.

He came, he saw, but never conquered. Instead he fished, golfed, went for English class (and learned to say "No thank you", downed insane amounts of beer and sang at  karaoke lounges when he felt like it. After almost three years of living the good life here in Malaysia, TY, our foreign adviser bid us adieu last week in a small farewell dinner *organised by my department. If we had judged the night by the food alone, it would have been pretty mediocre to say the least. Some of us had planned to get there, eat, maybe take a photo or two for posterity and say goodbye to spend the rest of the night in more pleasant ways. Turns out that wasn't meant to be the moment a live band turned up and started tuning their musical instruments. Arofsky went and checked with them, and yes, they did play songs from any language, which was the happiest news TY received that day. His eyes lit up when he and the band belted out Sukiyaki, Nagasaki and some other song which I can't recall...

"Un, dos, tres, toca la pared" Laura said as she knocked on the tree trunk in front of a big sprawling orphanage. She looked behind her after a short pause, gauging how close her friends were to her, preparing to run the moment any of them could tap her on her shoulders as the game progressed. Later, Laura gets adopted. El Orfanato, also known as The Orphanage, is a Spanish horror movie leaning towards the slightly mysterious and chilling side, with a bit of tragedy thrown in... It is what you could call a beautifully taken horror movie, verified by the non-existence of a blood-thirsty killer going on a rampage seeking revenge of some sort on skimpily dressed teenagers. Moving on to the present day, Laura is all grown up with a family of her own, including an adopted son, Simon who is so adorably cute you feel like biting his nose off. My sister wanted to bite his cheeks off, though. They live in her former orphanage where she has plans to turn it into a house for children ...